Crypto projects have spent about $640 million on buybacks of their own tokens this year, seeking to link protocol revenue more directly to token value. The pace is up about 17 percent from the same period last year, with most activity concentrated in Hyperliquid and Pump.fun. But buybacks do not guarantee price gains and can divert funds from hiring, product development and expansion. Tokens also differ legally from shares, raising questions about lasting value if buybacks stop.

OpenAI and Anthropic are rolling out new AI models as open-source rivals press them on cost efficiency. Meta also unveiled its Muse Spark 1.3 large language model, saying it has narrowed performance gaps with major AI companies. Separately, interest in open-source AI is growing after Nvidia officially announced it would acquire open-source model-sharing platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion. The article also rounds up moves by Google, Perplexity, Adobe and others, plus domestic developments and funding news.