The Amped Journal

Elon Musk announced Thursday that Grok, xAI's AI model, is now available in Microsoft Foundry, Microsoft's marketplace for AI models on Azure. The move gives Grok direct distribution to Microsoft's enterprise customer base alongside models from OpenAI, Meta and others already on the platform.

OpenAI said Thursday it's joining Anthropic, Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft and Oracle in calling for a coordinated global effort to strengthen cyber defenses, warning there is only "a limited window" to give defenders the tools and resources needed to protect shared infrastructure. The companies didn't detail specific funding or policy commitments alongside the statement.

Google DeepMind said Thursday it's piloting double-blind evaluations for its frontier AI models, an approach the company calls an industry first. Outside evaluators assess model safety and performance in a secure environment where neither the test prompts nor the model's internal weights are exposed to either party, which DeepMind says keeps reviews more private, robust and trustworthy.

A new benchmark called FrontierChallenge tested leading AI models against 97 real, end-to-end scientific research workflows and found even the best models fully completed only 20.6% of them. The result, published this week, underscores a widening gap between AI agent demos and models' actual ability to execute multi-step professional work without human intervention. It followed startup Apodex's Aug. 24 launch of Apodex 1.1, an open-source AI agent-team system built for exactly this kind of work.

Some U.S. companies with close ties to President Trump are taking steps to build goodwill with Democrats, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing concerns they could become political targets if Republicans lose control of the House in the 2026 midterms. The Journal did not name the companies involved.

President Trump said Thursday he is renaming Lake Ontario to "Lake America" within the United States, signing an executive order directing the Interior Department to update the name. The move comes as Trump escalates a trade war with Canada, having threatened 50% tariffs on Canadian autos, parts and steel effective Jan. 1, on top of existing 50% tariffs already covering $20 billion of other Canadian goods.

Air traffic controllers warned of radio communication issues a week before a commercial jet and President Trump's helicopter took off simultaneously, the National Transportation Safety Board said Thursday, according to the Associated Press. The disclosure raises fresh questions about air traffic safety protocols around the president's movements.

The death toll from flash floods along the Nepal-China border has risen to 469, up from roughly 160 reported the previous day, the Associated Press reported Thursday, with photos showing mud-caked survivors amid the wreckage. The floods, triggered by a suspected glacial avalanche near Gyirong Port, have left hundreds still missing.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said his recent trip to Samoa had nothing to do with vaccines, but new documents obtained by the Associated Press and The Guardian contradict that account, the AP reported Thursday.

Atrium Health, Novant Health and UNC Health each presented competing hospital proposals at a public hearing Thursday at the Arboretum Education Center, part of the state's certificate-of-need review. Atrium is proposing a 42-bed community hospital near Porters Neck, UNC Health a 150-bed hospital at Shipyard Boulevard and South 17th Street, and Novant a 225-bed heart-and-vascular tower on its existing New Hanover Regional Medical Center campus.

UNC Health CEO Cristy Page and president Jeff Lindsay spoke in favor of their system's bid, following hundreds of public comment letters submitted before the July deadline, many in support of UNC Health's proposal. The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services will decide which, if any, of the three gets approved.

Abby and Jonathan Beland plan to open Lost & Found Tiki Bar at 109 Market St. this fall, in the downtown Wilmington space vacated when Dram & Draught closed in July after four years. The couple, who moved from Los Angeles about 18 months ago, said the region had beach bars but lacked a true tiki bar; they pitched the concept at a 1 Million Cups event at UNCW's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship last fall before finding the space.

CareHome Technologies, a Wilmington startup founded in 2023, has been accepted into Project Healthcare, a healthcare accelerator in Nashville. Founder and CEO AJ Trelease built the company's flagship product, a smart dispensing device named Graciela, after watching his grandmother struggle to manage her prescriptions; it works with a caregiver app called Care Circle that sends notifications for missed doses. Trelease said the app is already in testing and set to launch by year-end.

Wilmington-based nCino Inc. (Nasdaq: NCNO) reported second-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $161 million, up 8% from $148.8 million a year earlier, with subscription revenue up 10% to $143.5 million. CEO Sean Desmond said the company's largest customers are consolidating more operations on nCino's platform and expanding commitments to its AI capabilities. The board authorized an additional $100 million stock buyback, on top of $300 million already repurchased since April 2025.

CloudFruit, a Wilmington-headquartered product development consultancy run by founder Sam Hilsman and COO Ana Yant, is growing as a bootstrapped software services firm with clients including Walmart, Novant Health, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and Infor. The company's enterprise resource planning platform, ERP Drift, has signed its first hospital design partner. Hilsman said the firm intentionally pushes back on customer requests upfront to avoid building features no one uses.

The Network for Entrepreneurs (NEW) will host its annual investor "Buzz In" conference Sept. 10 at Cape Fear Community College's Union Station auditorium, which founder Jim Roberts describes as the only venture capital conference east of Raleigh. Other upcoming events include UNCW's Wilmington Innovation Forum brain-health speaker series starting Sept. 3, and UNCW's Ocean Innovation Conference Sept. 29 at the Burney Center, open to investors, entrepreneurs and the public.

Walker Jenkins, a Southport native who starred at South Brunswick High School, has been called up to the major leagues by the Minnesota Twins, StarNews reported, just three years after the team drafted him.

Live Oak Bank named Matt Hilliard a commercial banking relationship manager for the Wilmington market, joining Brad Neigel and Morgan Moskal on the bank's local commercial team, which provides business loans up to $25 million along with cash management services. Hilliard, a Wilmington native and N.C. State graduate, has more than 25 years of banking experience and serves on the boards of the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra and the Rotary Club of Wilmington.