The Amped Journal

Palantir used its DevCon 6 conference to lay out the specific pieces of the Agent Stack it introduced this week: an Orchestrator for durable execution, plus an Agent Engine and Agent SDK for building agents on top of the company's Ontology data layer. Software engineer Ankit Shankar and group lead Natasha Armbrust presented the tools, with Armbrust describing the combination as producing "an agent loop that's actually a distributed state machine under the hood."

Google DeepMind, Google's AI research lab, published an essay arguing that AI agents are increasingly capable of proposing scientific hypotheses and designing experiments, but that validating those ideas in the real world has become the limiting step in AI-assisted discovery. The essay outlines priorities for policymakers and researchers to address the gap.

OpenAI highlighted new capabilities in GPT-Live, its real-time voice assistant, showing it holding a single conversation while juggling multiple tasks at once, such as checking flight options, pulling local weather, and shaping a travel itinerary as the user talks.

Emergent Labs closed a $130 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation, Y Combinator announced. Founded by Mukund Jha and Madhav Jha, Emergent lets people build full-stack, production-ready software without coding experience; the company says more than 12 million apps have been built on the platform and it has over 200,000 paying customers.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said the risks raised by Anthropic's newest AI model, Mythos, are a "real issue" and that the US government is already on top of it, according to Bloomberg. Dimon did not elaborate on the specific risks in the remarks reported.

Nvidia will supply AI hardware and software to Toyota to power smart-city systems, traffic intelligence and Toyota's carmaking factories, Bloomberg reported, broadening a partnership between the two companies that began with autonomous-vehicle development a decade ago.

Startup investor and podcaster Greg Isenberg said a friend, Corey, earns $1,000 an hour running a simple AI consulting business: he spends 45 minutes with a small-business owner, identifies where they lose five to ten hours a week, and prescribes off-the-shelf AI tools to fix it. Isenberg said only about 5% of businesses use AI beyond ChatGPT, leaving the other 95% as a market for this kind of hands-on help.

The five largest US banks reported a combined $49 billion in second-quarter profit, a record, according to Morning Brew. JPMorgan Chase led with $21.2 billion, followed by Bank of America at $9.1 billion, Goldman Sachs at $6.6 billion, Wells Fargo at $6.4 billion and Citigroup at $5.8 billion.

The US will begin charging a 25% tariff on imports of certain goods from Brazil, Bloomberg reported, following an investigation that alleged the country engaged in unfair trade practices.

Semiconductor stocks fell across Asia, dragging regional equities lower, as investors grew more skeptical that the artificial-intelligence-driven rally in chip stocks can withstand current valuations, Bloomberg reported.

President Trump's 2025 financial disclosure showed earnings unlike anything previously seen from a sitting US president, Bloomberg reported: $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency, 21,000 securities trades, and millions of dollars from his resorts and golf clubs.

Wilmington city officials are reviewing responses to three requests for qualifications covering master planning for more than 22 acres of undeveloped or under-developed land on the northern end of downtown, plus a 1.6-acre tract at 305-319 Chestnut St. that formerly housed a city office building, according to the Greater Wilmington Business Journal. The city received 17 responses for urban design services, 14 for placemaking and public realm work, and eight for market feasibility and economic analysis. Planning director Linda Painter said the city is taking a deliberate approach to shaping the area's future rather than relying on zoning alone.

North Carolina's health department denied an application to relocate 64 beds from the closed Castle Creek Memory Care in Castle Hayne to a new adult care home called The Landings of New Hanover, the Greater Wilmington Business Journal reported. The state said the application failed to demonstrate feasible financing, adequate staffing and partnerships with local health training programs. Castle Creek closed in 2022, and the property sold for $5.9 million last year with plans to convert it into a 54-bed inpatient treatment center.

Charles Boney, an architect, was named chair of the Cameron Art Museum's board of trustees effective July 1, the museum announced. Seven new trustees, including Caroline Cameron and Patricia Jenkins, also joined the board for three-year terms as the Wilmington museum looks to grow its audience and expand access to the arts.

The University of North Carolina Wilmington named David Glew interim dean of its Cameron School of Business, effective July 1. Glew has served as associate dean of undergraduate programs since 2015 and previously chaired the school's management department; he succeeds David Mautz, who served as interim dean for the 2025-26 academic year.