July 4, 2025

The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics

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. Inside India’s scramble for AI independence Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI. That gap…

Technology

XetHub raises $7.5M for its Git-based data collaboration platform

January 9, 2023

Seattle-based XetHub, a startup that makes it easy for businesses to use Git for data management, today announced that it has raised a $7.5 million seed financing round led by Madrona. The basic idea here is to allow developers to work with data the same way they work with code, including all of the collaboration […]

XetHub raises $7.5M for its Git-based data collaboration platform by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

Vista Equity Partners to acquire insurance software company Duck Creek for $2.6B

January 9, 2023

Private equity giant Vista Equity Partners has announced plans to take Duck Creek Technologies private in a $2.6 billion deal. Boston-based Duck Creek, a SaaS-based software provider for the property and casualty (P&C) insurance sector, went public back in 2020, initially hitting a market cap of around $5 billion. After peaking at around $7 billion […]

Vista Equity Partners to acquire insurance software company Duck Creek for $2.6B by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

The Download: introducing our 10 Breakthrough Technologies

January 9, 2023
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. Introducing this year’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies Each year, MIT Technology Review’s reporters and editors pick 10 Breakthrough Technologies, all of which have the promise to fundamentally change the way we live and work.…

Meet the designers printing houses out of salt and clay

January 9, 2023
Ronald Rael and Virginia San Fratello may have met as graduate students in architecture at Columbia University, but it quickly became clear that “architecture” would prove an inadequate term to describe their eclectic body of work.   As the pair started working together in 2002, they became increasingly aware that “sometimes the forces that enable architecture,…

NASA’s return to the moon is off to a rocky start

January 9, 2023
It was December 14, 1972, the final day on the moon for the last Apollo mission. The Challenger lander was dusted in a fine coating of gray lunar dirt, called regolith, both inside and out. Geologist Jack Schmitt was packing the sample containers, securing 243 pounds of rocks to bring home. After passing Schmitt the…

The constant is change

January 9, 2023
For the past 22 years, we’ve been publishing an annual list of the 10 biggest breakthrough technologies. In 2018, we defined a breakthrough as “a technology, or perhaps even a collection of technologies, that will have a profound effect on our lives.” That’s pretty broad! But it gets at the heart of what we try to…

Inside Japan’s long experiment in automating elder care

January 9, 2023
It’s a picture you may have seen before: a large white robot with a cute teddy bear face cradling a smiling woman in its arms. Images of Robear, a prototype lifting robot, have been reproduced endlessly. They still hold a prominent position in Google Image search results for “care robot.” The photos seem designed to…

The inevitable EV: 10 Breakthrough Technologies 2023

January 9, 2023
Electric vehicles are transforming the auto industry. While sales have slowly ticked up for years, they’re now soaring. The emissions-free cars and trucks will likely account for 13% of all new auto sales globally in 2022, up from 4% just two years earlier, according to the International Energy Agency. They’re on track to make up…