SpaceX’s First Big Move After Its Record IPO: Buying a $60 Billion AI Coding Startup
xAI has struggled to compete with Anthropic and OpenAI on AI coding tools. Cursor is Musk’s answer.
Roundtables: A Conversation With the Creator of AI-Designed Viruses
Friday, October 16, 2026 Can AI design new life forms? In 2025, Stanford University PhD student Samuel King came up with a preliminary answer when he used a generative AI model to propose genetic blueprints for microscopic viruses. It isn’t yet an example of AI-generated life, but that could be next. Join senior AI reporter…
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The Old Product Research Playbook Is Broken. Here Are the 5 Shifts Replacing It.
Product research has changed fast. What used to be a phase before launch is now a continuous practice that shapes how products get built.
SpaceX alum nabs $22M to turn rocket engines into geothermal power plants
Critical Energy is turning rocket engines into geothermal power plants, and it wants to build 300 GW per year by 2045.
Canadian pension giant joins race to fund India’s AI-fueled data center boom
The Canadian pension giant will acquire an 8.2% stake in CtrlS, a tech giant that operates more than 15 data centers across India.
The Download: a reality check for geoengineering and the science of interoception
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. Hacking the atmosphere: geoengineering gets a reality check Solar geoengineering, the controversial idea that we could deliberately intervene in the climate system to counteract global warming, is moving beyond computer simulations…
DeepL acquires Mixhalo for live-event audio streaming and translation
With this acquisition, DeepL is opening an office in San Francisco to expand its U.S. business.
The Investor Who Turned Arby’s Into a $20 Billion Empire Just Bought Pizza Hut for $1.5 Billion
Yum Brands has agreed to sell Pizza Hut to LongRange Capital, which engineered Arby’s comeback and now wants to do the same for pizza.
Uber will bring its premium robotaxi service to Houston in 2027
This will be the second market to have an Uber robotaxi service outfitted with Lucid EVs equipped with a self-driving system from Nuro.
Pinterest launches an experimental AI shopping app called ‘Ask Pinterest’
Pinterest has launched ‘Ask Pinterest,’ an experimental AI-powered shopping app that lets users seek recommendations and inspiration through a conversational interface.
Entrepreneurs in Nairobi make the case for going solar
Most of Kenya’s power grid runs on renewables. But with 25% of communities lacking centralized electricity, the nation is looking to off-grid solar to hit its goal of delivering universal electricity access by 2030 without driving up emissions. The ever-improving economics of solar technology have helped. A couple of years ago, a panel cost about…