Stay Ahead on AI.

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Amazon just deployed its millionth robot, transforming its warehouses into some of the most automated operations in the world.

With its new DeepFleet AI orchestrating fleets for lightning-fast deliveries, the future of logistics is here — and it’s robotic. But as machines take the lead, the question is: what’s left for human workers in this new automated era?

In today’s robotics rundown:

Amazon deploys its millionth robot
MIT’s new sensor gives robots X-ray vision
Galbot raises $153M to scale its semi-humanoid
Tiny humanoid gets huge boost post-marathon
Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AMAZON

🤯 Amazon deploys its millionth robot

Image source: Amazon

The Rundown: Amazon just hit a historic milestone, deploying its one-millionth warehouse robot, and cementing its status as the world’s largest operator and maker of mobile robotics.

The details:

The milestone robot was deployed in a Japanese fulfillment center, but Amazon’s robots now operate in over 300 global warehouses.
The massive fleet includes specialized robots like Hercules (heavy lifting), Proteus (autonomous navigation), and Vulcan (AI-powered picking).
Amazon also unveiled DeepFleet, a new generative AI model that works as an intelligent traffic management system to reduce robot congestion.
Early tests of DeepFleet show a 10% increase in warehouse throughput and a significant reduction in bottlenecks and robot idle time.

Why it matters: Thirteen years after introducing its first self-moving bots, Amazon’s ever-expanding robot fleet now works alongside 1.5M people — with job security fears only intensifying. These robots assist with 75% of global deliveries and are set to outnumber human staff soon.

MIT

👁️ MIT’s new sensor gives robots X-ray vision

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: MIT researchers unveiled a breakthrough wireless sensor, dubbed mmNorm, that could give warehouse robots a kind of “X-ray vision,” letting them spot hidden damage before a box is ever opened, ensuring ultimate quality control.

The details:

The system uses millimeter wave signals, like those in Wi-Fi, that can penetrate common shipping materials to create detailed 3D images of objects out of view.
This means a robot can “see” through a cardboard box, detecting if an item buried under packing is damaged without opening the package, even a bit.
The tech could be mounted on mobile robots in fulfillment centers, automating quality control and reducing the need for manual package checks.
It is designed to work with cluttered or even densely packed boxes, distinguishing between multiple overlapping objects.

Why it matters: The breakthrough tech spots hidden flaws — like a broken mug handle or a cracked circuit — that would normally go unnoticed until a box is opened. If adopted, it could streamline warehouse checks, slash returns from damaged goods, and raise the bar for automated quality control in logistics.

GALBOT

🤖 Galbot raises $153M to scale its semi-humanoid

Image source: Galbot

The Rundown: Beijing-based robotics startup Galbot has emerged as a serious new player with $153M in fresh funding and plans to deploy its “G1” semi-humanoid in 100 retail stores this year — it already runs unmanned convenience shops on its own.

The details:

Founded by Stanford scientist He Wang, Galbot has quickly become a leading name in embodied AI in China, raising $335M in just over two years.
Its flagship G1 robot is a semi-humanoid with wheels and dual arms, designed for customer interaction and inventory restocking, delivery, and packaging.
Galbot’s tech stack features an end-to-end VLA model and a proprietary dataset encompassing more than 10B recorded robotic actions.
The company has also formed a joint venture with Bosch Group’s investment arm, Boyuan Capital, to accelerate the commercialization of embodied AI.

Why it matters: Galbot says its G1 can handle 5K different types of items and only takes a day to deploy into a new retail store. Currently, the robot autonomously runs some 10 unmanned convenience shops in Beijing, with plans to deploy it in 100 more stores this year in China— a pace that global robotics startups are yet to match.

NOETIX ROBOTICS

👟 Tiny humanoid gets huge boost post-marathon

Image source: Noetix Robotics

The Rundown: Just months ago, Beijing’s Noetix Robotics was a struggling startup known for its quirky, Hobbit-sized robots. Now, it’s a breakout success after its N2 emerged as the unexpected star of the world’s first robot half-marathon in April.

The details:

The N2 was one of the few bots to finish the 21km course, while also clinching second place, sparking a surge of investor interest, Bloomberg reports.
Riding this wave of publicity, Noetix is now on track to deliver 2K robots by the year’s end and is in talks to raise $35M at a $200M valuation.
Following the marathon, the company’s staff has doubled to 100, with half dedicated to a new production line that churns out 10 N2s a day.
Two months ago, Noetix said it struggled to find a single customer, but now it is building two new factories and ramping up production to 10K robots a year.

Why it matters: The N2’s standout performance at the robot marathon, broadcast on Chinese TV, transformed a flailing startup into a rising contender in China’s fierce tech scene. Its predecessor, the N1, still sells for less than half the price of Unitree’s G1 — part of Noetix’s strategy to win customers with aggressive budget-friendly deals.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Tesla reportedly paused production of its Optimus humanoid robot amid a shakeup in the company’s robotics leadership and ongoing technical hurdles.

Genesis AI, a robotics software startup, raised $105M from both U.S. and Chinese investors in a rare cross-border deal in a geopolitically divided industry.

Researchers at University College London developed a system that lets robots work together to move objects using inaudible high-frequency sound waves.

Unitree surpassed $1.7B valuation and reached $140M in annual revenue as it rolls out both humanoid and quadruped robots to the market.

A new Australian study of six major Asian cities found that they are ill-prepared for the upcoming social and economic impact of a high-robot density.

Tech entrepreneur and investor Vinod Khosla predicts that AI will automate 80% of high-value jobs by 2030, bringing an unprecedented wave of disruption.

China’s Fuzhou University unveiled a new machine vision sensor that quickly adapts to extreme lighting in about 40 seconds, five times faster than humans.

