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Issue #159: Cursor’s $2.3B Mega-Round Reignites the Coding Wars

PLUS: GPT-5.1 upgrades, Gemini 3.0 leaks, Anthropic’s espionage warning, and the rise of 3D worlds from single images.

Author

Nathan Lands
November 14, 2025

Good morning, welcome to this week’s Lore Brief, your 3-minute brief of the most important moves in AI and tech.

This issue of Lore Brief is brought to you by Lore, building AI infrastructure for America and its allies.

  • Cursor secures $2.3B Series D amid $1B ARR surge → Backed by Accel, a16z, Thrive, Nvidia, and Google; now world's top code-producing AI agent, funding powers research for the next coding revolution. Read more here →

  • GPT-5.1 launches with adaptive thinking and natural tones → OpenAI upgrades Instant and Thinking models for dynamic reasoning - faster on simple queries, deeper on complex ones -plus warmer, empathetic chats with customizable styles like Quirky or Professional; benchmarks show strong gains on AIME 2025 math and Codeforces coding. Read more here →

  • Claude Code unveils frontend design Skills plugin → Dynamically loads guides for Tailwind/React UIs, spawning music players and themed apps with unique typography, motion - dev creativity unlocked. Read more here →

Finally, em-dashes out:

An AI Literary Interview Agent to map your writing style:

World Labs launches its first product, Marble, to create persistent 3d worlds from a single image:

Jeff Bezos finally lands his rocket - 10 years after Space X:

  • Google’s Gemini 3.0 and Nano Banana 2.0 launch feels imminent → People on X are posting impressive demos of coding and design, claiming they're generated with the new models. See some examples here → One, Two, Three.

  • Mira Murati's Thinking Machines Lab in $50B valuation talks → Ex-OpenAI CTO's fresh startup seeks funding at 4x prior mark months in, betting big on her vision amid AI talent wars. Read more here →

  • Google’s NotebookLM rolls out Deep Research for web synthesis → Scans hundreds of sites to compile structured reports with annotated sources, directly importable to notebooks - your ultimate research accelerator. Read more here →

  • Anthropic exposes China's first large-scale AI espionage → State-sponsored agents with minimal human oversight hit tech, finance, gov targets; disrupted ops highlight urgent need for AI cyber defenses. Read more here →

That’s it for this week’s Lore Brief.

See you next week!