Humanoid robot startup Apptronik has now raised $935M at a $5B+ valuation
Apptronik has sold another $520 million in a Series A extension to existing and new investors like Google and Mercedes-Benz.
What’s next for Chinese open-source AI
The past year has marked a turning point for Chinese AI. Since DeepSeek released its R1 reasoning model in January 2025, Chinese companies have repeatedly delivered AI models that match the performance of leading Western models at a fraction of the cost. Just last week the Chinese firm Moonshot AI released its latest open-weight model,…
Meridian raises $17 million to remake the agentic spreadsheet
A new company called Meridian.AI has emerged from stealth with an IDE-based approach to agentic financial modeling.
The Download: inside the QuitGPT movement, and EVs in Africa
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. A “QuitGPT” campaign is urging people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions In September, Alfred Stephen, a freelance software developer in Singapore, purchased a ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 a month and offers…
You Don’t Need Silicon Valley Funding to Start a Business — and These Founders Are Proving It
Founders across emerging and regional markets are building world-class companies without Silicon Valley’s capital advantage. Here’s how.
EVs could be cheaper to own than gas cars in Africa by 2040
Electric vehicles could be economically competitive in Africa sooner than expected. Just 1% of new cars sold across the continent in 2025 were electric, but a new analysis finds that with solar off-grid charging, EVs could be cheaper to own than gas vehicles by 2040. There are major barriers to higher EV uptake in many…
Samsung to hold its Galaxy S26 event on February 25
Samsung is going to launch S26 lineup just before Mobile World Congress (MWC).
With co-founders leaving and an IPO looming, Elon Musk turns talk to the moon
According to The New York Times, which reports that it heard the meeting, Musk told employees that xAI needs a lunar manufacturing facility, a factory on the moon that will build AI satellites and fling them into space via a giant catapult.
OpenAI policy exec who opposed chatbot’s “adult mode” reportedly fired on discrimination claim
The executive has denied the allegation that she engaged in discrimination.
Amazon may launch a marketplace where media sites can sell their content to AI companies
A new report claims the e-commerce giant is looking to create a pipeline of licensable content between media publishers and AI companies.
An ice dance duo skated to AI music at the Olympics
Czech ice dancers Katerina Mrazkova and Daniel Mrazek are learning the hard way that LLMs sometimes spit out straight-up plagiarism.