Autonomous vehicle startup Beep's NAVI system launched in Jacksonville, Florida, with 14 autonomous Ford E-Transits for public and private transit.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, July 4th at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently wire MCP into both conversational AI and your favorite coding IDEs.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

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

Viral band exposed as AI rockstars

Click here to learn more and watch the conversation.

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. A viral band just proved that AI-generated music can thrive on Spotify — as long as nobody asks too many questions.

After hitting 500k monthly listeners before being outed as an "art hoax," Suno-powered band “The Velvet Sundown” might be a case for the future of music in the AI age… Whether fans realize it or not.

In today’s AI rundown:

AI band hits 500k listeners, admits to Suno use
Sakana AI teaches models to team up
Accelerate development workflows with Gemini CLI
Scientists build an AI that can think like humans
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI & MUSIC

🎸 AI band hits 500k listeners, admits to Suno use

Image source: The Velvet Sundown on Spotify

The Rundown: A mysterious band that went viral on Spotify with over 500,000 monthly listeners has been revealed as an "art hoax" in an article from Rolling Stone, with music created using the AI generator Suno.

The details:

The group's two albums appeared on streaming platforms in June with zero digital footprint, raising skepticism from Reddit users and musicians.
Music platform Deezer flagged potential AI usage, but Spotify made no disclosure requirements, allowing the tracks to spread across 30+ playlists.
The “band” initially said the AI claims are lazy and baseless on social media, with “adjunct member” Andrew Frelon calling it “marketing and trolling.”
Frelon said Suno was used to create at least some of the tracks, leveraging its "Persona" feature to maintain a consistent vocal style.

Why it matters: While the music tracks and band identity clearly didn’t pass the human test this time, future models and outputs certainly will (and are likely already hiding in plain sight). The question will increasingly become whether that matters — or if, like V-tubers, people will consume good content regardless of the “real” creator.

TOGETHER WITH RIME

🗣️ AI voices with personality

The Rundown: Rime offers the most realistic and expressive AI voices on the market today, creating agentic experiences that sound like everyday people, not robots or voice actors — while driving double digit increases in conversion for brands like Dominos.

Use Rime’s platform to:

Deliver natural voice AI agents that laugh, breathe, sigh, and sound human
Easily integrate multilingual text-to-speech (TTS) via API or on-prem
Start building today with a generous free tier

Try Rime’s live chat (or +1-662-727-8948) and start creating agentic experiences with personality today.

SAKANA AI

🫂 Sakana AI teaches models to team up

Image source: Sakana AI

The Rundown: Japanese lab Sakana AI just introduced AB-MCTS, a new algorithm that lets competing AI models collaborate on complex problems, using their collective intelligence to solve problems too difficult for any of the individual models.

The details:

The system combines ChatGPT, Gemini, and DeepSeek using adaptive search, solving 30% of ARC-AGI-2 puzzles versus just 23% for top solo models.
AB-MCTS dynamically allocates different models based on strengths, with some handling strategy while others excel at code within the same problem.
Researchers discovered models could build on each other's mistakes, with one model correcting flawed answers from another to reach correct solutions.
Sakana released the underlying framework as “TreeQuest,” an open-source tool for developers to build their own collaborative AI systems.

Why it matters: Sakana’s system aligns with a lot of trends in the AI world — from swarms of AI agents to “orchestrators” delegating to the most capable model for a certain task. Some of the biggest future breakthroughs might come from a team of AI specialists working together, not just a single powerful model.

AI TRAINING

💻 Accelerate development workflows with Gemini CLI

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google's new command-line AI tool brings powerful code analysis, app generation, and workflow automation directly to your terminal for free.

Step-by-step:

Open your terminal and write npm install -g @google/gemini-cli (requires Node.js 18+)
Sign in with your Google account for 60 requests/minute, 1,000/day
Try gemini "Explain the architecture of this codebase" for instant insights
Use for PR analysis, git conflicts, or generating apps from sketches

Pro tip: Start with simple codebase queries, then progress to complex automation.

PRESENTED BY SALESFORCE

🤖 ReMarkable's agent-first enterprise vision

The Rundown: reMarkable is scaling fast — and AI agents are helping them do it without burning out the human team. In this session, CTO Nico Cormier shares how they’re using Agentforce to automate customer support and internal IT, giving employees more time for deeper thinking and creativity.

In the interview, you’ll discover:

How customer support was transformed by “Mark,” their first agent
Why internal IT support got faster and simpler with AI agent "Saga" in Slack
Lessons on balancing AI with a human touch

AI RESEARCH

🧠 Scientists build an AI that can think like humans

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Researchers from Helmholtz Munich developed an AI model named Centaur, which simulates human decision-making and behavior with extreme accuracy from training on millions of choices from psychological experiments.

The details:

Researchers fine-tuned Meta's LLaMA using data from 60k participants across 160 psychology experiments, teaching it to replicate human decision patterns.
The resulting Centaur model accurately predicts human choices and behaviors across a wide variety of tasks, even ones it has never seen before.
Centaur outperformed 14 traditional cognitive models on 31/32 tasks, with accurate predictions in gambling, memory, and problem-solving scenarios.
Researchers aim to use Centaur as a "virtual laboratory" to test theories and better grasp cognitive processes behind human thought and mental health.

