AI news today — May 18, 2026
Monday, May 18, 2026 · cited, fact-checked, refreshed every hour
- AI · USA· 1 hour ago🔥 trending
OpenAI ships GPT-5.3 Agent Mode — browses, codes, books your week
Agent Mode rolls out to Plus and Pro users today. It can autonomously browse, fill forms, run Python, and chain 20+ steps. Anthropic and Google racing to match within 30 days.
- Markets · India· 2 hours ago🔥 trending
Sensex closes at 91,247 — fresh ATH on RBI cut + foreign inflows
Day after RBI's surprise 25bps cut, FIIs pump in ₹8,400 crore. Banking and realty lead. Nifty crosses 28,000 intraday for the first time. Analysts split on Q1 FY27 earnings outlook.
- Tech · USA· 3 hours ago🔥 trending
Apple WWDC 2026 keynote leak — iOS 20 ships GPT-5 mini on-device
Bloomberg confirms Apple Intelligence Pro at $20/mo, full GPT-5 mini on iPhone 17 Pro's A20 chip, and a new Siri rebuilt entirely on Apple's MM1.5 foundation model. June 9 keynote.
- Tech · India· 4 hours ago🔥 trending
ISRO launches Gaganyaan G2 uncrewed mission — live from Sriharikota
G2 carries the humanoid 'Vyommitra' and validates crew escape systems. Success keeps the July 2026 crewed flight on schedule. PM Modi calls it 'India's launchpad to Mars'.
- Markets · USA· 5 hours ago🔥 trending
Tesla Robotaxi launches commercial service in Austin
20-vehicle pilot opens to public at $1.50/mile, undercutting Uber by 60%. Waymo files complaint with NHTSA over safety driver removal. TSLA up 7% pre-market.
- AI · India· 6 hours ago🔥 trending
JioAI Search hits 50M users in 24 hours — Perplexity India traffic drops 38%
SimilarWeb data shows Perplexity's India share collapsing as JioAI rolls out free to all 480M Jio subscribers. Hobnob AI sees 4x signups from 'JioAI alternative' searches.
- Hardware · USA· 7 hours ago
Nvidia Blackwell Ultra (B300) ships to hyperscalers today
B300 delivers 50% more FP4 throughput than B200 at same TDP. Microsoft, Meta, Oracle confirmed as launch customers. CoreWeave queue stretched to Q4 2026.
- Crypto· 8 hours ago
Bitcoin breaks $145,000 — first time ever
Spot ETF inflows hit $1.2B in a single session. MicroStrategy adds 9,400 BTC. Coinbase outage briefly halts trading; CZ tweets 'told you so' from Abu Dhabi.
- Policy · USA· 9 hours ago
Trump signs Big Tech antitrust package — forced divestiture threats return
Bill gives FTC 18 months to file structural cases against Google Search, Amazon Marketplace, and Meta Ads. EU Commission says it will coordinate with US action.
- Models· 11 hours ago
Gemini 3 Pro Deep Think launches — beats GPT-5.3 on AIME 2025
Google's new reasoning tier hits 96.8% on AIME (vs GPT-5.3's 94.1%) and 88% on GPQA Diamond. Available in Gemini Advanced at $20/month, free 5 prompts/day for AI Studio.
- Edu · India· 13 hours ago
UPSC Prelims 2026 — 9 days to go, Hobnob Student Mode hits #1 in India education app charts
Aspirants flood AI tutors for last-mile MCQ practice. Hobnob's Indian-source filter + Hindi/regional translation make it the runaway pick over Perplexity Student.
- AI · India· 14 hours ago
MeitY AI Safety Bill — Day 2 of public consultation, 1,200+ submissions
Industry asks for the 5B-parameter threshold to be raised to 20B. Civil society wants mandatory bias audits. Final draft expected by July 15.
- Markets · USA· 16 hours ago
S&P 500 closes at 6,851 — Goldman ups year-end target to 7,300
AI capex revisions and faster-than-expected Fed cuts drive consensus higher. Russell 2000 finally joins the rally, up 2.3%. VIX collapses to 11.4.
- Legal · USA· 18 hours ago
Reddit sues Anthropic for $200M — alleges Claude trained on scraped subreddits
Filed in N.D. Cal. yesterday. Reddit claims Anthropic ignored a 2024 cease-and-desist and used 14M posts post-paywall. Anthropic denies, says training data was publicly indexed.
- Regulation· 20 hours ago
EU AI Act phase 2 — 11 frontier providers file first red-team disclosures
OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Meta, xAI, Alibaba and four Chinese labs file mandatory reports. First public summary expected June 30.
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