BIGGEST AI RAISES THIS WEEK
TOP INVESTORS · 30 DAYS
- Abstract Ventures 2 deals · $110M in rounds
- Forgepoint Capital International 2 deals · $78.5M in rounds
- Motive Partners 2 deals · $43.6M in rounds
- High-Tech Gründerfonds 2 deals · $5.2M in rounds
DOTS · MUSE · GROK BOT · INSTINCT · GEMINI SPARK · OPENCLAW
MUSE Can you trust Meta’s Muse or OpenAI’s Dots to run your life?MANUS China’s Manus raises over $500M in first funding round since split with MetaGROK BOT Elon Musk says Grok Bot will use Suno’s AI music models, alongside Anthropic’s Claude and MidjourneyMUSE Meta Muse not available in India: Instagram shows AI agent icon, users see 'not available in your country' messageGROK BOT Musk’s Grok Bot Turns to Claude for HelpMore AI agent news →MUSE Meta Muse may be building personal files on users’ friends: ResearchersMANUS Manus parent Butterfly Effect completes more than $500 million funding roundGROK BOT Grok Bot Claude Opus 5.5 Routing: What Musk ConfirmedINSTINCT Instinct Puts AI Agents Inside Group Chats, Raising New Privacy and Permission RisksINSTINCT Instinct Adds AI Agents to Group ChatsAG TECH, FOOD AND THE MONEY BEHIND THEM
Image: TechDogs
Hokkaido farmer uses ChatGPT and Codex to automate his greenhouse vents and run a 100-hectare farmFUNDING Female-Founded Bare Beans Bags $2.8M & Launches Ready-to-Eat LegumesAI AI’s booming, but execute it right to win – Agrifood expertsFUNDING Myca raises $1.3m pre-seed to put AI agents in charge of agribusiness field operationsROBOTS Teams signing up for fifth Farm Robotics ChallengeMore farm & food news →FUNDING 🎥 Where are foodtech investors looking next after the boom and bust?ROBOTS Croptimal launches mounted selection robot for seed potato productionROBOTS Drones now delivering more options on the farmFUNDING France’s Edonia Nets $16.8M to Ramp Up Production of Ground Spirulina ProteinROBOTS 🎥 Can Picker AgRobotics’ Dr Octopus-style arms finally crack autonomous fruit harvesting?FUNDING FDA Investigation Found Cyclospora at Taylor Farms’ Mexico FacilityAI LABS
Image: NVIDIA
Into the Omniverse: How Developers Turn Ideas Into Simulations With Frontier AI Agents Pay-per-inference for AI agents: How BlockRun and Incarna use Amazon Bedrock AgentCore payments Share GPU clusters across teams with isolation and fairness using Amazon SageMaker HyperPod How Oracle turns days of work into minutes with ChatGPT and Codex Pollo AI turns creative ideas into campaigns with OpenAILegalOn halves Codex costs while maintaining development speed Disrupting AI-enabled “false front” operations The model that didn't exist, so you made it yourself More AI labs news →Does better work always mean better workers? Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5 on AWS
ON THE RISE
WHAT YOUNG PEOPLE ARE BUILDING
From ISEF finalist to Midjourney founder: David Holz reflects on creativity, entrepreneurship and the role of AIKnow a young person building with AI? Tell us →NVIDIA, Microsoft Kick Off a New Beginning for Windows PCs With RTX Spark and AI Agents Multimodal open d1 decision models for the edge Introducing Falcon ASR One Model Family, Two Gold-Level Results: Fine-Tuning Nemotron for IOI and IMO Helping teens learn, plan, and shape the future of AI
Radisson Hotel Group brings hotel discovery into ChatGPT EmbeddingGemma 2: an open, lightweight multimodal embedding model Unlocking Earth AI’s planetary geospatial foundation models for global public health Open and Emergent Problems in Agentic Privacy and Security: A Contextual Angle From Scan to Treatment Plan, AI Helps Close Breast Cancer’s Deadliest Gaps
ANTHROPIC · OPENAI · GOOGLE · GROK · CHINA · OPEN MODELS
Don't Marry the ModelOPENAI Fired OpenAI safety researchers dispute misconduct claims, warn of chilling effectANTHROPIC Claude can now generate animated explainer videos and live data dashboards from text promptsANTHROPIC Being mean to Claude can now get your account suspended under Anthropic's new TOSOPENAI OpenAI’s revenue is reportedly $20 billion less than previously projectedMore LLM news →GOOGLE Google brings agentic AI to Gemini, starting with businessesOPENAI Some mathematicians call for OpenAI boycott after AI-generated proofs flood their fieldGOOGLE Google is launching a one-stop Gemini agent for your work tasksCHINA Huawei and Qualcomm agree to cross-license patents covering 5G, AI and computingOPEN Mistral says "Le Chonk" can challenge the best AI modelsCHINA Tencent Rolls Out a Wave of Vertical AI Agents, From CraftBuddy to MusicBuddy, Inside Its Own AppsOPEN Why Telecom Operators Are Building Their AI Strategy on Open ModelsOPEN Introducing Mistral Large 4POLL
Trump floated 'self-regulation' for AI. Who should set the rules?
