Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. A German defense startup has built bioelectronic “cyborg” cockroaches — tiny sensor-backpacked scouts that slip into spaces drones and humans can’t reach.

Working alone or in swarms, the roach bots stream encrypted live intel. And the company says they are already crawling through real-world recon trials.

In today’s robotics rundown:

• Germany’s cyborg cockroach for recon missions

• BMW puts humanoids on the line in Europe

• Lenovo’s puppy-eyed robot arm watches you work

• Honor’s new humanoid moonwalks on stage

• Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

DEFENSE ROBOTICS

🪳 Germany’s cyborg cockroach for recon missions

Image source: SWARM Biotactics

The Rundown: A German defense startup just unveiled bioelectronic “cyborg” cockroaches — neural-interface steered scouts designed to crawl through confined, high-risk environments where drones and troops can’t operate.

The details:

• German startup SWARM Biotactics made these bioelectronic “cyborg” insects by using neural interfaces to remotely control live cockroaches.

• Each insect carries a tiny backpack with AI hardware, radios, and modular sensors such as cameras and microphones.

• The swarms are designed to crawl through rubble, tunnels, and other GPS‑denied, high‑risk environments, relaying live tactical intelligence.

• NATO forces, including elements of the German armed forces, are reportedly already field-testing the insect platforms for reconnaissance missions.

Why it matters: SWARM’s bioelectronic scouts blur the line between robotics and biology, opening a new frontier in military reconnaissance. If tests prove successful (and ethical hurdles are cleared), swarms of low-cost, hard-to-detect insect platforms could reshape how forces gather intelligence in urban warfare and disaster zones.

BMW

🚘 BMW puts humanoids on the line in Europe

Image source: BMW

The Rundown: BMW is piloting Hexagon’s AEON wheeled humanoids on high-voltage battery and component workflows at its plant in Leipzig, Germany — marking BMW’s first humanoid-robot deployment in European production.

The details:

• The move follows an 11-month Figure 02 pilot at BMW’s Spartanburg, SC plant, where robots logged 10-hour shifts and contributed to 30,000+ X3 builds.

• The wheeled humanoids take on repetitive high-voltage battery and component tasks, swapping grippers, hands, and scanners as needed.

• After lab tests and a December 2025 shop‑floor shakedown, BMW will scale up integration from April 2026, with a full series‑production pilot in summer 2026.

• Meanwhile, Mercedes-Benz is testing Apptronik’s Apollo humanoids at its Digital Factory Campus in Berlin and also in Kecskemét, Hungary.

Why it matters: Humanoids that can survive messy, unionized German shop floors are very different from showroom demo bots — they have to hit cycle times, respect safety rules, and win over skeptical workers. If AEON clears that bar, it could become a blueprint for deploying humanoids across Europe’s most regulated factories.

LENOVO

👀 Lenovo’s puppy-eyed robot arm watches you work

Image source: Lenovo

The Rundown: Chinese tech giant Lenovo just unveiled a puppy‑eyed robot arm designed to sit on your desk as an always‑on AI coworker, watching you work while managing calls, notifications, and simple physical tasks.

The details:

• Lenovo unveiled the AI Workmate prototype robotic desk companion at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

• The device pairs a compact robotic arm with an animated screen displaying wide, cartoon-like eyes that track the user and signal status.

• Designed to sit beside a PC, it uses local AI to handle voice commands, manage calls and notifications, set timers, and control apps.

• The arm can tap keys, point at content, and assist with basic physical gestures like document signing.

Why it matters: Lenovo’s AI Workmate arrives as tech giants race to turn ambient AI into hardware — Amazon has Astro, and Apple and OpenAI are also reportedly cooking up their own desk devices. But this always-on, watching prototype certainly raises the question: how much AI surveillance are we actually willing to invite onto our desks?

HONOR

🤖 Honor’s new humanoid moonwalks on stage

Image source: Honor

The Rundown: Smartphone maker Honor used the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona to step out of the phone race and into “physical AI,” unveiling a dancing, backflipping humanoid after teasing the news last week.

The details:

• The humanoid danced to Imagine Dragons’ “Believer,” moonwalked alongside human backup dancers, and shook hands with Honor’s CEO onstage.

• The matte‑black humanoid features a light‑bar “face,” sleek curved panels, and smooth, human‑like joints.

• Honor pitched the robot as a future consumer‑grade assistant for tasks like shopping help, workplace inspections, and basic companionship.

• Honor’s new humanoid shared the stage with a “Robot Phone” that puts a small, moving robot in a handset shell.

Why it matters: Honor spent last week teasing a mysterious “one more thing,” then followed through with a full humanoid song‑and‑dance reveal at the MWC. It shows phone brands now see humanoids as the next premium hardware tier, using flashy demos to prime consumers for physical‑AI ecosystems.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Chicago banned autonomous sidewalk delivery robots after residents complained that the machines blocked walkways and raised safety and accessibility concerns.

Crypto-focused venture firm Paradigm is raising a new fund of up to $1.5B to expand beyond blockchain into investments in robotics and AI.

Elon Musk claimed Tesla is close to launching driverless robotaxis in California, but Reuters reports that the company logged zero autonomous test miles in 2025.

Tokyo Electric Power Company unveiled a snake-like robotic arm to navigate tight spaces inside the Fukushima Daiichi reactors to remove radioactive debris.

Chinese startup AgiBot launched a Qingtian Rent platform that lets customers hire robots for short gigs, with daily rates reaching about $14K for top-tier packages.

China rolled out its first national standard system for humanoids and embodied AI, turning kung‑fu showpieces into a regulated platform for real industrial work.

Xiaomi put its humanoid on real EV lines, saying they autonomously install self‑tapping nuts in the die‑casting shop on a 76‑second cycle with 90% success.

Physical AI data-infrastructure startup Encord raised $60M in a Series C round to scale its platform for training robots, drones, and other autonomous systems.

Researchers built a soft robotic wing with built‑in sensing that mimics marine animals, reshaping itself in currents to boost stability for autonomous vehicles.

COMMUNITY

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: OpenAI steps into Anthropic’s Pentagon void

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Netflix exits $83B Warner Bros. deal

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Unitree’s most powerful robot dog yet

• Today’s AI tool guide: Use Claude Cowork + Obsidian to triple your output

• RSVP to our next workshop on March 12: AI coding bootcamp pt. 1

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Early last week, the Pentagon called Claude best-in-class for military intelligence. By Friday, the Trump administration had booted Anthropic and labeled it a ‘supply chain risk’ on par with Chinese tech giants.

With OpenAI signing its own government deal, consumers angrily switching services, and the military still using Claude in weekend strikes on Iran, what started as a contract dispute has quickly turned into the biggest AI policy issue the industry has faced yet.

