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Top 5 robotics trends this year
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Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Robotics went wild in 2025: humanoid boxing matches, lobster bots, bird drones, and robots doing your laundry.
Beneath the spectacle, things got real — humanoids landed jobs, robotaxis started behaving like transit, and warehouses crossed the million-robot mark. Today, we’re spotlighting the five biggest trends that defined the year’s breakneck pace.
In today’s robotics rundown:
Humanoids go mainstream
Robotaxis hit real streets
Robots get small, really small
The rise of the warehouse bot
China’s robotic surge
Quick hits on robotics news
TOP ROBOTICS TRENDS OF 2025
HUMANOIDS
🤖 Humanoids go mainstream
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: Humanoids went from viral stunts to looking like actual products. Investors poured billions into the sector this year, with roughly 50 startups raising $100M–plus rounds as the tech shifted from demos to real work.
The details:
Big industrial customers began running serious pilots, testing humanoids on warehouse lines, with 1X’s Neo moving into homes (but with a major caveat).
Tesla, Figure, Agility, Apptronik, and 1X shifted focus from viral clips to reliability, safety, and per-hour economics in real customer environments.
Tooling, components, and software platforms around humanoids matured, from actuators and battery packs to “generalist” control and vision models.
China turned humanoids into industrial policy, dangling pilots to push domestic players toward large-scale deployment by the end of the decade.
Why it matters: Humanoids have crossed from research novelties to real-world bets — though most “home robots” remain teleoperated demos and factory deployments still number in the hundreds, not thousands. And whether they can prove reliable and cost-effective enough to justify the hype remains the defining question of the next few years.
ROBOTAXIS
🚖 Robotaxis hit real streets
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: 2025 was the year robotaxis started looking like the real deal: freeway segments stitched into networks, custom pods on the Vegas Strip, ghost Teslas in Austin, Chinese fleets scaling citywide — autonomous rides became infrastructure.
The details:
Waymo began weaving freeway driving into routes across Phoenix, San Francisco, and LA, stretching its service to San Jose with 24/7 airport pickup.
Amazon’s robotaxi subsidiary Zoox launched its custom vehicles in Las Vegas — no steering wheel, no pedals, just two rows of seats for 4 passengers.
Tesla just started testing empty robotaxis on Austin streets this past weekend, with no safety monitor in the passenger seat.
China’s Baidu and Uber announced plans to deploy thousands of Apollo Go vehicles on Uber’s platform, while Pony AI rolled out 1K robotaxis in Shenzhen.
Why it matters: For the first time, robotaxis are operating at city scale with no one behind the wheel, forcing regulators, unions, and transit planners to treat them as part of the mobility stack rather than a sideshow. The next few years will determine whether these fleets stay confined to geofenced zones or rewrite urban transport worldwide.
MICROBOTS
🔍 Robots get small, really small
Image source: Penn Engineering
The Rundown: Microbots had a breakout year, shrinking to sand-sized specs while picking up sensing, computing, and locomotion. Labs stopped pushing particles around with magnets and started giving them brains, propulsion, and actual jobs.
The details:
Researchers unveiled tiny autonomous robots that can swim, sense temperature, execute onboard code, or coordinate in swarms.
Teams pushed drug-delivery bots closer to reality with 3D-printed “tumbling” microrobots and sub-millimeter continuum probes.
Researchers built dissolving microbots that swim through blood vessels and vanish after delivery, creating one-shot systems that leave no trace behind.
A wave of stimuli-responsive and biohybrid designs showed microrobots reacting autonomously to pH levels, chemical signals, and magnetic fields.
Why it matters: Robotics extended autonomy into softer, smaller, and more biologically inspired systems. If this progress continues, the most transformative robots of the 2030s may be split between visible helpers in homes and tiny systems operating inside brains, organs, and other hard‑to‑reach environments.
INDUSTRIAL BOTS
📦 The rise of the warehouse bot
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: Warehouse bots became the main characters of robotics in 2025. Amazon blew past 1M deployed robots, while Figure, Agility, Apptronik, and 1X moved their humanoids into live trials with major logistics and manufacturing customers.
The details:
Amazon deployed pickers like Blue Jay and dual-arm robots like Vulcan, marking the shift from simple mobile robots to integrated AI-powered workcells.
Autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) now account for 45% of warehouse deployments, with e-commerce driving half of new installations through 2030.
Beijing went all in, openly targeting hundreds of thousands of deployed units by 2030 while running 1.8M industrial robots on factory floors.
Agility’s Digit moved 100K totes at a GXO facility while humanoids from Apptronik and others tackled “last-meter” tasks that wheeled bots can't handle.
Why it matters: When the world’s largest e-commerce company deploys a million robots and reports it could avoid hiring 600K workers by 2033, warehouse automation is in full-blown disruption. The question is how quickly companies will swap humans for machines once the economics make sense.
CHINESE ROBOTICS
🚀 China’s robotic surge
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: No one is embracing robotics quite like China. More than 82% of the 300+ global robotics investment deals in the first half of 2025 occurred in China, with total financing topping at least 20B yuan (~$2.7 B).
The details:
State-backed funds have earmarked some 70B yuan (about $9.7B) for humanoids and robot initiatives, while pushing robotics into public spaces.
Companies like Unitree (eyeing a $7B IPO), Agibot, and EngineAI closed massive rounds, with Unitree slashing prices to $5,900 for its R1 humanoid.
Even Elon Musk has warned that in humanoids “positions two through ten could all be Chinese companies.”
China now produces 70–80% of global planetary roller screws — the critical actuator component that Tesla, Figure, and 1X all depend on.
Why it matters: China isn’t just building robots — it’s fusing hardware, software, and AI into a full-stack advantage, backed by massive government subsidies. If that strategy works, the West could soon be buying the very machines that make its goods, shifting both economic power and technological leverage.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in robotics today
Former Rivian chief growth officer Jiten Behl told TechCrunch’s Equity podcast that “every car company will become a robotics company.”
San Francisco–based startup Foundation is ramping up its military humanoid ambitions, laying out plans to build as many as 50K humanoids by the end of 2027.
A new fire-alarm permit for Tesla’s Cortex 2.0 datacenter at Giga Texas, built to train Optimus, pegs its power capacity at up to a whooping 200 MW.
Researchers at Imperial College London have created a new imitation-learning technique that enables a robot arm to master 1K distinct tasks in just one day.
Physical Intelligence’s new paper shows that once a robot model has enough real-world experience, it can use raw first-person human video to quickly learn new tasks.
Israeli startup SeaSphere has developed software that lets military fleets of unmanned underwater robots communicate securely over long distances.
COMMUNITY
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: Google’s Flash-y new Gemini 3 release
Read our last Tech newsletter: The AI boom’s phone problem
Read our last Robotics newsletter: 1X’s home humanoid gets a factory job
Today’s AI tool guide: Comparing ChatGPT Image and Nano Banana Pro
RSVP to next workshop @ 4PM EST Friday: Google NotebookLM For Work
See you soon,
Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team
Google’s Flash-y new Gemini 3 release
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenAI may have been riding high into the holidays after back-to-back releases, but Google just crashed the party again with another flashy gift of its own.
