AI is entering a new phase: models aren’t just smarter — they’re becoming autonomous operators. This week’s breakthroughs span agent swarms, modular workflow standards, and the globalization of premium AI access, with China emerging as a serious frontier contender alongside OpenAI and Google.
Here are our key takeaways:
Moonshot AI’s Kimi K2.5 signals China’s strongest open challenger yet.
Gemini’s new vision loop shifts AI from “seeing” to investigating
AI productivity tools are going worldwide, from Google subscriptions to Yahoo Search upgrades
The next battlefront is agents: workflows, standards, and execution speed.
Capital keeps pouring into OpenAI as SoftBank circles another mega-investment
Big Tech capital is escalating, with Amazon reportedly exploring one of the largest OpenAI investments yet
AI platforms are rapidly expanding into search, workplace tools, and modular professional standards
Join us at AI Tangle as we untangle this week's happenings in AI!
ALL THINGS AI LUNCH AND LEARN SCHEDULE
At All Things AI, we believe that building AI fluency is super important. That's why we provide cutting-edge learning opportunities both in person and online.
Lunch & Learn: Agentic Systems: How AI Actually Gets Work Done
Tue, February 10 · 12:00 PM EST · Online
A practical, non-technical look at agentic systems—how AI moves beyond chat interfaces to autonomously execute multi-step tasks, make decisions, and deliver real business outcomes.
In-Person Event: Ask Us Anything About AI
Wed, February 11 · 6:00 PM EST · Loading Dock, Raleigh
An in-person AMA with AI experts at the Loading Dock. Bring your questions about implementing AI in your organization—this is a rare opportunity to get direct access to practitioners in an intimate setting.
The Missing Link: Adding Your Data to Your App
Tue, February 24 · 12:00 PM EST · Online
So you vibe-coded a front-end app—now what? Building a sleek interface is only half the battle. This session covers how to connect your AI applications to real data sources and make them actually useful.
Missed a session? Catch up on recent recordings. Here are some past events:
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THE BIG AI STORY
Source: Moonshot AI
Chinese startup Moonshot AI has released Kimi K2.5, its newest multimodal model designed for reasoning, coding, video understanding, and agent execution.
What makes K2.5 notable isn’t just performance claims — it’s the Agent Swarm architecture, allowing coordination across many parallel sub-tasks and tool calls. While Moonshot’s benchmark comparisons should be treated cautiously (as with any lab self-reporting), Kimi’s rapid adoption and API expansion make it one of the most serious non-US challengers in the agentic frontier space.
Kimi is now positioned as a strategic open contender alongside Meta’s Llama ecosystem and emerging global labs.
7 QUICK HITS
Google has upgraded Gemini 3 Flash into a more agentic visual system. Instead of passively describing images, Gemini can now run step-by-step “Think, Act, Observe” workflows — zooming in, annotating, and even executing Python-based analysis to reason through visuals like an investigator.
Yahoo announced new generative AI layers in its search experience, marking another step toward AI-first consumer search beyond Google and Perplexity. The update focuses on summarization, guided answers, and conversational query refinement.
Reports say SoftBank is discussing another massive multi-tens-of-billions investment into OpenAI, reinforcing Son’s strategy of going “all-in” on foundation model infrastructure and AI platform dominance.
Google has expanded its AI Plus subscription bundle — giving more countries access to Gemini premium tiers and productivity upgrades.
Manus AI introduced Agent Skills, a modular open standard that lets professionals build reusable agent workflows integrating Python, Bash, and interoperable task blocks.
OpenAI has introduced Prism, a free research-focused tool that embeds advanced reasoning directly into scientific drafting and synthesis workflows — aiming to do for research what Copilot did for coding.
Amazon is reportedly negotiating a potential investment that could reach $50 billion, one of the largest AI financing moves ever. Talks may also include OpenAI using Amazon’s AI chips, despite Amazon’s existing Anthropic partnership.
3 AI TOOLS
Kimi K2.5 (Moonshot AI) - A next-generation Chinese multimodal open model designed for high-end reasoning and coordinated agent execution — built to run complex workflows, tool chains, and multi-step tasks beyond simple chat.
Manus - A modular “plug-and-play” framework that lets professionals package reusable workflows (Python, Bash, automation scripts) into interoperable agent skills — turning AI into a true productivity operating system.
Gemini 3 Flash Agentic Vision - Google’s fastest agent-ready vision model, enabling step-by-step visual investigation through “Think, Act, Observe” loops — built for real-time image analysis, annotation, and tool-assisted reasoning.
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📚 AIOS - This is an evolving project. I started with a 14-day free AI email course to get smart on AI. But the next evolution will be a ChatGPT Super-user Course and a course on How to Build AI Agents.
AI EXTRA READ
Company Run Almost Entirely by AI-Generated Employees Descends Into Chaos (5-min read)
Journalist Evan Ratliff tried something wild: he created a fictional tech startup staffed entirely by AI “employees” — no humans except him. The agents brainstormed, held meetings, delegated tasks, even planned an offsite… and quickly spiraled into hallucinated productivity, endless coordination loops, and runaway execution with no grounding in reality.
Your AI Sherpa,
Mark R. Hinkle
Publisher, The AIE Network
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