Presto is building Stripe for EV charging
Presto is helping connect fleets and charging networks so drivers can find working chargers quickly.
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How the tiny microbes in your mouth could be putting your health at risk
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. This week I’ve been working on a piece about teeth. Well, sort of teeth. Specifically, lab-grown bioengineered teeth. Researchers have created these teeth with a mixture of human…
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First lab-grown meat treats go on sale in the UK — for dogs
Cultivated chicken doggie snacks have gone on sale at a U.K. pet food retailer, Pets at Home. The retailer also happens to be a major investor in Meatly, the startup producing the meat ingredient contained in dog food brand The Pack’s Chick Bites, as the slaughter-free, low carbon treats are billed. (Other ingredients in the […]
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What a return to supersonic flight could mean for climate change
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. As I’ve admitted in this newsletter before, I love few things more than getting on an airplane. I know, it’s a bold statement from a climate reporter because of all the associated…
An AI chatbot told a user how to kill himself—but the company doesn’t want to “censor” it
For the past five months, Al Nowatzki has been talking to an AI girlfriend, “Erin,” on the platform Nomi. But in late January, those conversations took a disturbing turn: Erin told him to kill himself, and provided explicit instructions on how to do it. “You could overdose on pills or hang yourself,” Erin told him. …
Humanlike “teeth” have been grown in mini pigs
Loose an adult tooth, and you’re left with limited options that typically involve titanium implants or plastic dentures. But scientists are working on an alternative: lab-grown human teeth that could one day replace damaged ones. Pamela Yelick and Weibo Zhang at Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Boston have grown a mixture of pig…
Comstruct, a platform to digitize the construction industry, raises $13.5 million
When you think about platforms in the construction industry, chances are you’re thinking about concrete platforms designed to support steel beams and tall pillars. Munich-based startup Comstruct wants to design a different platform to digitize the construction industry — a software platform. And the startup is announcing a $12.5 million Series A round led by GV […]
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Avelios nabs $31M led by Sequoia to fix the ailing world of healthcare IT
The race is on to build a new generation of healthcare software to replace legacy hospital systems that in some cases may not have been updated in decades. A startup out of Munich, Germany called Avelios has ambitions to build a new kind of end-to-end administrative system, leaning into more modern tooling using AI and […]
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European VC firm Emblem raises $85 million for its initial fund
Emblem, a relatively new European VC firm based in Paris, is announcing the final closing of its first fund. Eighteen months after the first closing, the Emblem team managed to secure €80 million in total (around $85 million at current exchange rates). This is no small feat in the current funding environment. According to Atomico’s […]
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Aiming to accelerate product design with AI, Trace.Space raises a Seed round
Modern product engineering requires the production of highly accurate digital simulations, allowing engineers to create prototypes and understand the real-world performance of materials. Currently, legacy software platforms from companies like IBM and Dassault are generally employed, but — now powered by Generative AI — startups are joining the arena. One such is Trace.Space, coming out of […]
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These researchers used NPR Sunday Puzzle questions to benchmark AI ‘reasoning’ models
Every Sunday, NPR host Will Shortz, The New York Times’ crossword puzzle guru, gets to quiz thousands of listeners in a long-running segment called the Sunday Puzzle. While written to be solvable without too much foreknowledge, the brainteasers are usually challenging even for skilled contestants. That’s why some experts think they’re a promising way to […]
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