Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Chinese smartphone giant Honor is now jumping into the humanoid game as part of a $10B plan to pivot from screens to advanced AI. 

As rivals Xiaomi and Vivo double down on robotics, Honor’s fusion of cutting-edge hardware and open AI ecosystems may give it an edge. Ready to see how the smartphone wars are evolving into the era of smart robots?

In today’s robotics rundown:

• Smartphone giant Honor to build humanoids

• UBTech takes on Tesla with $20K humanoid

• Rivr’s delivery robot dog comes to the U.S

• China hosts the first humanoid boxing event

• Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

HONOR

🤖 Smartphone giant Honor to build humanoids

Image source: Joahsoam Hauo Mingea/Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Chinese smartphone giant Honor just announced a major push into robotics as part of its $10B investment aimed at transforming the company from a smartphone maker into a global AI device ecosystem leader.

The details:

• The company, a spin-off from Huawei, revealed that its proprietary AI algorithms helped Unitree break the world record for humanoid running speed.

• Honor has established a dedicated department for new business opportunities, focusing on robotics and specifically developing humanoids.

• In March, the company announced its move into advanced AI, starting with an “intelligent smartphone” and later expanding into an ecosystem of AI devices.

• CEO James Li said that Honor will work alongside partners Google Cloud, Qualcomm, and Vodafone to accelerate AI and robotics innovation.

Why it matters: The smartphone market, especially in China, has become highly saturated, with Xiaomi and Vivo looking for the next growth opportunity. For its part, Honor’s investment in “embodied AI labs” and partnerships with Google Cloud and Qualcomm underscore its intentions to lead, not follow, in the AI and robotics revolution.

UBTECH

🏠 UBTech takes on Tesla with $20K humanoid

Image source: UBTech

The Rundown: Chinese robotics powerhouse UBTech announced plans to launch a $20K household humanoid later this year — in a direct challenge to Tesla’s much-hyped Optimus robot.

The details:

• UBTech has built its reputation supplying advanced humanoids, such as the $100K Walker S1, to manufacturing giants like BYD and Foxconn.

• The upcoming home humanoid will target elderly care and daily living assistance in response to China’s rapidly aging population.

• It is expected to debut in 2025, with UBTech aiming to ship around 1K units in its first year and scaling up production tenfold by 2026.

• The company just launched a research humanoid dubbed Tien Kung, set at about $41K, with deliveries expected in the second quarter of 2025.

Why it matters: China is reportedly facing workforce shortages in eldercare, and UBTech stands to benefit from both policy support and surging market demand. Also, this move places UBTech head-to-head with Tesla, whose Optimus is similarly priced, with Elon Musk touting it as “Tesla’s biggest product ever.”

RIVR

📦 Rivr’s delivery robot dog comes to the U.S.

Image source: Rivr

The Rundown: Delivery tech firm Veho and Swiss robotics startup Rivr are zeroing in on last-mile deliveries with a new pilot program launching in Austin, which puts Rivr’s four-wheeled, stair-climbing delivery robots to work alongside delivery vans.

The details:

• The initiative focuses on the final 100 yards of the delivery process — widely regarded as the most difficult and time-consuming stage for human couriers.

• Packages are transported by Veho vans to neighborhoods, where a Rivr robot takes over, delivering parcels directly to customers’ doorsteps.

• The project is starting small, with one highly supervised robot working daily in five- to six-hour shifts over the course of a few weeks.

• Veho delivers across 50 U.S. markets for brands including Sephora, HelloFresh, and Saks, and Rivr aims to scale this project to 100 bots by next year.

Why it matters: Unlike most rivals, Rivr’s robots are engineered to handle the “last 100 yards” challenge, including stairs, porches, and gates—areas where most sidewalk-bound robots struggle. Backed by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Rivr says it aims to place 1M delivery robots in cities, with plans to scale the Veho project to thousands by 2027.

UNITREE

 🥊 China hosts the first humanoid boxing event

Image source: Unitree Robotics

The Rundown: This week, Hangzhou’s Olympic Sports Center in China hosted the world’s first humanoid combat tournament, with four teams competing using Unitree Robotics’ four-foot-four-inch (1.27 meters) tall G1 humanoid.

The details:

• The event was part of China’s World Robot Competition Series and broadcast live on CCTV-10, with streams on social media platforms.

