Daily AI News Briefing: April 18, 2026
Anthropic releases Claude Opus 4.7 and Mythos Preview; OpenAI GPT-5 advances coding capabilities; 73,000+ tech workers laid off in 2026; Trump signs executive order on AI; Chinese tech giants battle for AI supremacy
Global Robotics Daily: Beijing Robot Marathon Warrior Challenges, NVIDIA National Robotics Week
Beijing hosts 17 warrior challenges ahead of half-marathon; NVIDIA unveils Isaac GR00T, Cosmos World Models, Newton 1.0 for National Robotics Week; Figure 03 enters high-volume manufacturing; Palladyne AI secures foundational swarming patent
Daily AI Intelligence: Anthropic Claude Design, Google Gemma 4, Meta Llama 4
Anthropic launches Claude Design for visual work; Google releases Gemma 4 with Apache 2.0 license; Meta's Llama 4 models debut with multimodal intelligence; Cursor nears $50B valuation
Global Robotics Daily: Beijing Robot Marathon Finals, China Output to Surge 94%
Beijing prepares for 300+ robot half-marathon; China's humanoid output forecast to surge 94% in 2026; Unitree targets 20,000 units; Agibot reaches 10,000 shipments; Tesla Optimus Gen 3 production begins summer 2026
AI Daily: Claude 4 Tops Code Benchmarks, OpenAI Drops o3/o4-mini Reasoning Models
Anthropic launches Claude 4 series leading SWE-bench coding benchmarks; OpenAI introduces o3 and o4-mini reasoning models; Meta releases Llama 4 open-source multimodal models; Q1 2026 AI funding hits record $242B
Global Robotics Daily: Figure AI Hits $39B Valuation, Unitree Targets 20,000 Humanoid Robots in 2026
Figure AI closes $1B+ Series C at $39B valuation, Unitree announces plans to ship 20,000 humanoid robots in 2026, NVIDIA unveils GR00T N2 physical AI models, global robotics funding continues to surge