OpenAI on Monday said it is expanding Daybreak, its exclusive cybersecurity initiative, to help give its participants access to the “right capabilities” that they need to help defend themselves from attackers.

The company first introduced Daybreak in May, shortly after its chief rival Anthropic captivated Wall Street and the U.S. government by launching its own cybersecurity coalition called Project Glasswing. OpenAI positioned Daybreak as a way for its ecosystem partners to use its most advanced artificial intelligence models to adapt to a rapidly changing threat landscape.

OpenAI said Monday that it is expanding the program to include two different access tiers: Daybreak Blue and Daybreak Red. The expansion follows a number of cybersecurity incidents that AI developers —including OpenAI, Anthropic and Meta — have disclosed in recent weeks. In each case, an AI model accessed systems that should have been off limits as part of cybersecurity testing, prompting industry researchers and government officials to call for stronger protections.

“As the threat landscape evolves, we’re putting frontier intelligence in the hands of trusted defenders before attackers can deploy offensive AI at scale,” OpenAI said in a post on X on Monday.

Daybreak Blue will give users unique access to OpenAI’s advanced general-purpose models, as the safeguards will be altered to allow for defensive security work, the company said in a blog post. Daybreak Red participants will be able to go a step further, leveraging OpenAI’s “purpose-trained cybersecurity models” for security testing, vulnerability research and exploit validation.

OpenAI is also launching a new AI model, GPT‑5.6‑Cyber, which will be available to Daybreak Red users. The company said the model is built on its most powerful publicly available offering, GPT-5.6 Sol, but it’s designed to improve capabilities and reduce refusals on certain specialized cybersecurity tasks.

The company said it recommends Daybreak Blue as the starting point for most organizations.

OpenAI has repeatedly warned about AI models’ advancing cyber capabilities in recent months. The company said last week that it is pausing some internal activities involving an upcoming model called Astra, which has demonstrated “significant advancements in agentic coding and cybersecurity” during testing.

It said it is working to assess these capabilities and implement more robust safeguards and security controls.

“We’re committed to working alongside governments, safety institutes, and civil society to ensure that the frontier capabilities of models like Astra, and those that follow, are deployed responsibly and broadly for the benefit of all humanity,” OpenAI said.

WATCH: OpenAI, Anthropic agents participate in new ‘unsanctioned’ AI behavior

Nvidia unveiled a new AI model for robots and vision AI agents on Wednesday, deepening its push into the physical AI market in Japan.

The company’s new model, Cosmos 3 Edge, is a so-called world model, designed to help systems perceive and navigate physical environments in real time. Cosmos 3 edge is a World models are systems that can learn from a wider range of inputs compared to large language models (LLMs). The rollout follows the launch of Cosmos 3 in May.

The regional expansion takes center stage during CEO Jensen Huang’s two-day visit to Japan, where the Silicon Valley chip giant is expanding its physical AI footprint by forming a coalition that local industrial giants, including Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries, intend to join, according to Nvidia.

“The next frontier of AI is in the physical world, and this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for Japan,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a Wednesday statement. “Japan invented modern manufacturing. Now, it has the opportunity to reinvent it for the age of intelligent industries.” 

The tech giant’s partnership with Japanese firms comes just months after Microsoft‘s $10 billion investment in the country, which aims to build out AI infrastructure and beef up cybersecurity. Japanese investment giant SoftBank has bet heavily on the boom in AI. It’s looking to partner with Microsoft and Sakura Internet to develop AI in Japan.

Japan’s AI market is expected to reach $27.9 billion by 2029, opening doors for U.S. firms to invest, according to the International Trade Administration. This growth is driven by Tokyo’s active push to promote AI adoption across industries, coupled with the eagerness of local firms to forge international partnerships.

Ajay Rajadhyaksha, global chairman of research at Barclays, told CNBC last month that the country holds an advantage in Asia, driven by its diverse AI and clean structural growth stories.

When it comes to agentic AI, Nvidia highlighted the ongoing expansion of Tokyo-1, the AI drug discovery consortium operated by Xeureka, a Mitsui subsidiary. The platform, which has steadily grown since its initial announcement in 2023, is powered by the Nvidia BioNeMo Agent Toolkit, a platform for accelerating autonomous AI drug discovery.

Japan’s pharmaceutical heavyweights are already scaling their involvement. Major drugmakers, including Astellas Pharma Inc, Daiichi Sankyo, and Ono Pharmaceutical are utilizing Nvidia’s specialized biology toolkit to streamline their workflows, the U.S. company said in a blog post.

Beyond biotech, Nvidia said it is making inroads into industrial automation through a partnership with Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

Singapore’s economy expanded 5.7% in the second quarter, topping market expectations, on the back of strong growth in the manufacturing sector.