Reader poll, not scientific. One vote per browser. Closes Sat, Oct 10, 8 PM ET.
NEW IN HAVE I BEEN PWNED
CyrusOne — 373,460 accountsDouble Counter — 274,922 accountsAngel One — 6,765,054 accountsMedela — 423,947 accountsBreach data: Have I Been Pwned (CC BY 4.0)
AI NEWS
Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / TechCrunch
Pretend you’re sitting at Elizabeth Holmes’ desk on this weirdly detailed website The Mentorship Cliff: AI Is Eliminating the Work That Creates Experts California is trying to shut down robot vs. human cage matches She Designed Meta’s New AI Logo. Then Came the Hate Ben Affleck is an AI nerd, and the internet is impressedPopular AI leaderboard Arena nearly doubles valuation to $3.1B valuation in 10 months Anthropic changes usage policy to ban model abuse and election interference OpenAI’s math solutions aren’t meeting the field’s standards yet More AI news →USA Today becomes the latest publisher to sue OpenAI SpaceXAI backs Omarchy, the controversial Linux distro, with $1.5 million in compute
Anthropic bans ‘abusive or cruel behavior’ toward Claude Google’s AI note-taking app transcribes your meetings completely offline AI math breakthroughs have Ethereum researchers debating how fast wallet security could collapse A single prompt was enough to hijack every AI agent in an AWS account, Zenity researchers found Nvidia's big bet on physical AI aims for safer robotaxis, humanoid robots
Claude Haiku 5.5 arrives with massive price cuts proving the AI pricing arms race is far from over Tristan Harris’ Tech Nonprofit Is Laying Off Most Staff and Going ‘Founder-Led’ AI breakthroughs in robotics won’t change your life any time soon Building a safer path to autonomous industrial AI Microsoft event debuts new AI-friendly hardware and Windows changes
“Software is over”: Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open source clones These Researchers Made AI Drive a Toyota Corolla to Get In-N-Out The New ChatGPT Is More Show Than Tell Fraudster jailed for using 10K bots and AI songs to outstream Taylor Swift Google rolls out improved SynthID AI content detector, now available globally
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TOP TECH, AI & BUSINESS PODCASTS THIS WEEK
RISING FAST Sharp Tech up 613% on 6 days ago · now #15
- 1Moonshots: The Fight Over Claude's Consciousness, AI's 1942 Moment, & Why Altman Says "Accept Some Bad Things"727K views this week · 4 episodes
- 2All-In: Trump’s Super Intelligence Summit, AI Safety Accord, GDP Beats, Midterm Predictions650K views this week · 1 episode
- 3Lenny's Podcast: OpenAI’s Head of ChatGPT: We’re entering a new era of AI (again)104K views this week · 1 episode ▲1
- 4Prof G Pod: Anand Giridharadas: Who Actually Ends Up Homeless? It’s Not Who You Think.103K views this week · 4 episodes ▼1
- 5TBPN: Crypto Going Bunker Mode, AI Mathpocalypse, Starbucks Explores Chipotle Takeover86K views this week · 11 episodes NEW
Image: Peak of Ohio
Einride, EASE Logistics launch driverless electric trucks in MarysvilleWorld’s first drone to reach the stratosphere climbs 34,245 feet for weather dataSafeWorld emerges from stealth to build, deploy robot safety simulation technologiesLowe’s launches 20-minute drone delivery with Wing and DoorDashGalaxy Corporation stages 16-robot K-pop performance in New YorkMore robot news →European TALOS project demonstrates autonomous robots for solar plant maintenanceCalifornia is trying to shut down robot vs. human cage matchesJabil discusses the pace of humanoid robot development and productionAWS launches open-source Physical AI Toolchain for roboticsThis Disembodied Hand Is All the Robot You NeedNvidia's big bet on physical AI aims for safer robotaxis, humanoid robotsHOLLYWOOD, MUSIC, TV AND GAMES