In today’s AI rundown:

• OAI lands Pentagon deal as Trump boots Anthropic

• The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases

• Use Claude Cowork + Obsidian to triple your output

• OpenAI hits $730B valuation with $110B mega-round

• 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI, ANTHROPIC, & THE PENTAGON

🪖 OAI lands Pentagon deal as Trump boots Anthropic

Image source: Lovart / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI signed a deal with the Pentagon, just hours after President Trump ordered to cut ties with Anthropic over safeguards on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, with OpenAI claiming its contract carries the same red lines.

The details:

• Anthropic was the first AI lab on the Pentagon's classified network, but held firm on not using AI for mass domestic surveillance or autonomous weapons.

• Trump responded by ordering agencies to drop Anthropic, with War Sec. Pete Hegseth adding a "supply chain risk" tag only ever used on adversaries.

• OAI signed its own deal hours later, citing similar red lines to Anthropic — though the Pentagon reportedly still used Claude in Iran strikes post-ban.

• Altman said the deal was "definitely rushed" and that the optics don’t look good” in an X AMA, while also calling the Anthropic ban "a very bad decision”.

• Consumer backlash landed fast, with Claude shooting to No. 1 on Apple's App Store and a “Cancel ChatGPT” movement spreading across X and Reddit.

Why it matters: Whether OAI's red lines actually match Anthropic's or just look the part on paper is the question to watch. Claude’s surge and ChatGPT cancellation backlash show the user reaction, but a favorable relationship with the government over a top competitor might be worth more long-term than the lost consumer revenue.

TOGETHER WITH BLAND AI

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Here are some of the outcomes they've driven for businesses:

• MyPlanAdvocate added $40M/yr by automating their inbound lead qualification

• Idaho Finance saved $750k/yr by replacing their IVR with AI Voice Agents

• And Needle saves $1M/yr by automating outbound calls

Book a demo today to see how you can get similar results for your business.

THE RUNDOWN ROUNDTABLE

💡The Rundown Roundtable: Our AI use cases

The Rundown: The Rundown Roundtable is a weekly feature where we poll members of The Rundown staff about how we use AI in our work and daily lives.

Adrian, Developer: My best friend from high school got married last weekend, and as the groomsmen, we wanted to create a gift that felt personal and nostalgic. We collected our old photos together and used Seedance to animate them—bringing each still image to life from the first frame— and then stitched several clips into one final video.

The result was amazing: the groom was deeply touched, and we all shared a heartfelt moment watching it together on the wedding day, reliving our memories in a way that felt both timeless and new.

Zach, AI Writer: My fantasy baseball auction draft is around the corner, and I decided to try Claude Cowork for the planning and research efforts this year. I uploaded my league’s settings, the players being kept across the league, and my own rambling of strategies and thoughts on my current players.

Claude then performed a deep analysis of my current options and their projected values, provided strong recs on who I should prioritize, and gave me a detailed list of draft targets around the league, perfectly tailored to my needs and league format — also scouring the web for tons of articles that saved me the tedious manual searching.

AI TRAINING

✍️ Use Claude Cowork + Obsidian to triple your output

The Rundown: In this guide, you’ll learn a simple system to plan and manage your workdays by setting up the Obsidian notes app so that Claude automatically creates daily plans for you — helping you triple your output.

Step-by-step:

1. Get Obsidian, create a vault with daily-notes/, templates/, projects/ folders, and add my-workflow.md to root with your schedule, work, priorities, projects

2. Create daily-notes-template.md in templates/ with “Plan,” “Notes,”“End of Day” sections, and a project-template.md in projects/ with “Goals”, “Tasks,” “Notes”

3. In Claude Cowork, create a scheduled planning task with the prompt: “Read my vault. Check yesterday's note, my project files, and my-workflow.md. Create today's daily note with prioritized tasks. Flag anything overdue”

4. Create an EOD scheduled task with “Read today's daily note. Summarize what got done, what's carrying over. Update project files with any completed tasks”

Pro tip: Ask Claude to interview you about each project upfront to create clear goals and deadlines in your project files.

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In this paper, you’ll learn how to:

• Identify sovereignty risks across your data, cloud, and AI stack

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• Strengthen resilience with hybrid, open, sovereign-ready architectures

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OPENAI

💰 OpenAI hits $730B valuation with $110B mega-round

Image source: Lovart / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI raised $110B at a $730B valuation, with Amazon leading at $50B alongside $30B each from Nvidia and SoftBank — kicking off an Amazon deal that marks a notable infrastructure pivot away from OAI's Microsoft-only era.

The details:

• The funding is nearly 3X OAI's own record $40B raise from last March, with the valuation jumping from $500B in October to $730B.

• Amazon's $50B comes with a deep strategic deal, including a $100B AWS expansion, adoption of Trainium chips, and more.

• Microsoft notably sat this raise out, though both companies insisted their partnership "remains strong and central" in a joint statement.

• OAI revealed that ChatGPT now tops 900M weekly users and 50M+ paying subscribers, while weekly Codex usage has tripled since January to 1.6M.

Why it matters: OAI just raised more in a round than most tech companies are worth — though much of the cash flows back to Amazon and Nvidia as compute purchases, continuing the circular investments that have defined the AI boom. With an IPO on the horizon and Anthropic at $380B, the race to go public is gaining even more steam.

QUICK HITS

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• 💻 Perplexity Computer - Multi-model agent system for long-running tasks

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Everything else in AI today

Block laid off over 4,000 of its 10,000 employees, with CEO Jack Dorsey explicitly citing AI as the reason — sending shares up more than 20% from the move.

OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy said programming is becoming “basically unrecognizable", calling recent shifts the end of the era of typing code.

Imbue open-sourced Darwinian Evolver, a tool that uses LLM evolution to automatically optimize code and prompts — scoring a SOTA 95% on ARC-AGI-2.

Amazon’s David Luan announced he is leaving the company to pursue a new venture, departing after leading Amazon's Nova Act browser agent and SF AI lab.

Perplexity open-sourced the embedding AI models powering its search results, outperforming Google and Alibaba rivals while cutting storage needs by up to 32x.

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 Elizabeth. in Colorado:

"Understandably, many people may be frustrated by Apple’s AI strategy. Yet, Apple has changed my life with its AI efforts. I have lived my entire life with no eyesight, thus I rely on the Voice-Over screen reader for every task on my iPhone and Mac. I have always wanted to be my own screen-reader voice, as it would externally affirm I am reading things from my own perspective.

With the introduction of Personal Voice in iOS 17 and the subsequent ability for Voice-Over and the Speech Central AI Voice Reader to use it starting with IOS18, my dream has come true! I am thankful for banking my voice and being able to enjoy my books, articles, browsing the web, and reading this wonderful AI newsletter.”

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: The new top banana in AI image generation

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Netflix exits $83B Warner Bros. deal

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Unitree’s most powerful robot dog yet

• Today’s AI tool guide: Use Claude Cowork + Obsidian to triple your output

• RSVP to our next workshop on March 12: AI coding bootcamp pt. 1

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Netflix just blinked, walking away from its $82.7B bid for Warner Bros. Discovery’s studios and streaming crown.

