SpaceX will attempt historic catch of returning Starship booster on Sunday

Starship is ready to fly again — and for the first time, SpaceX is going to try to bring the booster back to the launch site to catch it with a pair of oversized “chopsticks.” SpaceX will launch the mammoth Starship on Sunday in a launch window that opens at …...Read More

'Where we are today in biology AI is similar to GPT in 2020': An interview with the CEO of Africa's biggest AI startup

In January last year, German biotech company BioNTech acquired African AI startup Instadeep for over $550 million, a deal finalized in July of the same year. Instadeep, whose exit is currently the largest from Africa, has been operating under the German pharma umbrella for just over a year. Now is …...Read More

The most interesting unicorns to come out of Japan

Japan’s startup sector, despite being one of the biggest in the world, has lagged behind other regions like the U.S., China, and the U.K., in terms of the number of unicorns and the scale of venture capital investment. For years, an aging population, overall economic deflation, and salarymen’s inclination to …...Read More

'Chat control': The EU's controversial CSAM-scanning legal proposal explained

The European Union has a longstanding reputation for strong privacy laws. But a legislative plan to combat child abuse — which the bloc formally presented back in May 2022 — is threatening to downgrade the privacy and security of hundreds of millions of regional messaging app users. The European Commission, …...Read More

Amazon’s Tye Brady discusses the next-generation robotic warehouses

For the last several years, the Delivering the Future event has showcased the latest technologies powering Amazon operations. Seattle’s 2023 event showcased updates to the company’s pharmacy offerings and drone deliveries. This year in Nashville, Amazon discussed AI updates to its shopping experiences and how the company is using computer …...Read More

How do you solve a problem like MariaDB? Cozy up to the community, says new CEO

The new CEO of MariaDB (Plc) says he wants closer-knit collaboration with the foundation behind the eponymous open source database project. He cites the corporation’s newfound stability from its recent acquisition by a private equity firm as to why it should now be able to get on a firmer footing. …...Read More

What is wearable neurotech and why might we need it?

The wearables category already contains multitudes, from exercise-focused smart watches and sleep tracking smart rings to smart femtech and semi-invasive blood glucose monitors — to name a few of the gizmos we’ve tracked over roughly a decade of novel personal hardware launches. But the space is set to get even …...Read More

Anthropic CEO goes full techno-optimist in 15,000-word paean to AI

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wants you to know he’s not an AI “doomer.” At least, that’s my read of the “mic drop” of a ~15,000 word essay Amodei published to his blog late Friday. (I tried asking Anthropic’s Claude chatbot whether it concurred, but alas, the post exceeded the free …...Read More

Researchers question AI's 'reasoning' ability as models stumble on math problems with trivial changes

How do machine learning models do what they do? And are they really “thinking” or “reasoning” the way we understand those things? This is a philosophical question as much as a practical one, but a new paper making the rounds Friday suggests that the answer is, at least for now, …...Read More

Here’s the full list of 39 US AI startups that have raised $100M or more in 2024

For some, AI fatigue is real — but clearly venture investors haven’t grown tired of the category. AI deals continued to dominate venture funding during the third quarter. AI companies raised $18.9 billion in Q3, according to Crunchbase data. That figure represents 28% of all venture funding. The third quarter …...Read More