LWiAI Podcast #249 - Fable 5 ban, SpaceX Cursor + IPO, OSS Aplenty

Last Week in AI released episode 249 of its podcast, hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie Harris and recorded on 06/17/2026. The episode covers Anthropic cutting off access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 following a US government order tied to alleged jailbreaks, which the show says prompted debate over inconsistent policy, export controls, and the practicality of preventing jailbreaks.

On the business side, the episode reports that SpaceX completed an IPO at a roughly $1.75T valuation and then moved to acquire AI coding startup Cursor for $60B, positioning xAI with Cursor's talent, data, and product to compete more effectively in coding. Other business items include Anthropic pursuing direct US data center leases backed by Google, leaked documents showing OpenAI's revenue growth alongside large losses, and chatbot market share shifting with ChatGPT below 50% as Gemini and Claude gain.

Projects and policy highlights listed for the episode include OpenRouter's Fusion multi-model synthesis, new open releases from Moonshot, Qwen, and NVIDIA, DOJ support for xAI's unpermitted gas turbines in Memphis, and a Munich court ruling Google liable for false AI Overview statements.

Additional segments cover Facebook's new AI Mode search drawing on public posts, Sakana AI commercializing AB-MCTS in Sakana Marlin, Moonshot AI's Kimi K2.7-Code, Qwen-RobotSuite, Nemotron 3 Ultra, a ProCUA-SFT technical report, a WIRED report on Meta's new AI unit, work on SFT safety filters, a discussion titled From AGI to ASI, Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v4.1, and SIA: Self Improving AI with Harness and Weight Updates. In a note, Kurenkov said he had paused paid subscriptions until posting becomes consistent again.