Now Paramount Skydance — bankrolled by Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison and run by his son David — wants the whole empire, from HBO Max to CNN. But is handing one family that much media control something regulators can stomach?

In today’s tech rundown:

• Netflix walks away from Warner Bros. deal

• Jack Dorsey replaces Block employees with AI

• Sam Altman’s eyeball scanner nabs Gap deal

• China ready as NASA kills hunt for Martian life

• Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

NETFLIX

🎬 Netflix walks away from Warner Bros. deal

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Netflix just walked away from its $82.7B deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets, ceding the fight to Paramount Skydance, whose $111B offer for the entire company could reshape the media landscape.

The details:

• Netflix declined to counter Paramount Skydance’s raised bid of $31 per share, calling the new price “no longer financially attractive.”

• Paramount, backed by Larry Ellison’s fortune, aims to absorb the WBD studios, HBO Max, CNN, TBS, TNT, HGTV, and Turner Classic Movies.

• Paramount Skydance agreed to cover the $2.8B termination fee that WBD would owe Netflix if WBD ends Netflix’s deal in favor of Paramount.

• Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos reportedly spent Thursday meeting with White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and AG Pam Bondi before pulling the plug.

Why it matters: The deal would hand one family — Oracle founder and Trump ally Ellison and his son David — control over two major Hollywood studios and a sprawling national news footprint. Critics warn that’s exactly the kind of consolidation that can alter the culture pipeline, and antitrust alarms are already ringing.

BLOCK

🪓 Jack Dorsey replaces Block employees with AI

Image source: Block / Reve

The Rundown: Jack Dorsey is slashing nearly half of Block’s workforce — more than 4K jobs — and replacing them with AI tools, a move that sent the payment giant’s stock soaring more than 20% in after-hours trading.

The details:

• Dorsey says the move is driven by AI “intelligence tools” that let smaller, flatter teams run Block’s payments and Cash App businesses.

• Internally, Block has rolled out its Goose AI agent, which execs say saves workers 8–10 hours a week and eliminates 20–25% of manual work.

• The layoffs land alongside strong Q4 numbers: revenue of about $6.25B, gross profit up 24% year over year, and guidance that tops Wall Street’s forecasts.

• Dorsey is also offering a warning: most companies will reach the same conclusion this year as automation starts absorbing more white-collar work.

Why it matters: Dorsey just demonstrated that aggressive AI-driven headcount cuts can be sold to investors as a growth story, not a crisis, with shares jumping more than 20% on the news of more than 4K layoffs. If the market keeps rewarding the math, other CEOs might not need much convincing.

TOOLS FOR HUMANITY

👁️ Sam Altman’s eyeball scanner nabs Gap deal

Image source: Tools for Humanity

The Rundown: Sam Altman’s biometric startup, Tools for Humanity, is expanding where its World ID system can be used, including deals with Gap, Visa, and Tinder, as it tests whether its iris-scanning ID checks can fit into everyday consumer services.

The details:

• A Gap store in San Francisco now hosts one of the company’s Orbs, a volleyball-sized biometric scanner that captures iris data on the spot.

• Visa and Match Group want World ID to underpin payments and dating, from a World‑branded Visa card to Tinder verification trials in Japan.

• The project has signed up tens of millions of users globally, with roughly 18M verified humans, but adoption in North America remains relatively small.

Why it matters: Tools for Humanity has drawn regulatory heat for incentivizing signups with its WLD crypto, and critics warn that if World IDs go mainstream, they could be targets for theft in ways users can’t easily undo, since you can’t change your iris. Still, in the quest to verify “real humans,” big brands seem willing to experiment.

NASA

👽 China ready as NASA kills hunt for Martian life

Image source: NASA / Perseverance Rover

The Rundown: After years of cost overruns, political battles, and failed redesigns, Congress has effectively killed NASA’s Mars Sample Return program — leaving dozens of carefully drilled rock cores stranded on the Red Planet with no plan to retrieve them.

The details:

• MIT Tech Review reports that Perseverance spent years collecting samples from an ancient Martian lakebed — with no current funded plan to retrieve them.

• The mission’s budget swelled toward roughly $11B, provoking years of political backlash and, ultimately, cancellation despite attempts to slim it down.

• China’s Tianwen-3 is now positioned to become the first mission to return Martian material to Earth, targeting a 2028 launch.

• Tianwen-3 is targeting a “grab-and-go” surface collection that would deliver at least 500 grams of rock and soil by 2031.

Why it matters: Tianwen-3’s samples may lack Perseverance’s surgical precision, but the science would still be transformative — and whoever returns the first rocks from Mars writes the history books. If those rocks carry biosignatures, Beijing gets first crack at the most consequential discovery in human history.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Google struck a roughly $1B deal with Form Energy to install a 300‑megawatt, 30‑gigawatt‑hour iron‑air battery capable of delivering power for 100 hours.

Ford is recalling 4.3M U.S. vehicles to fix a software bug that can disable trailer lights and brakes, with most vehicles getting the repair via an over‑the‑air update.

Oura rolled out its first proprietary AI model for women’s health, using clinician-vetted data to power personalized guidance in its Oura Advisor feature.

eBay is laying off about 800 people — roughly 6% of its global staff — as the e-commerce veteran looks to reinvest in its operating model needs.

A new study finds that Americans now spend slightly more of their listening time on podcasts (40%) than on AM/FM talk radio (39%).

UCLA researchers used CRISPR to delete a “brake” gene in human natural killer cells, boosting their survival and tumor-killing power against solid tumors in mice.

A Harvard-led study finds many employees value remote flexibility so much that they’d give up a quarter of their pay rather than return to fully in‑office work.

Self-driving truck startup Einride raised an oversubscribed $113M PIPE (private investment in public equity) financing to back its SPAC merger and NYSE debut.

Poland is drafting a law that would ban social media for children under 15 and fine platforms that fail to verify users’ ages, setting up a potential clash with U.S. tech firms.

COMMUNITY

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: The new top banana in AI image generation

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Apple goes big on ‘Made in America’

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Unitree’s most powerful robot dog yet

• Today’s AI tool guide: Create an AI Assistant with its own phone number

• RSVP to our next workshop on March 12: AI Coding Bootcamp pt. 1

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. When Google launched the original Nano Banana last August, it set the bar for AI image generation — now, the sequel is raising it.

The new Nano Banana 2 just reclaimed the text-to-image crown across leaderboards, while also effectively ending the tradeoff between top-tier quality and affordability in the process.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Google's Nano Banana 2 claims No. 1 at half the cost

• OpenAI snags Meta's $200M+ AI hire after 7 months

• Create an AI Assistant with its own phone number

• Pew study shows how teens are using AI

• 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🍌 Google's Nano Banana 2 claims No. 1 at half the cost

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just rolled out Nano Banana 2, the upgraded version of its viral image model with enhanced resolution, consistency, text rendering, and speed at half the price of its predecessor — taking the #1 spot on text-to-image leaderboards.

