R&D Spending Separates AI Winners From Losers

AWS has launched G7e instances on Amazon SageMaker AI, powered by NVIDIA RTX PRO 6000 Blackwell GPUs with 96 GB of GDDR7 memory per GPU. The instances deliver up to 2.3x inference performance compared to previous-generation G6e instances and support configurations from 1 to 8 GPUs, enabling deployment of large language models up to 300B parameters on the largest 8-GPU node. This represents a significant upgrade in memory bandwidth, networking throughput, and model capacity for generative AI inference workloads.

Anthropic has launched Claude Design, a new product aimed at helping non-designers like founders and product managers create visuals quickly to communicate their ideas. The tool addresses a gap for early-stage teams and individuals who need to share concepts visually but lack design expertise or resources. Claude Design integrates with Anthropic's Claude AI platform, leveraging its capabilities to streamline the visual creation process. The launch reflects growing demand for AI-powered design tools that lower barriers to entry for non-technical users.

Phononic, a 17-year-old Durham, North Carolina semiconductor company that makes cooling components for AI data center servers, is in talks with potential buyers at a valuation of at least $1.5 billion, with some buyers expressing interest above $2 billion. The company has engaged investment bank Lazard to evaluate its options since early 2026. This valuation would more than double its last private funding round, reflecting broader investor appetite for industrial suppliers tied to AI infrastructure demand. Phononic may also choose to raise additional capital instead of pursuing a sale.

The week's biggest AI story was the simultaneous release of GPT-5 and Llama 4 — a 24-hour period that redefined what frontier and open-source models can do. Here's everything that happened and what it means.