#merck
3 digests
2026
- Moderna and Merck's cancer vaccine gamble appears to have paid offModerna and Merck's individualized cancer vaccine program appears to have overcome years of skepticism, according to STAT. Anthropic's revenue climbed sharply even as its flagship model reportedly loses ground to cheaper rivals, a tension one developer described as forcing harder choices about AI coding costs. Health policy shifted on several fronts: a Medicaid precedent that could reach far beyond its original target, a new FDA nominee, and a promised FDA guidance on generative AI devices.Aug 24, 2026
- Thinking Machines' 975B Inkling leads a week of open-model momentum and AI security incidentsThinking Machines launched Inkling, a 975B open-weights multimodal model that immediately drew comparisons to closed frontier labs. xAI's Grok CLI sparked a data-privacy backlash after users reported it uploading entire home directories. Eli Lilly acquired psychedelics biotech AtaiBeckley for $2.8B, and CMS signaled a structural overhaul of how it pays for clinical AI.Jul 16, 2026
- OpenAI model cracks an 80-year-old math problem as Lilly's obesity drug hits surgery-level resultsAn OpenAI reasoning model disproved an 80-year-old Erdős conjecture in discrete geometry for under $1,000 in compute, a result mathematicians are calling one of the most significant AI contributions to pure math to date. Eli Lilly's retatrutide, a triple-receptor obesity drug, produced bariatric-surgery-level weight loss in a Phase 3 trial, though dropout rates from side effects were notable. Google shipped Gemini 3.5 Flash to general availability at Google I/O and announced a $100 AI Ultra subscription tier. The acting head of NIH's infectious disease institute stepped down as senators pressed NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya on leadership gaps and a proposed 2027 budget cut. Kevin Warsh was confirmed and sworn in as the new Federal Reserve chair this week.May 21, 2026