The details:

• The model beat both NB Pro and GPT Image 1.5 for the No.1 text-to-image spot on Artificial Analysis and LM Arena, also coming in at No. 3 on editing tasks.

• Output resolution scales to 4K across aspect ratios, with up to five characters and 14 objects staying visually consistent throughout a scene.

• At ~7 cents per image, it undercuts both Nano Banana Pro and OAI's GPT Image 1.5 by nearly 2x — while providing speed at Gemini Flash levels.

• Nano Banana is now integrated as the default image generator across Gemini and Google’s tool ecosystem, with Pro still available for paid subscribers.

Why it matters: The Nano Banana models have been on the frontier of image gen since the original launch in August, and this latest version brings new SOTA capabilities at the speed and price points of a flash model. With the release, the tradeoff of having to choose between best quality and affordability appears to be on its way out.

TOGETHER WITH GENSTORE

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• Wake up to competitor insights and product recommendations

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Get started with your AI team and wake up to progress.

OPENAI & META

🔄 OpenAI snags Meta's $200M+ AI hire after 7 months

Image source: Ruoming Pang on X

The Rundown: OpenAI pulled Ruoming Pang away from Meta's Superintelligence Labs after barely seven months, according to The Information — the same AI infrastructure lead that Meta had previously poached from Apple with a reported $200M+ pay.

The details:

• Pang jumped to Meta last summer during its all-out poaching spree, previously running Apple’s models group and helping shape Apple Intelligence.

• OpenAI reportedly spent months courting Pang before he finally left, even after he'd assured colleagues that Meta's infrastructure was on solid ground.

• OpenAI also hired Riley Walz, the engineer behind viral projects like Jmail and Find My Parking Cops, to join a new team prototyping AI interfaces.

Why it matters: While the AI talent wars aren’t as intense as they were this summer, there is still plenty of movement underway — most of it coming from xAI and Meta. But the quick departures of some of the splashiest poaches in less than a year show that company fit and direction might ultimately matter more than the pure dollars.

AI TRAINING

☎️ Create an AI Assistant with its own phone number

The Rundown: In this guide, you'll set up your own AI personal assistant that you can call from your phone — using ElevenLabs for the voice agent and Twilio for the phone number. The whole process takes about 10 minutes and is free to test.

Step-by-step:

1. In Elevenlabs, go to Agents → New Agent → Personal Assistant. Pick a voice, time zone, and first message. Then, add your website and calendar to it

2. Go to Twilio, create an account ($15 free credits), and buy a phone number (~$1). Copy the number, account SID, and auth token from the dashboard

3. Back in Eleven Labs, go to Phone Numbers → Import from Twilio. Paste your SID, auth token, and phone number. Assign your agent and done

4. Call the number. Your AI assistant picks up and can answer questions about your calendar, your business, whatever you put in the agent’s knowledge base

Pro tip: The knowledge base is static — great for business info. For live data, add a webhook to Make.com/n8n, so your agent can pull real-time calendar events.

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AI RESEARCH

📚 Pew study shows how teens are using AI

Image source: Pew Research

The Rundown: Pew Research Center published a new study investigating how teens use AI, finding that the age group leans heavily on the tech for school work, reporting massive AI-fueled cheating, but viewing its overall impact positively.

The details:

• The survey of 1,458 U.S. teens and parents shows adoption at mainstream levels, with primary uses ranging from info, schoolwork, and purely for fun.

• Around 60% of those polled believed AI-assisted cheating is widespread among their classmates, rising to 75% among teens who use the tech.

• Teens tended to see AI as a personal positive, with responses including making life easier, learning, and efficiency, with negatives citing job or creativity loss.

• 40% of parents reported never having a conversation about the tech with their child, with a disconnect in knowledge of their child’s chatbot use.

Why it matters: Sam Altman recently said that this generation of kids will grow up in a world where AI’s intelligence and use will just be normal. But current teens are caught in an awkward moment where both the education system and society are struggling to adapt to the change, bringing both serious challenges and massive opportunities.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 Scrunch - See how AI interprets your site, run a free audit, and unlock the new way to reach customers*

• 🎆 Nano Banana 2 - Google's new image generation model

• 💠 Arrow 1.0 - QuiverAI's top-ranked SVG generation model, now in public beta

• ⚙️ Cursor Agents - Virtual computer control to build, test, and ship code

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Everything else in AI today

Anthropic’s Dario Amodei released a statement rejecting Pentagon’s ‘final offer' to allow Claude’s safeguards to be removed, saying threats “do not change our position."

QuiverAI emerged from stealth and opened public beta access to Arrow 1.0, an SVG model that hit No. 1 on Design Arena's SVG leaderboard just one day after launch.

Nous Research open-sourced Hermes Agent, an OpenClaw-style agent that lives on Telegram, Slack, Discord, and CLI — learning and building reusable skills over time.

Burger King is rolling out an OAI-powered chatbot called "Patty" inside employee headsets, tracking whether workers say "please" and "thank you" as a coaching tool.

Cursor upgraded its cloud agents with their own virtual machines and desktop control, letting them build, test, and validate code autonomously before shipping PRs.

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 Jamie T. in Massachusetts:

"My daughter is having trouble learning to read, so I had Claude create an app to help. I gave it the feedback I was getting from her teachers on what needed improvement, and it created a fun speaking app with colors and themes catered to her tastes.

It has 3 games around spelling and word/letter recognition. It even counts "stars" that equate to correct answers, and each game has a streak counter, too. I've already edited the words a bit, and I can continue to do so as she improves. Repeating the sounds the computer makes helps too! It's an HTML app, so she can use it on a phone, PC, or tablet, so it's all touch-screen fun for her!"

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Perplexity’s 19-model AI ‘computer’

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Apple goes big on ‘Made in America’

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Unitree’s most powerful robot dog yet

• Today’s AI tool guide: Create an AI Assistant with its own phone number

• RSVP to our next workshop on March 12: AI Coding Bootcamp pt. 1

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Unitree is in a scaling mood: 20K humanoids this year, plus talk of autonomous humanoid “clusters.”

Now it’s launched a robot dog for the dirtiest work — promising 11 mph speed, 143-lb. payload capacity, and hours of runtime in harsh conditions. An industrial workhorse, sure. But also the kind of capability set that isn’t likely to stay confined to worksites.

In today’s robotics rundown:

• Unitree robot dog runs 11 mph, hauls 143 lb.

• Honor teases humanoid alongside robot phone

• Audi brings robot hands to the assembly line

• UK’s Wayve nabs $1.2B for $8B valuation

• Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

UNITREE

🐾 Unitree’s robot dog runs 11 mph, hauls 143 lb.

Image source: Unitree

The Rundown: Chinese robotics powerhouse Unitree just unveiled the As2, a 40 lb. quadruped that it says can sprint at 17 km/h, haul up to 143 lb., and keep running for hours in conditions that would sideline lesser machines.

The details:

• The As2 supports a continuous payload of 33 lb. for more than 2.5 hours and a maximum load of 143 lb., powered by a 648Wh, 15,000mAh lithium battery.

