Bitcoin financial services company Fold has selected Stripe, the programmable financial services company, to power the upcoming launch of the Fold Bitcoin Credit Card™, a bitcoin-only rewards product designed to turn everyday spending into a direct path to bitcoin ownership. The card enables users to accumulate bitcoin with every purchase, offering a simple and consistent way to build long-term wealth. Issued on the Visa network and powered by Stripe Issuing, the Fold Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card delivers up to 3.5% back on every purchase, with no categories and no deposit requirements. Cardholders earn an unlimited 2% back instantly, plus up to 1.5% back when they pay off purchases using their Fold Checking Account with qualified activity. In addition, cardholders can earn up to 10% back with top brands in the Fold rewards network, including Amazon, Target, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Uber/Uber Eats, Starbucks, DoorDash, Best Buy, and hundreds more. Fold’s reward system is designed to be simple and transparent, offering bitcoin-only rewards without the complexity of tokens, staking tiers, or exchange lock-ins. Fold’s integration with Stripe Issuing marks a key milestone in Fold’s product development and reflects growing demand for digital asset integration in consumer financial tools. With Stripe’s infrastructure in place, Fold is positioned to bring the Fold Bitcoin Credit Card™ to market with the reach and reliability users expect.
Anthropic launches Claude Sonnet 4.5 that leads a benchmark on real-world computer tasks at 61.4%; and introduces Claude Agent SDK which gives the ability to build AI agents with the same infrastructure that powers its frontier products
Anthropic has released Claude Sonnet 4.5, saying it outperforms other artificial intelligence models in coding, building complex agents and using computers. “Claude Sonnet 4.5 is state-of-the-art on the SWE-bench Verified evaluation, which measures complex real-world software coding abilities,” the company said. Anthropic added in the post that Sonnet 4.5 leads a benchmark that tests AI models on real-world computer tasks, OSWorld, at 61.4%. Together with the release of Sonnet 4.5, Anthropic has released upgrades to its products. These include the addition of checkpoints to Claude Code, enabling users to save their progress and roll back to a previous state; the addition of a new context editing feature and memory tool to the Claude API, letting agents run longer and handle greater complexity; and the addition of code execution and file creation directly into the conversation in Claude apps. Anthropic also introduced Claude Agent SDK, which gives developers the ability to build AI agents with the same infrastructure that powers its frontier products. In addition, the Claude for Chrome extension is now available to Max users in the waitlist. “We recommend upgrading to Claude Sonnet 4.5 for all uses,” Anthropic said. “Whether you’re using Claude through our apps, our API, or Claude Code, Sonnet 4.5 is a drop-in replacement that provides much improved performance for the same price.”
Perplexity makes AI-powered browser Comet available to all at no cost; new Background Assistants can work in the browser, the inbox or the background
Perplexity AI made its artificial intelligence-powered browser, Comet, available generally and at no cost. Comet was launched in a limited release on July 9 and since then has had a waitlist joined by “millions of people,” the company said. The browser includes the Comet Assistant, which can help with research, meetings, code and eCommerce while the user is browsing the internet. Perplexity also announced in its blog post the launch of Background Assistants, which are AI assistants that can work in the browser, the inbox or the background. The company will also make Comet available as a mobile app “soon,” per the post. The browser is currently desktop-only. When introducing Comet in July, Perplexity said that the AI-powered browser “transforms entire browsing sessions into single, seamless interactions, collapsing complex workflows into fluid conversations.” By making Comet available for free, the company will be better able to compete with other AI-powered browsers, such as those available from Google, OpenAI and Anthropic. The first publishers to participate in Comet Plus, its service that gives users and their AI assistants access to participating publishers’ journalism and compensates the publishers for that access.
Microsoft’s Copilot Vision AI can now look at your whole desktop or “any specific browser or app window” and help analyze content, provide insights, and answer your questions, coaching you through it aloud
Microsoft has upgraded its AI tool, Copilot Vision, to view the entire screen and analyze two apps simultaneously. This update for Windows Insiders allows the AI to see any open app, browser, or desktop. Copilot Vision aims to become a more intuitive and responsive assistant, understanding the full context of on-screen activity. It provides personalized support for editing documents, exploring creative projects, or browsing the web. Users can activate Copilot Vision manually, clicking the glasses icon in the app and choosing what they want it to see during a video call. The AI can now offer suggestions, analyze visual content, and coach users aloud, guiding users with improvements, insights, and live feedback. Copilot Vision is now compatible with mobile phone cameras, allowing users to AI what their camera sees and answer questions. Microsoft has also launched Copilot for Gaming, an AI-powered assistant designed specifically for Xbox gamers. The feature is currently being tested within the company by Microsoft employees.