The company’s new Gemini 3 variant combines top-level intelligence with extreme speed at a fraction of the price — a combo that may be the toughest yet for its AI rivals to answer.
In today’s AI rundown:
Google’s Flash-y new Gemini 3 release
Amazon discussing $10B+ investment in OpenAI
Comparing ChatGPT Image and Nano Banana Pro
Stanford AI experts predict 2026 will be a year of reckoning
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
⚡️ Google’s Flash-y new Gemini 3 release
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google just rolled out Gemini 3 Flash, a speed-optimized version of its recently released flagship model that still maintains frontier-level intelligence, becoming the new default model across Gemini and in Google Search’s AI Mode.
The details:
Gemini 3 Flash matches and even exceeds 3 Pro across a range of benchmarks, while coming in at ¼ the price and 3x the speed.
On Humanity’s Last Exam, Flash scored 33.7% — tripling the 11% from its predecessor and nearly matching GPT-5.2’s 34.5%.
Both the Gemini App and Google Search’s AI Mode now default to 3 Flash, combining real-time web results with fast, improved reasoning.
Why it matters: It may sound counterintuitive, but Gemini 3 Flash feels like a bigger deal than 3 Pro — offering a unmatched intelligence and speed combo at prices that significantly undercut the competition. Google continues to eat away at OpenAI’s market share, and Flash is looking like yet another reason for that trend to continue.
TOGETHER WITH ATLASSIAN ROVO
👋 Meet Rovo, AI that knows your business
The Rundown: Discover Atlassian Rovo — AI that knows your business. Rovo connects teams, knowledge, and tools so you can move faster and work smarter — together.
Why Rovo?
Rovo connects to all your favorite SaaS apps.
Rovo brings organizational knowledge and context into every workflow.
It’s already built into Jira, Confluence, and more.
And it’s built on Atlassian’s enterprise-grade security & privacy.
AMAZON & OPENAI
💰 Amazon discussing $10B+ investment in OpenAI
Image source: Nano Banana Pro / The Rundown
The Rundown: Amazon is reportedly negotiating a potential $10B investment in OpenAI that would value the AI leader above $500B, according to The Information — with the deal also possibly including a commitment to use Amazon’s Trainium AI chips.
The details:
The two companies signed a 7-year, $38B AWS cloud contract last month, with OpenAI now partnered with “at least” 5 cloud providers.
OpenAI would adopt Amazon’s Trainium processors, giving AWS a high-profile customer for chips competing against Nvidia.
The companies have also discussed commerce and enterprise partnerships, with OAI continuing to position ChatGPT as a shopping destination for users.
Why it matters: The restructuring that freed OAI from Microsoft exclusivity is paying off, with the ability to court competing cloud providers for massive infra needs. For Amazon, the move would hedge its Anthropic bet — while also securing a big customer for Trainium chips that have struggled to gain traction against Nvidia’s dominance.
AI TRAINING
⚖️ Comparing ChatGPT Image and Nano Banana Pro
The Rundown: Learn the key similarities and differences between Google’s Nano Banana Pro and ChatGPT’s new image generation model, while also learning how to build your own comparison matrix that you can reuse for other model comparisons.
Step-by-step:
Pick 5 use cases (ours were logo, website graphic, IG post, marketing brochure, photorealistic image) and outline testing rules: same prompt per model, 4 images each, graded 1-5 on consistency, creativity, utility, and quality
Feed use cases into Claude/ChatGPT/Gemini and prompt: “Here’s my use cases: [X]. Write me a json prompt for each with 4 variations in a 4x4 grid”
Create a scoring matrix (duplicate our Notion guide here) where Overall Rating = (Consistency + Creativity + Utility + Quality)/4
Generate images by putting each prompt into both tools using new chats per use case, then rate outputs based on your criteria
Pro tip: To save on time/tokens, tell the LLM to write a prompt that will generate 4 variations in a 4x4 grid.
PRESENTED BY BOX
📈 Executing an AI-first strategy with Box
The Rundown: 60% of enterprises expect AI transformation within 2 years, and Box’s Executing AI-First Series is the step-by-step playbook for empowering teams to thrive in the era of AI.
In this series, you’ll learn:
How Box approached becoming AI-first through its value realization strategy
How to Deploy agents with an ideate>pilot>rollout>scale plan
How to be an AI manager
How to measure what matters by tracking AI agent impact
Read the first article in Box’s series and follow along for actionable insights and downloadable templates.
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
🔮 Stanford AI experts predict 2026 will be a year of reckoning
Image source: Nano Banana Pro / The Rundown
The Rundown: Stanford University’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) just shared its AI predictions for 2026: a “ChatGPT Moment” for healthcare and a shift from hype to hard evaluation of what AI can actually deliver.
The details:
HAI Co-Director James Landay predicts “no AGI this year,” expecting more companies to admit AI hasn’t delivered gains outside coding and call centers.
Economist Erik Brynjolfsson forecasts a rise in “AI dashboards” tracking displacement and productivity at the task level updated monthly, not years later.
Researcher Curtis Langlotz anticipates a “ChatGPT moment” for healthcare as the training cost of medical models decreases and dataset accessibility rises.
Law professor Julian Nyarko said firms will move from “Can it write?” to “How well, on what, and at what risk?” with a shift toward more complex legal work.
Why it matters: With 2025 being the year of AI hype and massive investments, the experts see 2026 as a transition to asking whether it was worth it. Stanford’s faculty isn’t expecting an AI bubble crash like many others, but their predictions do point to an industry that may have exhausted its patience for overpromising demos and pilots.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
🔐 Incogni - Erase sensitive data like addresses and phone numbers from the web. Get 55% off with code RUNDOWN*
⚡️ Gemini 3 Flash - Google’s powerful, cost-effective frontier reasoning model
🌌 ChatGPT Images - OpenAI’s upgraded image generation system
🗣️ Chatterbox Turbo - Resemble AI’s fast, expressive, open-source TTS model
*Sponsored Listing
📰 Everything else in AI today
Alibaba unveiled Wan2.6, a new multimodal model that can generate up to 15 seconds of HD video with dialogue, storyboarding, and character reference capabilities.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders announced plans to pursue a pause on AI data center construction, citing concerns about job displacement and societal impacts.
Amazon’s Peter DeSantis will now lead a new division overseeing AI models, chips, and quantum computing, while Alexa and Nova architect Rohit Prasad departs.
xAI introduced the Grok Voice Agent API, allowing developers to build voice tech using the company’s top-ranking speech-to-speech model.
Meta released SAM Audio, a model that can isolate specific sounds from audio or video files using text descriptions, visual clicks, or timeline selections.
COMMUNITY
🤝 Community AI workflows
Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.
Today’s workflow comes from reader Ritesh K. in India:
“I built an autonomous ‘Financial Firewall’ that reads and audits invoices better than a human team. Instead of using brittle OCR templates, I use Vision Models to extract data from messy PDFs, but the magic is the semantic reasoning.