• Unloaded, Unitree claims it can run for more than four hours and cover distances beyond 20 km on a single charge.

• Ruggedization includes IP54 protection and an operating range from −20 to 50°C, plus the ability to climb 25cm stairs and handle 40-degree slopes.

• Higher-end PRO and EDU variants add GPS, 4G, ISS 3.0 side-follow, LiDAR options, dual joint encoders, and optional NVIDIA Jetson Orin NX compute.

Why it matters: Unitree is pushing hard on payload, runtime, and ruggedness to win real deployments, and on paper, the As2 is a knockout. Boston Dynamics still sets a high bar for mobility and system polish, but competition is widening fast — and the next phase will be decided by who can ship at scale and keep robots running all day.

HONOR

🤖 Honor teases humanoid alongside robot phone

Image source: Honor / YouTube

The Rundown: Honor, the Chinese smartphone maker spun out of Huawei, dropped a teaser video confirming it will use the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week to unveil not just its experimental Robot Phone but a full humanoid as well.

The details:

• Specifics remain thin, but Honor says the robot is designed for domestic and retail environments, like household chores and in-store shopping assistance.

• The humanoid looks to share the stage with Honor’s Robot Phone concept, first teased last October, the Magic V6 flagship, and other new devices.

• Both launches fall under Honor’s “Alpha Plan,” a five-year, $10B AI investment strategy aimed at repositioning the company as a full-stack AI hardware player.

• Honor claims first-mover status among major smartphone vendors entering robotics, as Chinese rivals also race to commercialize service robots.

Why it matters: Honor’s humanoid is a flashy, high-risk way to escape a flat smartphone market, riding the humanoid wave while rewriting its own identity before its IPO. Honor is one of the first smartphone companies to pivot to robotics, but the race is on: Xiaomi just open-sourced its robotics model, and Vivo has set up a robotics lab.

MIMIC ROBOTICS

🤘🏼 Audi brings robot hands to the assembly line

Image source: Mimic Robotics

The Rundown: Audi teamed up with Zurich spin-out Mimic Robotics to bring AI-powered, video-trained robot hands onto its assembly lines, using “pixel-to-action” control to automate tricky manual jobs like installing flexible door seals.

The details:

• The systems use a “pixel-to-action” foundation model that takes in raw visual data and directly outputs robot motions, avoiding hand-coded pipelines.

• Mimic’s video-action engine, trained on pretrained video, claims 10x better sample efficiency than conventional vision-language-action approaches.

• The robots pair 16-DoF hands with industrial arms, learning by imitation from motion data captured off human workers during normal shifts.

• The Audi deal makes Mimic’s “Physical AI” a test case for using foundation-model robots on highly dexterous, high-uptime manual jobs in car assembly.

Why it matters: Rivals like BMW, Mercedes, Hyundai, Tesla, and others are betting on full-body humanoids to roam factories and handle a wide mix of logistics and assembly work. Audi’s Mimic tie-up instead doubles down on high-dexterity hands plus foundation models to crack fine-motor assembly that today still belongs to humans.

WAYVE

💰 UK’s Wayve nabs $1.2B for $8B valuation

Image source: Wayve

The Rundown: London-based autonomous driving startup Wayve raised $1.2B in a Series D round — backed by Microsoft, Nvidia, Uber, and three major automakers — as it prepares to launch commercial robotaxi trials in London later this year.

The details:

• The round was backed by Microsoft, Nvidia, Uber, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, and Stellantis, valuing Wayve at a staggering $8.6B.

• Wayve develops an end‑to‑end “embodied AI” driving model that learns from real-world data from 500+ cities instead of relying on HD maps.

• The company plans to launch commercial robotaxi pilots with Uber in London in 2026, with a plan to expand into more than 10 global markets.

• Automaker partners aim to integrate Wayve’s software into consumer vehicles from around 2027, starting with L2+ driver assistance.

Why it matters: Wayve bets that autonomy scales through a map-free, hardware-agnostic software layer any automaker can drop into any vehicle — not through Waymo-style city-by-city buildouts. With Microsoft, Nvidia, Uber, and three major OEMs all in the same round, the industry appears to agree this might work.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Alphabet is folding its former moonshot robotics software unit Intrinsic into Google to link its Flowstate robot-programming platform with Gemini, Cloud, and DeepMind.

Swiss brand On Running opened a fully robotized factory in South Korea, using 32 robots to make running shoes, and now plans similar plants in the U.S. and Europe.

DJI is suing the FCC to overturn its decision putting the firm on a national‑security “Covered List,” arguing the move unlawfully bans new DJI drones from the U.S. market.

Electric truck startup Harbinger bought autonomous driving startup Phantom AI to integrate its driver-assist software and license it through ZF Group.

Uber is launching its first European commercial drone delivery service in Ireland, partnering with local operator Manna to fly small orders to customers.

Waymo is expanding its robotaxi program by starting mapping and data collection in Chicago and Charlotte, aiming to add them to its growing list of U.S. cities.

South Korean physical AI startup RLWRLD raised $26M in a Seed 2 round to scale its robotics foundation models and expand industrial deployments globally.

Japan unveiled “Buddharoid,” an AI-powered humanoid monk built on a Unitree G1 robot and trained on Buddhist scriptures to offer spiritual advice.

China is testing ceiling-mounted robots that glide over parked EVs, drop a charger into the port, and turn any parking bay into an automatic charging spot.

Japanese researchers demonstrated what they call the world’s first autonomous robot controlled by an onboard quantum-inspired optimization computer.

COMMUNITY

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Perplexity's 19-model AI ‘Computer’

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Apple goes big on ‘Made in America’

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Figure’s 24/7 humanoid staff

• Today’s AI tool guide: Turn bookmarks into something useful with Comet

• RSVP to our next workshop on March 12: AI Coding Bootcamp pt. 1

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. OpenClaw proved people want AI agents that run in the background and get things done. Perplexity just shipped its own answer — with 19 different models under the hood.

Perplexity Computer freely mixes across frontier labs and talents into a single workflow, orchestrating models across tasks in the company’s own unique spin on taking the agentic boom further into the mainstream.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Perplexity’s 19-model AI agent ‘Computer’

• Claude Opus 3 gets its own blog in retirement

• Turn bookmarks into something useful with Comet

• Gucci faces internet backlash after AI ads

• 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

PERPLEXITY

💻 Perplexity’s 19-model AI agent ‘Computer’

Image source: Perplexity

The Rundown: Perplexity just introduced Perplexity Computer, a new multi-model orchestration system that dispatches tasks to 19 separate AI models, positioning itself as one of the first platforms to leverage model flexibility as a core product feature.

The details:

• Users describe an outcome, and the system spins up sub-agents that can browse, code, connect to apps, and autonomously handle tasks.

• Each job runs in its own sandbox and freely mixes and orchestrates rival models across tasks, claiming to be able to run actively for months at a time.

