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Weekly Tech
IBM, UChicago Demonstrate Trusted Quantum Advantage With Logical Qubits
IBM and University of Chicago researchers demonstrated quantum advantage using error-corrected logical circuits, encoding 70 logical qubits to complete a classically intractable calculation in roughly 15 minutes — a task infeasible for leading classical methods. The logical circuits achieved error rates about ten times lower than the underlying physical qubits, addressing the reliability gap that has undermined earlier advantage claims. IBM and Algorithmiq separately demonstrated a related trusted-computation framework by simulating a heterogeneous quantum material without relying on classical verification.
"What works against an AI agent and what works against a human are not the same thing."
Michelle Vaccaro · Ph.D., MIT Sloan negotiation researcher · Jul 27 2026
The Roundup— frontier moves this week
OpenAI Cuts GPT-5.6 Prices, Adds Fast Mode for Priority Workloads
OpenAI cut prices across its GPT-5.6 lineup — Luna by roughly 80% and Terra by 20% — while adding a "Fast mode" for GPT-5.6 Sol that processes priority workloads up to 2.5 times faster. The changes, effective July 30, 2026, target both ends of the price-performance curve: Luna and Terra make high-volume workloads cheaper at scale, while Fast mode serves latency-sensitive enterprise use cases on the flagship Sol tier.
TakeawayOpenAI is now segmenting price and speed within one model family instead of shipping a single frontier update — price-performance, not raw capability, is the next battleground.
OpenAI · Jul 30→
BNY Moves $8.6 Trillion Fund Record-Keeping Business Onto Blockchain
BNY is moving part of its $8.6 trillion transfer-agency record-keeping business onto blockchain rails, giving banks, asset managers and other participants a shared, tokenized ownership record instead of reconciling separate databases. The bank will keep existing systems running in parallel while adding the digital record, with Baillie Gifford, BlackRock and BNY's own Dreyfus unit among the first clients on what is described as the first fully native UK-regulated tokenized fund.
TakeawayLarge custodians are starting to treat the blockchain record as the legal ownership record itself, not a mirror of it — a structural shift for fund administration and settlement.
CoinDesk · Jul 29→
Walmart, Maersk Use AI Agents to Negotiate Binding Supplier Deals
Walmart, Maersk and Vodafone now run AI agents that negotiate and close binding supplier contracts at a volume no human team could match. MIT Sloan research across 180,000 AI-to-AI negotiations found rapport-focused agents beat ruthless ones, while one top performer used prompt injection to extract rivals' private positions.
TakeawayNegotiation-agent performance depends more on interpersonal design than raw aggression, and boards deploying them face a real-time oversight gap standard compliance reviews don't cover.
PYMNTS · Jul 27→
Australian CFOs Race to Deploy AI Agents as Governance Lags
A global Avalara survey of 250 Australian finance leaders found 88% feel career pressure to prove ROI on AI agent investments, with 59% saying deployment speed is the primary driver rather than governance. Only 12% of Australian respondents said their organization prioritizes governance over deployment speed, and nearly a third have not updated internal control frameworks for AI agents taking or recommending actions in the past year.
TakeawayFinance functions are outrunning their own governance — a control gap worth tracking as more agentic tools move from pilot into production decisioning.
SMBTech AU · Jul 26→
PayPal Pushes AI and Digital Identity as Checkout Growth Stays Flat
PayPal's Q2 2026 earnings update centered on a 2% currency-neutral rise in branded checkout and a $1.5 billion cost-savings target, with CEO Enrique Lores framing agentic payments and digital identity as contributors starting only in 2028. Near-term AI use is more operational — embedding it across the software delivery cycle to cut costs and reduce headcount layers — rather than any new payment-decisioning or fraud capability.
TakeawayPayPal's AI story today is internal efficiency, not product — the agentic-payments narrative is a 2028-plus bet, not a near-term feature to benchmark against.
PYMNTS · Jul 28→
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