News

The Week’s 10 Biggest Funding Rounds: No Summer Doldrums As Dollars Still Flow To AI
It was not a holiday week on the funding front, as a raft of largely AI-focused companies closed big rounds. The largest of these was a $1.5 billion financing to enterprise AI startup Fireworks AI, and a Series D for meal and delivery provider Wonder.
news.crunchbase.com
China’s Xi Jinping Wants AI to Be Open to the World—and Out of America’s Control
Beijing is building an AI coalition with 29 countries, including Russia.
gizmodo.com
Agility Robotics plants its flag in Tesla’s backyard
Agility is opening a new training center for its Digit robots in Fremont, California.
techcrunch.com
Brex built its AI agent policy by watching what agents actually do, not by writing rules first
OpenClaw has become one of the most widely adopted agentic frameworks, but it has yet to prove itself at enterprise scale. Agents need real credentials — API keys, OAuth tokens, service accounts — to work effectively, and Brex found that traditional guardrails couldn't contain wh…
venturebeat.com
There’s a lot of hype around perimenopause. Don’t buy it.
Perimenopause has entered the chat. Perimenopause—and its better-known relative, menopause—used to be considered taboo. Not anymore, thanks at least in part to TV doctors and social media influencers. Perhaps it’s my age, but these days, both my algorithm and my conversations wit…
MIT Technology Review
Vertu wants executives to pay $6,880 for an AI agent — here’s how it actually performs
From AI workflows to battery life and security, here's what it's really like to live with Vertu's luxury foldable every day.
techcrunch.com
International tech
The 1722 Easter Island myth: what Dutch sailors actually saw when they landed on Rapa Nui
When Jacob Roggeveen's Dutch crew landed on Rapa Nui in 1722, they spent roughly a day on the island and produced a founding myth that took three centuries to unwind. The walking moai hypothesis, confirmed by physics experiments in 2025, matched what islanders had said all along.
siliconcanals.com
2026: China Chips Underpin Domestic AI Models at WAIC as Domestic Computing Infrastructure Reaches Tipping Point
WAIC 2026 showcases full lineup of Chinese AI chips from Huawei Ascend to Dongfang Suanxin, as domestic computing ecosystem reaches critical mass with 108 chips and 261 models.
pandaily.com
The parents and partners we stay closest to aren’t the ones who demand constant updates — they’re the ones who made contact easy without requiring you to arrive as a polished, working version of yourself
Attachment research from Purdue's Susan South and others keeps finding the same quiet pattern: the parents and partners we stay closest to are not the ones who audit our lives or demand constant updates, but the ones who made contact so low-friction we could show up unpolished, t…
siliconcanals.com
XPeng launches MONA L03 in Munich, taking aim at Europe’s electric SUV market
On Thursday, XPeng unveiled the MONA L03 smart SUV at its global launch event in Munich, Germany. The model will be launched in 65 countries and regions, including China, Europe, and other overseas markets, according to the Chinese automaker. The launch marks a strategic move in …
technode.com
CXMT Targets Trillion-Yuan Market Cap: China DRAM Leader Carries the Flag for Memory Chip Localization Against Samsung and SK Hynix
CXMT ChangXin Memory Technologies launches 66.6B RMB IPO as world fourth-largest DRAM maker with 7.67% share, charting a path to challenge Korean memory dominance by 2030.
pandaily.com
Xi Jinping calls for ‘openness’, opposes ‘one country’ rule in AI – as it happened
President Xi Jinping spoke on Friday at the opening of the 2026 World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), China’s largest annual event for the AI industry. Xi’s personal attendance elevated the conference’s profile, and signalled AI development has become both a technologi…
scmp.com

Trending

MacSurf Hits 2.0 To Bring PowerPCs back Online
There’s an interesting thing about retrocomputing — the moment that you realize your 25-year-old machine can do almost everything your average person uses a computer for. The problem is that the …read more
hackaday.com
How Octopuses Hacked their Ribosome to Become Smart
A fascinating aspect in evolutionary biology is that of convergent evolution — whereby similar structures and functions evolve independently from each other. The highly advanced nervous system of octopuses is …read more
hackaday.com
The BornHack 2026 Cyber Ægg Is A Badge With A Life Afterwards
A problem facing the designers of event badges is this: what happens to the badge after the event? It’s one that designers have tried to solve in many ways with …read more
hackaday.com
First atmosphere found on Earth-like planet in habitable zone of distant star
Article URL: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy4kdd1e0ejo Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48947560 Points: 366 # Comments: 231
bbc.com
Hackaday Podcast Episode 378: C Coders, Ceramic Printers, and Shadow Archives
It’s a hot one at both microphones, as Elliot Williams and Kristina Panos wilt in the heat with ice lollies and freezer packs. But still, we persevered long enough to …read more
hackaday.com
Kaiser nurses say AI, workplace surveillance are making their jobs, care worse
Article URL: https://localnewsmatters.org/2026/07/15/kaiser-nurses-say-ai-workplace-surveillance-are-making-their-jobs-and-patient-care-worse/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48952880 Points: 264 # Comments: 159
localnewsmatters.org
Kimi K3, and what we can still learn from the pelican benchmark
Article URL: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/16/kimi-k3/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48947717 Points: 276 # Comments: 144
simonwillison.net
This Week in Security: Another Record Patch Tuesday, LAME is More Secure, Secure Boot is Less Secure, and Milk Malware
Following the reports last week using the Windows Global Device ID (GDID) in tracking a malware operators behavior, here is a comprehensive write-up about what goes into the GDID and …read more
hackaday.com
The state of open source AI
Article URL: https://stateofopensource.ai/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48947825 Points: 370 # Comments: 269
stateofopensource.ai