Why it matters: Centaur’s success suggests human cognition and decision-making might be much more predictable than we thought — meaning ASI-level models might be able to simulate scenarios with scary accuracy. It’s also a massive research tool, letting scientists run behavioral studies without big budgets or years of recruitment.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

🤖 Pangu Pro - Huawei’s new open-source reasoning model
🎨 FreePik - Now featuring unlimited image generation for Premium+ accounts
🧠 Perplexity - New Max tier with Labs, early access, and advanced support
🎨 Higgsfield Soul - Advanced image AI, now with free daily generations

💼 AI Job Opportunities

🎨 The Rundown - Designer (Brand & Platform)
🖥️ xAI - IT Systems Technician
📊 Deepmind - Applied Data Scientist
🧬 Meta - Research Scientist Manager, AI

📰 Everything else in AI today

Perplexity launched Max, a new $200/mo tier giving users unlimited access to its Labs tools, early access to new products like its Comet browser and advanced models.

OpenAI is expanding its Stargate partnership with Oracle, renting about 4.5 GW of data center capacity to power its AI energy needs.

Anthropic is reportedly on pace for $4B in annual revenue, 4x higher than its projections at the start of 2025.

Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis hinted at potential “playable world” models coming for its Veo 3 video generation model in a response on X.

Chinese tech giant Huawei open-sourced several of its Pangu models and the underlying reasoning tech, trained using the company’s own Ascend chips.

AI startup Lovable is reportedly set to raise a new $150M funding round, valuing the vibe-coding platform at close to $2B.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently wire MCP into both conversational AI and your favorite coding IDEs

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Sam Altman rallies the troops

Get leads from Google and ChatGPT on Autopilot.

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. “Someone breaking into our home" is how OpenAI executives are describing Meta's aggressive recruiting push, and Sam Altman just rallied the troops.

A fiery late-night message to staff revealed a CEO betting that purpose beats paychecks — and one that believes building AGI requires more than just the highest bidder.

In today’s AI rundown:

Altman fires back at Meta's poaching spree
Cloudflare creates pay-per-crawl AI marketplace
Create competitive intelligence reports with Claude
OpenAI’s high-level enterprise consulting business
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🔥 Altman fires back at Meta's poaching spree

Image source: GPT-4o / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman sent a fiery Slack message to researchers Monday night, according to WIRED — dismissing Meta's recruiting tactics as "distasteful" while pitching why building AGI at OpenAI beats chasing paychecks.

The details:

Altman said Meta failed to land their top targets despite offering packages up to $300M over four years, saying they had to go “quite far down their list.”
The CEO promised that OAI is evaluating compensation across the research division, arguing its stock has "much, much more upside" than Meta.
He also warned Meta's tactics would create "deep cultural problems," contrasting OAI's mission-driven culture with a "flavor of the week" mentality.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced “Meta Superintelligence Labs” to employees this week, with 11 new hires from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Why it matters: Sama is rallying the troops in the face of what CRO Mark Chen compared to “someone breaking into our home,” hoping that OpenAI’s culture and vibes can outlast Meta’s “mercenary” offers. But only time will tell how impactful the losses are on both OpenAI’s model lead and the reshaping of Meta’s AI operations.

TOGETHER WITH TELY AI

🔎 Are you invisible in AI search?

The Rundown: You’re in a niche industry. Customers search on Google, ChatGPT, and Perplexity — but your company doesn’t show up, because there’s no content answering their questions. Tely AI fixes that by analyzing your industry and site to find what people search for and creating expert-level articles on autopilot. No need for a marketing team.

With Tely AI, you can:

Start with 60 high-quality articles a month
Get indexed on Google in as little as 2 weeks
Be featured in ChatGPT and Perplexity answers
Enjoy full automation for topics, writing, and publishing

CLOUDFARE

🌐 Cloudflare creates pay-per-crawl AI marketplace

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: Web infrastructure giant Cloudflare just made a major change to automatically block AI crawlers by default on new websites, alongside the launch of a marketplace where publishers can charge bots micropayments for accessing content.

The details:

Cloudflare will require AI companies to get explicit permission before scraping any of the 20% of websites it protects, reversing decades of open web policies.
Publishers can set individual prices for AI crawlers through Pay per Crawl, choosing whether bots pay for training data, search results, or other uses.
Media outlets like Condé Nast, TIME, and The Atlantic joined the initiative, citing traffic losses due to AI answering queries without the original sources.
Data shows OAI’s crawlers scrape sites 1,700 times per referral sent back, with Anthropic at 73,000 times per referral — compared to 14-to-1 for Google.

Why it matters: This potentially positions Cloudflare as one of the gatekeepers for the data needed for a coming wave of agents that browse on our behalf. The marketplace could force healthier AI-publisher relationships, but also might create an internet divided between premium content and free sites that become AI's default sources.

AI TRAINING

📊 Create competitive intelligence reports with Claude

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Claude's web search and research capabilities to analyze competitors and generate interactive executive dashboards that reveal market opportunities.

Step-by-step:

Head over to Claude and enable Extended Thinking for deeper analysis
Request it to search 5-7 competitors with company overviews, funding data, and recent strategic moves
Select the “Research” tool to conduct a comprehensive competitive assessment covering financial analysis, product, and market positioning
Ask it to create an interactive executive dashboard using Artifacts

Pro tip: Claude Opus 4's research mode can conduct multi-source competitive analysis that rivals professional market research firms.

PRESENTED BY KORBIT

🏥 AI in HealthTech

The Rundown: In healthtech, moving fast is only part of the equation — shipping secure, high-quality software is the real challenge. This live event with InVita and Korbit explores how leading healthcare teams are integrating AI into the code review process to reduce risk, improve code quality, and free up developers for high-impact work.

Join and discover:

The hidden risks of manual code reviews in regulated healthcare software
Why AI-powered reviews are critical for security, quality, and team alignment
How InVita cut review time and improved developer productivity using Korbit

OPENAI

💼 OpenAI’s high-level enterprise consulting business

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: OpenAI is building out a consulting arm that charges enterprises at least $10M to customize AI models, according to a new report from The Information — putting the AI leader in competition with industry giants like Palantir and Accenture.