Treasury to delay the implementation of AML/CFT rule for investment advisors by two years due to revision of scope by FinCEN to address the diverse business models and risk profiles of the sector and appropriately balance costs and benefits
The Treasury Department plans to delay for two years the implementation of a new anti-money laundering rule focused on investment advisers while one of its bureaus, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), revisits the scope of the rule. The agency postponed the effective date of the final rule establishing Anti-Money Laundering/Countering the Financing of Terrorism Program and Suspicious Activity Report Filing Requirements for Registered Investment Advisers and Exempt Reporting Advisers (IA AML Rule) until Jan. 1, 2028. The previous effective date for the IA AML Rule was Jan. 1, 2026. The agency announced the postponement “to ensure efficient regulation that appropriately balances costs and benefits” and that it aims to ease the industry’s compliance costs and reduce regulatory uncertainty. The IA AML Rule seeks to address ongoing illicit finance risks, threats and vulnerabilities posed by criminals and foreign adversaries that exploit the U.S. financial system and assets through investment advisers. FinCEN recognizes, however, that the rule must be effectively tailored to the diverse business models and risk profiles of the investment adviser sector.
Q2 to embed Greenlight’s family focused financial literacy tools to enable FIs to deliver financial education and personal finance experiences directly to parents and kids within its digital banking experience
Greenlight has partnered with Q2 Digital Banking Platform to embed its family-focused money app within their digital banking experience. The Q2 Partner Accelerator program allows financial institutions to deliver financial education and personal finance experiences directly to parents and kids through their bank’s app. Greenlight’s financial literacy tools enable kids and teens to earn, save, spend wisely, give, and learn. The integration also equips families to protect their finances, providing parents with tools to monitor transactions, automate allowances, and control spending. The Greenlight app includes curriculum-based content like Level Up™, Greenlight’s interactive financial literacy game. The Q2 Partner Accelerator program allows financial services companies to pre-integrate their technology to the Q2 Digital Banking Platform, allowing financial institutions to work with these partners, purchase their solutions, and deploy their standardized integrations to account holders. With the Greenlight Q2 Integration, families can more easily learn about smart money habits and find safe financial tools in their everyday banking platform.
SEC’s Atkins says most crypto assets are not securities; plans purpose-fit disclosures for crypto securities including for so-called ‘initial coin offerings,’ ‘airdrops’ and network rewards.”; could allow innovation with ‘super-apps’
SEC Chairman Paul Atkins said his agency is launching “Project Crypto” with an aim to make a quick start on the new crypto policies urged by President Donald Trump. Atkins said the effort will be rooted in the recommendations of the President’s Working Group report issued Wednesday by the White House. He described it as “a commission-wide initiative to modernize the securities rules and regulations to enable America’s financial markets to move on-chain.” “I have directed the commission staff to draft clear and simple rules of the road for crypto asset distributions, custody, and trading for public notice and comment,” Atkins said. “While the commission staff works to finalize these regulations, the commission and its staff will in the coming months consider using interpretative, exemptive and other authorities to make sure that archaic rules and regulations do not smother innovation and entrepreneurship in America. Despite what the SEC has said in the past, most crypto assets are not securities,” Atkins said. Atkins suggested his agency will move to begin answering those questions now, working on “clear guidelines that market participants can use to determine whether a crypto asset is a security or subject to an investment contract.” For crypto securities, he said he’s “asked staff to propose purpose-fit disclosures, exemptions, and safe harbors, including for so-called ‘initial coin offerings,’ ‘airdrops’ and network rewards.” Atkins said he means to “allow market participants to innovate with ‘super-apps'” that offer a “broad range of products and services under one roof with a single license.”