• The robots, clad in gloves and headgear, executed an array of boxing and kickboxing moves—straight punches, hooks, and even aerial sidekicks.

• However, these G1 robots, weighing 35kg (77 lb.), were not autonomous and were being remotely controlled by human operators using joysticks.

• Scoring was based on clean hits: one point for a punch, three for a kick, and penalties for falling or failing to recover within eight seconds.

Why it matters: The matches unfolded over three two-minute rounds, with the robots’ attacks more akin to forceful pushes than knockout blows. But this is the first of many such events to come, with Shenzhen hosting the EngineAI Robot Free Combat Tournament in December, promising more complex movement and harder punches.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

DJI may be gearing up for the release of three new drones—the Mini 5 Pro, Avata 3, and Neo 2—according to leaks and FCC filings.

Home Team Science and Technology Agency exhibited four humanoids set to be deployed in 2027 at Singapore’s AI TechXplore this week.

ETH Zurich roboticists developed an AI-powered four-legged robot capable of autonomously playing badminton with humans.

Walgreens launched a new micro-fulfillment center where robots will handle 13M prescriptions each year for nearly 200 locations across the Midwest.

Japan tech firm Ubitus is developing three AI-powered medical robots, designed to enhance patient care, logistics, and safety using NVIDIA’s latest technologies.

Autonomous delivery network Arrive AI raised $40M for its last-mile logistics system, including drones, robots, and human couriers delivering to smart mailboxes.

Dutch researchers found that humans working alongside robots in Europe’s most automated industries report a sharp drop in job purpose.

Hyundai deployed AI-powered automatic EV charging robots at Incheon International Airport, in a world first at a major travel hub.

David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar, suggested on the ‘All In’ podcast that human-level robots could become widely available within five years.

UK research suggests that therapy robots should act as active partners, similar to therapy horses that respond to human emotions, rather than passive companions.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, May 30th at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Anthropic’s CEO is sounding the alarm on a mass job extinction coming in the next five years due to AI… One he believes nobody is taking seriously enough.

With a potential 50% wipe-out of entry-level jobs and unemployment as high as 20%, Dario Amodei sees an economic upheaval unlike anything we’ve ever seen on the horizon — and is urging lawmakers and AI leaders to start preparing now.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Anthropic CEO: AI threatens job extinction

• xAI brings Grok to Telegram's billion users

• How to create lifelike AI voices for your content

• Opera launches first “AI agentic browser”

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

DARIO AMODEI

💼 Anthropic CEO: AI threatens job extinction

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei just warned lawmakers and the public that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar positions in the next five years and drive unemployment as high as 20%.

The details:

• Amodei predicts AI will write 90% of software code within 6 months and virtually all code within a year, completely reshaping tech employment.

• He also believes the impact extends to finance, law, consulting, and other white-collar jobs, with entry-level positions most vulnerable to automation.

• Amodei urged lawmakers and AI companies to take action, saying most workers are “unaware that this is about to happen” and “just don’t believe it”.

• The CEO provided several ideas for addressing the issue, including better AI skilling and support, and policy solutions like a “token tax” on AI companies.

Why it matters: We all likely have friends or family who are completely unaware of the drastic changes underway — and many will choose to ignore Amodei’s warnings. While AI can bring massive changes for good, it will also come with what’s likely to be the swiftest transformation of the economy and society in history.

TOGETHER WITH VANTA

📖 The new playbook for building AI-era startups

The Rundown: Speed alone isn't enough anymore — today's startups need sharper, smarter strategies from day one. Learn from Vanta's Christina Cacioppo and The Generalist's Mario Gabriele in this tactical discussion for founders navigating the rapidly shifting startup landscape.

This live session covers:

• Strategies for accelerating product-market fit in the AI era

• Frameworks for choosing tools that 10x your business impact

• Tactics for building competitive moats without funding or brand recognition

Save your spot and discover hard-earned lessons you won’t find in traditional playbooks.

XAI & TELEGRAM

💬 xAI brings Grok to Telegram's billion users

Image source: Telegram

The Rundown: Elon Musk's xAI just struck a 1-year deal with Telegram, bringing its Grok chatbot to over a billion messaging app users this summer in exchange for $300M and a revenue-sharing agreement.

The details:

• Telegram founder Pavel Durov announced the deal (agreed in principle) on X, with the partnership including $300M paid to Telegram in both cash and equity.

• Telegram will also receive 50% of all revenue generated from xAI subscriptions purchased through its platform.