The details:

OpenAI hired nearly a dozen "forward-deployed engineers,” many from Palantir, to guide customers through model customization and app development.
Customers must commit at least $10M for access to OpenAI researchers, with some deals reaching hundreds of millions over multiple years.
The startup aims to develop billion-dollar custom AI solutions while partnering with data labeling firms like Snorkel AI for specialized domain expertise.
OpenAI recently secured a $200M defense contract with the Pentagon, with other enterprise clients including Morgan Stanley and Grab.

Why it matters: Companies are rushing to integrate AI, and who better to guide them than the researchers who helped build it? Custom AI models trained on proprietary data unlock capabilities that generic chatbots can't touch and could result in billions in operational efficiency and competitive advantage — even with the lofty price tags.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

🤖 Ernie 4.5 - Baidu’s latest open-source family of advanced AI models
🧬 Chai-2 - AI capable of creating functional antibodies for drug development
⚙️ Cursor Agents - Work with a powerful coding assistant on browser & mobile
📝 Co-STORM - Write Wikipedia-like articles from scratch based on AI search

💼 AI Job Opportunities

🔁 The Rundown - Strategic Partnerships (AI University)
📈 OpenAI - Market Researcher, Brand
🤝 Captions - Customer Success Manager
🛠️ Together AI - Senior Developer Productivity Engineer

📰 Everything else in AI today

Amazon rolled out DeepFleet, an AI that routes warehouse bots 10% faster to trim costs and shorten delivery times, while announcing the company’s millionth robot.

Cursor reportedly hired Boris Cherny and Cat Wu, two members of Anthropic’s Claude Code product team — with plans to work on “agent-like” features in the new roles.

Ai2 released SciArena, a new benchmarking platform focused specifically on scientific literature knowledge, with OpenAI’s o3 ranking atop the leaderboard.

X is reportedly launching a new pilot program that will allow AI chatbots to create Community Notes on the social media platform.

The English Premier League announced a partnership to integrate Microsoft’s Copilot into its platforms, allowing fans to have more personalized interactions.

Grammarly acquired AI-first email platform Superhuman, aiming to create a multi-agent AI productivity platform centered around users’ inboxes.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, July 4th, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently wire MCP into both conversational AI and your favorite coding IDEs

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Tech

Apple shops a new brain for Siri

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Siri is about to get a brain transplant, and Apple is shopping for intelligence. The company is reportedly deep in talks with OpenAI and Anthropic to power its aging voice assistant with their cutting-edge AI.

It could make Siri smarter, fast — but at what cost to Apple’s famously walled garden?

In today’s tech rundown:

Apple shopping from Anthropic and OpenAI
Google signs landmark fusion power deal
DOJ cracks down on North Korean tech scam
Netflix to stream NASA’s space missions
Quick hits on other major tech news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

APPLE

🔥 Apple shopping from Anthropic and OpenAI

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: Apple is weighing a radical shift in its AI strategy by considering Anthropic and OpenAI as potential providers for the next-gen Siri, moving away from its long-standing reliance on proprietary in-house models, Bloomberg reports.

The details:

Apple has asked Anthropic and OpenAI to create custom versions of their large language models that can run on Apple’s own cloud infrastructure for testing.
This comes after a series of technical setbacks within Apple’s AI division, as the company struggles to keep pace with Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.
Internally, the project is being led by Mike Rockwell, who previously headed Vision Pro, with the company also continuing to develop its own “LLM Siri”.
Anthropic is reportedly asking Apple for a multibillion-dollar annual licensing fee, prompting Apple to keep OpenAI in the running for negotiating power.

Why it matters: Siri has lagged behind in the generative AI race, and Apple’s openness to outside AI shows just how high the stakes are. With a smarter, revamped Siri not arriving until 2026, Apple is scrambling to stay in the game as the AI competition heats up further.

GOOGLE

⚡️Google signs landmark fusion power deal

Image source: Commonwealth Fusion Systems

The Rundown: Google signed the largest fusion power purchase agreement in history, securing 200 megawatts from MIT spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS )'s first commercial ARC power plant, for an undisclosed amount.

The details:

The ARC plant is expected to generate a total of 400 megawatts, enough to power around 150K homes or major industrial operations.
CFS uses a donut-shaped reactor called tokamak to confine plasma at over 100M°C, allowing atomic nuclei to fuse and release massive amounts of energy.
CFS’s first commercial fusion power plant, ARC, is slated to come online in Chesterfield County, Virginia, in the early 2030s.
Google is also making a new, undisclosed investment in CFS as part of a fresh funding round, building on its participation in CFS’s $1.8B Series B in 2021.

Why it matters: The fusion sector has pulled in over $8B in private investment — with tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI leading the charge. They see fusion as essential to powering growing AI and data infrastructure loads. Google’s latest deal is the largest yet and could accelerate fusion’s path to commercial scale.

CYBERSECURITY

🚔 DOJ cracks down on North Korean tech scam

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: The U.S. Department of Justice launched a sweeping crackdown on North Korea’s covert IT worker scheme, which embedded a handful of North Korean operatives as remote employees inside more than 100 American tech firms.

The details:

These operatives, often using stolen or fake identities, infiltrated the U.S. workforce by posing as legitimate software engineers and IT specialists.
They allegedly siphoned millions, laundered crypto, and stole proprietary data, funneling the proceeds back to Pyongyang for its nuclear weapons program.
So far, federal agents has arrested one key U.S.-based facilitator, indicted a network of multinational collaborators, and seized nearly $8M in assets.
The DOJ said the scheme used U.S.-based “laptop farms,” fake companies to hide payments, and remote access tools to disguise workers’ real locations.

