Daily AI CatchupAI Catchup — Wednesday, July 1, 2026
Wednesday, July 1, 2026Anthropic
Anthropic's Most Powerful Models Are Free Again as Fable 5 Export Ban Lifts
An 18-day U.S. export ban on Fable 5 and Mythos 5 just lifted, with global access restoring this week.
AnthropicClaude Sonnet 5 Launches With Near-Opus Performance at Half the Cost
Anthropic's most agentic Sonnet yet drives a browser or terminal directly, at a fraction of Opus pricing.
AnthropicAnthropic Launches Claude Science, an AI Workbench for Researchers
60+ scientific tools in one workbench, plus a new in-house drug discovery program for neglected diseases.
GoogleGoogle Ships Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash for Fast, Cheap Media
4-second images at 3 cents each, plus a video model built to animate them — designed to be chained together.
Nous-ResearchNous Research's Hermes Agent Browses the Web 60x Faster at 49x Lower Cost
A huge efficiency leap that makes autonomous web research and monitoring pipelines finally affordable at scale.