Anthropic’s new Claude Opus 4.1 model scores 74.5% on SWE-bench Verified, surpassing OpenAI’s o3 model at 69.1% and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro at 67.2%, indicating its dominance in AI-powered coding assistance
Anthropic unveiled the latest version of its flagship artificial intelligence model, the same day that OpenAI released its first two open reasoning models since 2019. Claude Opus 4.1 is better at agentic tasks, coding and reasoning, according to a company blog post. Leaks of Claude Opus 4.1 began appearing the day before on social platform X and TestingCatalog. Anthropic Chief Product Officer Mike Krieger said this release is different from previous model unveilings. Claude Opus 4.1 is a successor to Claude Opus 4, which launched May 22. Opus 4.1 shows gains on benchmarks such as SWE-Bench Verified, a coding evaluation test, where it scores two percentage points higher than the previous model. The 4.1 model is also strong in agentic terminal coding, with a score of 43.3% on the Terminal-Bench benchmark compared with 39.2% for Opus 4, 30.2% for OpenAI’s o3, and 25.3% for Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro. Customers such as Windsurf, a coding app being acquired by Cognition, and Japan’s Rakuten Group have reported quicker and more accurate completion of coding tasks using Claude Opus 4.1. The Claude Opus 4.1 release came amid signs that rival OpenAI is nearing the debut of GPT-5
McDonald’s using a digital experience that lets customers virtually interact with animated avatars of its promotional characters, play interactive mini-games, explore themed virtual worlds and unlock in-game wearables by completing quests
McDonald’s is introducing a new version of its McDonaldland promotional concept that is quite different from the 1970s version featuring costumed TV performers. Starting Tuesday, Aug. 12, the chain will roll out “McDonaldland VR,” an interactive digital experience launching alongside its new limited-time “McDonaldland Meal,” which will be on McDonald’s menu for a limited time this summer. (The meal features a milkshake with what the company describes as a “surprise flavor,” choice of a Quarter Pounder with Cheese or 10-piece Chicken McNuggets, fries and one of six exclusive collectible tins featuring postcards, stickers, and more. ). Inside McDonaldland VR, customers can virtually interact with fully animated avatars of McDonald’s promotional characters such as Grimace, Hamburglar and Birdie. Users can also play interactive mini-games, explore themed virtual worlds such as the Hamburger Patch, search for hidden digital collectibles such as Mt. McDonaldland Shake icons and various Easter eggs throughout the virtual world, and complete quests to unlock in-game wearables like the Mayor McCheese Hat, Burger Buddy Backpack and Ronald McDonald’s Guitar. McDonaldland VR will be available on Meta Horizon Worlds via the Meta Quest VR headset and via browser-based Web VR access.
Google’s tiny AI model brings advanced, quantization-ready AI that fits on smartphones—empowering efficient, on-device reasoning and quick adaptation to enable private, offline AI for specialized and enterprise tasks
Google’s DeepMind AI research team has unveiled a new open source AI model, Gemma 3 270M — far smaller than the 70 billion or more parameters of many frontier LLMs (parameters being the number of internal settings governing the model’s behavior). While more parameters generally translates to a larger and more powerful model, Google’s focus with this is nearly the opposite: high-efficiency, giving developers a model small enough to run directly on smartphones and locally, without an internet connection, as shown in internal tests on a Pixel 9 Pro SoC. Yet, the model is still capable of handling complex, domain-specific tasks and can be quickly fine-tuned in mere minutes to fit an enterprise or indie developer’s needs. Google DeepMind Staff AI Developer Relations Engineer Omar Sanseviero added that it Gemma 3 270M can also run directly in a user’s web browser, on a Raspberry Pi, and “in your toaster,” underscoring its ability to operate on very lightweight hardware. Gemma 3 270M combines 170 million embedding parameters — thanks to a large 256k vocabulary capable of handling rare and specific tokens — with 100 million transformer block parameters. According to Google, the architecture supports strong performance on instruction-following tasks right out of the box while staying small enough for rapid fine-tuning and deployment on devices with limited resources, including mobile hardware. One of the model’s defining strengths is its energy efficiency. In internal tests using the INT4-quantized model on a Pixel 9 Pro SoC, 25 conversations consumed just 0.75% of the device’s battery. This makes Gemma 3 270M a practical choice for on-device AI, particularly in cases where privacy and offline functionality are important. The release includes both a pretrained and an instruction-tuned model, giving developers immediate utility for general instruction-following tasks. Quantization-Aware Trained (QAT) checkpoints are also available, enabling INT4 precision with minimal performance loss and making the model production-ready for resource-constrained environments. Google frames Gemma 3 270M as part of a broader philosophy of choosing the right tool for the job rather than relying on raw model size. For functions like sentiment analysis, entity extraction, query routing, structured text generation, compliance checks, and creative writing, the company says a fine-tuned small model can deliver faster, more cost-effective results than a large general-purpose one. By fine-tuning a Gemma 3 4B model for multilingual content moderation, the team outperformed much larger proprietary systems. Gemma 3 270M is designed to enable similar success at an even smaller scale, supporting fleets of specialized models tailored to individual tasks.