OpenAI's first gadget is the $230 Codex Micro macropad
Chinese AI model takes US tech industry by surprise with abilities rivaling Claude and ChatGPT
By Saeed Ezzati7 min read
In today’s email:
🧠 GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization
☠️ I Unlocked ChatGPT's Dark Side for $101.40 [video]
🕵🏻♂️ The CIA Operative Who Spied on the U.A.E.–and Played a Role in Its AI Win
🧰 11 new AI-powered tools and resources. Make sure to check the online version for the full list of tools.
OpenAI's first gadget is the $230 Codex Micro macropad
Key Takeaway: OpenAI has partnered with Work Louder to launch the Codex Micro, a customizable mechanical macropad designed to help developers monitor and control multiple Codex coding agents.
More Insights:
Six illuminated “agent keys” show whether agents are idle, thinking, finished, or experiencing errors.
Users can select agents, approve or reject code changes, branch tasks, and activate voice controls.
The device supports USB-C and Bluetooth, with silent or clicky mechanical switches.
Nearly every key, dial, joystick, light, and software layer can be customized for Codex or other apps.
At $230, it is largely a redesigned version of Work Louder’s existing macropad rather than OpenAI’s anticipated Jony Ive hardware project.
Why it matters: The Codex Micro suggests that AI agents are becoming active coworkers that need dedicated controls and status indicators—but its real significance depends on whether physical interfaces improve productivity or simply turn AI software into expensive desk accessories.
Know whether your secrets setup is ready for AI agents
AI agents are minting credentials faster than teams can track them, and secrets are already scattered across Vault, cloud managers, CI/CD, and .env files nobody rotates.
This webinar will show you how to:
🔍 Surface the shadow secrets hiding in your environment
🤖 Stand up machine identities and workload auth built for agents
✅ Pressure-test your setup before agents hit prod
Walk out knowing exactly what modern teams are doing to build a more developer-friendly credential control plane.
Save your seatChinese AI model takes US tech industry by surprise with abilities rivaling Claude and ChatGPT
Key Takeaway: China’s Moonshot AI has released Kimi K3, a powerful open-weight model that appears competitive with leading U.S. systems while raising fears that cheaper Chinese AI could weaken America’s technological and financial advantage.
More Insights:
Kimi K3 reportedly rivals top models from OpenAI and Anthropic, particularly in coding.
Semiconductor stocks fell sharply as investors questioned whether massive AI infrastructure spending will deliver adequate returns.
The release revived memories of DeepSeek’s 2025 debut, which triggered a major sell-off in U.S. technology stocks.
Chinese firms are advancing despite U.S. chip restrictions by improving efficiency and developing domestic hardware alternatives.
Kimi K3 could pressure the pricing and revenue models of closed AI providers, even if the market reaction proves exaggerated.
Why it matters: Kimi K3 suggests that leadership in AI may depend less on who owns the most expensive chips and more on who can build capable, affordable, and widely accessible models—potentially transforming today’s AI arms race into a global competition over efficiency, openness, and adoption.
Former OpenAI CTO builds open weight model in 9 months
Key Takeaway: Thinking Machines Lab’s first model, Inkling, challenges closed, one-size-fits-all AI by giving organizations a powerful open-weight foundation they can customize with their own expertise.
More Insights:
Inkling has 975 billion total parameters, with 41 billion activated per task for greater efficiency.
The multimodal model was trained on 45 trillion tokens and can process text, images, audio, and video.
It performs strongly in coding, tool use, safety, and agentic tasks, but still trails leading Chinese models on several benchmarks.
Companies can download and fine-tune Inkling, while Thinking Machines plans to earn revenue through its Tinker customization platform and hosting ecosystem.
Early results suggest specialized models can outperform proprietary rivals at a fraction of the operating cost, though the company’s claims have not been independently verified.
Why it matters: Inkling represents a bigger shift than another benchmark competition: if businesses can turn open models into private, specialized systems that are cheaper and better at their own work, the future of AI may belong not to the company with the single smartest model, but to the ecosystem that makes intelligence easiest to customize.
Other stuff
I interned at OpenAI in San Francisco. Here's how I landed it, what it was like, and what I thought of Sam Altman.
I Gave an AI Agent Access to My Passwords. Here's What Happened.
Anthropic's newest ad is creeping people out
GPT-5.6 used a prompt to close a 30-year gap in convex optimization
Over 10k people shared what they love about GPT-5.6
I Unlocked ChatGPT's Dark Side for $101.40 [video]
The CIA Operative Who Spied on the U.A.E.–and Played a Role in Its AI Win
For Software Engineers, the AI Reckoning Is Here
Turn ChatGPT into your AI workspace 🔥
Organize conversations, highlight and annotate important text, map long threads, queue prompts, keep notes, reference past chats, download audio, search everything, and export the work you want to keep.
Editor's Pick
Cuey - Before you trust an AI answer, cross-check it across ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
Codex Micro - Tactile controls for your Codex agents
The first way to trade directly inside Claude and ChatGPT
For decades, the most powerful intelligence lived behind the closed doors of quant firms — billion-dollar funds whose algorithms quietly out-traded everyone else.
That era just ended.
Co-Invest by Liquid is the first way to trade directly inside Claude and ChatGPT. Ask your AI to analyze a market, stress-test an idea, or build a position sized to your comfort level, then execute, right there in the conversation. No jargon. No twelve-screen terminal. No guesswork.
It's built for people who want to invest smarter, not gamble harder. You set the risk tolerance. The AI does the heavy lifting. You approve every trade.
The institutions made the game, Co-Invest gives you a way to beat them.
Albato AI - Build AI-driven workflows across 1,000+ apps
Nitrosend - Email for AI agents. They sign up, send and reply.
Agently - Your whole stack, running itself!
Tiptap AI Toolkit - Empower your AI to directly edit documents in real time.
Clerk | AI Assistant for Cap Tables - Issue grants, model funding rounds, ask it anything equity
Kimi K3 - The world's first open 3T-class model
Basedash Suggestions - Your AI data analyst, now with ideas of its own.
ZooData - The data layer for AI agents
Clark - An AI coworker with its own cloud computer
Unclassified 🌀
Your portfolio could be losing more to taxes than you might realize. On July 23, Range’s CFPs and CPAs share the portfolio moves that can help you maximize your after-tax returns.
