Perplexity just shipped a browser. Yes, really—and it's agentic.
Comet Browser, Perplexity's new web browser, isn't a Chrome fork. It's a purpose-built agent runtime disguised as a browser. The engine handles automated task execution across online services—form-filling, API calls, multi-step workflows. This is what convergence looks like: browsing and autonomy stop being separate concerns. For builders, it's a signal that the next wave of agent infrastructure isn't Selenium clones. It's purpose-built.
🚀 Zyphra is shipping smaller models that don't suck.
Zyphra is optimizing LLMs for inference efficiency without the usual performance cliff. The company's approach: advanced training techniques that squeeze performance into significantly fewer parameters. Details are sparse, but the timing matters—everyone's tired of 7B models that lose to 13B models. Edge deployment gets serious when your model actually works.
🏗️ Lakebase decouples compute from storage, speeds Postgres writes 5x.
Databricks' Lakebase Architecture separates the processing engine from persistent storage using write-ahead logs streamed to safekeepers. The result: Postgres writes run 5x faster because compute nodes don't carry the weight of durability. The architecture reimagines databases as cloud-native systems, not monoliths. For infrastructure teams, this is permission to rethink every assumption about where state lives.
🤖 Voice models now handle interruptions like humans do.
OpenAI's reasoning work on voice agents includes real-time interrupt handling—users can correct, revise, or redirect mid-conversation without breaking the model. Preamble responses (brief utterances like “let me check that”) also signal active processing, reducing perceived latency. The gap between voice AI and natural speech just got smaller. Builders shipping voice apps should expect this standard soon.
🎯 The healthcare operations gap is data, not models.
Databricks warns hospitals about the operational intelligence gap: surgical scheduling decisions happen before performance data arrives. OR utilization, staffing allocation, case timing—all optimized blind. The blocker isn't AI; it's data plumbing. Organizations sitting on rich claims data that could drive real-world evidence still can't query it fast enough to matter.
Still no Gemini 3.5. Claude 4 radio silence continues. Grok keeps iterating quietly.
That's the brief. Full pages linked above. See you tomorrow.