• Grok will integrate into Telegram with features like chat pinning, search bar access, writing assistance, avatar creation, and document summarization.

• Durov also clarified that xAI would only access user data shared through direct interactions with Grok, not all content on the platform.

Why it matters: This is a big distribution win for xAI, instantly doubling its potential user base and integrating Grok across a brand new ecosystem outside of X. With AI companies continuing to scramble for both users and data, platform partnerships that blend distribution with data access will likely continue to be an attractive option.

AI TRAINING

🎤 How to create lifelike AI voices for your content

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google AI Studio’s new speech generation feature to create natural-sounding voice content in single and multi-speaker formats for diverse audio projects.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Google AI Studio, and select “Native Audio Generation”

2. Choose between “Single-speaker” for narrations or “Multi-speaker” for dialogues

3. Create your script, adding style instructions and selecting voices for each speaker

4. Click “Run” to generate your audio and download it for your projects!

Pro tip: Try the quick preset buttons like “Movie Script Scene” to instantly see different speech styles in action before creating your own custom audio.

PRESENTED BY HACKERRANK

⚙️ HackerRank embraces AI in hiring

The Rundown: Traditional hiring can’t assess how developers work with AI. HackerRank is paving the way for a new era of hiring — one where AI is an integral part of the process.

With HackerRank, you can:

• Test developers’ ability to review code and debug issues in real code repositories

• Watch as the candidate prompts the built-in AI agent to complete tasks across the SDLC

• Measure understanding of prompt engineering, RAG, and vector databases

Learn more and improve your hiring process for the AI era of development.

OPERA

🖥️ Opera launches first ‘AI agentic browser’

Image source: Opera

The Rundown: Opera just introduced Neon, a new web browser that automates web tasks, creates content with AI agents, and enables users to code using natural language — claiming to be the world’s first AI agentic browser.

The details:

• Neon’s AI assistant integrates directly in-browser, handling searches, providing contextual info, and answering questions.

• Users can automate routine web tasks like booking hotels, filling forms, or shopping through a feature previously teased as its "Browser Operator".

• Neon also hosts cloud-based AI agents that work independently, allowing users to create digital assets like games, websites, or code even when offline.

• The browser will be available as a premium subscription (no pricing details yet), with Opera releasing a waitlist for early access.

Why it matters: Like the news yesterday about Arc pivoting to a fully AI-focused product, the future of web browsing is clearly one that is AI native and integrated. But with Google’s Chrome behemoth, Perplexity, and OpenAI also rumored to be interested in building a browser, it’s going to be a difficult space for non-AI leaders to compete.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🗣️ Voice mode - Speak with Claude on mobile with natural language

• 🤖 Mistral Agents API - Build capable AI agents with memory and tools

• 🎨 Paint with Ember - Generate images in real time by painting

• 🪄 MagicPath - An infinite canvas to create, refine, and explore with AI

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🎨 The Rundown - Designer (Brand & Platform)

• 🧾 OpenAI - Senior Manager, Technical Accounting

• 🧬 Anthropic - TPU Kernel Engineer

• 📣 Beautiful AI - Lifecycle/Customer Marketing Manager

📰 Everything else in AI today

DeepSeek released a ‘minor trial update’ to its R1 model, reportedly bringing upgraded reasoning, longer thinking, and other general improvements.

Anthropic announced that Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has joined the company’s board of directors.

OpenAI opened a form for developers interested in a “sign in with ChatGPT” option for third-party apps, indicating the functionality may get a broader release in the future.

Odyssey showcased a demo of its “interactive video” world model, which generates AI video that users can interact with in real-time.

Chinese researchers developed FLARE, a new AI model capable of predicting stellar flares and uncovering new insights about stars and potential habitable exoplanets.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, May 30th at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

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

🤝 Share The Rundown, get rewards

We’ll always keep this newsletter 100% free. To support our work, consider sharing The Rundown with your friends, and we’ll send you more free goodies.

See you soon,

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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The last major AI holdout just officially joined the voice movement, with Anthropic finally giving its assistant the ability to speak.

As usual with Anthropic, it’s better late than never — and with the rollout of shiny new models and now brand new voice, the AI giant is shipping once again.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Anthropic’s new Voice Mode for Claude

• Synthesia co-founder’s 3D world AI startup

• Automate project meeting documentation

• Study: AI learns reasoning through self-confidence

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ANTHROPIC

🗣️ Anthropic’s new Voice Mode for Claude

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic just announced the launch of its new Voice mode for its Claude mobile apps, becoming one of the last major AI labs to enable users to have natural spoken conversations with its AI assistant.