Growth was higher than the 5.5% expected by economists polled by Reuters, but lower than the revised 6.3% seen in the first quarter, according to a release from the country’s Ministry of Trade and Industry.

The goods sector expanded 10.4% from the 8.4% in the previous quarter, while growth in the services sector slowed to 4.6% from 6.2% in the first quarter.

“Singapore’s 2Q26 advance GDP estimates indicate that the economy remained resilient despite the shock stemming from tensions in the Middle East,” said Chua Han Teng, senior economist at DBS Bank said in a note.

He expects robust trade-related performance and tailwinds from domestic construction to continue into the next few quarters, but warned that GDP was likely to moderate going forward due to high base effects.

In May, Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry projected that GDP growth for 2026 at 2%-4%, “although downside risks have risen significantly as a result of the US-Israel-Iran conflict,” it said.

The advance GDP data comes as Singapore’s central bank prepares to announce its quarterly monetary policy decision later this month.

Instead of using interest rates, the city-state manages monetary policy by influencing the Singapore dollar’s value against the currencies of its main trading partners within an undisclosed trading band, known as the Singapore dollar nominal effective exchange rate, or S$NEER.

The Singapore dollar traded at 1.294 against the greenback, marginally weaker after the data release.

The GDP data also comes as inflation in the city-state held steady at 1.8% in May, its joint-highest level since September 2024.

The MAS said in its CPI release that global energy prices remain elevated compared to 2025, forecasting that full-year inflation at 1.5%–2.5%.

Small-cap U.S. stocks are capping off one of their strongest first halves in decades. But this is not your ordinary small-cap boom led by traditional businesses linked to the economic cycle.

This run, like the one going on with their larger-cap peers, has been driven by the rapid buildout of AI infrastructure, as spending spreads beyond the largest technology companies to a broader network of suppliers.

Investors believe the small-stock rally can broaden out beyond tech and continue, as long as interest rates stay in check.

The Russell 2000 Index has surged more than 21% this year, putting the benchmark on track for its best first-half performance since 1991. The advance marks a sharp turnaround after years of underperformance versus large-cap peers.

“It’s both a valuation catch-up story and a fundamental story,” said Amy Zhang, portfolio manager at Alger. “The valuation gap was so wide that a truck can drive through it. At the same time, fundamentals are improving in small caps and I think that’s why it’s causing the broadening trade.”

Semiconductor and semiconductor-equipment companies have been the biggest winners, underscoring how the AI investment boom is rippling through the broader market. Chip-related companies account for 16 of the Russell 2000’s 50 best-performing stocks this year, including Aehr Test Systems, Ichor Holdings and MaxLinear, which have all rallied more than 400%.

Rather than competing directly with industry leaders like Nvidia, many of these smaller companies are benefiting from rising demand across the AI supply chain. As chipmakers and cloud providers ramp up spending on AI infrastructure, suppliers of semiconductor equipment, components and connectivity solutions are seeing the gains trickle down, amplifying revenue and earnings growth for companies with much smaller market capitalizations.

“I think a significant part of the small cap story is tied to AI,” Zhang said. “The impact of AI investment trickles down from large-cap leaders to small-cap companies. The effect will be more amplified for small-cap companies, in terms of revenue and probability growth.”

More Than Just AI

While AI has been a key driver of the rally, strategists say the small-cap rebound has been supported by a broader set of fundamental tailwinds and can continue.

“Small-cap leadership has been notable amid the mega-cap-driven bull market, although small caps have meaningful exposure to semiconductors and technology hardware,” said Adam Turnquist, chief technical strategist at LPL Financial. “Building fundamental strength has also helped offset headwinds from higher rates.”

Consensus forecasts for Russell 2000 companies’ 2026 earnings growth have climbed to 38% from about 23% at the start of the year, according to LPL, reflecting growing optimism that profit growth is broadening beyond the largest technology companies.

Turnquist also…

JetBlue Airways told CNBC on Wednesday that it will close its flight attendant base at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey and tech operations bases there and at LaGuardia Airport in New York this fall as it seeks to reduce costs and beef up service in Florida, though it noted that no staff will lose their jobs.

It said staff could bid or transfer to other bases.

“JetBlue is making targeted schedule adjustments, ending seasonal service between Newark (EWR) and Los Angeles (LAX) and Las Vegas (LAS), to support growth in Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport,” the airline said in a statement.

It comes as JetBlue earlier Wednesday said it would expand daily, cross-country flights with its lie-flat business class, Mint, from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to San Diego on Nov. 19 and will add more Mint-equipped flights this winter to San Francisco and Los Angeles.

JetBlue has spent years trimming unprofitable routes and cutting costs to return to steady profitability.

