- Horizon AI
- Posts
- Nano Banana 2 Just Dropped. Here's What's New and How to Try It 👇
Nano Banana 2 Just Dropped. Here's What's New and How to Try It 👇
OpenAI Raises $110 Billion in Record Funding Round 💰
Gina Acosta
February 27, 2026
In partnership with
Welcome to another edition of Horizon AI,
When Google released Nano Banana last year, it took social media by storm. Now the tech giant is introducing a new version of its popular image generation model. In today's issue, we take a look at what's new with the updated model and share some ways to try out its new features.
Let’s jump into it!
Read Time: 4.5 min
Here's what's new today in the Horizon AI
Google Launches Nano Banana 2 With Faster, Pro-Level Image Generation
OpenAI Finalizes $110 Billion Funding at $730 Billion Value
AI Tutorial: Things You Can Try with Nano Banana 2 in the Gemini App
AI Tools to check out
AI Findings/Resources
The Latest in AI and Tech 💡
AI News
Google Launches Nano Banana 2 With Faster, Pro-Level Image Generation
Google has released Nano Banana 2 (officially Gemini 3.1 Flash Image), their best image model yet. The new model provides the visual quality and reasoning of the "Pro" tier at the faster speeds and lower costs of the "Flash" architecture, while also introducing new features of its own.
Details:
The updated model uses Gemini's understanding of the world and is powered by real-time information and images from web search, meaning it can better reflect real-world conditions in high fidelity.
It comes with improvements in text rendering and translation. The model can generate images with accurate, legible text and then translate that text into different languages within the same image editing workflow.
Subject consistency has also improved significantly. Nano Banana 2 can maintain character resemblance across up to five characters and preserve the fidelity of up to 14 reference objects in a single generation workflow.
Other improvements include enhanced instruction following capable of handling more complex requests, aspect ratio control, and resolutions from 512px to 4K; all while delivering vibrant lighting, richer textures, and sharper details.
Nano Banana 2 is about 50% cheaper and up to 5x faster than Nano Banana Pro, although the company says Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers can continue to use Nano Banana Pro for "specialized tasks."
The new model is rolling out as the new default in the Gemini app, Search (across 141 countries), and Flow, and is available in preview via Google AI Studio and Vertex AI.
TOGETHER WITH WISPR FLOW
Better prompts. Better AI output.
AI gets smarter when your input is complete. Wispr Flow helps you think out loud and capture full context by voice, then turns that speech into a clean, structured prompt you can paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or any assistant. No more chopping up thoughts into typed paragraphs. Preserve constraints, examples, edge cases, and tone by speaking them once. The result is faster iteration, more precise outputs, and less time re-prompting. Try Wispr Flow for AI or see a 30-second demo.
OPENAI
OpenAI Finalizes $110 Billion Funding at $730 Billion Value
OpenAI has secured a massive $110 billion funding round, more than doubling its previous raise and setting a new record for private tech financing as the AI race intensifies.
Details:
Amazon is investing $50 billion, while Nvidia and SoftBank are each committing $30 billion, valuing the company at $730 billion pre-money and $840 billion post-money
The deal includes a multi year strategic partnership with Amazon to build customized AI models that will help power Amazon’s customer-facing applications.
OpenAI also expanded its partnership with Nvidia, receiving 3 gigawatts of dedicated inference capacity and 2 gigawatts of training on Vera Rubin systems.
The new funding will help fuel the startup's costly push to secure more computing power and talent for AI development.
AI Tutorial
Things You Can Try with Nano Banana 2 in the Gemini App
Now that Nano Banana 2 is the default model, free Gemini users can generate images with real-time information, legible text, and more.
Go to the Gemini app, select "Create Image," and put it to the test:
Create infographics, logos, posters, and more using its improved reasoning, text rendering, and world knowledge.
“I want to wash my car. The car wash is 50 meters away. Should I walk or drive?”
"Make a guide for Americans riding public transit in Japan"
Generate images with incredible consistency across characters and objects.
Now you can storyboard and build out entire narratives, with characters and key objects maintaining their appearance.
“Create an image of these 14 characters and items having fun at the farm. The overall atmosphere is fun, silly and joyful. It is strictly important to keep identity consistent of all the 14 characters and items.”
“Create a funny 4-part story featuring 3 fluffy creatures building a treehouse. The story has emotional highs and lows and ends in a happy moment. Maintain consistent identity across the 3 characters. Generate 4 images in 16:9 format, one at a time.”
Screenshot a map and ask it to generate a panorama in anime / cartoon style.
Source: @icreatelife
Use very basic sketches to create landing pages, thumbnails, and more.
Translate images or generate images in foreign languages with incredible accuracy.
AI Tools to check out
🔥 Lorka: All-in-one AI platform for writing, research, art, and more.
📽 Kubrix: Create stunning AI-generated videos in seconds.
💡 Piooy: An AI creation platform that brings together advanced visual, motion, and creative capabilities to turn ideas into powerful digital expression.
🛒 Rekam AI: The marketplace for vibe coding makers where vibe coding apps become sellable tools—instantly
🌘 Moonlake: AI platform developing frontier multimodal models that empower anyone to build immersive, interactive worlds.
TOGETHER WITH ADD WISPR FLOW
You think 4x faster than you type. Why slow down?
Wispr Flow turns your voice into ready-to-send text inside any app. Speak naturally and Flow handles the cleanup -- stripping filler words, fixing grammar, formatting everything properly.
For developers, this means:
Dictate into Cursor, VS Code, or any IDE with full syntax accuracy
Give coding agents 10x more context by talking instead of typing
Write PRs, docs, and Linear tickets without switching to a text editor
Respond to Slack and email without breaking your flow state
Used by teams at OpenAI, Vercel, and Clay. 89% of messages sent with zero edits. Millions of users worldwide.
Available on Mac, Windows, iPhone, and now Android - free and unlimited on Android during launch.
AI Findings/Resources
🍔 Burger King reportedly plans AI chatbot in staff headsets to monitor “please” and “thank you” usage with customers
👀 Perplexity just became the first Al company to truly go head-to-head with the Bloomberg Terminal
The latest in AI and Tech
Ruoming Pang had joined Meta from Apple about seven months ago and oversaw AI infrastructure for Meta’s Superintelligence Labs, which is building the company’s next generation of AI models.
Google and the Massachusetts AI Hub are rolling out a new workforce program that gives residents across the Commonwealth free access to AI and career training through the Grow with Google initiative.
The partnership is part of Google’s broader push to expand AI literacy nationwide, following similar efforts in Arkansas, Connecticut, Oklahoma and Virginia.
Free users can now choose from more than 150 connectors spanning coding, data, design, finance, sales and more.
Block said it will eliminate more than 4,000 roles, nearly half its workforce, as part of a sweeping push to embed AI across its operations. The announcement sent the payments company’s shares up about 25 percent in after hours trading.
"These threats do not change our position: we cannot in good conscience accede to their request," Amodei said.
That’s a wrap!
We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's email!Your feedback helps us improve our content |
Not subscribed yet? Sign up here and send it to a colleague or friend!
See you in our next edition!
Gina 👩🏻💻