Morning Scan

GPT-6 Sol, Opus 5.5, Xiaomi's MiMo, Tencent's image model, and Alibaba's mega-model plans all landed within a 72-hour window. The more consequential fight is over pipes and permissions: who controls checkout, water, chips, and the courts.

10T parameters — Alibaba's Eddie Wu says that's the ceiling on the model the company plans to train next, alongside a chip that scales to 500K-unit clusters. (Reuters)

Machines & Minds

Vibe Check: GPT-6 Sol vs. Opus 5.5

Two flagship launches, same day — the frontier lab release calendar has officially become a demolition derby. (Every)

Alibaba unveils Zhenwu V900 chip, plans 5T-10T parameter model

China's answer to the compute shortage is building more compute — vertically, aggressively, on its own silicon. (Reuters)

Tencent launches Hy Image 3.5 to catch ByteDance, Alibaba (paywall)

Third horse in China's image-model race in as many weeks — the domestic competition is doing Beijing's export-model bragging rights for free. (Bloomberg)

OpenAI and Anthropic were close to a mutual stress-testing pact

Reportedly scuttled by the Hugging Face incident — a reminder that lab "cooperation" is one bad headline from collapsing. (The Information)

Connected World

Amazon blocks Meta's Muse, Stratechery says there's still a deal to be made

Ben Thompson's take: Amazon's warehouses and logistics are the moat agentic AI can't route around. (Stratechery)

Shopify will let Muse complete checkout via Shop Pay (paywall)

While Amazon slams the door, Shopify opens it wide — agentic commerce is splitting the retail world into walled and unwalled gardens. (WSJ)

Meta's Muse is outpacing ChatGPT's early mobile launch

Downloads and DAUs ahead of ChatGPT's comparable window — distribution via Instagram and WhatsApp is doing real work here. (TechCrunch)

Apple asks court for access to OpenAI's hardware R&D docs

The trade-secrets fight is getting discovery-heavy, which usually means both sides think they've got something to find. (9to5Mac)

British Columbia sues OpenAI over Tumbler Ridge shooting (paywall)

A government, not a plaintiff's firm, bringing the suit — that's a different kind of legal exposure for OpenAI to manage. (WSJ)

Connected World

California signs seven bills regulating AI data centers

Aimed squarely at stopping utilities from passing data-center power costs onto regular ratepayers — the political backlash is now law. (The Verge)

SoftBank's SB Energy delays IPO amid valuation pushback

Investors balking at a $50B+ ask — first real sign that AI-infrastructure IPO enthusiasm has a ceiling. (NYT)

Amazon pledges $20M for Colorado River water conservation

Generous-sounding number, except Amazon still won't disclose how much water its data centers actually use. (The Verge)