Techtonic

Fractile, a British startup developing AI chips, has raised a $720 million Series C backed by Britain’s Sovereign AI Fund with hopes of “ensuring the U.K. has a greater stake in the hardware that will underpin its future economy,” its government stated. Alongside the likes of Axelera, Etched, and OLIX, this makes Fractile one of […] More

Outside the formal negotiations, COP31 president Murat Kurum, Turkey’s environment minister, is spearheading a side agenda, including two informal initiatives that will be worth watching. These wouldn’t be part of the official agreement text, but countries could sign on to signal support.   One is a pledge to make AI more sustainable; this is almost comically […] More

For years, websites have relied on technology like CAPTCHA to prove that the user on the other end is human. More recently, social media platforms have turned to photos or videos to verify users’ identities. Now, a startup called Helix is betting that voice technology can do the same job, without requiring users to hand […] 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. Six wild ideas for perpetuating your mind As we age, we forget most of what we’ve experienced, yet there’s still undeniable continuity: At 30, or 50, or 70, you will still […] More

New York is gearing up to enforce one of the country’s most significant AI safety laws. The state opened a registration portal Tuesday, with which large frontier AI developers like Anthropic and OpenAI will be required to register by January 1, 2027.  The RAISE Act, New York’s safety and transparency bill, kicks in at the […] More

Nvidia’s stock sank 5.47% on Tuesday, following a 4% drop on Monday, a loss of about 9.5% in two days, even though there wasn’t much news out of the company. CEO Jensen Huang has reportedly been trying to conduct business as usual after admitting an extramarital affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Nvidia […] More

Over the past few years, X has released a number of features to make itself a friendlier hub for influencers. The latest effort to attract social media talent? Its own clipping tool. Clipping is the pivotal social media technique by which longer videos are spliced into TikTok-attention-span length “clips” and then strategically posted to engage […] More

OpenAI has acquired an AI travel agent called Odessia, according to Odessia’s founder, Francis Davidson. Davidson says in a post announcing the deal that he’s now working for OpenAI, helping the AI lab with the future of travel. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but this looks like an acqui-hire. Davidson’s announcement focused largely […] More