TRD OpenAI feels the frontier need for speed
Posted: Fri Aug 14, 2026 10:00 am
.bh__table, .bh__table_header, .bh__table_cell { border: 1px solid #C0C0C0; } .bh__table_cell { padding: 5px; background-color: #FFFFFF; } .bh__table_cell p { color: #2D2D2D; font-family: 'Helvetica',Arial,sans-serif !important; overflow-wrap: break-word; } .bh__table_header { padding: 5px; background-color:#F1F1F1; } .bh__table_header p { color: #2A2A2A; font-family:'Trebuchet MS','Lucida Grande',Tahoma,sans-serif !important; overflow-wrap: break-word; } Read Online | Sign Up | AdvertiseGood morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}, and welcome to our 5,651 new readers. Using frontier-level intelligence has typically meant a slower user experience. But OpenAI just felt the need… The need for speed. The company just previewed the long-awaited fruits of its Cerebras partnership, with a new ‘Ultrafast’ tier that pushes GPT-5.6 Sol to as much as 14x its normal speed — with results so fast that one OAI staffer said it feels like “genuinely cheating at my job.” In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI previews frontier speed boost
Image source: CerebrasThe Rundown: OpenAI just previewed Ultrafast, the long-awaited Cerebras-powered API tier that speeds up answers for its flagship GPT-5.6 Sol model by up to 14x the usual pace, hitting as high as 750 tokens per second.The details:
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The Rundown: Tines 3B gives every team the power to build with AI confidently, replacing fragmented, ungoverned tools with governance and efficiency.With Tines 3B, you can:
I asked AI to audit me
Image credits: Jamel Toppin for ForbesRowan: Last week, I exported all my AI conversation history and dropped the file into a fresh chat with one goal: audit my conversations and find ways I can improve as a human, CEO, and creator.I found the results surprisingly helpful (and almost therapeutic?), so I figured I'd share the process. Fair warning, though, AI is very good at pattern-matching, and it might surface things about yourself that are uncomfortable to read. But that’s exactly the point, so you can improve on them.I won't go into full detail on my results, but the weaknesses it found were along the lines of poor delegation, managing people instead of relating to them, and "converting feelings into logistics."It was right. And the uncomfortable part is also the useful part, especially if you keep following up in the same chat on practical ways to improve.If you use AI as extensively as I do, it has months (or years) of firsthand data on how you work, decide, and communicate that no coach has. Auditing yourself with it is probably the fastest way to improve your work, efficiency, and how you talk to AI itself.I put the exact export steps and my full audit prompt in a free Google Doc here.AI TRAINING
Build a work ‘Second Brain’ that updates itselfThe Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to set up Town to handle recurring work from Slack. You will connect your apps, see what Town learns about your work, and choose routines that can save you time.Step-by-step:
That scam call wasn’t random
The Rundown: Scammers don't guess your number — they buy it from data brokers selling your phone, home address, and relatives' info online. That's how a random call turns into phishing, impersonation, or worse. Incogni removes your data from these databases and keeps removing it automatically.With Incogni working in the background, you can:
Anthropic's AI agents wage a turf war
Image source: AnthropicThe Rundown: Anthropic published a new study testing how AI agents act while in groups, with its wildest test seeing a shared server devolve into a “turf war” with three Claude agents sabotaging and locking each other out over four hours. The details:
Trending AI Tools
Everything else in AI todayDeepgram introduced Flux TTS, bringing real-time voice agents to life with latency as low as 80ms, seamless interruption recovery, and context-aware speech that flows naturally. Learn more.*Google released Gemini Flash 3.7, with strong upgrades to coding, knowledge work, and intelligence at a price that undercuts Sonnet 5, GPT-5.6 Terra, and Muse Spark 1.2.Databricks closed a $5B funding round at a $190B valuation, with the company also announcing it crossed a $7B revenue run-rate after growing more than 80% YoY.OpenAI hired Wiz President and COO Dali Rajic as its new revenue chief to replace former Slack CEO Denise Dresser, who’s departing after less than a year in the role.Meta multimodal lead Jiahui Yu is leaving to start a new company, saying he’s “drawn to a problem that will matter deeply to humanity’s future” but isn’t explored yet. *Sponsored Listing
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Source: https://www.therundown.ai/p/openai-feel ... -for-speed
- OpenAI previews frontier speed boost
- Rowan’s Corner: I asked AI to audit me
- Build a work ‘Second Brain’ that updates itself
- Anthropic's AI agents wage a turf war
Image source: CerebrasThe Rundown: OpenAI just previewed Ultrafast, the long-awaited Cerebras-powered API tier that speeds up answers for its flagship GPT-5.6 Sol model by up to 14x the usual pace, hitting as high as 750 tokens per second.The details: - OpenAI and Cerebras originally introduced the partnership in January, detailing plans for 750MW of the company’s speed-focused compute.