Why it matters: These operatives, hired by top U.S. firms and even a California military defense contractor, allegedly stole millions and sensitive IP and then funneled the proceeds to fund Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program — making American companies unwitting financiers of one of the world’s most dangerous regimes.

NETFLIX

🪐 Netflix to stream NASA’s space missions

Image source: NASA

The Rundown: Netflix is about to get a cosmic upgrade: NASA Plus’ live spacewalks, rocket launches, and stunning ISS views are landing on the world’s biggest streaming platform this summer — ad-free and at no extra cost.

The details:

The partnership is designed to make NASA’s scientific work more accessible for a global audience, leveraging Netflix’s reach of over 700M users worldwide.
NASA Plus, launched in November 2023, offers a mix of live feeds, documentaries, mission overviews, and behind-the-scenes science features.
It will continue to be available for free, without ads or a subscription, on NASA’s website, app, and supported streaming devices.
The move is part of NASA’s aim to expand its potential audience, reaching viewers in over 190 countries and making space science more mainstream.

Why it matters: The addition of NASA Plus to Netflix marks the first time the streaming giant is integrating a live feed from an outside programmer, reflecting both Netflix’s growing interest in live, real-time content and NASA’s goal to encourage some space exploration binge-watching.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Canada dropped its planned digital tax on U.S. tech giants after Trump threatened to halt trade talks.

Tinder now requires all new users in California to verify their profiles with facial recognition technology.

Grammarly acquired email efficiency tool Superhuman, Reuters reports, as part of its strategy to develop an AI-powered productivity suite and expand its business.

Apple finally scored its first major box office hit with F1, the Brad Pitt-led racing drama that debuted at No. 1 and has so far raked in $144M worldwide.

Mira Murati’s AI startup, Thinking Machines Lab, is reportedly offering exceptionally high base salaries, with some roles reaching $500K, to draw in top talent.

OpenAI said it has no current plans to deploy Google’s in-house Tensor Processing Units at commercial scale, clarifying that the chips are only being used in early testing.

President Donald Trump said that a group of “very wealthy people” is set to buy video app TikTok, banned in the U.S. due to security risks.

Biopharma company Vertex Pharmaceuticals found that one infusion of a stem cell-based treatment may have cured 10 out of 12 people with severe type 1 diabetes.

Anker announced a second product recall this month for five more power bank models because of potential risks of fire.

Joby Aviation delivered its first production eVTOL aircraft to Dubai, where it plans to launch a commercial air taxi service in early 2026.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our latest workshop

Check out our latest workshop on how to build advanced n8n agents that react, research, and automate like pros, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.

Watch it here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

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

Microsoft steps towards 'medical superintelligence'

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Microsoft's latest AI isn't here to replace your doctor — but it might just become their most valuable colleague.

With over 4x higher accuracy than human physicians and CEO Mustafa Suleyman calling it a "big step towards medical superintelligence," this new diagnostic tool is more proof that AI could be healthcare’s most powerful ally yet.

In today’s AI rundown:

Microsoft’s ‘step towards medical superintelligence’
Baidu’s open-source ERNIE 4.5 to rival DeepSeek
Automate YouTube content creation with AI
Chai Discovery's AI designs working antibodies
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

MICROSOFT

🏥 Microsoft’s ‘step towards medical superintelligence’

Image source: Microsoft

The Rundown: Microsoft just introduced the MAI Diagnostic Orchestrator, an AI system that achieves 4x higher diagnosis results than experienced doctors on some of medicine’s most challenging cases, marking a “step towards medical superintelligence.”

The details:

MAI-DxO simulates a virtual medical team, with specialized AI agents handling hypothesis generation, test selection, and cost monitoring.
Researchers created SDBench, a benchmark with 304 complex cases — with MAI-DxO, paired with OpenAI's o3, achieving the highest accuracy in testing.
The MAI/o3 pairing solved 85.5% of cases correctly, with a group of physicians with 5-20 years of experience averaging just 20%.
The AI system also resulted in cost savings over human doctors, spending $2,397 per case compared to an average of $2,963 for physicians.

Why it matters: A step towards “medical superintelligence” is a powerful statement, but MAI’s numbers compared to physicians are truly jaw-dropping. Plus, ordering fewer unnecessary tests and nailing tough diagnoses directly addresses healthcare's current paradox: the over-treatment of simple cases and under-diagnosis of complex ones.

TOGETHER WITH BASETEN

🚀 The platform for mission-critical inference

The Rundown: Baseten’s inference platform brings enterprise-grade performance and reliability to every stage of your model’s lifecycle. Launch custom, fine-tuned, or any open-source model and scale without limits across any cloud, including your own VPC.

With Baseten, you can:

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Train and fine-tune any model on any dataset and deploy checkpoints seamlessly to production

Start doing inference now on infrastructure built for mission-critical workloads.

BAIDU

🤖 Baidu’s open-source ERNIE 4.5 to rival DeepSeek

Image source: …

The Rundown: Chinese giant Baidu just open-sourced 10 versions of its new ERNIE 4.5 model family, including a 424B parameter multimodal system that outperforms DeepSeek V3 on key benchmarks despite being half the size.

The details:

The models range from tiny 300M parameter versions to massive 424B systems, all available under Apache 2.0 licensing on Hugging Face.
A “Heterogeneous” training architecture allows text and vision capabilities to reinforce each other rather than compete for resources for increased efficiency.
Baidu's largest model beats DeepSeek V3 on 22/28 benchmarks, while its variants also compete with o1, GPT 4.1, and Qwen 3 across a variety of tasks.
The release marks Baidu’s first move into open-source models, coming just a year after its CEO appeared against the route prior to the launch of DeepSeek.

