Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund today announced the launch of a $26 million fund to back early-stage startups, a move that formalizes his extensive history of angel investing. Axios first reported in February. Akhund has been an active angel investor since 2016, backing over 350 startups at their earliest stages. His portfolio includes companies […]
On Monday, Google announced the launch of its AI Futures Fund, a new initiative that seeks to invest in startups that are building with the latest AI tools from Google DeepMind, the company’s AI R&D lab. The fund will back startups from seed to late stage and will offer varying degrees of support, including allowing […]
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is using his olive oil inefficiently in an “offense to horticulture,” the Financial Times humorously reports. For its “Lunch with the FT” series, the paper joined Altman in his kitchen. He prepared a garlicky pasta and salad, taking a rare break from his demanding job of advocating for the disruption of […]
In early May, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would split up the agency’s main arm devoted to scientific research. According to a report from NPR, scientists at the 1,500-person Office of Research and Development were told to apply to roughly 500 new scientific research positions that would be sprinkled into other areas of […]
General Motors has turned to Sterling Anderson, a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry, to oversee its entire product line of gas-powered and electric vehicles, in a newly created job that will touch nearly every department at the U.S. automaker. The new VP of global product and chief product officer position will cover the entire […]
OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate data center project is facing delays thanks to tariff-related economic uncertainty, reports Bloomberg. Growing market volatility and cheaper AI services have made banks, private equity investors, and asset managers wary of investing in Stargate, an OpenAI-led project that aims to raise up to $500 million for AI infrastructure in the U.S. and […]
Google’s openly available Gemma collection of AI models has reached a milestone: over 150 million downloads. Omar Sanseviero, a developer relations engineer at Google DeepMind, announced the figure on X over the weekend, also revealing that developers have created more than 70,000 variants of Gemma on the AI dev platform Hugging Face. Gemma just passed […]
It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but it actually comes from a lab in Maryland. In 2018, Liangbing Hu, a materials scientist at the University of Maryland, had devised a way to turn ordinary wood into a material stronger than steel. It seemed like yet another headline grabbing discovery that wouldn’t make it […]
I’ve never been a vertical mouse person. These mice have a vertical shape that puts your palm in a more neutral posture, reducing strain on the wrist. But every time I’ve used one in the past, it felt awkward, unnatural, or like I was making a trade-off in exchange for better ergonomics. They just never […]
This model from Petcube attempts to combine popular laser toys that cats go crazy for with a pet security cam, to mixed results. Like many other cameras from the brand’s lineup, it has crystal clear color and night vision, an extrawide view, two-way audio, and fun features available with the paid Care plan, like video […]