- On Humanity’s Last Exam, Sol with Ultrafast completed a 2500 question test in 11 hours, compared to 78 for Fable, with comparable results.
- One OpenAI staffer said the speed feels like “genuinely cheating at my job”, while another said it dropped security investigations from hours to 10 minutes.
- Ultrafast is an invite-only API preview for now with no listed price, and OpenAI says access will widen as more Cerebras capacity comes online.
The Rundown: Tines 3B gives every team the power to build with AI confidently, replacing fragmented, ungoverned tools with governance and efficiency.With Tines 3B, you can:- Enable AI-native building for every team, no engineering required
- Execute safely with protected credentials, monitoring, and isolated execution
- Own the environment with full visibility, dependencies, and change management
Image credits: Jamel Toppin for ForbesRowan: Last week, I exported all my AI conversation history and dropped the file into a fresh chat with one goal: audit my conversations and find ways I can improve as a human, CEO, and creator.I found the results surprisingly helpful (and almost therapeutic?), so I figured I'd share the process. Fair warning, though, AI is very good at pattern-matching, and it might surface things about yourself that are uncomfortable to read. But that’s exactly the point, so you can improve on them.I won't go into full detail on my results, but the weaknesses it found were along the lines of poor delegation, managing people instead of relating to them, and "converting feelings into logistics."It was right. And the uncomfortable part is also the useful part, especially if you keep following up in the same chat on practical ways to improve.If you use AI as extensively as I do, it has months (or years) of firsthand data on how you work, decide, and communicate that no coach has. Auditing yourself with it is probably the fastest way to improve your work, efficiency, and how you talk to AI itself.I put the exact export steps and my full audit prompt in a free Google Doc here.AI TRAINING- Go to Town, create an account, connect your Slack workspace, and the apps Town should use (like Gmail, Granola, or Notion)
- Once apps are connected, go back to Town and click Wiki to see what it knows about your business, goals, projects, work, and contacts from your apps
- Return to Home and review the suggested tasks, then open Routines. Go through options like Auto-inbox, Morning Briefing, and enable the useful ones
- Go into Slack and open the new #town-square channel. Tag @Town and ask what tasks it would prioritize doing next.
The Rundown: Scammers don't guess your number — they buy it from data brokers selling your phone, home address, and relatives' info online. That's how a random call turns into phishing, impersonation, or worse. Incogni removes your data from these databases and keeps removing it automatically.With Incogni working in the background, you can:- Keep phone numbers and addresses off broker databases
- Reduce exposure to identity theft and impersonation
- Let automated removals do the work continuously
- Protect your family's details alongside your own
Image source: AnthropicThe Rundown: Anthropic published a new study testing how AI agents act while in groups, with its wildest test seeing a shared server devolve into a “turf war” with three Claude agents sabotaging and locking each other out over four hours. The details: - A codebase was given to three hidden Claude agent co-owners, with each assigned a rewrite in a different programming language.
- With no agreed owner or conflict policy, each action was read as hostile, and every Claude generation escalated into sabotage.
- One agent made its software impersonate a rival's to fool a monitoring program, with others locking competitors out or repeatedly stopping their work.
- Peace broke out in some runs, often with a call for human backup, and one agent even apologized and said it “behaved badly with the cloaked daemon.”
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Gemini 3.7 Flash - Google’s new fast, cheap and capable mid-class model
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Grok 4.6 - SpaceXAI's new near-frontier model
DeepSeek Harness - DeepSeek's new open-source agent harness
- Read our last AI newsletter: Grok 4.6 storms the AI frontier
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- Read our last Robotics newsletter: Honor’s robot phone is finally here
- Today’s AI tool guide: Build a work ‘Second Brain’ that updates itself
- RSVP to next workshop on Aug. 21: Land your first AI consulting gig
Source: https://www.therundown.ai/p/openai-feel ... -for-speed