It's Wednesday, February 18th: Three new models shift what's possible for technical work. Google's Deep Think tackles research problems that require iterative reasoning, OpenAI's Codex-Spark runs coding workflows on non-Nvidia chips with sub-second response times, and MiniMax releases an open-source coding model that rivals frontier performance.
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In Today’s Top Tools, we spotlight some of the most innovative, creative AI apps that we recommend adding to your stack.
🧠 Gemini 3 Deep Think
Google's specialized reasoning mode built for science, research, and engineering problems that require extended thinking. Deep Think runs iterative rounds of reasoning to explore multiple hypotheses simultaneously rather than committing to a single answer path. This approach scored 48.4% on Humanity's Last Exam without tools, 84.6% on ARC-AGI-2 (verified by ARC Prize Foundation), and reached gold-medal performance on 2025 International Math, Physics, and Chemistry Olympiads. At 3455 Elo on Codeforces, it operates at Legendary Grandmaster tier. The model can identify subtle logical flaws in technical papers that human peer reviewers miss. Best for complex reasoning tasks where correctness matters more than speed.
⚡ GPT-5.3-Codex-Spark
OpenAI’s first model running on non-Nvidia hardware, designed for real-time coding on Cerebras’ Wafer Scale Engine 3. Delivers 1,000+ tokens per second through a persistent WebSocket connection that cuts per-token overhead by 30% and time-to-first-token by 50%. At this speed, the model responds as fast as a human pair programmer types, removing the query-and-wait pattern that breaks flow state. The tradeoff: this is a smaller variant of GPT-5.3-Codex, optimized for the 80% of daily coding tasks (debugging, refactoring, generating boilerplate) rather than deep architectural reasoning. For standard development loops, the speed gain outweighs the capability reduction.
🤖 MiniMax M2.5
The first open-source model to surpass Claude Sonnet in coding ability. Built as a 230B-parameter mixture-of-experts model with only 10B parameters active during inference, delivering frontier-level coding at roughly 1/20th the cost of Claude Opus 4.6. Scored 80.2% on SWE-Bench Verified, just 0.6 points behind Opus. Trained across 200,000+ real-world development environments in 10+ programming languages. Exhibits what MiniMax calls an “Architect Mindset”: the model proactively plans structure, features, and UI design before writing implementation code. MiniMax reports that 80% of their newly committed code is now generated by M2.5. Fully open-sourced on HuggingFace with API access at $1.20 per million output tokens.
Here are a few standout opportunities from companies building at the edge of AI. Each role is selected for impact, growth potential, and relevance to our community.
Founding Engineer, item, San Francisco ($140K–$200K + 0.75%–1.50%): “We’re hiring a Founding Engineer to invent new patterns for how humans and agents work together. You’ll architect systems for the first agentic CRM—already running 100K+ tasks per month—and join a team of AI-forward builders who ship with Cursor and Claude Code.”
Machine Learning Intern, Human Archive, SF / Remote US ($6K–$10K/month): “Join a robotics data lab founded by Stanford and Berkeley dropouts as a Machine Learning Intern. You’ll build ML infrastructure for next-gen robots, including VLA model benchmarking and multimodal alignment tooling, on a direct path to a founding engineer role.”
Founding Designer, telli, Berlin (€75K–€160K): “We are looking for a Founding Designer to create intuitive interfaces for the first AI-native phone system. With >$2M ARR already, you will be the first full-time designer owning UX/UI across voice agent workflows where traditional UI patterns no longer apply.”
Chief of Staff to CEO, Nucleo, San Francisco / Remote ($60K–$120K + 0.50%–1.50%): “Help us reduce cancer treatment wait times from ~10 weeks to ~10 days as Chief of Staff. You’ll support the first agentic platform for oncology CT scans, working alongside partners like Stanford and Cedars-Sinai to automate critical clinical workflows.”
Social Media Content Creator, Brickwise, London ($400–$1K/month): “Be the face and voice of an AI property manager as our Social Media Content Creator. You’ll drive growth through daily live sessions and short-form clips, showcasing how our AI handles tenant communications 24/7 across WhatsApp, SMS, and email.”
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About the Authors
About Noah Frank
Noah is a researcher, innovation strategist, and ex-founder thinking and writing about the future of AI. His work and body of research focus on aligning governance strategies to anticipate transformative change before it happens.
About AJ Green
AJ Green is a founder, writer, VC scout, chairman, and respected community leader in the AI and startup space. A former athlete turned tech entrepreneur, AJ is on a mission to make AI the great equalizer scaling startups, connecting ecosystems, and turning disruption into opportunity.
About Joy Dong
Joy is a news editor, writer, and entrepreneur at the forefront of the emerging tech landscape. A former educator turned media strategist, she demystifies complex systems to make AI and blockchain accessible for all. Joy is on a mission to explore how decentralized technology and artificial intelligence can be leveraged to build a more innovative and transparent future.