April 23, 2025

Roundtables: Brain-Computer Interfaces: From Promise to Product

Recorded on April 23, 2025 Brain-Computer Interfaces: From Promise to Product Speakers: David Rotman, editor at large, and Antonio Regalado, senior editor for biomedicine. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) have been crowned the 11th Breakthrough Technology of 2025 by MIT Technology Review‘s readers. BCIs are electrodes implanted into the brain to send neural commands to computers, primarily to assist…

April 2025

A vision for the future of automation

April 14, 2025
The manufacturing industry is at a crossroads: Geopolitical instability is fracturing supply chains from the Suez to Shenzhen, impacting the flow of materials. Businesses are battling rising costs and inflation, coupled with a shrinking labor force, with more than half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs in the U.S. alone. And climate change is further intensifying…

DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data

April 14, 2025
Tech buzzwords are clanging through the halls of Washington, DC. The Trump administration has promised to “leverage blockchain technology” to reorganize the US Agency for International Development, and Elon Musk’s DOGE has already unleashed an internal chatbot to automate agency tasks—with bigger plans on the horizon to take over for laid-off employees. The executive order…

Nvidia says it plans to manufacture some AI chips in the U.S.

April 14, 2025
Nvidia says it has commissioned more than a million square feet of manufacturing space to build and test AI chips in Arizona and Texas as part of an effort to move a portion of production to the U.S. The chipmaker says that Nvidia Blackwell chips have started production at TSMC’s chip plants in Phoenix, Arizona, […]

Conifer locks down $20M seed round for its ‘drop-in’ electric hub motor

April 14, 2025
A handful of engineers who worked at Lucid Motors and on Apple’s electric car project have launched a new startup that puts a fresh spin on electric hub motors. The new startup, called Conifer, has developed its motor to be free of rare earth elements by using more abundant ferrite magnets, which the company says […]

Intel agrees to sell controlling stake in Altera chip business

April 14, 2025
Intel on Monday announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to sell 51% of its Altera semiconductor business to Silver Lake, a private equity firm. The deal, which values Altera at $8.75 billion, will make Altera “operationally independent,” Intel said in a press release. Intel will retain 49% ownership in Altera, which will […]

The Download: the dangers of DOGE, and how to blow up an asteroid

April 14, 2025
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. DOGE’s tech takeover threatens the safety and stability of our critical data —Steven Renderos is the executive director of Media Justice Tech buzzwords are clanging through the halls of Washington, DC. The Trump…

Bill Gates-backed Arnergy to expand solar access in Nigeria with $18M as demand surges

April 14, 2025
Demand for solar energy in power-starved Nigeria has soared in the last decade thanks to worsening grid reliability and rising fuel costs. That’s drawn investor interest to Arnergy, a cleantech startup meeting that need. The company just raised a $15 million Series B extension (on top of a $3 million B1 round last year), bringing […]

UK founders grow frustrated over dearth of funding: ‘the problem is getting worse’

April 13, 2025
According to Dealroom data cited by the Financial Times, British start-ups raised just £16.2 billion last year, far less than the more than £65 billion raised by their counterparts in Silicon Valley during the same period. In fact, the U.S. appears to be pulling further ahead each year. In 2024, 57% of global venture capital […]