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xAI

Related event timeline, sources and context from the news index.

EVENT TIMELINE

22

REGULATION · 1 SOURCE · TechCrunch AI

New York Times sues Brave, alleges it scraped publisher content and supplied it to AI firms

The New York Times sued Brave in federal court in Manhattan, alleging the privacy-focused browser scraped its copyrighted content—building an index of over 30 billion webpages—and unlawfully distributed that content to AI companies named in the suit, including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. Separately, the Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel filed a similar lawsuit; the Times seeks injunctive relief and damages and also targets Brave features that bypass paywalls and block publishers' ads while selling its own.

8.0

REGULATION · 1 SOURCE · The Verge AI

The New York Times and other publishers sue Brave, alleging AI scraping and paywall bypass

The New York Times and a group of other publishers — including companies that run the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Orlando Sentinel — filed lawsuits against Brave Software alleging the company unlawfully scraped and indexed publishers' content in a "Brave Index" and sold paid access to AI firms. The complaints also allege Brave's browser offers a "Paywall blocker" that lets users bypass publishers' paywalls without permission or compensation and names AI companies (Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, Cohere) as recipients of the indexed content.

8.0

REGULATION · 1 SOURCE · TechCrunch AI

Judge allows NAACP Clean Air Act lawsuit against xAI over Colossus data center to proceed

A federal judge denied xAI's motion to dismiss an NAACP suit alleging the company operated at least 35 combustion turbines and other pollution sources at the Colossus data center outside Memphis without required preconstruction or operating air permits, violating the Clean Air Act. Judge Debra M. Brown found the plaintiffs have statutory standing, the turbines are not 'mobile sources' under Mississippi's State Implementation Plan, and constitutional challenges fail, so the case will proceed (a similar DOJ motion was also denied earlier).

7.0

COMPANIES · 1 SOURCE · The Verge AI

xAI subsidiary reportedly offering to buy Southaven homes if owners waive lawsuit claims

According to reporting in The Guardian and the Mississippi Free Press, xAI and its subsidiary MZX are offering to buy hundreds of homes around Southaven, Mississippi — reportedly up to 418 properties — but ask sellers to sign release agreements that would bar them from joining or recovering in a lawsuit alleging near-constant noise and vibrations from a nearby xAI data center and power plant. Residents and renters say some are already being forced out, and the company faces separate legal challenges including a lawsuit by the NAACP and the ongoing Haley action by three residents.

7.0

COMPANIES · 3 SOURCES · Anthropic · TechCrunch AI · The Decoder

Anthropic creates Public Benefit Fund, commits 5% of shares with valuation-linked top-ups

Anthropic is establishing the Anthropic Public Benefit Fund as a wholly-owned LLC and, subject to stockholder approval, is committing 5% of its shares today with board-discretionary additions of 2% for every 50% increase in company valuation above a baseline. The fund will be used to scale public-benefit activities (e.g., donations, targeted distributions) while none of the equity held by the LLC will be used for lobbying or political giving; Anthropic says roughly 20% of shares will be dedicated to public benefit when combined with prior co-founder and employee pledges. The company also said it will give METR employee-like access to evaluate its models, is in talks with Hugging Face, and has opened an office in Singapore with an MOU with the government to advance safe AI adoption.

8.0

COMPANIES · 1 SOURCE · The Verge AI

Major websites are blocking AI agents (Muse, Dots, Grok, Perplexity)

Multiple popular websites and services are preventing autonomous AI agents — including Meta’s Muse, OpenAI’s Dots, xAI’s Grok, Instinct, and Perplexity — from performing tasks like shopping, booking, and account access. Companies such as Amazon, Yelp, airlines, banks, and Cloudflare’s anti-bot tools are cited as blocking agents or requiring paid data licensing, while some retailers (Walmart, Gap, Sephora, Best Buy, Shopify merchants) have partnered to allow agent access.

7.0

COMPANIES · 1 SOURCE · The Verge AI

Meta's Muse and OpenAI's Dots bring always-on consumer AI agents

The Verge discusses the recent mainstream rollouts of Meta’s Muse and OpenAI’s Dots — animated, always‑on consumer AI agents pitched to handle tasks like reservations, inbox triage, and purchases. Muse is being offered for free while Dots are paid; both follow earlier community work such as OpenClaw and raise privacy and security questions about granting agents access to personal data.

