Flash, Finance, Firings

By the Orchestra editors · 4 min read

TL;DR

Google ships Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash with 15-second native video gen and a 30% price cut
Anthropic plugs Claude directly into bank accounts via Plaid for personal finance analysis
NAB rolls out an Anthropic-powered AI assistant called Ruby across staff
Heidi slashes 18% of headcount and loses two cofounders just weeks after raising $475M

AI · Worldwide

Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash goes GA with longer video clips and lower prices

Google DeepMind's updated video-generation model now produces native 15-second clips with step-by-step conversational editing. Pricing drops 30% to US$0.07 per second at 720p, and drafting at low resolution before upscaling cuts costs further.

Claude gets a Personal Finance tool wired to your bank account

Anthropic's new feature connects Claude to bank and card accounts through Plaid, letting users ask plain-language questions about spending, bills and savings. It generates category breakdowns and can advise on whether you can afford upcoming purchases.

Perplexity launches always-on AI "Teammates" for workspaces

Perplexity's new Teammates are persistent AI agents that sit inside a workspace, pulling from existing projects and memory to handle ongoing work across multiple roles simultaneously. They build on Perplexity Computer, which can deploy agents on a user's device.

Australian Tech

NAB deploys Anthropic-powered AI assistant Ruby for staff

National Australia Bank has rolled out an internal AI tool called Ruby, built on Anthropic's models, and is pursuing 50 more AI use cases across the bank. It's the latest sign of major Australian enterprises standardising on frontier model providers for internal tooling.

Heidi cuts 18% of staff and loses two cofounders weeks after $475M raise

AI health startup Heidi, which recently reached unicorn status, has laid off roughly a fifth of its workforce and seen two cofounders depart. The cuts come just weeks after closing a $475 million funding round.

NSW data centre inquiry stops short of moratorium

A cross-party NSW parliamentary inquiry found that data centre approvals failed to account for cumulative impacts on power and water but declined to recommend a moratorium, drawing a sharp rebuke from the inquiry's own chair. The tension mirrors the global backlash playing out in the US midterms.