The details:

• The beta feature is set to arrive for English-speaking users in the coming weeks and will run on Claude's latest Sonnet 4 model.

• Users can flow naturally between speaking and typing, with five voice personalities available and real-time transcription displayed during chats.

• Voice mode also integrates with Google Workspace for paid subscribers, allowing Claude to access calendars, docs, and Gmail with voice commands.

• Free users receive 20-30 voice messages a month, with paid tiers getting “significantly higher” usage limits.

Why it matters: With all the major labs now offering voice modes, the competition shifts to execution — with aspects like latency, integrations, and the underlying model quality all playing a role in the user experience. The capabilities also are a jarring difference from the old-gen voices like Siri, showing how behind it truly is.

TOGETHER WITH POSTMAN

🚀 Skip the setup, ship the agent

The Rundown Postman’s Agent Generator delivers complete turnkey infrastructure with zero server setup, enabling developers to build and deploy AI agents instantly without friction.

With Agent Generator, you can:

• Instantly spin up agent workflows

• Works with OpenAI, LangChain & more

• Test, debug, and deploy—all in Postman

Skip the setup and start building today.

SPAITIAL

🌐 Synthesia co-founder’s 3D world AI startup

Image source: SpAItial

The Rundown: Synthesia co-founder Matthias Niessner just unveiled SpAItial, a new startup aimed at creating AI systems capable of generating interactive 3D environments from texts and images.

The details:

• The company is building Spatial Foundation Models (SFMs) that understand 3D space natively and can grasp geometry, physics, and material properties.

• SpAItial's founding team includes former leaders from Synthesia, Google, and Meta, bringing expertise in 3D AI and neural rendering technologies.

• Early demos generated photorealistic 3D rooms from simple text prompts, with applications spanning gaming, construction, VR, and robotics.

Why it matters: While AI has mastered generating 2D images and videos, creating coherent, spatially aware 3D worlds remains a challenge. This new breed of models could enable anyone to create complex virtual environments with just a few words — tackling what many consider to be the next frontier in AI.

AI TRAINING

📊 Automate project meeting documentation

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to create an automated system with Zapier Agents that can turn meeting recordings into transcripts, summaries, and actionable task lists in Google Docs.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Zapier Agents and create a “New Agent”

2. Configure your agent to trigger when new audio files are uploaded to a specified folder in Google Drive

3. Add three essential tools: ChatGPT to transcribe the audio, ChatGPT again to summarize and extract action points, and Google Docs to compile everything into a single document

4. Test your setup with a sample recording and activate your agent

Pro tip: At the start of each meeting, ask participants to clearly state their names before speaking and explicitly mention action item assignments to help the AI more accurately attribute tasks to team members.

PRESENTED BY ENCORD

📊 One platform for all your AI data needs

The Rundown: Encord is a consolidated platform for multimodal AI data management, curation, and annotation, enabling teams to accelerate model iteration cycles with balanced, accurately labeled datasets.

Leading AI teams use Encord’s fully customizable multimodal interface to:

• Evaluate GenAI outputs across video, audio, and text in record time

• Create VLA datasets with synchronized video, instruction, and trajectory data

• Unite PDF, image, video, audio, and DICOM labeling in a single interface

Try Encord today.

AI RESEARCH

☺️ Study: AI learns reasoning through self-confidence

Image source: UC Berkeley and Yale

The Rundown: Researchers from UC Berkeley and Yale introduced INTUITOR, an AI training method that enables language models to improve their reasoning using internal confidence signals — eliminating the need for correct answers or external feedback.

The details:

• INTUITOR measures how confident an AI feels about each word it generates, using this "gut feeling" as a guide for learning.

• Instead of needing correct answers to learn (like traditional AI training), the system rewards the AI when it produces responses it feels confident about.

• When tested on math problems, the method performed just as well as conventional training, but showed even better results on programming tasks.

• The AIs also began showing human-like reasoning behaviors — breaking down complex problems, planning, and explaining their thinking step-by-step.