The AI compares every invoice against the original Purchase Order, and understands context. Crucially, it also catches subtle exceptions that human reviewers often miss due to fatigue — like a vendor slipping in a shipping fee on a ‘free shipping’ order or small unit-price variances. It auto-flags these discrepancies with a summary of the error, ensuring zero financial leakage while fully automating the boring approval logic.”
How do you use AI? Tell us here.
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: OpenAI’s answer to Nano Banana Pro
Read our last Tech newsletter: The AI boom’s phone problem
Read our last Robotics newsletter: 1X’s home humanoid gets a factory job
Today’s AI tool guide: Comparing ChatGPT Image and Nano Banana Pro
RSVP to next workshop @ 4PM EST Friday: Google NotebookLM For Work
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown
OpenAI answers Google with major image upgrade
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Google’s recent AI moves may have had Sam Altman slamming the ‘Code Red’ button, but the AI giant’s latest releases are rising to the challenge.
OpenAI’s counter to Nano Banana Pro is officially here, with a long-overdue GPT-image upgrade that vaults the company back to the frontier of image leaderboards (for now).
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI counters Nano Banana Pro with new Images upgrade
HubSpot CEO Dharmesh Shah on SEO for the AI era
Quickly iterate on Sora videos with a simple automation
Google, MIT study finds pitfalls in multi-agent systems
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
🚀 OpenAI counters Nano Banana Pro with new Images upgrade
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI just released GPT Image 1.5, a major update to ChatGPT’s image generator that creates visuals up to 4x faster, improves text rendering, and maintains consistency across edits — arriving as an answer to Google’s recent creative momentum with Nano Banana Pro.
The details:
Image 1.5 brings significantly upgraded generation speeds, with the model also now able to preserve faces, lighting, and composition across edits.
Text rendering also gets a big improvement, with 1.5 handling long content, infographics, and varied text sizes compared to GPT-image-1’s rampant issues.
The new model moves to first place on both Artificial Analysis and LM Arena’s text-to-image and editing leaderboards.
OpenAI also released a new dedicated creative panel, joining the typical chat-based workflow to offer users quick-start templates and curated style options.
Why it matters: Despite GPT-image-1 being a viral success at the time, it doesn’t take long to fall far behind the frontier curve — making this new upgrade very overdue. 1.5 delivers on the benchmarks and, like the recent GPT-5.2 release, brings OpenAI at least on par with Google’s buzzy releases heading into the new year.
TOGETHER WITH UIPATH
👋 Goodbye Chaos. Hello Orchestration.
The Rundown AI: UiPath 2025.10 upgrades how work moves across the enterprise with stronger coordination and clearer oversight. It sharpens the way teams manage processes that span systems, people, and intelligent agents — pushing automation into a faster, more intelligent era.
What’s in the newest UiPath release:
Expanded Maestro upgrades for agentic orchestration
Smarter AI across documents, testing, and workflows
Faster build cycles with streamlined Studio and Autopilot tools
Explore UiPath 2025.10 and the features people are talking about.
ROWAN X DHARMESH
🎙️ HubSpot CEO Dharmesh Shah on SEO for the AI era
Image source: The Rundown
The Rundown: We sat down with HubSpot CEO Dharmesh Shah for an exclusive interview on how the traditional SEO playbook is changing with LLMs and how to prepare for a world run by agents.
On SEO’s shift to AEO (Answer Engine Optimization):
Dharmesh: We’re moving from an SEO mindset (solving for Google) to an LLM mindset (solving for AI). Ask, “How can I take the ideas and content that I have and ‘translate’ it to make it more easily consumable by LLM vs. search engines and humans directly?”
On the hidden risk of low-quality AI content:
Dharmesh: The worst that can happen is actually not zero return. The worst that can happen is negative return. Because if you build a reputation online, in the algorithm’s mind that you are crappy content, not trustworthy... it’s hard to dig yourself back out of that hole.
On the bottlenecks for AI agents:
Dharmesh: If you think of agents as teammates... You wouldn’t just hand them a computer and access to all the internals of the organization and say, “Here’s what we want done, go do it.” Agents need to be trained, tested, and need to have the equivalent of performance reviews.
Catch Rowan’s full interview with Dharmesh on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
AI TRAINING
📹 Quickly iterate on Sora videos with a simple automation
The Rundown: Learn how to generate bulk Sora videos automatically using a simple Make.com automation that watches your Google Sheet prompts and uploads completed videos to Google Drive.
Step-by-step:
Duplicate this Google Sheet Template, then sign into Make.com and create a new scenario with the Google Sheets ‘Watch Rows’ trigger
Add a Sora module with your API key (create one if needed + verify org), then create a Google Drive folder and add ‘Upload a File’ module
Add a Google Sheets ‘Update a Row’ module that updates the drive link column with the ‘Web View link,’ then write prompts in your sheet with ID numbers and click ‘run once’ in Make
Within a few minutes, your Google Sheet will update with links to completed videos in your Google Drive
Pro tip: Instead of waiting every 15 minutes for the automation to fire, you can set up Google Sheets to fire a webhook straight to Make every time a row is updated.
PRESENTED BY AMAZON
⚙️ Automate UI workflows with Amazon Nova Act
The Rundown: Nova Act just launched — designed for developers to build, deploy, and manage #NormcoreAgents to automate tasks so you don’t have to.
How does it work?
Prototype agents in the playground
Write, test, and debug agents directly in your IDE
Deploy agents to production
Try it for free in the Nova Act Playground.
AI RESEARCH
😵 Google, MIT study finds pitfalls in multi-agent systems
Image source: Reve / The Rundown
The Rundown: Researchers from Google and MIT published a new study testing whether throwing more AI agents at problems improves results, finding that performance swung wildly depending on the structure of the task.
The details:
The team ran 180 experiments across models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, using the same prompts and token budgets.
Financial analysis tasks split across agents saw an 81% improvement, while Minecraft tasks requiring step-by-step work degraded by up to 70%.
When a single agent already hit 45% accuracy on a task, adding more typically led to worse performance — with multiple agents eating through tokens quickly.
Why it matters: The agentic hype is pushing companies and users towards complex multi-agent workflows, but this research may show that more isn’t always better. For many enterprise tasks that require step-by-step reasoning, a well-designed single agent may outperform an elaborate system at a fraction of the cost.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
🌌 ChatGPT Images - OpenAI’s upgraded image generation system
🎥 Wan 2.6 - Alibaba’s new native multimodal model for image and video
📪 CC - Google Labs’ experimental AI productivity agent in Gmail
🔊 SAM Audio - Meta’s new model for segmenting sounds using text prompts
📰 Everything else in AI today
Sonatype just launched Guide — ensuring your AI assistants select the right open-source components so you can spend less time debugging. Watch the unboxing webinar to learn more.*
OpenAI released FrontierScience, a new benchmark to evaluate research-level reasoning in scientific research tasks, with GPT 5.2 taking the top spot in testing.