7.0

REGULATION · 1 SOURCE · WIRED AI

Frontier labs sign White House 'Accord on Super Intelligence' after Trump luncheon

Executives from Google, Anthropic, Meta, OpenAI, xAI and Nvidia signed a voluntary “White House Accord on Super Intelligence” announced after a luncheon with President Donald Trump, committing to internal controls, empowered internal safety teams, external monitoring, and board oversight. The commitments are voluntary and limited in scope, and came as the FTC reportedly prepares investigations into several frontier AI firms and third-party evaluators.

7.0

REGULATION · 1 SOURCE · The Decoder

FTC launches probe into OpenAI, Anthropic and other AI labs

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is investigating OpenAI, Anthropic and other leading AI labs for potential consumer-protection violations and plans to issue legally binding Civil Investigative Demands to compel documents and executive testimony, sources tell the New York Post. The probe reportedly predates the Hugging Face hacking incident and also touches organizations including METR; it comes a day after several industry leaders signed a voluntary pledge for external audits.

9.0

COMPANIES · 1 SOURCE · The Verge AI

OpenAI says it will not go public until it can make confident safety claims about its models

At his DevDay Q&A, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company will not pursue a public offering until it can make confident safety claims about increasingly capable models and avoid added pressure from Wall Street. His remarks referenced recent security incidents across the industry and come as rivals like Anthropic have moved ahead with IPO plans and SpaceX (owner of xAI) recently went public.

7.0

COMPANIES · 1 SOURCE · TechCrunch AI

xAI-owned dot.com redirects to Grok amid OpenAI’s Dots launch

After OpenAI announced a new always-on agent called Dots, the domain “dot.com” — shown in Whois as transferred to xAI in July — redirects to the download page for xAI’s Grok chatbot, prompting online speculation the move was a deliberate poke at OpenAI. Observers first flagged the redirect on X, and xAI has been contacted for comment; other related typo domains are not owned by xAI according to the report.

4.0

MONEY · 1 SOURCE · TechCrunch AI

OpenAI reportedly in talks to raise $30B at $1.4T valuation

Bloomberg reports OpenAI is in talks with investors to raise at least $30 billion in a pre-IPO funding round at an approximate $1.4 trillion valuation; the round would serve as a bridge to an eventual IPO. The report cites a 70% jump in run-rate revenue to $40 billion in August and notes OpenAI previously raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation; CEO Sam Altman has said OpenAI will not pursue an IPO in 2026 to prioritize AI safety.

8.0

MODELS · 1 SOURCE · AWS Machine Learning

xAI’s Grok 4.7 becomes available on Amazon Bedrock

xAI has made Grok 4.7 available via Amazon Bedrock (served through the bedrock-runtime endpoint with cross-Region inference profiles). The model offers a 500K-token context window, four configurable reasoning-effort levels (low/medium/high/xhigh), improved long-horizon self-verification for coding and knowledge work, new safeguards, and support for Responses, Chat Completions, InvokeModel and Converse APIs.

8.0

STARTUPS · 1 SOURCE · TechCrunch AI

Lightspeed targets $250M for new India early‑stage fund focused on AI

Lightspeed plans to raise a $250 million India-focused early-stage fund, Lightspeed India Partners V, that will concentrate on AI startups across India and Southeast Asia; the fund is roughly half the size of its 2022 predecessor and Lightspeed expects to begin investing within about two months. The firm is also aligning its India fundraising cycle with its global funds and will keep the same India team managing the vehicle.

7.0

MODELS · 1 SOURCE · AWS Machine Learning

xAI’s Grok 4.6 is now available in Amazon Bedrock

xAI says Grok 4.6, a model with a 500K-token context window and four configurable reasoning levels, launched on Amazon Bedrock on August 18, 2026; it is served on both bedrock-mantle and bedrock-runtime and supports the Converse API as well as Chat Completions and Responses. xAI reports Grok 4.6 was trained with supplemental model-generated data and agentic reinforcement-learning tasks, and that it shows improved self-checking, first-pass visual/interactive outputs, and expanded safety testing; xAI published benchmark results including ones from Artificial Analysis.

