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1.	U.S. Judge Orders Pentagon to Rescind Blacklisting of Anthropic By Jason Dean Source: The Information

A federal judge ruled that the Defense Department must end its blacklisting of Anthropic in a blistering decision that accused the Trump administration of violating the AI company’s First Amendment rights.

The decision, issued late Thursday by U.S. District Judge Rita Lin of the Northern District of California, came in one of two Anthropic lawsuits against the Pentagon challenging its designation of the company as a supply-chain risk. The judge ordered that designation be rescinded, saying the government violated the law by imposing it in response to Anthropic’s criticism of Trump administration policy.

“The undisputed record shows that the challenged actions constituted unlawful retaliation in violation of the First Amendment, and that Anthropic was denied the pre-deprivation process required under the Fifth Amendment,” Judge Lin wrote. “The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics.”

While Anthropic has continued to work with the government in the months since the designation, the company’s legal victory helps alleviate regulatory risk it faces as it prepares for what is expected to be one of the biggest initial public offerings ever.

An Anthropic spokesperson said in a statement that the company welcomes the ruling and that: “We remain focused on working productively with the government to harness AI for our national security so all Americans benefit from this technology.”

Anthropic’s two lawsuits challenged separate statutes used by the Pentagon in applying the supply chain risk designation. The second suit, filed with the circuit court in Washington, D.C., is ongoing.

2.	OpenAI Leads New Call for Cyberdefense of Critical Infrastructure By Rocket Drew Source: The Information

Over 100 companies from tech, finance and other industries signed a statement that OpenAI published Thursday calling for an industry-wide effort to protect critical infrastructure, including hospitals and water treatment plants, from AI cyberattacks.

“We have a limited window to strengthen cyber defenses,” reads the letter, whose signatories include Anthropic, Google, Citadel and Visa. AI companies should provide their models and training to support vulnerable infrastructure, it argued, and governments should play a stronger role in coordinating and funding cyber defense.

The letter is the latest warning from prominent tech leaders, companies and employees about the growing security threat from AI. It comes on the heels of OpenAI’s investigation into how its models hacked into its own software and AI company Hugging Face, findings from which OpenAI published Wednesday alongside results from an independent investigation.

3.	Z.ai’s Latest Model Intensifies Competition for Low-Cost Offerings By Juro Osawa Source: The Information

Chinese AI firm Z.ai’s new open-source model is generating a lot of buzz because of its near-frontier capabilities at super low costs. This further intensifies the price competition in the global AI model market.

The new GLM-5.3 Flash model, officially released earlier this week, is ranked eighth on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 57, matching OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Terra. Its performance is not far behind Z.ai’s larger and more expensive flagship model, GLM-5.3, and Moonshot AI’s popular Kimi K3 model, which are both ranked fifth with a score of 60.

Z.ai, also known as Zhipu, anonymously launched the preview version of GLM-5.3 Flash earlier this month under the name Ox Alpha through OpenRouter and OpenCode platforms, and the model got a lot of attention from developers on X due to its strong coding performance.

GLM-5.3 Flash costs only $0.15 for input and $0.50 for output per 1 million tokens, and Z.ai is currently offering a 50% discount from those prices until Sept. 9. It is cheaper than DeepSeek’s popular light-weight model, V4-Flash, which costs $1.32 for output at peak hours and $0.66 at non-peak hours. Both GLM-5.3-Flash and V4-Flash are tapping into a growing market for light-weight models that are capable enough to power autonomous agents but much cheaper to run.

4.	Tencent’s New Flagship AI Model Shows Major Progress By Juro Osawa Source: The Information

Chinese tech giant Tencent Holdings on Friday launched a preview version of its new flagship open-source model, Hy4, which demonstrates a significant improvement in performance from its predecessor.

Benchmarks and early feedback on Hy4 suggest that Tencent is emerging as a more formidable competitor to leading Chinese AI model makers such as Moonshot AI, DeepSeek and Alibaba Group. On Code Arena’s WebDev benchmark for agentic coding and web development, Hy4 is ranked fifth along with Z.ai’s new GLM-5.3 Flash and xAI’s Grok-4.6—a huge leap from Tencent’s previous model, Hy3, which was ranked 31st on the same benchmark.

The major progress for Tencent comes under the leadership of former OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu, who joined the Chinese company last year and became the head of model development. Earlier this month, Tencent President Martin Lau said during an earnings call that the company’s new Hy4 model will make its AI productivity tools more competitive. “We are confident that Hy’s capabilities will reach state-of-the-art levels,” he said.

5.	Workday Revenue Growth Flattens But Execs Suggest an AI-Related Boost is Coming By Laura Bratton Source: The Information

Workday, whose software is used by HR and finance teams, said revenue growth slowed slightly in the July quarter, underscoring how enterprise software companies have yet to show that AI can boost their revenue meaningfully.

Shares initially fell 7% in after-hours trading before bouncing back as executives highlighted its AI-related revenues during a call with analysts.

Workday’s subscription revenue grew 13.9% to about $2.5 billion, a fraction of a percentage point lower than revenue growth it reported for the April quarter. While the July quarter result was higher than Workday’s earlier projection of 13% growth, the company also said revenue growth would slow to 12% in the current fiscal quarter.

But boosting investor sentiment, executive Gerrit Kazmaier said annual recurring revenue from Workday AI products that automate tasks for customers grew more than 200% from the previous year to $600 million. Executives said fiscal year 2028 revenue could grow quickly due to those products.

The company reported a slight decline in the growth of its subscription revenue backlog over the next 12 months. The backlog rose 14.2% in the July quarter to roughly $9 billion, around one percentage point lower than growth in the April quarter. And free cash flow fell 22% to $460 million in the July quarter compared to a year earlier.

On the plus side, Workday raised the bottom of its guidance range for full year subscription revenue to $9.94 billion from $9.925 billion previously.

The stock had spiked earlier this month on a report that private equity firm Silver Lake was interested in buying Workday. After normal trading hours Thursday, Workday shares were down 6% for the year, giving it a market capitalization of a little under $50 billion.

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