On Friday, July 10, 2026, the AI landscape reached a historic inflection point as GPT-5.6 began its first full day in public hands, Grok 4.5's independent benchmarks and political bias controversy dominated developer discourse, Meta launched Muse Spark 1.1 on a commercial API, Anthropic countered with Claude Cowork for mobile, Micron committed $250 billion to US AI chip infrastructure, Google's Gemini 3.5 Pro remained absent from the market it needed to enter, Illinois became the first state to mandate independent AI safety audits, and the week's wave of model launches sent the Nasdaq surging 1.3% on AI momentum. Stories: ChatGPT Work & GPT-5.6 Go Public — Three Tiers, One Front Door · Day-One Scorecards Rank Grok 4.5 Fourth — Trust Debate Overshadows Scores · Meta Opens MuseSpark 1.1 API — Its First Commercial, Non-Open Model · Meta's Custom AI Chip Enters Manufacturing in September — 14 GW Target · Anthropic Ships Claude Cowork on Mobile and Web — Direct Answer to ChatGPT Work · Gemini 3.5 Pro: Six Weeks Past GA Target, No New Date From Google · Micron Commits $250B to US AI Chip Manufacturing Through 2035 · Illinois Signs the Nation's Strictest AI Safety Law — Annual Audits, Whistleblower Protections.