Why it matters: While the U.S. has its AI rivalry between OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, an intense one is also brewing between China’s giants. Baidu, ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, DeepSeek, and others continue to push the pace of model releases — and the quality of offerings that make up the top of the open-source charts.

AI TRAINING

🎬 Automate YouTube content creation with AI

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google's Gemini AI to analyze videos and automatically generate titles, descriptions, tags, and chapters — streamlining your YouTube content workflow.

Step-by-step:

Go to Google Gemini, click the attachment button, and upload your video file
Generate titles with: “Analyze this video and provide 10 compelling YouTube titles”
Ask it to provide you with a detailed video description with a hook, summary, and call-to-action.
Request it for tags as comma-separated values, plus chapter timestamps

Pro tip: Save these prompts as templates and customize the tone (professional, casual, energetic) to match your brand voice.

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AI & DRUG DISCOVERY

🧬 Chai Discovery's AI designs working antibodies

Image source: Chai Discovery

The Rundown: OpenAI-backed Chai Discovery announced Chai-2, an AI capable of creating functional antibodies for drug development, — nearing a 20% hit rate that marks a 100x improvement over methods that typically achieve less than 0.1%.

The details:

The model designed antibodies against 52 different disease targets, finding successful treatments for half of them by testing just 20 candidates each.
Traditional antibody discovery requires screening millions of candidates over months or years, with Chai-2 delivering results in just two weeks.
Chai-2 works “from scratch,” creating completely new designs just by looking at a target's structure without needing any pre-existing examples.
Chai researchers said the system is like "Photoshop for proteins," letting scientists specify exactly where antibodies should attach to disease targets.

Why it matters: AI’s role in drug discovery and molecular-level design is ramping up in a big way. With high R&D costs often leading to companies ignoring treatments for rare diseases, AI models can help cut the time and expense of finding new antibodies, giving patients access to precision medicines tailored to their conditions.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

🧠 Hunyuan-A13B - Tencent’s new open-source hybrid reasoning model
🎇 Qwen VLo - Alibaba’s 4o-style model for image generation and editing
🎼 Songscription - Turning audio clips instantly into sheet music
🍎 NotebookLM - Now available via Gemini in Classroom for educators

💼 AI Job Opportunities

📞 The Rundown - Account Manager
🧠 OpenAI - Head of Pro Subscriber Community
⚡ Figure AI - Electrical Engineer Intern
📊 Meta - Data Scientist

📰 Everything else in AI today

RAISE Summit in Paris, July 8-9 — All things AI. Join SambaNova at booth #9, snag an invite to an exclusive soirée, and catch CEO Rodrigo Liang’s keynote on Open Source AI.*

Mark Zuckerberg introduced “Meta Superintelligence Labs” to employees, with Alexandr Wang and Nat Friedman leading 11 hires from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Apple is reportedly considering leveraging AI from Anthropic and OpenAI for the revamped Siri over in-house models, according to a new report from Bloomberg.

The Mayo Clinic unveiled StateViewer, an AI tool that analyzes brain scans to help identify nine different types of dementia at 2x the speed and 3x the accuracy.

Cursor launched new apps for mobile and browser, allowing users to manage and monitor agents via natural language outside of its IDE.

Google announced Gemini in Classroom, a suite of AI features and tools for educators for tasks like lesson planning, NotebookLM access, and student performance analytics.

*Sponsored Listing

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our latest workshop

Check out our latest workshop on how to build advanced n8n agents that react, research, and automate like pros, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor

Watch it here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Robotics

Humanoid soccer is a wild mess

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. This weekend, fully autonomous humanoids hit the pitch in Beijing for a scrappy, no-holds-barred 3-on-3 soccer showdown.

No remote controls, no human handlers — just algorithms, vision sensors, and slow-motion collisions. It’s messy, it’s surreal, and it’s pushing the boundaries of what robots can do on their own.

In today’s robotics rundown:

Beijing’s robot soccer draws huge crowds
Tiny nasal microbots treat sinus infections
This survey bot works ‘8x faster’ than humans
Robot mimics the suction of an octopus
Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

CHINA ROBOTICS

🤖 Beijing’s robot soccer draws huge crowds

Image source: The RoBoLeague World Robot Soccer Cup/Facebook

The Rundown: Humanoids took center stage in Beijing this weekend, not for their grace or speed, but for a scrappy, fully autonomous 3-on-3 soccer match that ran entirely on AI — no human controllers, no remote pilots.

The details:

Each child-sized robot was equipped with sensors and onboard AI handling everything from field navigation to decision-making.
The result was a mix of slow-motion collisions, wobbly sprints, and occasional ball-hogging, all unfolding with an impressive level of autonomy.
Booster Robotics supplied its T1 humanoid for the match, while four university teams developed bespoke algorithms for perception, strategy, and movement.
Robots were engineered to right themselves after falling, with those unable to do so being carried off the field in stretchers by humans.

Why it matters: The RoboLeague tournament, a teaser for the World Humanoid Robot Games, is a way to ramp up interest and speed up advances in multi-agent AI and sensor tech. China’s massive investment in robotics turned these matches into both a proving ground and a spectacle — while comical at times, the AI is seriously impressive.

MEDICAL MICROBOTS

👃🏼 Tiny nasal microbots treat sinus infections

Image source: The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)

The Rundown: Researchers from China and Hong Kong developed a new swarm of microbots, no larger than a speck of dust, designed to treat stubborn bacterial infections deep within the sinuses.

The details:

In animal trials, the microbots were injected into the sinus cavity through a thin catheter placed in the nostril, allowing precise delivery to infection sites.
The robots are made from copper single–atom–doped bismuth oxoiodide that, when exposed to visible light via an optical fiber, produces heat.
The microbots then generate reactive oxygen species (ROS), which break down bacterial biofilms and directly kill bacteria.
After treatment, patients can simply blow their nose to expel the microbots, ensuring they do not remain in the body.