8.0

MODELS · 2 SOURCES · xAI · The Decoder

SpaceXAI releases Grok 4.7 — faster, cheaper model for coding and knowledge work

SpaceXAI released Grok 4.7, a new base-model upgrade positioned as its most capable model for coding and knowledge work; it reportedly uses a larger base model, longer RL training focused on long-running tasks, and an entirely new safeguard stack. The company says Grok 4.7 matches the price and speed of Grok 4.6 while improving verification, longer-context handling, document/presentation generation, benchmark performance (CursorBench 4.0, GDPval, AA Briefcase), and safety metrics (LatchBio biosafety 62.4%, HackerBench v0.3 allowing 3.3% risky prompts); it is available in Cursor, Grok Build, the Grok API, third-party harnesses and cloud platforms, priced from $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens, with an optional faster (2x) variant at double the price.

8.0

REGULATION · 1 SOURCE · TechCrunch AI

Executives clash over AI safety vs control after Amodei essay; Zuckerberg says Meta delayed Muse

Dario Amodei’s long essay calling for a slowdown in AI development has intensified debate among tech executives about whether safety needs coordinated public regulation or can be handled by companies themselves. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta delayed the Muse model to focus on safety, while other leaders and reports of a self-regulatory standards body from major labs highlight tensions over regulation, competitive advantage, and potential regulatory capture.

6.0

MODELS · 1 SOURCE · xAI

xAI adds 21 multilingual flagship voices to Grok Voice and upgrades original five

xAI released 21 new flagship voices for Grok Voice, all natively multilingual and available now in the Realtime Voice Agent API, the Text to Speech API, and the Grok Voice Agent Builder. The original five voices (Ara, Eve, Leo, Rex, Sal) were retrained with an improved recipe for more natural pacing, phrasing, and emphasis; developers can also clone a custom voice from about one minute of audio.

6.0

MODELS · 1 SOURCE · xAI

SpaceXAI launches Grok 4.5, a model optimized for coding and agentic tasks

SpaceXAI says it has released Grok 4.5, its newest model trained alongside Cursor and optimized for coding, agentic workflows, and knowledge work. The company reports training across tens of thousands of NVIDIA GB300 GPUs, claims roughly 2× token efficiency versus leading models, 80 TPS serving speed, and priced the model at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens; Grok 4.5 is available in Grok Build, Cursor, and via the SpaceXAI console with limited free usage offered.

8.0

MODELS · 1 SOURCE · xAI

Grok 4.5 becomes available in GitHub Copilot

Grok 4.5, SpaceXAI’s latest coding model, is now available as a selectable model in GitHub Copilot across VSCode and other Copilot products (including cloud agents and the Copilot CLI). For some businesses and enterprises the model must be enabled in Copilot settings; Grok 4.5 is also offered directly via the SpaceXAI console at $2 per million input tokens and $6 per million output tokens.

7.0

MODELS · 1 SOURCE · xAI

xAI launches Imagine Image 2.0 (grok-imagine-image-2.0) with advanced editing and API access

Imagine Image 2.0 is now generally available as the Quality Mode on grok.com, on iOS and Android apps, and via the API as grok-imagine-image-2.0. The update emphasizes fidelity and iterative editing—including a magic wand, precise segmentation, background removal, multi-reference editing, templates for common workflows, and fills for arbitrary aspect ratios—and is ranked second on Arena’s text-to-image and image-edit leaderboards (as of Aug 7, 2026).

7.0

MODELS · 1 SOURCE · xAI

xAI's Imagine Video 1.5 adds image and voice references and native 1080p

xAI updated its best video model, Imagine Video 1.5 (grok-imagine-video-1.5), to support image and voice references, text-to-video and image-to-video without a starting image, and native 1080p output. Image and voice references start in the US for SuperGrok Heavy and SuperGrok Plus on grok.com/imagine and iOS (rolling out to other tiers in days); image references, text-to-video, and native 1080p are also live in the xAI API, while voice-reference support is available on request.

8.0