April 18, 2025

How creativity became the reigning value of our time

Americans don’t agree on much these days. Yet even at a time when consensus reality seems to be on the verge of collapse, there remains at least one quintessentially modern value we can all still get behind: creativity.  We teach it, measure it, envy it, cultivate it, and endlessly worry about its death. And why…

The Download: China’s empty data centers, and OpenAI’s new practical image generator

March 26, 2025
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. China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused. Just months ago, China’s boom in data center construction was at its height, fueled by both government…

Rivian spins out a new micromobility startup called Also with $105M from Eclipse

March 26, 2025
Before RJ Scaringe founded Rivian in 2009, he had micromobility on his mind. More than a decade later, his musings took root in a small skunkworks program inside Rivian that set out to answer one question: Could the company’s technology be condensed down into something smaller and more affordable than its electric vans, trucks, and SUVs? […]

Cloud veterans launch ConfigHub to fix ‘configuration hell’

March 26, 2025
A trio of cloud industry leaders have launched a new company with the mission of modernizing software configuration data management. Emerging from stealth today with $4 million in funding, ConfigHub is the handiwork of CEO Alexis Richardson, founder of cloud-native container management platform Weaveworks; CTO Brian Grant, former Google software engineer and original lead architect […]

AI’s coming to the classroom: Brisk raises $15M after a quick start in school

March 26, 2025
It’s virtually impossible today to determine when a student’s writing has been composed using ChatGPT or another GenAI tool, and it can be a nightmare to disprove incorrect accusations. An AI edtech startup called Brisk has built a tool that could at least help teachers identify some of the telltale signs, and it’s now announcing […]

The AI Hype Index: DeepSeek mania, Israel’s spying tool, and cheating at chess

March 26, 2025
Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. While AI models are certainly capable of creating interesting and sometimes entertaining material, their output isn’t necessarily useful. Google DeepMind is hoping that…

China built hundreds of AI data centers to catch the AI boom. Now many stand unused.

March 26, 2025
A year or so ago, Xiao Li was seeing floods of Nvidia chip deals on WeChat. A real estate contractor turned data center project manager, he had pivoted to AI infrastructure in 2023, drawn by the promise of China’s AI craze.  At that time, traders in his circle bragged about securing shipments of high-performing Nvidia…

Microsoft adds AI-powered deep research tools to Copilot

March 26, 2025
Microsoft is introducing a “deep research” AI-powered tool in Microsoft 365 Copilot, its AI chatbot app. There’s been a raft of deep research agents launched recently across chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok. Powering them are so-called reasoning AI models, which posses the ability to think through problems and fact-check themselves — […]