What\u2019s new in AI tools
Automated weekly roundup of release notes and changelogs across every AI tool we track. Currently indexing 317 updates.
This week \u2014 2026-W18
AI Tools This Week: 42 updates across 7 products
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Introducing Waymo Premier, an elevated rider experience
Waymo launches Premier, a premium tier service offering enhanced rider experience.
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Introducing Waymo Premier, an elevated rider experience
Waymo launched Premier, a premium tier service offering an elevated experience for top riders. The new service tier provides enhanced features for frequent users of Waymo's autonomous ride-hailing platform.
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Introducing Waymo Premier, an elevated rider experience
Waymo launched Premier, a premium tier service offering an elevated experience for top riders. The new service tier provides enhanced features and amenities for frequent users.
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Introducing Waymo Premier, an elevated rider experience
Waymo launched Waymo Premier, a premium tier service offering an elevated experience for top riders of their autonomous ride-hailing service.
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Introducing Waymo Premier, an elevated rider experience
Waymo launched Premier, a new premium tier service offering enhanced rider experience features. The service provides priority status and elevated amenities for riders.
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Introducing Waymo Premier, an elevated rider experience
Waymo launched Premier, a premium tier service offering an elevated experience for top riders of their autonomous ride-hailing service.
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Introducing Waymo Premier, an elevated rider experience
Waymo launched Premier, a new premium service tier offering an enhanced rider experience with additional features and amenities.
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Introducing Waymo's New Reference Model for Human Collision Avoidance
Waymo published joint research with TU Delft in Nature Communications advancing an active inference framework to model human crash-avoidance behavior. The work provides a benchmark for collision avoidance capabilities.
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Introducing Waymo's New Reference Model for Human Collision Avoidance
Waymo releases a new reference model for human collision avoidance technology.
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Introducing Waymo's New Reference Model for Human Collision Avoidance
Waymo developed a new reference model for human collision avoidance to improve autonomous vehicle safety benchmarking. The model provides better standards for evaluating collision prevention capabilities.
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Introducing Waymo's New Reference Model for Human Collision Avoidance
Waymo developed a new reference model for human collision avoidance to improve autonomous vehicle safety benchmarking. The model provides better standards for measuring collision avoidance performance.
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Introducing Waymo's New Reference Model for Human Collision Avoidance
Waymo released a new reference model designed to improve collision avoidance capabilities by better predicting human behavior patterns.
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A second life for EV batteries, clean energy for communities
Waymo announced a partnership with B2U Storage Solutions to repurpose retired EV batteries from their fleet for local electricity grid storage. The program gives batteries a second life powering communities.
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A second life for EV batteries, clean energy for communities
Waymo announced a partnership to repurpose electric vehicle batteries for community clean energy projects. The initiative extends battery lifecycle and supports sustainable energy infrastructure.
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A second life for EV batteries, clean energy for communities
Waymo announced a partnership to repurpose electric vehicle batteries for community clean energy projects. The initiative gives retired EV batteries a second life in energy storage applications.
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January Drop 2026
Introduced specialized AI agents for marketing, advanced code search and writing for engineers, and enhanced Assistant capabilities.
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February Drop 2026
Released 85+ new agent actions, conversational deployment analytics, and specialized engineering agents for workflow automation.
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Same Driver, new vehicle: Welcoming our first riders trips in the Ojai
Waymo began welcoming public riders to experience the Ojai, their next-generation autonomous vehicle. The new vehicle has been tested with employees for months and offers an enhanced rider experience.
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Same Driver, new vehicle: Welcoming our first riders trips in the Ojai
Waymo began offering rider trips in their new Ojai vehicle model while maintaining the same autonomous driving technology. This represents the deployment of a new vehicle platform for passenger service.
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Same Driver, new vehicle: Welcoming our first riders trips in the Ojai
Waymo began offering public rides in their new Ojai vehicle after months of employee testing. The Ojai is designed as a next-generation autonomous vehicle experience.
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Same Driver, new vehicle: Welcoming our first riders trips in the Ojai
Waymo began offering rider trips in their new Ojai vehicle model. The deployment maintains the same autonomous driving technology while introducing a new vehicle platform.
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Same Driver, new vehicle: Welcoming our first riders trips in the Ojai
Waymo began welcoming public riders to experience trips in their new Ojai vehicle after months of employee testing.
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Same Driver, new vehicle: Welcoming our first riders trips in the Ojai
Waymo introduced the Ojai as a new vehicle option in their autonomous fleet, marking the first passenger trips in this vehicle model.
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Introducing Search Toolkit
Mistral AI released Search Toolkit for building production search pipelines that can be deployed anywhere.
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Vibe gets to work
Mistral AI launched Vibe, a unified agent for long-horizon productivity and coding with Work and Code modes, plus a new VS Code extension.