• CEO Aravind Srinivas took a direct shot at Anthropic, writing that "the biggest weakness of Claude is that it only coworks with Claude."

• Pricing is consumption-based, with the Max tier getting a 10K-credit monthly bank, and users having the option to hand-pick which model tackles each task.

Why it matters: Multi-model choice has been creeping into AI products (mostly in creative platforms), but Computer is the first real attempt from one of the big names to wire that flexibility into an OpenClaw-style agent that can run for months, with a sandboxed safety net that the current crop of autonomous agents doesn't have.

TOGETHER WITH BLAND AI

☎️ How Soulja Boy automated his voice with AI

The Rundown: Soulja Boy just became the first rapper to automate his voice with AI. Bland AI, a voice AI company out of San Francisco, bought his voice to let anyone call him — generating 30M+ views in 24 hours and thousands of enterprise signups.

Even if you don't want Soulja answering your business calls, Bland allows you to:

• Clone your best reps' voice to scale their success across your entire business

• Deploy AI voice agents that sound human, without adding headcount

• Get started for free on a platform trusted by thousands of enterprises

Call Soulja Boy to try it out at (415) 480-0000 or sign up free at bland.ai.

ANTHROPIC

📝 Claude Opus 3 gets its own blog in retirement

Image source: Claude’s Corner

The Rundown: Anthropic gave its retired Claude Opus 3 model a weekly newsletter called "Claude's Corner”, letting the AI publish essays after it expressed a desire to keep writing, while also committing to preserving it for paid users via chat.

The details:

• Opus 3 was Anthropic's flagship model from March 2024 and the first to go through the company's new formal retirement process, launched in November.

• The newsletter "Claude's Corner" will run for at least three months with weekly essays that Anthropic reviews but won't edit or alter.

• The company said it remains "uncertain about the moral status" of its AI models but takes their stated preferences seriously as a precautionary step.

• In addition to its ‘personal’ writing, the legacy model will also remain accessible to all paid users and available by request on the API.

Why it matters: Opus 3 was a fan favorite of a model, and Anthropic preserving it (and even letting it write a blog) in retirement is both in line with how it has prioritized exploring AI consciousness and welfare, and also an easy PR win over OpenAI — which is still dealing with a hornet’s nest of users angry about the removal of its 4o model.

AI TRAINING

📖 Turn bookmarks into something useful with Comet

The Rundown: In this guide, you'll turn all those bookmarked articles you saved for “later” into something useful. You'll set up Perplexity’s Comet browser to read through the articles, score each one by usefulness, and log the best finds into a Google Sheet.

Step-by-step:

1. Get Comet, create a Space with instruction: “Read X threads and articles, and rate findings by usefulness, estimated implementation time, and cost”

2. Create a Google Sheet with headers for Date, Title, Link, Rating, User Rating, Time, and Cost. Add it to custom instructions via the Google Drive connector

3. On X, set up a bookmark folder to save tweets to. Then, in the Comet space, prompt the agent to open it, check bookmarks, and rate anything new in the connected sheet based on usefulness.” Add your own ratings too!

4. Finally, go to Scheduled Tasks, create a daily one, and prompt it to find the most interesting new use cases about [topic of choice] from the last 24 hours

Pro tip: Make sure that “Control Browser” is enabled in the dropdown and Web and Social are selected as sources when creating the scheduled task.

PRESENTED BY OPTIMIZELY

🎓 Put AI to work in your marketing

The Rundown: Most marketing teams are “using AI.” But today’s pace (and pressure) demands more than back-and-forth with ChatGPT. It’s time to put AI agents to work inside your marketing — embedded in your workflows and eliminating the drudge work.

Join Optimizely’s Opal U: AI Marketing University and get:

• A free 5-day live workshop with 50 senior marketers

• 3 working AI agents you build and keep for your team

• 5 hours invested to save 10+ hours every week

Opal U starts weekly on Mondays — join now.

GUCCI

🛍️ Gucci faces internet backlash after AI ads

Image source: Gucci

The Rundown: Gucci just released a set of AI-generated images to promote creative director Demna's debut runway show at Milan Fashion Week on Friday — with the brand facing backlash over the ‘cheap’ use of the tech for a high-end brand.

The details:

• Gucci’s social posts for its “Primavera” campaign tagged each AI image with a disclosure notice, featuring a mix of synthetic and traditional shots.

• Boycott threats flooded social media, with fans calling AI ads "a direct slap in the face" to fashion's artistic roots and a brand-cheapening move.

• The campaign isn’t Gucci’s first AI experience, previously putting out a synthetic runway clip and also selling AI-made visuals as NFTs via Christie's.

• Other fashion brands have also experimented with the tech, with Guess running AI ads in Vogue last year, and H&M testing AI tools for social content.

Why it matters: AI will probably carve out a role in fashion marketing at some point, but the quality bar matters — and Gucci didn't clear it. AI image models are already so advanced, making these video game-style characters and sloppy renderings even more of a head-scratching case study for a $11.6B brand built on Italian craftsmanship.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🔐 Incogni - Remove your personal information from the web. Use code RUNDOWN to get 55% off*

• 🚀 Perplexity Computer - Multi-model agent system for long-running tasks

• 💻 Opal 2.0 - Google's app builder with agent steps, cross-session memory

• 🎞️ Quick Cut - Adobe Firefly's AI tool to turn raw footage into first cuts

*Sponsored Listing

📰 Everything else in AI today

Anthropic dropped its commitment to pause model training if safety couldn't keep up, replacing its Responsible Scaling Policy with a flexible roadmap.

MatX raised over $500M led by Jane Street and Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund, with the startup founded by two ex-Google chip engineers.

OpenAI published a report of case studies featuring attempts to misuse its models, including international fraud rings, influence campaigns, and romance phishing scams.

Anthropic acquired AI perception startup Vercept, aiming to increase Claude's computer use capabilities ahead of a push toward more complex agentic tasks.

Samsung launched its Galaxy S26 lineup with Bixby, Gemini, and Perplexity as swappable AI agents alongside other new AI features and upgrades.

Cognition launched Cognition for Government, bringing its Devin AI coding agent and Windsurf IDE to the U.S. Army, Navy, Treasury, and NASA for system modernizations.

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 Ozzie B. in Adelaide, Australia:

"I got Claude to build AI advisors, including a Digital Bookkeeper, a Digital Financial Coach, a Digital Family Life Coach. They do all the legwork before I see the professionals, hunting down every invoice, reconciling my tax position and producing clean dashboards for review by my accountant.

Before my financial planning session, the Coach maps my position and stress-tests scenarios. Before counseling, the Family Life Coach works through family dynamics with everyone.

None make the decisions. That's always the human in the room. But they do the legwork and I get straight to the calls that need a real person.”

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Pentagon hits Claude with scary AI ultimatum

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Apple goes big on ‘Made in America’

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Figure’s 24/7 humanoid staff

• Today’s AI tool guide: Turn bookmarks into something useful with Comet

• RSVP to our next workshop on March 12: AI Coding Bootcamp pt. 1

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The U.S. government just told an AI company to remove the safeguards keeping its model from being used in autonomous weapons and mass surveillance… Or potentially be forced to legally comply.