Google Labs rolled out CC, an experimental AI assistant powered by Gemini that connects to user’s Gmail, calendar, and files to send personalized morning summaries.
Black Forest Labs released FLUX.2 [max], the startup’s new top image model featuring upgraded editing and the ability to create visuals from real-time web data.
AI2 introduced Molmo 2, an SOTA open model family for analyzing video by following objects across frames, counting events, and locating precise moments within footage.
*Sponsored Listing
COMMUNITY
🤝 Community AI workflows
Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.
Today’s workflow comes from reader Bo in Cincinnati, OH:
“I used Claude to help my law firm pivot to an AI-native firm, using it for annual planning, project management, workload integration, and more. Recently I created AI agents to serve as my CFO, CTO, and content creator. With my digital CTO, we started building our own small language model trained on our proprietary data to scale our law practice.”
How do you use AI? Tell us here.
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: Nvidia’s powerful open AI model play
Read our last Tech newsletter: The AI boom’s phone problem
Read our last Robotics newsletter: 1X’s home humanoid gets a factory job
Today’s AI tool guide: Iterate on Sora videos with a simple automation
RSVP to next workshop @ 4PM EST Friday: Google NotebookLM For Work
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown
The AI boom’s phone problem
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Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Your next phone could get pricier— and AI is the reason.
A new forecast warns that the AI boom is gobbling up critical memory chips, setting the stage for supply crunches and sticker shock in 2026. As silicon gets swallowed by data centers, the cost squeeze looks to hit consumers right in their pockets.
In today’s tech rundown:
AI chip crunch may spike phone prices
SpaceX IPO could net Google $111B
Ford trades electric trucks for AI power
U.S. freezes $39B UK tech deal
Quick hits on other tech news
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
AI BOOM
📱 AI chip crunch may spike phone prices
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: The AI boom is about to make your next phone more expensive. A new Counterpoint Research forecast warns that AI’s voracious appetite for memory chips will squeeze smartphone supply in 2026, pushing prices up by 6.9%.
The details:
Global smartphone shipments are expected to fall 2.1% in 2026, a sharp reversal from Counterpoint’s earlier prediction of stable or growing sales.
Average selling prices will jump 6.9% year-over-year — nearly double the firm’s previous 3.6% estimate — as shortages drive component costs up 15%.
Low-end phones under $200 have already seen material costs surge 20% to 30% since early 2025, with mid- and high-end devices up 15%.
Apple and Samsung are best positioned to absorb rising costs, while some Chinese brands may downgrade features or promote higher-priced models.
Why it matters: AI is now directly competing with consumer electronics for the same critical components, forcing smartphone makers to choose between shrinking margins and raising prices. The crunch hits budget and mid-tier Android phones hardest, potentially widening the gap between premium flagships and everything else.
SPACEX/GOOGLE
🚀 SpaceX IPO could net Google $111B
Image source: SpaceX
The Rundown: Alphabet’s red-hot streak could get even hotter if SpaceX goes public. Back in 2015, Google put about $900M into a 7% stake; at a rumored $1.5T IPO in 2026, that slice could be worth roughly $111B, reports Business Insider.
The details:
A SpaceX IPO at $1.5T would turn Google’s early stake into $111B — about 3% of Alphabet’s current value and possibly Silicon Valley’s best startup bet ever.
SpaceX has already boosted Alphabet’s results, contributing an estimated $8B gain — about 25% of its Q1 2025 net income.
Starlink operates on Google Cloud infrastructure, locking both companies into a strategic space-and-compute alliance.
Google ranks among SpaceX’s biggest outside backers, alongside VC firm Founders Fund and Fidelity.
Why it matters: What started as a controversial moonshot on Starlink has turned into both a financial and strategic coup. Starlink now powers connectivity for just about everyone, while SpaceX leans on Google Cloud on the back end, giving Alphabet a front‑row seat to one of the most important space plays of the decade.
FORD
🔌 Ford trades electric trucks for AI power
Image source: Ford
The Rundown: Ford is killing its all-electric F-150 Lightning and pivoting unused battery capacity into a grid and data-center storage business. As it retreats from large EVs, the automaker is pouring billions into systems that feed AI infrastructure instead.
The details:
Ford canceled its next-gen all-electric truck (codenamed T3) and a commercial van, though the E-Transit survives. The F-150 Lightning dies entirely.
Instead of scrapping battery plans, Ford will launch an energy storage business using lithium iron phosphate systems for data centers and grid operators.
The company will invest roughly $2B over two years and target 20 GWh of annual storage capacity starting in 2027.
Ford will repurpose its Kentucky plant to build LFP cells, integrate them into storage modules, and package them as 20-foot DC container systems.
Why it matters: Ford’s retreat from electric pickups exposes Detroit’s recalibration: EV demand has stalled, political headwinds are mounting, and data centers offer better margins. Ford is chasing the same opportunity as Tesla and GM — after taking a reported $19.5B bruising on its EV business.
TECH POLICY
🧊 U.S. freezes $39B UK tech deal
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: The U.S. has abruptly frozen negotiations on a “technology prosperity deal” with the UK, putting a high-profile tech pact announced during President Trump’s September state visit with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer on indefinite hold.
The details:
The deal was positioned as a cornerstone of the renewed U.S.-UK “special relationship,” creating a transatlantic tech axis countering China’s influence.
Negotiations covered joint initiatives on AI, quantum computing, nuclear fusion, and other tech.
U.S. tech companies pledged billions in UK investments, including $27.5B from Microsoft and $6.3B from Google.
The Trump administration reportedly balked at the U.K.’s digital services tax on U.S. tech firms and food safety rules blocking certain U.S. agricultural exports.
Why it matters: The freeze is a setback for the UK government, which had positioned the deal as proof that a year of intensive diplomacy with Washington could shield British exports from Trump’s tariffs. It also exposes the fragility of tech diplomacy even between close allies: despite billions in corporate pledges and shared strategic goals.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in tech today
Netflix co-CEOs moved to calm staff over the company’s bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, stressing that there’s little business overlap and no plans to shutter studios.
Google is shutting down its dark web monitoring feature, telling users it will stop scanning for exposed personal data on January 15.
Merriam-Webster named ‘slop’ as its 2025 Word of the Year, defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of AI.”
The U.S. government has launched “Tech Force,” a new initiative to hire 1K early‑career AI and software specialists into federal jobs to boost tech talent.
Overview Energy has raised $20M to pursue space-based solar, using satellites to beam power down to Earth-side solar panels for round-the-clock clean electricity.
Tesla shares reportedly closed at a new high for 2025 after Elon Musk told investors the company has begun testing fully driverless robotaxis on public roads in Austin.
Colin Angle, co-founder and former CEO of Roomba-maker iRobot, called the company’s bankruptcy “nothing short of a tragedy for consumers.”
Lightspeed Venture Partners, the 25-year-old VC firm, just closed a record $9B in new funds, marking the biggest capital raise in its history.
