%20(12).jpg)
Welcome to The AI Loop #15. We just closed out an incredible ETHDenver week: three panels, a keynote, nonstop booth energy, and a major milestone. Meanwhile, the AI world delivered headlines on agents, blockchain security, and pharma. Let's get into it.
Perle Labs Update
ETHDenver Recap: We Showed Up Everywhere
We closed out an incredible week at ETHDenver. The Perle Labs team was everywhere:
- MultiChain Day by Wrapped Events: CCO Arthur Ding spoke on the panel "AI Infra Onchain: Compute, Data, and the Coordination Layer" alongside speakers from 0G, KiteAI, and Pi Squared.
- RoboCon by PrismaX: CEO Ahmed Rashad spoke on coordinating human intelligence for AI, alongside teams from SentientAGI, Blockchain Builder's Fund's Gil Rosen, and PrismaX.
- Proof of AI: Builder & Influencer Night hosted by PayPal Ventures and KiteAI: Packed room. The team participated in discussions on autonomous agents, open-source innovation, and scaling human-in-the-loop AI.
- Open AGI Summit by Sentient: Ahmed gave a keynote: "Trust is the New Compute: Why Sovereign Data Wins the AI Race." The Perle Labs team ran a booth all day. One of the most talked-about AI rooms of the week.
ETHDenver was nonstop. Thanks to everyone who came by, said hi, and built with us in the mountains! Between Korea at the end of January, Hong Kong last week, and Denver this week, it has seriously been incredible to talk with so many of you IRL. We are just getting started.
1M Annotators. 1B Points. The Numbers Speak.
BSCN dropped the news: Perle Labs has officially hit 1 million annotators and over 1 billion points distributed. A massive milestone for the community and for the future of human-verified AI data.
Top AI Stories
OpenAI's Acquisition of OpenClaw Signals the Shift From Chatbots to Agents
OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger announced he's joining OpenAI to "work on bringing agents to everyone." The open-source AI agent project, which went viral in late 2025, will transition to a foundation, though OpenAI is already sponsoring it. Sam Altman, OpenAI founder, confirmed Steinberger will drive the next generation of personal agents at OpenAI.
OpenClaw distinguished itself by combining tool access, sandboxed code execution, persistent memory, and messaging platform integration into a single agent that didn't just think, but acted. LangChainAI CEO Harrison Chase called it "catching lightning in a bottle," noting the project's viral growth came from its willingness to be "unhinged" in ways big labs can't be.
Source: VentureBeat
EVMbench for Smart Contract Security from OpenAI
OpenAI and Paradigm released EVMbench, a benchmark evaluating how well AI agents can detect, patch, and exploit high-severity smart contract vulnerabilities. It draws on 120 curated vulnerabilities from 40 audits, including scenarios from the Tempo blockchain.
GPT-5.3-Codex via Codex CLI scored 72.2% on the exploit mode, a major jump from GPT-5's 31.9% just six months prior. Detection and patching remain harder, with agents struggling to audit exhaustively and maintain functionality while fixing bugs. OpenAI also committed $10M in API credits to accelerate cyber defense for open-source and critical infrastructure.
Source: OpenAI
Merck and Mayo Clinic Partner on AI-Enabled Drug Discovery and Precision Medicine
Merck and MayoClinic announced a research and development agreement to apply AI, advanced analytics, and multimodal clinical data to support drug discovery. It's Mayo Clinic's first strategic collaboration of this scale with a global biopharma company.
The partnership integrates Mayo Clinic Platform's de-identified clinical and genomic datasets with Merck's AI and machine learning capabilities. Initial focus areas include inflammatory bowel disease, atopic dermatitis, and multiple sclerosis, therapeutic areas where multimodal data can advance more tailored therapies.
Source: Mayo Clinic News Network
Stay in the Loop
Join the Perle Labs community on X, Discord, and Telegram to stay connected and catch the next drop of insights from across the ecosystem.