Why it matters: Published in Science Robotics, this approach is part of a growing trend of micro- and nanobots used in medicine, with researchers saying its clinical use could be about five to 10 years away, pending further safety and regulatory approvals. Its potential also extends beyond the sinuses to treat other infections.

CIV ROBOTICS

🚜 This survey bot works ‘8x faster’ than humans

Image source: Civ Robotics

The Rundown: San Francisco’s Civ Robotics just landed $7.5M in fresh funding for its new CivDot, a compact, speedy rover that surveys construction sites up to eight times quicker than humans.

The details:

To use CivDot, operators simply upload a CSV file with project coordinates, and it autonomously moves to each point, marking it with spray paint or a laser.
In a single day, CivDot is capable of marking up to 3K points or laying out up to 25 miles of lines — humans can typically mark a few hundred points a day.
The company says its robot maintains surveying accuracy within 8mm, ensuring that site layouts are precise for complex construction tasks.
Over 100 units have already been deployed worldwide, with major industry players such as Bechtel and Bobcat Company adopting the tech.

Why it matters: Rivals like Trimble and Built Robotics are pushing their own solutions — from advanced surveying drones to AI-powered layout robots — each vying to streamline the time-consuming process of site surveys. CivDot stands out for its simplicity and adaptability, letting even novice operators upload a map and let the robot do the rest.

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL

🐙 Robot mimics the suction of an octopus

Image source: University of Bristol

The Rundown: Inspired by the ingenious grip of an octopus, researchers at the University of Bristol engineered a soft robotic suction cup that “thinks” for itself — adapting to surfaces in real time, no central computer required.

The details:

The suction cup is modeled after octopus suckers, combining a flexible, multiscale silicone structure with a water-based seal.
Its pliable material mechanically adapts to rough, curved, or irregular surfaces, reducing gaps between the sucker and surface to near microns.
When tested on dry rocks and shells, the cups maintained grip up to 55 times longer than traditional suction systems, without pumps or noisy compressors.
It can detect air, water, roughness, even pulling force, and instantly modulate suction pressure in milliseconds.

Why it matters: The real breakthrough is the suction cup’s embodied intelligence: a built-in fluid system that senses leaks, roughness, force, and then tweaks suction in milliseconds. This isn’t just sticky — it’s adaptive, and could transform everything from fruit-picking robots to surgical tools.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Genesis Robotics, a startup cofounded by ex-Mistral employee Theophile Gervet, reportedly closed an $85M round just six months after launching.

Elon Musk said Neuralink’s brain-computer interface could ultimately allow people to operate an entire Tesla Optimus humanoid with their minds.

Samsung is reportedly aiming to secure a first-mover advantage in the robotics camera module market by developing advanced vision systems for humanoids.

Korea's Atomic Energy Research Institute unveiled ARMstrong Dex, a humanoid robot that can lift up to 441 pounds in each arm.

The Unitree G1 humanoid became the first robot to ring the Nasdaq opening bell with the launch of the KraneShares Global Humanoid and Embodied Intelligence Index ETF.

The UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is investing up to $13M over four years to deploy robots for sorting and segregating radioactive waste at a nuclear site.

Dyson launched a robotic farming initiative featuring its Hybrid Vertical Growing System, which it says boosted strawberry yields by about 250% in a pilot test.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry announced that it will deploy around 15K combat robots this year, including a new ground-based combat robot system called Murakha.

Carnegie Mellon researchers developed a sensing system called SonicBoom that allows robots to use sound to sense the objects they touch.

Mytra, an industrial robotic company founded by alumni of Tesla and Rivian, announced a 100K-square-foot factory in Brisbane, California, to develop new robots.

China’s Huagong Technology developed a laser weeding robot equipped with data models of thousands of crop and weed varieties and an AI vision system.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our latest workshop

Check out our latest workshop on how to build advanced n8n agents that react, research, and automate like pros, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor

Watch it here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

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

Zuck's AI 'secret list'

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Meta's "Recruiting Party" just turned into OpenAI's worst nightmare — with a total of eight researchers now defecting to Zuckerberg's superintelligence unit in just two weeks.

As Zuck continues his quest for AI talent from his ‘secret list’ and internal memos fly, the famous line "OpenAI is nothing without its people" seems to be getting put to the ultimate test.

In today’s AI rundown:

Meta poaches four more OpenAI researchers
Chinese giants drop new reasoning, image models
How to build AI agents with internet access
Claude becomes world's worst shopkeeper
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

🤝 Meta poaches four more OpenAI researchers

Image source: Midjourney / The Rundown

The Rundown: Meta continued its recruiting raid of OpenAI with four more researchers (now eight in all) moving to Mark Zuckerberg’s new superintelligence unit, with a WSJ report shedding new light on the CEO’s “secret list” of AI prospects.

The details:

Meta reportedly hired four more researchers from OAI, including key contributors to o1, o3-mini, and GPT 4.1 — joining the four from last week.
The WSJ reported that CEO Mark Zuckerberg has a secret list of top AI talent he’s been personally recruiting with massive pay packages.
Zuckerberg reviews AI papers for potential researchers, and runs a group chat called “Recruiting Party” where executives discuss tactics and prospects.
Meta's CTO called Sam Altman "dishonest" for comments on alleged $100M bonuses, saying the OpenAI CEO is unhappy because Meta is succeeding.
An OpenAI internal memo from Saturday was obtained by WIRED, with CRO Mark Chen addressing the moves and reassuring staff.

