Cosmic Robotics’ robots could speed up solar panel deployments
Cosmic Robotics has developed a robotic assistant that does the heavy lifting on solar job sites.
The quest to defend against tech in intimate partner violence
After Gioia had her first child with her then husband, he installed baby monitors throughout their Massachusetts home—to “watch what we were doing,” she says, while he went to work. She’d turn them off; he’d get angry. By the time their third child turned seven, Gioia and her husband had divorced, but he still found…
Jurassic Patent: How Colossal Biosciences is attempting to own the “woolly mammoth”
Colossal Biosciences not only wants to bring back the woolly mammoth—it wants to patent it, too. MIT Technology Review has learned the Texas startup is seeking a patent that would give it exclusive legal rights to create and sell gene-edited elephants containing ancient mammoth DNA. Colossal, which calls itself “the de-extinction company,” hopes to use…
Hammerspace, an unstructured data wrangler used by Nvidia, Meta and Tesla, raises $100M at $500M+ valuation
Artificial intelligence services at their heart are massive data plays: you need data — a lot of it — to build the models, and then the models need efficient ways to ingest and output data to work. A company called Hammerspace has built a system to help AI and other organisations tap into data troves […]
Google used AI to suspend over 39M ad accounts suspected of fraud
Google on Wednesday said it suspended 39.2 million advertiser accounts on its platform in 2024 — more than triple the number from the previous year — in its latest crackdown on ad fraud. By leveraging large language models (LLMs) and using signals such as business impersonation and illegitimate payment details, the search giant said it could suspend […]
AI is coming for music, too
Artificial intelligence was barely a term in 1956, when top scientists from the field of computing arrived at Dartmouth College for a summer conference. The computer scientist John McCarthy had coined the phrase in the funding proposal for the event, a gathering to work through how to build machines that could use language, solve problems…
What is vibe coding, exactly?
MIT Technology Review Explains: Let our writers untangle the complex, messy world of technology to help you understand what’s coming next. You can read more from the series here. When OpenAI cofounder Andrej Karpathy excitedly took to X back in February to post about his new hobby, he probably had no idea he was about…
Visa-backed African unicorn Moniepoint tackles remittances. But is it late to the game?
When Visa invested in Nigerian fintech Moniepoint earlier this year, it didn’t just validate the newly minted unicorn — it signaled a bold new direction. As part of that deal, the Nigerian fintech best known for building one of Africa’s largest business banking platforms, hinted at plans to integrate with Visa Direct, a move that […]
Opera adds its Aria AI assistant to Opera Mini browser
Norway-based browser company Opera said today that it is making its AI assistant Aria available to Opera Mini users on Android. This move will help users with low-end devices and data constraints access better AI features. Aria AI can help users get the latest news and information on different topics, learn more about various subjects, and […]
TS Anil, CEO of Monzo, is joining our StrictlyVC London lineup
StrictlyVC, the boutique brand powered by TechCrunch and known for evening events that invite headliners into smaller rooms to connect with live audiences, is headed back to London on May 13 — and its latest speaker lineup is one of its strongest yet. Joining the stage is TS Anil, CEO of Monzo Bank, the digital […]
How Musk manages his growing family: WSJ
Elon Musk says it’s his duty to “make new humans.” Now, a WSJ investigation suggests he may have fathered more than the 14 children already known, with sources claiming the real number could be significantly higher. The report also describes how Musk keeps those details under wraps. At the center of it all, per the […]