Today in AI — 18 April 2026

Cursor pulls in over a billion dollars a year selling AI to developers. Sora was burning a million a day selling AI video to consumers and couldn't keep 500,000 users. Today's through-line: AI that slots into professional workflows prints money; AI sold as a standalone consumer experience does not.

Enterprise AI finds its price

Cursor is raising $2 billion at a $50 billion-plus valuation, nearly doubling in six months on enterprise adoption. GitHub starts training on Copilot interaction data from individual users on 24 April; business and enterprise tiers are exempt, everyone else is opted in by default.

• Cursor in talks to raise $2B at $50B+ valuation as enterprise growth surges — TechCrunch
• GitHub Copilot will use your interaction data to train AI models starting April 24 — GitHub Blog

AI meets the lab bench

OpenAI unveiled GPT-Rosalind for life sciences, with Amgen and Moderna as launch partners. Novo Nordisk signed on the same week to apply OpenAI across drug discovery and manufacturing. Specialised models plus pharma-scale data is the bet.

• OpenAI launches GPT-Rosalind, its first specialised model for life sciences and drug discovery — OpenAI
• Novo Nordisk partners with OpenAI to accelerate drug discovery in obesity and diabetes — CNBC

Consumer AI's cost problem

Sora closes 26 April after burning an estimated $1 million per day with fewer than 500,000 active users. Disney learned about the shutdown less than an hour before the public announcement.

• OpenAI's Sora app shuts down April 26 as company retreats from consumer creative AI — The Decoder

Personalisation as the surviving consumer play

The consumer AI that works is a feature inside an existing platform. Netflix added an AI-powered vertical feed, Google connected Gemini to Photos, and Meta shipped AI shopping across Instagram and Facebook.

• Netflix launches TikTok-style vertical video feed with AI-powered recommendations — TechCrunch
• Google brings personalised AI image generation to Gemini using your Google Photos — Google Blog
• Meta launches AI-powered shopping mode across Instagram and Facebook via Muse Spark — Retail Brew

Hollywood goes all in

NAB 2026 opens with nearly double last year's AI exhibitors. Adobe arrived with AI colour grading for Premiere Pro and an agentic Firefly Assistant that orchestrates multi-app workflows.

• Adobe unleashes AI Color Mode in Premiere and agentic Firefly Assistant at NAB 2026 — Adobe Blog
• NAB Show 2026 nearly doubles AI exhibitors as Hollywood embraces generative video tools — Sports Video Group

Policy and research

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met White House officials, with a Mythos compromise reportedly under discussion. Meta published hyperagents that rewrite their own improvement mechanisms.

• White House and Anthropic hold 'productive' meeting as Mythos standoff shows signs of thaw — Axios
• Meta researchers introduce hyperagents — AI systems that rewrite their own improvement mechanisms — VentureBeat

Compute costs don't care about your demo reel. The products surviving are the ones where someone already has a workflow, a budget, and a problem.

---