COMMUNITY
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: Nvidia's powerful open AI model play
Read our last Tech newsletter: SpaceX preps monster $1.5T IPO
Read our last Robotics newsletter: 1X’s home humanoid gets a factory job
Today’s AI tool guide: Design websites with Cursor’s visual design editor
Watch our last live workshop: AI Automations Made Simple
See you soon,
Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team
Nvidia's powerful open AI model play
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The company selling the shovels in the AI gold rush just made a big move to start mining, too.
With its new powerful (and fully open) Nemotron 3 models, Nvidia is giving Western developers the competitive option they’ve been missing — while ensuring they stay hooked on its hardware in the process.
In today’s AI rundown:
Nvidia releases Nemotron 3 open models for agentic AI
AI reasoning models smash CFA exams
Design better websites with Cursor’s new editor
Perplexity study shows how users are using AI agents
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
NVIDIA
🤖 Nvidia releases Nemotron 3 open models for agentic AI
Image source: Nvidia
The Rundown: Nvidia just introduced its Nemotron 3, a family of open models designed specifically for building multi-agent AI systems — marking the chipmaker’s most significant push yet into frontier model development.
The details:
The lineup spans three sizes: Nano (30B), Super (100B), and Ultra (500B), with Nano available now and the larger versions coming in 2026.
Nano beats similar-sized models like Qwen3-30B on coding and instruction-following benchmarks, while also generating responses over 3x faster.
Unlike most closed U.S. rivals, Nvidia is publishing training data, fine-tuning tools, and reinforcement learning environments alongside the models.
The chipmaker lists Cursor, Perplexity, ServiceNow, and CrowdStrike as early adopters across coding, search, enterprise automation, and cybersecurity.
Why it matters: Closed U.S. labs are increasingly creating their own silicon, while Chinese leaders are dominating open model usage globally. Nvidia releasing strong, completely open models gives Western developers a competitive open-source option, and also keeps them building on Nvidia’s hardware in the process.
TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT
🧠 100+ ChatGPT prompts to revolutionize your workflow
The Rundown: HubSpot’s free, comprehensive “How to Use ChatGPT at Work” guide provides 100+ ready-to-use prompts to help professionals boost efficiency and adopt AI-driven workflows.
Inside, you’ll find:
A quick crash course to master ChatGPT in under 30 minutes
Practical industry use cases to spark real-world inspiration
100+ prompts to streamline tasks and accelerate productivity
Expert tips to tackle common AI roadblocks with confidence
Get your free copy and join 10,000+ professionals leveling up with AI.
AI & FINANCE
🤑 AI reasoning models smash CFA exams
Image source: Reve / The Rundown
The Rundown: A new study just found that six leading AI models now pass all three levels of the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certification exams, with Gemini 3.0 Pro scoring a record high of 97.6% on Level 1.
The details:
Researchers tested GPT-5, Gemini 3.0 Pro, Claude Opus 4.1, Grok 4, and DeepSeek-V3.1 across 980 questions spanning all exam tiers.
GPT-5 topped Level II at 94.3%, while Gemini 3.0 Pro dominated the most difficult constructed-response section with 92%.
In 2023, GPT 3.5 failed the first two levels, and GPT-4 passed only Level I — with the leap to near-perfect scores taking roughly 24 months.
An NYU study in September also showed models passing all three levels, but with scores in the 70s vs. the near-perfect numbers of current frontier systems.
Why it matters: Acing a standardized test and handling daily demands of financial analysis are still very different things, but the speed of improvement on these exams is wild — and models mastering finance knowledge could shift the profession’s value toward human skills like client judgment and relationship management.
AI TRAINING
🎨 Design better websites with Cursor’s new editor
The Rundown: Learn how to quickly set up and use Cursor’s new visual design editor to refine your frontend design without having to switch back and forth with a design tool like Figma.
Step-by-step:
Open a new project in Cursor with an HTML and CSS file (latest update required) — ask Cursor agent to build a simple
index.html+styles.cssor use a templateInstall the live server extension: hit
CMD+Shift+P, search "Open with Live Server," then copy the URL and paste it into Cursor browser (CMD+Shift+B)Toggle on the element selector, click any element to edit properties in the Design pane, or tell the agent what changes you want in the active chat
Hit Apply for the agent to make changes — click "Keep" or "Keep All" to save (the agent updates classes automatically so changes apply to all matching elements)
Pro tip: Make sure you’re saving your progress with Git as you go. Git will make it easier to roll back any unwanted style changes, and you can even ask the agent to write Git commits for you.
PRESENTED BY TRIPLE WHALE
🎁 $2.9B in BFCM AI data is in
The Rundown: Triple Whale tracked $2.9B across 50K brands during this year’s BFCM (19.7% of all Shopify sales), with Moby AI handling over 24K queries like “Which campaigns should I scale?” and “What should my spend distribution look like tomorrow to hit $600K?” — providing actionable answers for users in seconds.
Download the BFCM Breakdown Report to uncover:
Platform-by-platform performance across Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon & AppLovin
Industry benchmarks across 15 industries (Apparel led with 36% of revenue)
The AI strategies top-performing brands used to optimize in real time
AI RESEARCH
📊 Perplexity study shows how users are using AI agents
Image source: Perplexity
The Rundown: Perplexity and Harvard just published a study analyzing how users of the company’s Comet browser are utilizing AI agents, finding usage heavily centered on cognitive work and research over automating simple tasks.
The details:
Researchers analyzed hundreds of millions of anonymized queries from Perplexity’s Comet browser, which launched in July.
Over half of queries involved research or workflow management, with common tasks including summarization, document editing, and coursework help.
Tech workers, academics, marketers, and finance professionals generated the bulk of activity, with adoption correlating to GDP and education levels.
Behavior shifted over time, with users who started with casual queries like travel planning often migrating toward heavier knowledge work later on.
Why it matters: During the AI agent rise, we’ve frequently seen use cases like booking flights/tickets, ordering groceries, and handling mundane tasks. But Perplexity’s research (which may skew differently from ChatGPT or other assistants) shows users gravitating toward deeper work uses, not personal life conveniences.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
📊 Quadratic - The AI spreadsheet that does your work for you. Turn raw data into insights and visuals without the pain of old tools*
📚 Gemini Deep Research Agent - Google’s SOTA agent for long-running context gathering and synthesis tasks
🤖 Nemotron 3 - Nvidia’s new family of open-source models designed to build multi-agent systems
🚀 Manus 1.6 - New performance upgrades for complex agentic work
*Sponsored Listing
📰 Everything else in AI today
Merriam-Webster named ‘Slop’ as its 2025 Word of the Year, defined as “digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of AI.”
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management introduced “Tech Force,” a push to recruit 1K early-career AI and software workers into federal government roles.
Manus released version 1.6 of its AI agent platform, which introduces mobile app development and a visual design editor alongside performance improvements.
Klarna launched the Agentic Product Protocol, an open standard that gives AI assistants access to over 100M products across merchants.
AI2 released Olmo 3.1, an upgraded version of its open-source model family that the lab claims is the “strongest fully open reasoning model.”
COMMUNITY
🤝 Community AI workflows
Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.
