xAI says it raised $20B in Series E funding
Nvidia is among the many investors, but xAI has not disclosed if these investments come in the form of equity or debt.
AI professors are negotiating the new realities of academic research
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last week, I headed 30 miles south of San Francisco to a hotel in Mountain View, California, to join some of the most accomplished, and some of the most promising, AI…
California lawmaker proposes a four-year ban on AI chatbots in kid’s toys
“Our children cannot be used as lab rats for Big Tech to experiment on,” Senator Steve Padilla said. He just introduced a bill to ban AI chatbots in toys until safety regulations are developed.
The most bizarre tech announced so far at CES 2026
From an AI panda pet to an anime girl hologram for your desk, here are the wildest products at CES 2026.
Intel is building a handheld gaming platform including a dedicated chip
Intel has been building chips designed for gaming PCs for years but the company is now moving into handheld devices too.
LMArena lands $1.7B valuation four months after launching its product
LMArena, which started as a UC Berkeley research project, has raised about $250 million total and become a unicorn in about seven months.
Founder of spyware maker pcTattletale pleads guilty to hacking and advertising surveillance software
Bryan Fleming, the founder of hacked stalkerware company pcTattletale, pleaded guilty to federal charges linked to the running of his now-defunct Michigan-based spyware company.
This Is What the New Lego Smart Brick Can Do — Its ‘Most Significant Evolution’ in 50 Years
Lego says the new brick will ‘make entire sets come to life’ starting with Star Wars in March.
Nvidia to accelerate Siemens chip-design tools using its GPUs
Nvidia announced today at CES 2026 that it would help Siemens’ electronic design automation (EDA) software run on its GPUs in an attempt to speed up the chip-design process. Nearly all computer chips today are designed using EDA tools, and as chip features get smaller and transistors more numerous, the process has grown more computationally […]
How World Cup champion Mario Götze built a parallel career as an angel investor
Mario Götze will go down in soccer history as the player who scored the winning goal that made Germany the 2014 FIFA World Cup champion. But he is also an increasingly seasoned angel investor.
This CEO Found a Way to Stop $30 Billion of Hydrogen From Going Up in Smoke
Big oil has a billion-dollar problem that one company is solving.