Block just unveiled Dessa, a real-time voice model trained entirely on human speech without relying on text or traditional pre-training. It can laugh, sigh, and interrupt naturally while running locally on consumer hardware. Public access is currently locked down, with testing limited to AI safety researchers.
Block just open-sourced Berd, a canvas-based desktop environment built to coordinate specialized AI agents directly alongside your local files and repos. Users can spin up agents with distinct skills and personalities while swapping underlying models on the fly. It is a thoughtful push to move AI interactions away from disposable chat windows toward durable project building.
Jack Dorsey’s Block just slashed nearly half its workforce, axing over 4,000 jobs to shrink from 10,000 to under 6,000 employees. Dorsey stressed the business is growing and profitable, calling AI the sole driver as new tools allow far smaller, flatter teams to build faster. Why it matters: It’s the most aggressive real-world case yet of a massive tech firm downsizing specifically to become an AI-native company.
Anthropic just donated the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to the newly formed Agentic AI Foundation under the Linux Foundation. Co-founded alongside Block and OpenAI, the move makes the runaway agent connector standard officially vendor-neutral. With over 10,000 active public servers and native support in ChatGPT, Cursor, and Gemini, MCP is cementing its role as the web's default plumbing for AI agents.
Anthropic just open-sourced Model Context Protocol (MCP), a new standard designed to hook any AI model directly into tools, code repos, and enterprise software. Instead of custom connectors for every app, developers can build two-way connections to services like GitHub and Slack in under an hour. The protocol is open to rivals, but whether competitors like OpenAI adopt it remains an open question.