Today’s workflow comes from reader Vicky F. in Phoenix, AZ:
“I am using AI as a research partner to reconstruct the complex life of one of my ancestors. ChatGPT has helped me locate and analyze historical records, draft emails to libraries and state agencies, and uncover new leads….We’ve built timelines, tested genealogical theories, compared maps and newspaper accounts, interpreted probate language, and tracked migration patterns. Now we’re co-writing a full narrative of her life.”
How do you use AI? Tell us here.
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: Gemini turns headphones into translators
Read our last Tech newsletter: SpaceX preps monster $1.5T IPO
Read our last Robotics newsletter: 1X’s home humanoid gets a factory job
Today’s AI tool guide: Design websites with Cursor’s visual design editor
Watch our last live workshop: AI Automations Made Simple
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown
1X's home humanoid gets a factory job
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Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Norwegian robotics startup 1X just found a fast lane for its humanoids — by turning a “home robot” loose in the factory.
In a striking pivot, the startup says it will deploy 10K Neo robots across the industrial portfolio of one of its own backers, sending its beige, living-room-friendly humanoid to do grunt work in warehouses.
In today’s robotics rundown:
1X’s home robot has a new gig: factories
Unitree debuts an app store for humanoids
Google, Runway build robot testing worlds
Medra nabs $52M for drug-discovery robots
Quick hits on other robotics news
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
1X
🤖 1X’s home robot has a new gig: factories
Image source: Reve / The Rundown
The Rundown: 1X secured a captive market for its humanoids by cutting a deal with one of its own investors. The robotics startup will deploy 10K Neo humanoids across portfolio companies of EQT, the Swedish investment giant whose venture arm backs 1X.
The details:
The rollout spans 2026 to 2030 and targets EQT’s 300-plus companies, with priority given to warehousing and industrial operations.
For EQT, the arrangement offers a testing ground to evaluate humanoid robotics at scale across diverse operational environments.
This partnership marks a pivot for 1X, whose Neo has been marketed as “the first consumer-ready robot designed to transform life at home.”
1X does make an industrial robot called Eve, but this deal specifically deploys the consumer-oriented Neo.
Why it matters: While 1X marketed Neo as a home robot, consumer adoption faces steep hurdles — a $20K price tag, privacy concerns, and safety risks around children and pets. By pivoting Neo into industrial settings, 1X secures near-term revenue and real-world validation while the far more challenging consumer market slowly matures.
UNITREE
🔥 Unitree debuts an app store for humanoids
Image source: Unitree
The Rundown: Unitree is pitching a future where humanoids download skills like phone apps, launching a “humanoid robot app store” where users can browse, install, and trigger prebuilt action routines via a smartphone.
The details:
The platform lets users install prebuilt motion routines — martial-arts combos, dance sequences — on Unitree bots via a smartphone interface.
Developers will be able to upload and share their own behaviors, effectively crowdsourcing a growing library of robot skills.
Unitree is pushing a model, reportedly launched in public beta, where robots can be continually updated for new tasks without physical modifications.
Why it matters: By trying to own not just the hardware but the ecosystem layer, Unitree is betting that an open, community-driven marketplace for robot behaviors will accelerate real-world use cases — and give it the same kind of platform power in embodied AI that Apple and Google enjoy in mobile.
GOOGLE/RUNWAY
🌎 Google, Runway build robot testing worlds
Image source: Google DeepMind
The Rundown: Google DeepMind and Runway dropped near-simultaneous announcements claiming major breakthroughs in video generation — advancements they say could fast-track the development of general-purpose robots.
The details:
Google DeepMind and Runway both unveiled new video-generation systems that can produce longer, more coherent scenes from text prompts.
These models can train general-purpose robots by creating millions of synthetic scenarios without real-world data collection or hardware risk.
Other companies like Luma AI have explicitly positioned their video models as large-scale world models designed for robot training in simulation.
This approach could dramatically compress the time and cost required to train robots for complex tasks in factories, warehouses, and homes.
Why it matters: Video-generation companies are racing to build so-called world models — AI systems that can stand in for reality itself. If these systems can reliably simulate physics and predict robot behavior before hardware deployment, they could solve one of robotics’ biggest challenges: the need for massive real-world testing.
MEDRA
🔬 Medra nabs $52M for drug-discovery robots
Image source: Medra
The Rundown: Medra raised $52M to build “physical AI scientists” — robotic workcells linked to large language models that autonomously plan, execute, and refine drug discovery experiments for partners like Genentech.
The details:
The San Francisco startup deploys robotic workcells that run lab protocols autonomously using standard instruments.
These systems integrate tightly with LLMs that design experiments and interpret results in natural language.
Data from each run feeds back into the models in a closed loop, letting the system iteratively optimize future experiments.
Although still in development, Medra’s systems are used by leading biopharma players, including Addition Therapeutics, Genentech, and Cultivarium.
Why it matters: Medra fuses a robotic “Physical AI” layer that executes protocols with a “Scientific AI” layer that interprets results and plans next steps. The pitch: drugmakers offload routine benchwork to self-improving robot scientists, dramatically accelerating the path from discovery to clinic while cutting costs.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in robotics today
iRobot, the U.S. company behind the Roomba vacuum, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, ceding ownership to its Chinese manufacturer Picea Robotics.
Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla is now testing fully driverless robotaxis in Austin after a viral video showed an empty Model Y on city streets.
T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas has struck a multiyear deal for Zoox robotaxis to shuttle fans to and from the venue via a dedicated Strip-side pickup lane starting in early 2026.
Livestream star IShowSpeed is now being sued by Social Robotics for punching and choking humanoid ‘influencer’ Rizzbot in a livestream video back in September.
YouTuber Inside AI discovered a humanoid initially refused to fire a BB gun due to safety protocols, then complied after a role-play-style prompt bypassed restrictions.
The makers of China’s military Robowolf robot dog have reportedly secured a $5.5M order for its full-sized humanoid.
University of Utah has built an AI “co-pilot” for prosthetic bionic hands that uses fingertip sensors and a neural network to autonomously manage each finger’s grip.
Car-share startup Zevo plans to buy up to 100 fully autonomous cars from newcomer Tensor and add them to its EV-sharing network.
Shenzhen is creating China’s first “robot‑friendly” urban zone, with rules and infrastructure to let service and humanoid robots operate in daily city life.
COMMUNITY
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: Gemini turns headphones into translators
Read our last Tech newsletter: SpaceX preps monster $1.5T IPO
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Skild eyes $14B for robot brains
Today’s AI tool guide: Perform an instant attention audit on your webpage
Watch our last live workshop: AI Automations Made Simple
See you soon,
Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team
🎧 Gemini turns headphones into translators
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Google just quietly shipped the future of cross-language communication: any headphones, 70+ languages, instant translations that actually sound human.
With the new Gemini-powered Translate understanding context, slang, and cultural references in real time, the dream of seamless multilingual conversation may have just become a reality.