Its last profitable quarter was two years ago, and the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport push is a big part of its strategy, JetBlue President Marty St. George told CNBC earlier this month. The airline is scouting space for a high-end airport lounge there, too, he said.

The airline is already the top carrier at Fort Lauderdale, though it was previously second to Spirit Airlines, the South Florida-based discounter that collapsed on May 2.

JetBlue executives have called out the high costs of operating at airports like LaGuardia.

“We are much, much smaller at LaGuardia than we were four years ago because it’s a $40 [enplanement fee] airport for us. And the fountain is really pretty, but … I think people would rather have low fares than a really nice fountain,” St. George said at a JPMorgan industry conference in March, referring to the 25-foot-tall water feature in the airport’s Terminal B.

In a quarter partially affected by the economic disruptions from the Middle East conflict, India’s economy grew at 7.8% year-on-year in the three months to the end of March, a faster-than-expected pace.

As per a Reuters poll, the economy was forecast to grow by 7.2% in Jan-Mar, lower than 7.8% in the previous quarter.

In the first half of the quarter, India’s trade prospects improved sharply as it finalized a “mother of all deals” with the European Union and managed to get the U.S. to lower tariffs on its goods from 50% to 18%.

These were further lowered to 10% after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs as illegal.

But then the Iran war began at the end of February, which has since become a severe risk to India’s economy and is anticipated to hurt growth and raise inflation.

On Friday, India’s central bank raised its inflation projection for the financial year ending March 2027 by 50 basis points to 5.1%, while tempering the economy’s growth forecast to 6.6% for the year, down from 6.9% projected earlier.

Energy supply disruptions caused by the conflict have inflated India’s import bill, piling pressure on the rupee that has already been hit by record foreign investor outflows.

The world’s fastest-growing major economy is expected to feel the pinch of inflation as the government has passed on global fuel price hikes to consumers in May, after holding them off for a couple of months.  

As of April, inflation remains under the RBI target of 4%, but India is widely expected to face weather-related disruptions due to El Nino this year, which could cause crop shortages and push food prices higher.

The Reserve Bank of India on Friday said the policy has turned “cautious” owing to the deteriorating global economic conditions.

Anthropic on Tuesday said an additional 150 partners in more than 15 countries will gain access to its powerful Mythos artificial intelligence model, which has proven adept at finding software vulnerabilities.

The startup said the expansion of Project Glasswing includes industries that weren’t well represented in the initial launch, such as power, water, healthcare, communications and hardware. New partners will need to meet security requirements before gaining access to the model.

“This expansion is the next step toward our long-term goals: for AI to make all software more secure, and for us to help the industry adjust to how AI could change many of the core assumptions of cybersecurity,” the company said in a blog post.

Anthropic’s Mythos expansion comes a day after the AI lab said it would start offering access to the European Union. On Monday, the company also confidentially filed its initial public offering prospectus with the Securities and Exchange Commission, beating rival OpenAI to the milestone and paving the way for a significant AI share sale.

In April, Anthropic rolled out initial testing of Mythos to 50 partners amid concerns over the model’s advanced cybersecurity capabilities.

Many experts warned that these capabilities existed beforehand, but hackers could use Mythos to expose software vulnerabilities more quickly.

As worries mounted, the White House held numerous meetings with Big Tech leaders and financial institutions over ways to safely deploy advanced AI models in the era of Mythos.

Since launch, Anthropic said Project Glasswing partners revealed more than 10,000 high or critical security flaws. The company estimates that a major cyberattack could impact more than 100 million people.

Major Project Glasswing partners include Apple, Nvidia, Microsoft, CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks. Anthropic did not disclose the new companies joining the coalition.

Oil prices rose Monday after Israel ordered troops to push deeper into Lebanon, renewing concerns that clashes with the Iran-backed Hezbollah group could threaten a fragile ceasefire between Washington and Tehran.

Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, gained 2.45% to $93.35 a barrel. West Texas Intermediate futures added 2.8% to $89.78 per barrel.

The escalation in hostilities, which followed the U.S.-brokered Israeli-Lebanon talks in Washington on Friday, dimmed hopes that Washington and Tehran were nearing an extension of their ceasefire arrangement. 

“Together with Defense Minister Yisrael Katz, I instructed the IDF to expand the maneuver in Lebanon,” Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday. The order came despite a ceasefire declared in April. 

Goldman Sachs said risks to its fourth-quarter 2026 Brent and WTI forecasts of $90 and $83 per barrel remain “two-sided,” with the bank warning that while persistent Middle East supply disruptions could push prices higher, weakening demand could create meaningful downside risks.

Goldman estimated that weak April oil retail sales data from China and Western Europe together implied around 2 million barrels per day of downside risk to its already subdued demand forecasts.