Google augments AI shopping with conversational search, agentic checkout and an AI that calls stores for you
Google is expanding AI shopping with conversational search, agentic checkout and an AI that calls stores for you about local inventory.
Four bright spots in climate news in 2025
Climate news hasn’t been great in 2025. Global greenhouse-gas emissions hit record highs (again). This year is set to be either the second or third warmest on record. Climate-fueled disasters like wildfires in California and flooding in Indonesia and Pakistan devastated communities and caused billions in damage. In addition to these worrying indicators of our…
Coding assistant Cursor raises $2.3bn five months after its previous round
Cursor plans to use the capital to continue developing Composer, the AI model the vibe coding startup released in October.
The Download: AI to measure pain, and how to deal with conspiracy theorists
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 is changing how we quantify pain Researchers around the world are racing to turn pain—medicine’s most subjective vital sign—into something a camera or sensor can score as reliably as blood pressure. The…
Spotify adds a new, less repetitive shuffle, plus audiobook recaps
Spotify’s new default shuffle option will queue up fewer songs from your recent listening history
Microsoft’s plan to fix its chip problem is, partly, to let OpenAI do the heavy lifting
Microsoft is taking a page from OpenAI’s playbook, literally.
Milestone raises $10M to make sure AI rhymes with ROI
Israeli startup Milestone raised a $10 million seed funding round to correlate AI tool usage with engineering metrics, including code quality.
Google is still aiming for its “moonshot” 2030 energy goals
Last week, we hosted EmTech MIT, MIT Technology Review’s annual flagship conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over the course of three days of main-stage sessions, I learned about innovations in AI, biotech, and robotics. But as you might imagine, some of this climate reporter’s favorite moments came in the climate sessions. I was listening especially closely…
Cash App debuts a new AI assistant that answers questions about your finances
Cash App is adding a map to its app to let users discover places that accept bitcoin
Willow’s voice keyboard lets you type across all your iOS apps — and actually edit what you said
Willow’s iOS keyboard lets you type or use your voice to dictate and input text.
Kering-backed fund Mirova pours $30.5M into India’s Varaha for regenerative farming
Varaha aims to support around 337,000 farmers across 675,000 hectares in northern India through its regenerative farming project.