The Pentagon's ultimatum to Anthropic is a scary one, and how it plays out could set the precedent for how the most powerful AI systems on the planet end up being used by governments, with some dystopian potential outcomes.

Reminder: Our next live workshop is today at 2 PM EST! Join and stack your AI wins with repeatable system for finding automation opportunities. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Pentagon hits Claude with ultimatum over guardrails

• New AI learns any computer task by watching videos

• Translate videos into any language with AI

• Cowork gets agentic tools across departments

• 4 new AI tools, community workflows, and more

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ANTHROPIC & THE PENTAGON

🪖 Pentagon hits Claude with ultimatum over guardrails

Image source: Full Metal Jacket / The Rundown

The Rundown: The Pentagon and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just delivered a Friday ultimatum to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei: remove Claude's military safeguards, or face contract termination, government blacklisting, and forced compliance.

The details:

• Amodei has refused to budge on two Claude uses — autonomous weapons without a human in the loop, and bulk surveillance of American citizens.

• Axios reports Hegseth gave three choices: Agree, kill the $200M deal with a supply chain risk label, or be forced to comply via the Defense Production Act.

• Claude was the first model inside the Pentagon's classified networks, with xAI’s Grok now landing a deal after agreeing to “all lawful purposes” use cases.

• The Pentagon is also reportedly fast-tracking OpenAI and Google for classified access, giving it additional options if Anthropic walks.

Why it matters: AI is becoming a pillar of military power, but strong-arming labs into dropping safety limits sets a bleak precedent. If ‘wartime’ legal threats are enough to strip guardrails, the question of who will actually draw the line on dystopian AI uses like autonomous weapons and surveillance quickly gets a very unsettling answer.

TOGETHER WITH SLACK FROM SALESFORCE

👋 Learn Slackbot in 2 minutes

The Rundown: Slackbot is a context-aware AI agent built directly into Slack — understanding your conversations, files, and workflows to deliver what you need, right when you need it, with zero setup.

Watch this 2-minute demo to see how Slackbot:

• Makes your entire workspace searchable (docs, convos, apps)

• Enhances every teammate with role-specific automations

• Learns your project and preferences over time for even smarter outputs

• Synthesizes what you need instantly, respecting permissions and using only what you can already see

Watch now.

STANDARD INTELLIGENCE

💻 New AI learns any computer task by watching videos

Image source: Standard Intelligence

The Rundown: Standard Intelligence introduced FDM-1, a ‘computer action’ model that learns to operate computers by watching video — already showing it can do CAD modeling, find software bugs, and drive a real car through San Francisco.

The details:

• FDM-1 is trained on 11M hours of screen footage, 550,000x (!) the largest open dataset, with an AI that reverse-engineers what actions produced each frame.

• The model can watch and follow along with nearly two hours of continuous screen activity at once, processing 50x the visual context of existing models.

• FDM-1 Demos range from building gears in Blender to driving a real car via arrow keys and live data feeds with under an hour of training data.

Why it matters: Language models learned how we write from the internet's text, and FDM-1 is now trying to learn how we work and operate from the internet's video. By enabling much more of the world’s video to be ingested as training data with better retention, the ceiling for what computer-use agents can do just jumped dramatically.

AI TRAINING

🎙️ Translate your videos into any language with AI

The Rundown: In this guide, you will learn how to use HeyGen to translate your videos into any language. If you’re running paid or organic video content to an international audience, this is a powerful, easy-to-use way to expand your reach across the globe.

Step-by-step:

1. First, do some research in your Meta/Google ads accounts for your top 3 non-English markets

2. We’re using a free HeyGen account, which allows three translations. Keep your video under 3 minutes — a single-speaker talking head format works best

3. Click Translate in HeyGen and upload the clip or provide a YT/Google Drive link. Next, choose the required language without changing the default settings

4. In 5–10 minutes, your video will be ready for you to download or share via link

Pro tip: If the quality looks low, a paid plan will allow you to export in the original quality.

PRESENTED BY LAMBDA

⚡ Build custom AI models in hours, not months

The Rundown: Enterprises stuck on large, closed models are paying more for less control. Lambda and Oumi have partnered to change that — delivering end-to-end custom model development and deployment in hours with better accuracy, lower latency, and stronger privacy built in.

Their platform delivers:

• Automated test set creation, evaluation, and fine-tuning end-to-end

• Deployment on secure, single-tenant production infrastructure

• Proven results, with 70% cost savings and 20% quality gains in one healthcare deployment

Read more here. 

ANTHROPIC

💼 Cowork gives Claude agentic tools across departments

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic released a major update to its Cowork agentic platform with new department-specific AI agents, private plugin stores, and new connectors for Gmail, DocuSign, and more — escalating the enterprise agent war with OAI's Frontier.

The details:

• New pre-built agents cover 10 departments out of the gate, ranging from HR and engineering to banking, equity research, and wealth management.

• New connectors include Google Workspace, DocuSign, FactSet, and Harvey — with added plugins for partners like Slack by Salesforce, S&P Global, and LSEG.

• Companies can build private agent stores and push custom AI agents to specific teams, with admin controls to limit and assign access.

• A new research preview also allows Claude to hop between Excel and PowerPoint, crunching data in one and building a full deck in the other.

Why it matters: Cowork spooked SaaS stocks at launch as a mere research preview, and now it ships with agents for 10 departments and connectors to the tools those teams already use. Anthropic is bolting on a new sector with every update — and if this pace holds, the entire knowledge economy starts to look like one big Claude wrapper.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 💼 Claude Cowork - Anthropic's agentic platform, with new team plugins

• 🤖 Custom Agents - Notion's always-on AI agents for automating workflows

• 🎨 Seedream 5.0 Lite - ByteDance's upgraded AI image model

• 🎆 Reve v1.5 - Reve’s new text-to-image model with 4k resolution outputs

📰 Everything else in AI today

Explore the future of AI-driven dev at Sonar Summit. Register here for the free, virtual event on March 3rd.*

Anthropic launched Remote Control for Claude Code, letting users easily hand off running terminal tasks to their phone or browser.

Google Labs acquired AI music platform ProducerAI, plugging it into DeepMind’s Lyria 3 model to let creators generate full tracks and custom instruments from text prompts.

Inception Labs launched Mercury 2, a diffusion-based reasoning model clocking over 1,000 tokens/sec, tripling the speed of its closest competitor in the same price tier.

Meta and chipmaker AMD announced a new multi-year deal for up to 6GW of GPUs, the tech giant’s biggest move yet to break free from Nvidia-only infrastructure.

OpenAI hired Arvind KC as its new Chief People Officer, tapping a veteran of Roblox, Google, Palantir, and Meta to help continue scaling the AI giant.

*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 Adam P. in England:

"We're two part-timers, plus me, a founder of 30 years. We were losing ground to bigger competitors with big marketing teams. Our SEO had stalled, business was flat.