In today’s AI rundown:
Google adds real-time audio translation to any headphones
The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases
Perform an instant attention audit on your webpage
Zoom claims new SOTA on AI reasoning benchmark
4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
🎧 Google adds real-time audio translation to any headphones
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google just rolled out a series of new Gemini-powered translation upgrades, including a new beta feature that streams live speech translations to any connected headphones — expanding on a capability previously restricted to its own Pixel Buds hardware.
The details:
The new Gemini 2.5 Flash Native Audio model upgrades conversational abilities, instruction following, and real-time info use for live voice agents.
The integration into Translate works with any earbuds on Android, supporting 70+ languages while preserving tone, pacing, and cadence of the speaker.
2.5 Flash Native Audio’s world knowledge also helps better interpret slang or culturally specific language contextually for more nuanced translations.
Google also expanded a Duolingo-style language practice mode to 20 new countries, with new features like streak tracking and pronunciation feedback.
Why it matters: The universal translators from sci-fi are getting closer, with Google’s update making cross-language conversation more seamless than ever. Between any headphones now facilitating real-time translation and the tech eventually coming to areas like YouTube, social media, etc., language barriers could disappear in the AI age.
TOGETHER WITH WARP
🤖 Spin up Warp Agents from anywhere
The Rundown: Small tasks shouldn’t slow your team down. Now you can summon a Warp agent right from Slack or Linear and let it handle the work for you.
Warp Agents allow you to:
Link Warp to Slack or Linear to enable cloud-run agents
Tag @warp in any Slack thread or Linear ticket to delegate tasks instantly
Let agents pull context and start executing in minutes
Get live updates and a clean PR ready to review
THE RUNDOWN ROUNDTABLE
💡 The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases
Image source: Reve / The Rundown
The Rundown: The Rundown Roundtable is a weekly feature in which we poll members of The Rundown staff about how we use AI in our work and daily lives.
Johannah, Finance: It’s year-end season & I'm doing a lot of modeling as we prep to pay taxes & pass off our financials to accountants. I use Excel in Google Drive the most, and recently I’ve been using Gemini to convert an accrual P&L estimate to a cash flow forecast. Gemini can pull the forecast into a separate spreadsheet, and I’ll ask it to list the assumptions it made to easily verify its accuracy. I would say it’s about 70% accurate; however, it still saves me a lot of time.
Joey, Head of Partnerships: To spice up my daily work check-ins, I share my completed work tasks into ChatGPT and prompt it to make my notes into pop-like song lyrics. From there, I pop it into Suno and create a fun “check-in” song for my team.
Zach, Lead AI Writer: I am not very handy by nature, but using ChatGPT and Gemini has given me the confidence to tackle home repairs I'd have never attempted before, from mounting fixtures to fixing our washing machine. Being able to send images for troubleshooting beats any generic guide and saves money without having to call a repair service.
AI TRAINING
🔥 Perform an instant attention audit on your webpage
The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to use Google Stitch to predict where people’s eyes go on your website, using these insights to help optimize your site’s design for conversions.
Step-by-step:
Sign in to Google Stitch.
Grab a screenshot of your site just above the fold (the hero section).
Go to Google’s AI Studio. Generate a heat map using your screenshot with the following prompt. Make sure you update the CTA text to match your site.
“Use Nano Banana to generate a predictive attention heat map on top of this landing page. The audit should highlight areas of high visual engagement and identify any elements that are distracting focus from the primary ‘Get Started’ CTA.”
Drop the heat map and your screenshot into a new Google Stitch session along with the following prompt. Make sure you toggle to start with a new Web design.
“Analyze the provided landing page screenshot alongside its predictive attention heat map. Generate a redesign of the hero section optimized specifically to maximize the click-through rate on the primary ‘Get Started’ button. The new design should use the heat map insights to eliminate distractions and focus user attention directly on the main conversion goal.”
Pro tip: Try comparing solutions across scenarios to understand the underlying reasoning patterns. This helps build better problem-solving skills for future challenges.
PRESENTED BY YOU.COM
🚀 Stop winging AI rollouts
The Rundown: Without a clear roadmap, AI adoption often fizzles, leaving ROI unproven and teams frustrated. The 90-Day AI Adoption Playbook from You.com gives you an effective, phased roadmap to move from pilot to real, measurable ROI — in only 90 days.
What you'll get:
A week-by-week rollout plan for secure, scalable AI adoption
Key actions to build user skills, certify competency, and drive consistent usage
Certification steps to ensure every user delivers impact
Make your first 90 days count. Download the playbook.
ZOOM
🧠 Zoom claims new SOTA on AI reasoning benchmark
Image source: Zoom
The Rundown: Zoom just announced that its ‘federated’ AI system scored 48.1% on Humanity’s Last Exam, surpassing Google Gemini on one of the industry’s most demanding expert-level reasoning tests.
The details:
Zoom’s federated approach orchestrates top models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google with its own small models through a “Z-scorer” selection system.
Zoom’s system edges out the previous leader Gemini 3 Pro’s 45.8%, which has since also been surpassed by the recently released GPT 5.2’s 50%.
The system will power the company’s AI Companion 3.0, with Zoom promising more accurate summaries, reasoning, and task automation across the platform.
The claim was also challenged by AI tool DeepWriter, which claims to have scored 50.91% on the benchmark in late November.
Why it matters: Zoom… The frontier AI research lab? Jokes aside, this is an impressive result, though one that warrants more proof — but a federated approach of combining multiple frontier models could be a compelling template for enterprises seeking new cutting-edge AI capabilities without building from scratch.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in AI today
Voxel51 introduced Sample-Level Evaluation, a new layer in the MLOps workflow that reveals hidden model failures (Like why Model A has the highest aggregate accuracy score but fails on critical scenarios) so teams can build better models.*
xAI is partnering with El Salvador to create a nationwide AI-powered education program for the country, bringing Grok across schools for both students and teachers.
Adobe integrated Photoshop, Acrobat, and Express directly into ChatGPT, enabling users to edit photos, create designs, and modify PDFs through conversational prompts.
OpenAI is ending its 6-month waiting period before new employees can access stock compensation, the latest move in an industry battle to attract and retain top talent.
Google is elevating engineer Amin Vahdat to a new chief technologist role to oversee AI infrastructure, putting him among a key group reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai.
*Sponsored Listing
COMMUNITY
🤝 Community AI workflows
Every newsletter, we showcase how a reader is using AI to work smarter, save time, or make life easier.
Today’s workflow comes from reader Jeff N. in Atlanta, GA:
“I have two kids in middle school and was overwhelmed by emails from their teachers. Each kid has seven teachers, and each teacher emails us several times a week with various notices, assignments, simple reminders, etc. I set up a mailbox to collect these messages and created an n8n workflow that downloads them once a day. The workflow uses ChatGPT to read the emails, determine which items are actionable and urgent, and then compiles them into a daily summary that is sent to me and my wife so we can focus on what’s important.”
How do you use AI? Tell us here.