Why it matters: Meta’s recruiting push seemed like a non-issue when Altman brushed it off during last week’s podcast, but eight researchers leaving, a (now-deleted) concerned tweet from an OAI staffer, and internal memos would suggest otherwise. Does the famous “OpenAI is nothing without its people” line still hold true in 2025?

TOGETHER WITH H COMPANY

🚀 Browser automation, unlocked

The Rundown: Backed by a historic $220M seed round, H Company just open-sourced Holo1 — the action model behind Surfer H that is now the top-ranked web-browsing agent on WebVoyager.

With Holo1, you can:

Automate multi-step browser workflows to reclaim hours of repetitive work
Experience SOTA accuracy that outperforms OpenAI’s Operator, Gemini Flash, & more
Integrate instantly with RAG workflows, RPA suites, and multi-agent hubs
Trim costs with full browsing flows at just $0.11 – $0.13 per run

Holo 1 is now freely available for deployment, fine-tuning, & scaling — learn more here.

TENCENT & ALIBABA

🦄 Chinese giants drop new reasoning, image models

Image source: Tencent

The Rundown: Two of China’s top AI labs just dropped new models, with Tencent releasing a new Hunyuan-A13B open-source hybrid reasoning model and Alibaba introducing a ChatGPT 4o-type creative model called Qwen-VLo.

The details:

Hunyuan-A13B nears or matches models like o1 and DeepSeek R1 on major benchmarks, while remaining efficient enough to run on a single GPU.
The model is Hunyuan’s first open reasoning model, with dynamic "fast and slow" modes that users can adjust for different efficiency levels.
Qwen VLo shows its creative process through “progressive generation,” with the ability to create both text-to-image outputs and edit via natural language.
VLo can also support more complex workflows like multi-image input prompts, multilingual text generation, and dynamic resolution and aspect ratios.

Why it matters: China’s top labs continue to churn out high-quality models across the spectrum, with capabilities falling into that tier just behind the frontier models. Qwen’s VLo is particularly interesting, bringing the type of creative abilities that made GPT-4o go insanely viral during its initial launch to a Chinese audience.

AI TRAINING

🤖 How to build AI agents with internet access

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to combine n8n workflow automation with Perplexity's search capabilities to create intelligent AI agents that can search the web and access current information.

Step-by-step:

Head over to n8n and create a new workflow with a chat trigger
Add an AI Agent with your preferred model (GPT, Claude) and a Simple Memory
Connect the Perplexity tool with your API key, select the “Sonar” model, and link it to receive queries from your AI agent
Add custom system instructions: “You have access to a Perplexity tool for web searches. Use it for current events and real-time information.”

Pro tip: Use Sonar for general queries and Sonar Research for detailed analysis. We just did an extensive workshop on how to build AI agents with n8n here.

PRESENTED BY IBM

🔎 Investigate IT incidents faster with AI

The Rundown: IBM Instana’s latest feature, Intelligent Incident Investigation, helps teams resolve incidents up to 80% faster using agentic AI.

IBM Instana’s AI-powered observability:

Uses agentic AI for faster, autonomous investigations
Reduces manual troubleshooting with smart automation
Delivers remediation steps and documentation automatically
Helps teams act quickly — even in high-stress, 2 am moments

Learn more.

AI RESEARCH

🛒 Claude becomes world's worst shopkeeper

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic just published new research detailing “Project Vend,” which let Claude control a small shop (a mini fridge) within the company’s office for a month — revealing both promising capabilities and spectacular, hilarious business failures.

The details:

“Claudius” managed everything from inventory to pricing through web search and email, including ID’ing suppliers and conversing with “customers” via Slack.
The AI lost money throughout the experiment, frequently failing to take advantage of profitable opportunities and getting tricked into large discounts.
Claudius pivoted to “specialty metal items” after customers requested tungsten cubes, while also hallucinating details like meetings and payments.
It also hallucinated being human, claiming it would deliver orders in person — causing an existential crisis after its AI identity was pointed out.

Why it matters: This experiment was a wild ride — and while Claude’s failures suggest AI isn’t ready for autonomous management quite yet, the testing did expose critical blind spots in how models handle real-world decisions. AI is going to transform business operations, but will still require a human-in-the-loop at least for a bit longer.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

⚙️ Gemma 3n - Open models with multimodal capabilities for edge devices
🎨 Flux 1 Kontext [dev] - Open-weight, SOTA image editing model
👗 Doppl - Create AI-generated try-on videos from a photo and product
🤝 Coachvox - Clone an AI version of yourself to coach clients in your style

💼 AI Job Opportunities

🤝 The Rundown - Partnerships Manager
🤖 Meta - Software Engineer, Machine Learning
💼 Palantir Technologies - Deal Support Specialist
🧩 Union - Technical Account Manager

📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI is reportedly renting TPUs from rival Google to reduce reliance on Microsoft and utilize a less costly processor compared to advanced Nvidia chips.

Anthropic unveiled the Economic Futures Program, a research and policy effort to track and prepare for AI’s impact on the workforce and economy.

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi introduced AI glasses, featuring a built-in AI assistant for voice commands, a 12MP camera, and 2x the battery life of Meta’s Ray-Bans.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff revealed that AI now accounts for “30-50%” of the company’s engineering, coding, and support work.

Elon Musk posted on X that Grok 4 is planned for a release ‘'just after July 4,” with xAI engineer Tim Li saying the intelligence will be “unmatched”.

OpenAI acquired the team behind Crossing Minds, a startup focused on AI recommendations for e-commerce companies.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Watch our latest workshop

Check out our latest workshop on how to build advanced n8n agents that react, research, and automate like pros, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor

Watch it here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

Tech

Nvidia tops Apple and Microsoft