Open Standard Stablecoin Launches with Visa, Stripe and Partners; Vercel Unveils Major Platform Upgrades

Key Takeaways

1. A new stablecoin ecosystem, Open Standard, launches with support from Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, Cloudflare, Google, Stripe, and 100+ partners, aiming to become the default for business stablecoin transactions via Stripe.
2. Vercel rolls out multiple significant infrastructure upgrades: Turbopack boosts Next.js build speed up to 5.5x, Functions package size expands to 5GB, Dockerfile support becomes GA, and Vercel Services enable polyglot deployments.
3. Emerging AI hardware and applications gain traction: Etched's custom inference chip secures $1B+ contracts, Avoca builds an AI workforce for physical economy with $100M+ revenue, and Brain2Qwerty v2 achieves real-time sentence decoding from brain signals.

1. Financial Infrastructure: Open Standard Stablecoin

1. A consortium of major financial and tech companies—including Visa, Mastercard, Coinbase, Cloudflare, Google, and Stripe—introduced Open Standard, a new stablecoin designed for global scale. Open USD will be natively issued on Tempo and will become the default for businesses using stablecoins on Stripe, sharing economics back to users and distributors. — via 1 2
2. Over 100 initial partners, including American Express and BlackRock, join the mission of issuing Open USD, positioning it as a shared stablecoin for the global financial system. — via 1

2. Platform Expansions: Vercel and Replit

1. Turbopack in Next.js 16.3 Preview delivers dramatic performance improvements: memory usage reduced up to 90% in development mode, build speed increased up to 5.5x via filesystem caching, improved HMR, and experimental Rust React Compiler support. This investment in filesystem caching is especially valuable for agent-driven frequent builds. — via 1
2. Vercel Functions now support packages up to 5GB (up from 250MB), enabling deployment of Python data/AI libraries, browser automation, image processing, and more. Additionally, Vercel now runs any Dockerfile, expanding platform flexibility. — via 1 2
3. Vercel Services allows deploying Python backends, ExpressJS servers, and React SPAs in a single project with atomic deployments/rollbacks, unified preview URLs, internal networking, and unified local development (vc dev). — via 1
4. Replit Desktop launches for Windows and Mac, enabling multi-tasking and local development environment. — via 1 2

3. Emerging AI Hardware and Applications

1. Etched claims to be the first system designed from scratch for modern AI inference, securing over $1B in customer contracts and planning to ship this summer. Amjad Masad notes that AI compute is expensive because most workloads run on general-purpose hardware. — via 1
2. Avoca is building an AI workforce for the physical economy, achieving eight-figure revenue and a billion-dollar valuation. Paul Graham highlights that AI expands software capabilities beyond traditional SaaS. — via 1
3. Brain2Qwerty v2, a non-invasive brain-computer interface decoder, achieves real-time sentence decoding from raw brain signals, surpassing character-level performance to reach word and semantic levels. This could help millions with brain injuries or disorders restore communication. — via 1
4. Elon Musk releases Rampart, a 14.7MB machine learning model that runs in-browser to detect and redact personal privacy information, protecting user data without sending it to servers. — via 1

4. Additional Notable Updates

1. Perplexity Computer integrates with Forge Global to provide private company financial data (funding history, implied valuation, secondary pricing) for all Computer users without setup or Forge subscription. — via 1
2. Tesla's Cybercab was shown driving autonomously without steering wheel or pedals in Austin. Elon Musk describes it as an "iPhone moment" for transportation, promising the lowest cost per mile and highest safety. — via 1 2