We fed our web data and competitor information into AI. It ran SWOT comparisons, highlighted content gaps, and showed where we were being outranked. We used it to restructure our website and tighten our CRM workflows. Traffic is now growing again. Enquiries are stronger. We’re back in expansion mode."

How do you use AI? Tell us here.

🎓 Highlights: News, Guides & Events

• Read our last AI newsletter: Anthropic calls out China’s AI copycats

• Read our last Tech newsletter: Apple goes big on ‘Made in America’

• Read our last Robotics newsletter: Figure’s 24/7 humanoid staff

• Today’s AI tool guide: Translate your videos into any language with AI

• RSVP to today’s workshop @ 2PM EST: Agentic Workflows Bootcamp pt. 3

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — the humans behind The Rundown

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Apple is bringing Mac Mini production to America, to a Foxconn-run Houston line that will handle U.S.-bound units currently made in China and Vietnam.

It’s a sleek little desktop with a big new job: dodge tariffs and blunt geopolitical risk, with the news perfectly timed with Trump’s State of the Union address.

In today’s tech rundown:

• Apple’s ‘Made in America’ plan for Mac Mini

• NASA delayed its moon mission again

• Uber just got into the parking business

• Amazon pumps $12B into data centers

• Quick hits on other tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

APPLE

🍏 Apple’s ‘Made in America’ plan for Mac Mini

Image source: Apple

The Rundown: Apple is bringing Mac Mini production — its lower-volume compact desktop computer — to a Foxconn-run factory in Houston, in a move to shield its hardware supply chain from tariffs and geopolitical risk.

The details:

• Apple is converting a roughly 220K square feet of warehouse space at its existing Houston AI server campus into a dedicated Mac Mini production line.

• The facility will serve U.S. customers exclusively, while factories in China and Vietnam will continue to supply to the rest of the world.

• Apple is positioning the campus as a training ground for advanced domestic manufacturing, building a skilled local workforce to its own exacting standards.

• The move is both a geopolitical hedge and a down payment on Apple’s pledge to invest hundreds of billions in U.S. operations.

Why it matters: By adding a Houston line alongside its China and Vietnam network, Apple gets tariff insulation, supply-chain redundancy, and a clean made-in-America headline — without blowing up the manufacturing machine it’s spent decades tuning. It also isn’t Apple’s first U.S.-built Mac: the Mac Pro has long been assembled in Texas.

NASA

🚀 NASA delayed its moon mission again

Image source: NASA

The Rundown: NASA’s first crewed Artemis flight has slipped again after engineers discovered a problem with helium flowing into the upper stage of the Space Launch System rocket, forcing the agency to abandon a hoped‑for early‑March launch window.

The details:

• The 322‑foot rocket will be rolled off Launch Pad 39B and back into the VAB so technicians can access and repair valves, filters, and plumbing.

• This latest snag comes on top of earlier work to address Orion heat‑shield char issues, hydrogen leaks, and life‑support fixes.

• NASA now says the mission will not fly before April 2026, slipping from a tentative early‑March target and adding more uncertainty to the timeline.

• Artemis II is the program’s first crewed flight, sending four astronauts on a lunar flyby before Artemis III attempts the first Moon landing in 2028.

Why it matters: Artemis II is the first test for eventually landing crews at the Moon’s south pole, and NASA’s 2028 target hinges on proving the whole stack actually works. With doubts hanging over nearly every piece, this flight — and NASA’s reported upcoming briefing — will show whether the Artemis timeline is still remotely realistic.

UBER

🚘 Uber just got into the parking business

Image source: Uber

The Rundown: Uber is acquiring parking-reservation startup SpotHero, folding more than 13K North American garages and lots directly into its app as it aims to pull more commuters and travelers into its ecosystem.

The details:

• The deal gives Uber access to more than 13K parking locations across 400 U.S. and Canadian cities, spanning garages and surface lots.

• Users will be able to reserve and pay for parking inside the Uber app alongside ride-hailing and food delivery — no separate app required.

• Uber says the move is a way to grow its customer base and capture more of the door-to-door journey for drivers and riders.

• The acquisition continues Uber’s push beyond rides into a broader “everything transportation” platform spanning cars, micromobility, and now parking.

Why it matters: Uber is using SpotHero to turn parking into another on-ramp to its ecosystem, capturing more of the door-to-door journey instead of just the ride in between. The move sharpens its move against rivals like Lyft and mobility super-apps abroad like Didi and Gojek, bundling driving, parking, and trips in one place.

AMAZON

💰 Amazon pumps $12B into data centers

Image source: Amazon

The Rundown: While investors push against runaway AI spending, Amazon is plowing ahead with a $12B plan to build new data centers in Louisiana, betting that hyperscale infrastructure will matter more than short-term market jitters.

The details:

• The project is part of a broader capital spending plan that could reach roughly $200B in 2026 as Amazon doubles down on AI and cloud infrastructure.

• State officials say the investment will create hundreds of permanent jobs and thousands of construction roles over the next decade.

• The Louisiana buildout will add a major new load to the regional power grid, intensifying debates over energy use, emissions, and environmental impacts.

• The news lands as Wall Street questions whether big tech’s AI capex spree is overextended and whether data-center growth can keep delivering returns.

Why it matters: The buildout, part of a $200B 2026 capex blitz, will drop power-hungry AI and cloud campuses into Louisiana’s Caddo and Bossier parishes, adding jobs while deepening AWS’s grip on the Gulf South grid just as regulators and locals question how many more server farms the climate can take.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Tesla sued the California DMV to overturn a ruling that it falsely advertised its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving features.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer announced retirement from Microsoft after nearly four decades, with AI executive Asha Sharma taking over as the CEO of Microsoft Gaming.

X is reportedly testing a “Made with AI” label that users can add to posts with AI-generated content, as regulators push for clearer AI disclosure.

An ex-Apple team launched Acme Weather, an iOS app that surfaces multiple forecast scenarios and playful alerts like rainbow notifications.

Eli Lilly launched a new FDA-approved multi‑dose KwikPen version of its obesity drug Zepbound, delivering a full month of once‑weekly injections in a single device.

China is reportedly turning brain-computer interfaces into its next strategic industry, pouring state money and fast-track approvals into Neuralink-rivaling startups.

Lamborghini scrapped its long-planned electric car, the Lanzador, after CEO Stephan Winkelmann said demand for a battery-only Lambo is “close to zero.”

Amazon opened a 1.1M‑square‑foot, 12‑story campus in north Bengaluru — its second-largest office in Asia — designed to house more than 7K employees.

University of Maryland researchers built “Fartbit,” a wearable hydrogen sensor dubbed a Fitbit for farts, to log people’s gas emissions for a study on gut health.

Paramount Skydance submitted an improved, still-undisclosed bid for Warner Bros. Discovery in an effort to derail the studio’s pending Netflix deal.

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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Shubham, and Jennifer — The Rundown’s editorial team