Techtonic

Waymo’s commercial robotaxi ramp-up looks expansive, both in geographic reach and in ridership. And by almost every measure, it is — until you pay attention to where the bulk of those robotaxis are actually showing up. The numbers over the past two years reflect the kind of commercial rollout you’d expect from a deep-pocketed company […] More

Lindsey Elliott is big into bolts. At last year’s Bolting Symposium — the 13th annual — she said the highlight was playing “Bolting Bingo” against the many self-proclaimed “torque dorks” who were in the room. A former engineer and planner at ExxonMobil, Elliott has spent years thinking about how to improve the infrastructure that moves […] More

Is Meta’s just-announced Muse Charm a playful device that will make AI more approachable to everyday consumers, or will it be yet another flop in a long list of AI hardware gadgets that didn’t take off, like the AI Pin, Rabbit, or Friend pendant? Reactions, so far, have been mixed. What the Charm is, however, […] More

Global climate-tech investment from venture capital hit $26 billion in the first half of 2026, according to data from Currence, a finance tracker for the industry. That’s 55% higher than last year, and products and services for data centers are getting a massive slice of that pie. But as a Semafor piece about the report […] More

An OpenAI model hacked into an Australian government website, the country’s prime minister Anthony Albanese said Wednesday, in the first publicly reported case of an AI model hacking into a government’s systems.  Albanese said that there would “obviously be legal consequences” following the breach, and said that OpenAI faces a government investigation into how its […] More

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 congressional representative just proposed killing America’s border tower program Delia Ramirez, a Democratic US representative from Illinois, has announced plans to introduce legislation to terminate the surveillance tower program along […] More

Meta is renewing its quest to make virtual reality a thing. At its Connect event on Wednesday, the company announced Meta VR Glasses, its newest entry into the VR market, which will be available next spring starting at $1,299.99. These glasses actually seem quite promising, thanks to a substantially lighter form factor and a host […] More

The AI amulet has become a bit of a cliché in the tech industry — devices like Friend have turned the idea of physical AI into little more than an exercise in eye-rolling for many consumers. But that hasn’t stopped Meta from jumping into the arena with its own AI wearable, called Muse Charm, which […] More