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ChatGPT app, Dynamic voice speed, A/B testing, and more
Introduced ChatGPT app for building voice agents, dynamic voice speed that adapts to caller pace, and A/B testing capabilities for splitting call traffic across multiple agents.
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Prompt Caching added
Prompt caching automatically reuses computation from recent requests when they share a common prefix, delivering 50% cost savings for cached portions and improved response times. The feature works automatically with no code changes required and data expires within hours for privacy.
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Python SDK v0.31.1, TypeScript SDK v0.32.0 changed
Updated Python SDK to v0.31.1 and TypeScript SDK to v0.32.0 with improved chat completion message type definitions and added support for new Groq Compound tools. Fixes compatibility issues with different message formats.
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Moonshot AI Kimi K2 Instruct 0905 added
Kimi K2-0905 brings Moonshot AI's cutting-edge model to GroqCloud with day zero support, featuring a 256K context window and enhanced agentic coding capabilities. The model offers prompt caching with up to 50% cost savings and runs at 200+ tokens/second.
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Merge cells in simple tables
Users can now merge cells in simple tables to create headers spanning multiple columns or group related rows into structured layouts.
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Figure Signs Agreement with Catalyst Brands to Scale Humanoid Operations
Figure AI announced a strategic partnership with Catalyst Brands to expand humanoid robot operations.
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Merge cells in simple tables
Users can now merge cells in simple tables to create headers spanning multiple columns and structured layouts.
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Figure Signs Agreement with Catalyst Brands to Scale Humanoid Operations
Figure AI has entered into a strategic agreement with Catalyst Brands to expand humanoid robot operations and deployment.
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Merge cells in simple tables
Added ability to merge cells in simple tables to create headers spanning multiple columns and group related rows.
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Figure Signs Agreement with Catalyst Brands to Scale Humanoid Operations
Figure AI announced a strategic agreement with Catalyst Brands to expand humanoid robot operations and scaling capabilities.
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Custom instructions for personalized chat responses
GitHub Copilot now supports custom instructions in VS Code and Visual Studio to personalize chat responses based on preferred tools, organizational knowledge, and coding best practices.
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Prompt files for consistent responses
Users can now save and reuse prompt files to get faster and more consistent responses from GitHub Copilot. This feature helps standardize interactions with the AI assistant.
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GitHub Copilot CLI - Agentic coding agent for terminal
GitHub Copilot CLI enables users to build, debug, and deploy code directly from the terminal with an AI coding agent. The tool includes GitHub MCP by default and supports extending with additional servers for enhanced context.
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Emmi joins Mistral to accelerate the AI-native industry
Mistral AI announces that Emmi has joined the company to help accelerate development in the AI-native industry.
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Observability for any agent, anywhere: Production-ready tracing with OpenTelemetry & Unity Catalog on Databricks
Databricks launches production-ready AI tracing capabilities using OpenTelemetry and Unity Catalog for comprehensive agent observability. The solution addresses traditional observability challenges in AI applications moving to production.
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Accelerating LLM Inference with Prompt Caching for Open‑Source Models on Databricks
Databricks introduces prompt caching capabilities for open-source LLM inference to improve performance and reduce latency. The feature optimizes repeated inference operations by caching common prompt patterns.
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December Drop 2025
Added new quickstart agents designed to help sales and revenue teams accelerate their workflows from request to completion.
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January Drop 2026
Released specialized AI agents for marketing, advanced code search and writing for engineers, and enhanced Assistant capabilities.
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February Drop 2026
Introduced 85+ new agent actions, conversational deployment analytics, and specialized engineering agents for workflow automation.
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March Drop 2026
Launched remote MCP server to ground ChatGPT and Claude in company context, expanded Assistant and Agents with third-party MCP tools.
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April Drop 2026
Added slide and interactive HTML page generation capabilities, plus embedded MCP Apps in Glean Assistant for cross-tool actions.
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Transforming industries with conversational AI: Partner solutions built on Databricks Genie
Databricks showcases partner solutions leveraging Databricks Genie for conversational AI across various industries. The announcement highlights ecosystem expansion and industry-specific AI applications.
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ChatGPT app, Dynamic voice speed, A/B testing, and more
Launched ChatGPT app for building voice agents, dynamic voice speed that adapts to caller pace, and A/B testing for splitting call traffic across multiple agents.
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Prompt Caching
Automatic prompt caching feature that reuses computation from recent requests with common prefixes, delivering 50% cost savings on cached tokens and improved response times. Initially available for Kimi K2 model.
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Python SDK v0.31.1, TypeScript SDK v0.32.0
SDK updates with improved chat completion message type definitions for better OpenAI compatibility and added support for new Groq Compound tools including Wolfram Alpha and Browser Automation.