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: Disney's billion-dollar AI bet on OpenAI
Read our last Tech newsletter: SpaceX preps monster $1.5T IPO
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Skild eyes $14B for robot brains
Today’s AI tool guide: Perform an instant attention audit on your webpage
Watch our last live workshop: AI Automations Made Simple
See you soon,
Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown
SpaceX preps monster $1.5T IPO
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Good morning, tech enthusiasts. SpaceX is reportedly prepping a $1.5T IPO for 2026 — one of the largest public offerings ever.
With Starlink burning cash, Starship demanding billions, and Musk eyeing space-based data centers, going public may be the only way for the company to bankroll its off-planet ambitions.
Reminder: Our next live workshop is today at 4 PM EST. Attend and learn how to leverage Google’s Workspace Studio to create practical AI automations for tasks like email inbox triage, template building, and more. RSVP here.
In today’s tech rundown:
SpaceX IPO could hit $1.5T valuation
Instagram gets an algorithm control panel
Altman’s everything app needs eyeballs
Hinge founder launches AI dating app
Quick hits on other tech news
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
SPACEX
🚀 SpaceX IPO could hit $1.5T valuation
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: Elon Musk could soon add another historic milestone — and a massive fortune boost — to his record. SpaceX is reportedly prepping one of the biggest IPOs ever, targeting up to $30B in 2026 at a staggering $1.5T valuation.
The details:
The listing could value the company at as much as $1.5T, making it one of the largest public offerings in history, Bloomberg reports.
The move would give Musk, already the world’s richest man, an even larger stake in what could become a market-defining aerospace giant.
Despite staying private, SpaceX has raised billions to bankroll Starlink and Starship, both capital-hungry mega-projects.
Musk confirmed SpaceX’s IPO plans, citing Ars Technica’s article for linking the move to rising AI demand and space-based data center opportunities.
Why it matters: SpaceX generates serious cash from Starlink launches, but it’s nowhere near the tens of billions needed for global coverage, orbital data networks, and lunar infrastructure. An IPO would give Musk the capital to turn his space business into civilization-scale infrastructure, assuming public markets buy the vision.
AUGMENT CODE
⭐ Catch critical issues without the noise
The Rundown: Augment Code Review’s retrieval engine pulls the exact set of files and relationships necessary for the model to reason about cross-file logic, API contracts, concurrency behavior, and subtle invariants. Results? Higher recall (55%), without sacrificing precision (65%) – 10 points ahead of competitors.
Augment Code Review helps your team succeed with:
a superior context engine
purpose-built code review
a reasoning-driven agent loop
Check out Augment Code Review and catch real bugs without spamming your PRs.
📱 Instagram gets an algorithm control panel
Image source: Instagram
The Rundown: Instagram is rolling out “Your Algorithm,” a new control panel for Reels that uses AI to surface the topics it thinks you care about most — and lets you tweak them in real time.
The details:
Instagram says the tool surfaces your interests based on in-app behavior, summarized by AI, so you can see exactly what’s shaping your feed.
While watching a Reel, tap the new icon to boost or downrank topics in real time, steering which themes dominate your feed.
Unlike TikTok’s handful of generic topic buckets, Instagram’s list is personalized and lets you add custom interests.
Strategically, it also helps Instagram respond to mounting regulatory and public pressure for explainable, user-controllable algorithms.
Why it matters: Instagram looks to be offering granular control TikTok only hinted at — personalized topics you can actually tweak, not just a dozen general top categories. But surfacing your interests is easier than actually respecting them, especially when engagement metrics still rule Meta’s bottom line.
TOOLS FOR HUMANITY
👁️ Altman’s everything app needs eyeballs
Image source: World
The Rundown: Sam Altman’s World just launched its “super app,” bundling Signal-grade encrypted chat with Venmo-style crypto payments — all anchored by its controversial eyeball-scanning verification system.
The details:
World’s core mission: combat AI-generated fakery and online impersonation by verifying you’re actually human via its iris-scanning Orb.
The app’s new World Chat uses end-to-end encryption and color-coded bubbles showing whether contacts have been verified through Orb.
A Venmo-style crypto wallet lets users receive paychecks, make bank deposits, and convert both to cryptocurrency, without requiring verification.
The super app strategy is designed to drive adoption beyond World’s current 20M verified users, far short of Altman’s billion-person goal.
Why it matters: World is testing whether people will trade biometric data for digital trust in an era where AI makes everyone suspect. If Altman can’t hit critical mass with a digital wallet incentive and social features, his “proof of human” vision may remain a niche curiosity rather than the web3 identity layer he’s pitching.
DATING APPS
💕 Hinge founder launches AI dating app
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: After more than a decade defining modern dating, Hinge founder Justin McLeod is swiping right on a new challenge. The long-time CEO is stepping down to launch Overtone, a new dating platform built around AI.
The details:
McLeod is launching a new venture called Overtone, which will use “AI and voice tools to help people connect in a more thoughtful and personal way.”
Match Group, which owns Hinge, Tinder, and OkCupid, will lead Overtone’s first funding round in 2026 and retain a “substantial ownership stake.”
Tinder has now logged nine consecutive quarters of paying-subscriber losses and is increasingly banking on AI tools designed to boost users’ match rates.
Hinge has also rolled out a new AI feature called “Convo Starters” to help daters open chats with something more interesting than standard small talk.
Why it matters: Dating app fatigue is real, especially for Gen Z, and founders are betting emotionally intelligent AI can fix it. As the likes of Tinder and Bumble rush to embed generative tools, Overtone’s trajectory could reveal whether AI rescues the industry — or just adds more noise. For now, specifics remain thin.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in tech today
Reddit filed a lawsuit in Australia’s High Court to overturn the country’s social media ban for children, arguing it violates the constitutional right to free speech.
Walt Disney is investing $1B in OpenAI and allowing it to use characters from Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel in its Sora AI video generator.
Trump signed an executive order creating a single national framework for AI regulation, giving the federal government authority and overriding state-level rules.
TIME Magazine selected “the architects of AI” as its 2025 Person of the Year, honoring Jensen Huang, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk.
Pebble unveiled Index 01, a $75 AI smart ring worn on the index finger that captures quick voice notes and reminders via a side button instead of always listening.
YouTube TV will begin unbundling its service in early 2026, offering 10-plus genre-based channel packages so subscribers pay only for the content they want.
Rivian announced its upcoming cars will use lidar, custom chips, and an autonomy computer to deliver advanced self-driving features backed by new AI models.
Apple’s 2025 U.S. download charts show OpenAI’s ChatGPT as the most-installed free iPhone app (excluding games), followed by Threads, Google, TikTok, and WhatsApp.
Eli Lilly said its next-gen obesity drug achieved what may be the greatest weight loss yet and also reduced knee arthritis pain in an initial weekly-injection study.
COMMUNITY
🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events
Read our last AI newsletter: Disney’s billion-dollar AI bet on OpenAI
Read our last Tech newsletter: Neuralink cofounder's wild next act
Read our last Robotics newsletter: Skild eyes $14B for robot brains
Today’s AI tool guide: Create and deploy voice agents for your business
RSVP to next workshop @ 4PM EST today: AI Automations Made Simple
See you soon,
Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team
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