During Meta’s earnings call on Wednesday, the company revealed its board had approved a new class of nonvoting stock, called Class C common stock. The shares give the holder an ownership stake but no vote on company decisions. This class takes effect in January. Meta says it will use the stock for capital raising, employee […] 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. Are we there yet? A reality check on six big tech promises Some seemingly impossible feats are too good to give up on. Decoding a pet’s yowls and yips? Absolutely. Scrubbing […] More
Ride-hailing company inDrive, known for letting passengers and drivers negotiate fares, is working with Chinese autonomous driving firm Pony.ai and Nvidia to begin testing robotaxis in Kazakhstan in 2027. The companies said Friday that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to explore bringing Pony.ai’s robotaxis to inDrive’s platform — a reflection of the growing […] More
I couldn’t help feeling some empathy for Holmes, a mother we see preparing to leave her two kids for a lengthy prison sentence. And even though I have long known the facts, Holmes is clearly an effective manipulator. You can see her plant the seeds of doubt in Fielder’s mind. At times, I felt she […] More
Smart ring maker Oura has sued Indian rival Ultrahuman again, seeking to block U.S. sales of its Ring Pro (pictured above) just months after the redesign helped the Bengaluru-based startup return to the American market following an import ban. The case is the latest in a string of patent disputes Oura has brought against competing […] More
Devavrat: It’s a fantastic question. And as you correctly noted, we’re at the cusp of becoming experimental to mainstream as far as AI is concerned. As you know, I’ve been teaching AI at MIT as a professor for more than the last two decades, so it’s no surprise that I’m very bullish about AI’s future […] More
AI agents left to explore a virtual island without a specific task began inventing challenges of their own. MIT researchers say the behavior bears the hallmarks of play. The researchers put 13 AI agents called Eko, each running on Claude Opus 4.7, alone on a simulated desert island for 30 hours. They describe the experiment […] More
A scalable AI system requires a strong foundation. Data, engineering, platforms, operating models, and governance must converge to work as one. This session from MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Future conference explores what it takes to build that foundation in a highly regulated environment and how a responsible, trustworthy implementation can turn emerging capabilities, including agentic […] More
OpenAI is reportedly close to securing another mega round of private funding, rather than plowing ahead with an IPO. The AI lab is working on raising up to $30 billion at $1.25 trillion pre-money valuation in a round led by Coatue and investors in UAE, sources told CNBC. This follows a similar report by Bloomberg […] More
Increasingly, the answer depends on the serving harness—the engineering system surrounding the model, including the architecture, memory management, scheduling, and optimization decisions that determine how efficiently model intelligence becomes a production capability. For technical executives, that changes where AI investment should go—and what they should demand from the architecture supporting it. Start with the workload, […] More
Elon Musk has invested approximately $1 billion in the newly formed media company Skydance, according to a new report from Semafor. News of the investment comes a few weeks after Paramount completed its $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery to create the combined company. Co-CEOs David Ellison and Ynon Kreiz are tasked with bringing […] More
The great news for both of us is that my colleague James Temple just published two in-depth stories about permafrost. His reporting took him to the boreal forests of Alaska, where he helicoptered into the wilderness to learn more about how this material could affect our climate both now and in the future. I’d recommend […] More