Ben Affleck, who sold his AI film company to Netflix: “I learned Python”Suno hires Ticketmaster’s Michael Chua to lead its live music team, including SongkickBen Affleck is an AI nerd, and the internet is impressedElon Musk says Grok Bot will use Suno’s AI music models, alongside Anthropic’s Claude and Midjourney"A creative idea can save more money than AI can right now" – Glen Schofield on his retirement, Callisto Protocol's development, and the state of AAAMore AI entertainment news →Fraudster jailed for using 10K bots and AI songs to outstream Taylor SwiftWizards of the Coast union expands, demands company stop pushing generative AIUnity unveils a web-based AI game creation platformONLINE AND BRICK-AND-MORTAR
Home Depot and Lowe's share a common goal for their AI assistants, but their strategies divergeWhy ChatGPT ads won’t likely impact holiday sales in a major way this yearWalmart targets Denver area for drone deliveryAI is ‘reshaping’ Walmart and Sparky is leading the chargeThredUp CEO on AI costs: ‘I was both surprised and didn’t care’More AI retail news →AI, social media, digital shopping: What retailers need to do to grab Gen Alpha, Gen Z shoppersModern Retail+ Research: How agencies adapt to a media landscape shaped by AI and creatorsHow agentic commerce helps brands like Willy Chavarria optimize for BFCMGap expands AI shopping with Alta Daily and new discovery toolsStudy: Claude, ChatGPT Offer Different Shopping Prices Based on WealthWalmart expands drone delivery of groceries and other goodsAI & TECH IN EDUCATION
SCHOOLS, TEACHERS, STUDENTS AND CAMPUSES
AI forces coding program to revamp how it prepares Philadelphia students for tech jobsDespite Rise of AI, More Skilled Trades Training Needed, Industry Leaders SayWhat role could AI play in reimagining assessment?CU Denver’s AI Hub aims to teach students and faculty about the technologySupporting Career and Technical Education Programs With the Right TechnologyMore AI education news →How Coding Can Cultivate Deep Civic EngagementCyberattack Hits South Carolina School Choice ProgramOpinion: For Many Schools, Implementing AI Has Become a Minefield. How Congress Can Help“My boss probably used AI”: What school leaders need to know about AI, authenticity, and trustThe Real Cost of a Student Device: A Total Cost of Ownership GuideBUILDERS & RESEARCH
Diffu-LoRA: A Novel Low-Rank Adaptation for Personalized Diffusion Models Wieszcz-XIX: A 3.1-Billion-Word Corpus of Pre-1918 Polish and Temporally Bounded Language Models Trained From Scratch Large Language Model-Assisted Preparation of Transportation Management Plans: A Case Study with WisDOT WisTMP System Cognitive Thermometers: Machine Learning and Logical Complexity Lossy Compressive Text Autoencodersttok 0.4 Quoting Carson Gross Sub-1-Bit LLM Compression via Latent Factorization More builders & research →I think I found a planet nobody knew existed. I used Claude Code to find it Port of the TypeScript compiler, checker and lsp to Rust, by LLM
Quoting Ben Affleck Claude Haiku 5.5 Meta and Microsoft take steps to reduce employee usage of Claude AI GPT‑6 and Intelligent UI for everyone Study: Claude, ChatGPT Offer Different Shopping Prices Based on Wealth
Anti-Patterns in Software Blogging Quoting Jake Boggan Claude Code’s suggested message feature: I think the real customer is the model