January 22, 2026

Why Commodity Scarcity Is Becoming the Biggest Bottleneck for Clean-Tech Entrepreneurs

Clean-tech startups are hitting a scaling wall because material supply, not technology or capital, is now the real constraint.

Technology

The era of agentic chaos and how data will save us

January 20, 2026
AI agents are moving beyond coding assistants and customer service chatbots into the operational core of the enterprise. The ROI is promising, but autonomy without alignment is a recipe for chaos. Business leaders need to lay the essential foundations now. The agent explosion is coming Agents are independently handling end-to-end processes across lead generation, supply…

The UK government is backing AI scientists that can run their own experiments

January 20, 2026
A number of startups and universities that are building AI scientists to design and run experiments in the lab, including robot biologists and chemists, have just won extra funding from the UK government agency that funds moonshot R&D. The competition, set up by ARIA (Advanced Research and Invention Agency), gives a clear sense of how…

The Download: digitizing India, and scoring embryos

January 20, 2026
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. The man who made India digital isn’t done yet Nandan Nilekani can’t stop trying to push India into the future. He started nearly 30 years ago, masterminding an ongoing experiment in technological state…

The Download: the US digital rights crackdown, and AI companionship

January 19, 2026
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. What it’s like to be banned from the US for fighting online hate   Just before Christmas the Trump administration dramatically escalated its war on digital rights by banning five people from entering the…

Going beyond pilots with composable and sovereign AI

January 19, 2026
Today marks an inflection point for enterprise AI adoption. Despite billions invested in generative AI, only 5% of integrated pilots deliver measurable business value and nearly one in two companies abandons AI initiatives before reaching production. The bottleneck is not the models themselves. What’s holding enterprises back is the surrounding infrastructure: Limited data accessibility, rigid…

What it’s like to be banned from the US for fighting online hate

January 19, 2026
It was early evening in Berlin, just a day before Christmas Eve, when Josephine Ballon got an unexpected email from US Customs and Border Protection. The status of her ability to travel to the United States had changed—she’d no longer be able to enter the country.  At first, she couldn’t find any information online as…

The Download: cut through AI coding hype, and biotech trends to watch

January 16, 2026
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. AI coding is now everywhere. But not everyone is convinced.   Depending who you ask, AI-powered coding is either giving software developers an unprecedented productivity boost or churning out masses of poorly designed code…

Three technologies that will shape biotech in 2026

January 16, 2026
Earlier this week, MIT Technology Review published its annual list of Ten Breakthrough Technologies. As always, it features technologies that made the news last year, and which—for better or worse—stand to make waves in the coming years. They’re the technologies you should really be paying attention to. This year’s list includes tech that’s set to…

Exclusive eBook: How AGI Became a Consequential Conspiracy Theory

January 15, 2026
In this exclusive subscriber-only eBook, you’ll learn about how the idea that machines will be as smart as—or smarter than—humans has hijacked an entire industry. by Will Douglas Heaven October 30, 2025 Table of Contents: Related Stories: Access all subscriber-only eBooks:

The Download: spying on the spies, and promising climate tech

January 15, 2026
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. Meet the man hunting the spies in your smartphone In April 2025, Ronald Deibert left all electronic devices at home in Toronto and boarded a plane. When he landed in Illinois, he bought…