Asymptote Labs raises $5.5M to track and control what AI agents do
New York startup Asymptote Labs has raised a $5.5M seed round led by Tower Research Ventures. It makes Beacon, a free open-source tool that records what AI agents do, and sells a …
Spotify pulls 50M AI slop and spam tracks from its recommendations
Spotify says it has taken more than 50 million AI-generated “slop” and spam tracks out of its recommendations this year, on top of 75 million spam tracks it has deleted. It found …
Streaming guide JustWatch becomes a streamer itself
JustWatch, the popular streaming search guide used by 50 million people, is launching its own streaming service, offering free, ad-supported movies and shows alongside a $3.99-per…
Plants can speak using electricity, so this startup built an AI model to decipher their language
Electric Plant has built an AI-powered translator to help humans listen to what plants are saying with the subtle electricity coursing through their stems.
Inception says its Mercury 3 model beats GPT-6 Luna and runs far faster
Inception, the Redwood City AI lab, released Mercury 3 on Monday. It is the newest version of what the company calls a diffusion LLM, a design that differs from the systems behind…
Amazon will hire 300,000 for the holidays as other retailers hold back
Amazon plans to hire more than 300,000 US workers for the holiday season, up 20% from last year, with seasonal staff paid an average of $20 an hour. It is adding health cover for …
MIT’s AI agent society result holds up on consumer hardware
In August, researchers at MIT dropped a society of AI agents into a shared world with no instructions. They showed it could invent, build and maintain technology better than the s…
OpenAI pulls back from China chip controls, Politico reports
OpenAI has stopped pushing for strict US limits on selling advanced chips to China, according to Politico. For much of last year the company openly called for such limits. Capitol…
TikTok staff raised child safety concerns, but executives reportedly failed to act
Court documents show TikTok employees were frustrated with how executives responded to their concerns about risks to children.
Terra Security’s AI Native Cybersecurity podcast opens with Amazon’s CISO
A cyberattack that once might have taken weeks or months to unfold can now go from initial access to a complete system takeover in minutes. That was the lesson CJ Moses, CISO of A…
Anthropic to rewrite part of its leaked AI bill after safety backlash
Anthropic has told US lawmakers it will rewrite part of its own draft AI safety bill. The leaked text drew days of criticism from the AI safety community. The confidential draft w…
Figma co-founder Dylan Field thinks MCP is not a perfect protocol
Figma said it plans to support as many standards as possible without exposing all of its data
DeepSeek open-sources DeepInfer, the engine that runs its AI models
DeepSeek has open-sourced DeepInfer, the software it uses to run its AI models in production. The Chinese AI lab announced the release on X on Tuesday and published the code on Gi…
US Army picks a bid for ECHOTRIBBLE, its plan for autonomous AI agents
Army Cyber Command has picked one company’s bid for ECHOTRIBBLE, a programme for AI agents that hunt down targets in computer networks. The command’s technology centre and the Cyb…
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent order $35bn of Nvidia chips, Reuters reports
ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent have ordered more than 3 million of Nvidia’s RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards. Their combined sticker price is over $35bn. Reuters reported the orders on…
Salesforce agrees $5.7bn deal for customer messaging firm Braze
Salesforce has agreed to buy Braze, a New York company that helps brands send personalised messages to their customers, for about $5.66bn including debt. The two companies announc…
SpaceX alum’s aviation startup, Reliable Robotics, lands $115M, topping $1B valuation
Reliable Robotics extended its Series D round with $115 million in equity and $25 million in debt.
US orders federal agencies to remove China’s DeepSeek AI from their systems
The US has ordered federal civilian agencies to remove DeepSeek products and third-party services built using its technology, citing national security concerns.
Jooba emerges with $4M to build AI-native recruiting firm
The startup combines human recruiters with custom AI sourcing agents, betting that fast-growing companies want help hiring without another tool to manage. For a startup trying to …
Postquant Labs launches a virtual machine for different quantum computers
Quantum computers don’t all work the same way, and that creates a problem for developers. Code written for one machine may need to be rewritten before it can run on another. Postq…
Inspired Capital closes $450M fourth fund as New York pushes back on Silicon Valley’s gravitational pull
The raise comes as venture dollars pile up on the West Coast.
Apple to buy up to $100M of US titanium for the iPhone Duo
Apple will buy up to $100M of titanium from Perryman, a family-owned producer in Pennsylvania, over the next three years, the company announced. The metal will be used in several …
Vectorial raises $3M to help companies launch successful products
AI is making building and launching products exponentially faster, but current user research is still painfully slow, expensive and biased. Even with AI-moderated interviews, gett…
Oura adds new fitness metrics to show how workouts impact your body
While Oura has largely dominated the smart ring market for years, rivals like RingConn and Ultrahuman are emerging to dethrone it, putting pressure on the company to keep innovati…