July 8, 2025

Why the US and Europe could lose the race for fusion energy

Fusion energy holds the potential to shift a geopolitical landscape that is currently configured around fossil fuels. Harnessing fusion will deliver the energy resilience, security, and abundance needed for all modern industrial and service sectors. But these benefits will be controlled by the nation that leads in both developing the complex supply chains required and…

Technology

The Download: AI benchmarks, and Spain’s grid blackout

May 8, 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. How to build a better AI benchmark It’s not easy being one of Silicon Valley’s favorite benchmarks.  SWE-Bench (pronounced “swee bench”) launched in November 2024 as a way to evaluate an AI model’s…

Why Hims & Hers turned to the autonomous vehicle industry to find an AI-savvy CTO

May 8, 2025
Hims & Hers, the telehealth and wellness company, has hired a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry as its next chief technology officer. The move, according to Hims & Hers co-founder and CEO, Andrew Dudum, was intentional. Hims & Hers on Thursday said its next CTO would be Mo Elshenawy, the former president and CTO […]

What Spain’s blackout says about the grid

May 8, 2025
At roughly midday on Monday, April 28, the lights went out in Spain. The grid blackout, which extended into parts of Portugal and France, affected tens of millions of people—flights were grounded, cell networks went down, and businesses closed for the day. Over a week later, officials still aren’t entirely sure what happened, but some…

How to build a better AI benchmark

May 8, 2025
It’s not easy being one of Silicon Valley’s favorite benchmarks.  SWE-Bench (pronounced “swee bench”) launched in November 2024 to evaluate an AI model’s coding skill, using more than 2,000 real-world programming problems pulled from the public GitHub repositories of 12 different Python-based projects.  In the months since then, it’s quickly become one of the most…

Roundtables: A New Look at AI’s Energy Use

May 7, 2025
Big Tech’s appetite for energy is growing rapidly as adoption of AI accelerates. But just how much energy does even a single AI query use? And what does it mean for the climate? Join editor in chief Mat Honan, senior climate reporter Casey Crownhart, and AI reporter James O’Donnell for a conversation exploring AI’s energy…

The business of the future is adaptive

May 7, 2025
Manufacturing is in a state of flux. From supply chain disruptions to rising costs, tougher environmental regulations, and a changing consumer market, the sector faces a series of competing challenges. But a new way of operating offers a way to tackle complexities head-on: adaptive production hardwires flexibility and resilience into the enterprise, drawing on powerful…

The Download: Neuralink’s AI boost, and Trump’s tariffs

May 7, 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. This patient’s Neuralink brain implant gets a boost from generative AI Last November, Bradford G. Smith got a brain implant from Elon Musk’s company Neuralink. The device, a set of thin wires attached…

This patient’s Neuralink brain implant gets a boost from generative AI

May 7, 2025
Last November, Bradford G. Smith got a brain implant from Elon Musk’s company Neuralink. The device, a set of thin wires attached to a computer about the thickness of a few quarters that sits in his skull, lets him use his thoughts to move a computer pointer on a screen.  And by last week he…

The Download: a longevity influencer’s new religion, and humanoid robots’ shortcomings

May 6, 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. Bryan Johnson wants to start a new religion in which “the body is God” Bryan Johnson is on a mission to not die. The 47-year-old multimillionaire has already applied his slogan “Don’t Die”…