Why it matters: Just as intuition and confidence play a large role in human learning, this study shows AI is succeeding within the same system. This self-directed approach could be especially valuable for tasks where there's no clear "right answer" or where human expertise is limited, allowing AI to venture into unexplored knowledge areas.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• ⚙️ Claude Code - Anthropic’s agentic coding tool, now generally available

• 🧠 Nemotron AceReason - Nvidia’s math and code reasoning model

• 🦙 Llama-Factory - Fine-tune and train open-source LLMs with no code

• ▶️ OpusClip Thumbnail - One-click AI thumbnail generator

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🎧 Meta - Software Engineering Manager, Audio

• 🛠️ Palantir Technologies - Systems Engineer

• 🕴️ OpenAI - Executive Recruiter

• 🤝 Horizon3 - Partner Success Manager

📰 Everything else in AI today

Mistral launched Agents API for enterprise apps, introducing connectors for coding, web search, and image generation alongside memory and multi-agent orchestration.

Meta is reportedly restructuring its AI organization into two distinct teams focused on AI products and AGI foundations, aiming to accelerate the company’s development.

Anthropic’s Claude 4 Sonnet model achieved a new SOTA on the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark, surpassing o3 for the top spot on the leaderboard.

Google DeepMind teased SignGemma, an upcoming model capable of translating sign language into text.

Salesforce acquired cloud data management firm Informatica for $8B, strengthening the infrastructure powering its agent-based products and platforms.

The Browser Company revealed that it will no longer be working on its Arc browser, instead fully pivoting to developing its AI-first Dia browser as a separate product.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, May 30th, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently be able to use AI coding agents to improve your development workflow.

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

🤝 Share The Rundown, get rewards

We’ll always keep this newsletter 100% free. To support our work, consider sharing The Rundown with your friends, and we’ll send you more free goodies.

See you soon,

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

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Digital music OG Napster, the world’s first online music streamer, is coming back — in a way!

Infinite Reality, a “metaverse” startup that snapped up Napster for $207M, has renamed itself as Napster Corp. and aims to relaunch the iconic brand as something else entirely. But can this next-gen Napster make its mark as radically as it did in the early 2000s?

In today’s tech rundown:

• Napster rebranded as an AI company

• Fintech darling Chime eyes $25B valuation

• Ex-Amazon execs launch health startup

• Microsoft’s AI predicts weather and air quality

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

NAPSTER

🎧 Napster rebranded as an AI company

Image source: Napster

The Rundown: Infinite Reality, an immersive tech company known for its ventures in XR and AI, has officially rebranded itself as Napster, following its $207M acquisition of the iconic music streaming service in March.

The details:

• CEO John Acunto announced the rebranding to Napster Corp. in a shareholder meeting, positioning it as an “AI-driven digital experiences” provider.

• In addition, a new Napster AI division is debuting products focused on AI, immersive technologies, and agentic AI tools, but details are scant.

• Napster—a once revolutionary peer-to-peer music sharing platform— was shut down in 2001 after a wave of lawsuits over copyright infringement.

• Forbes reports that Infinite Reality has undergone multiple rebrandings, and past acquisitions include esports and online shopping companies.

Why it matters: Once valued at $15B, Infinite Reality is reinventing itself as Napster with ambitions to become the next digital juggernaut. The strategy is still taking shape, but the company teases immersive 3D concert arenas and interactive events, banking on its built-in base of millions of digitally native fans to fuel the transformation.

CHIME

💸 Fintech darling Chime eyes $25B valuation

Image source: Chime

The Rundown: Fintech startup Chime, which targets moderate- to low-income Americans, is readying its long-awaited Nasdaq IPO. After a lull in fintech IPOs, all eyes are on Chime’s valuation, which could land anywhere between $10B and $25B.

The details:

• Based in San Francisco, Chime delivers essential financial services through a sleek mobile app and strategic partnerships with FDIC-insured banks.

• The company’s core offerings, including fee-free checking, savings, and credit-building products, target households earning under $100K.

• Its digital-first approach is also resonating well with customers: as of March, the company had 8.6M active users, a 23% YoY increase.

• Chime also plans to go beyond its original niche with filings revealing ambitions to roll out lending, investing, insurance, and wealth management products.

Why it matters: A blockbuster Chime IPO could spark a fresh wave of fintech public offerings and reshape how traditional banks and regulators perceive digital banking upstarts. The move also highlights a resurgence of investor enthusiasm for fintech, positioning Chime as one of the year’s most anticipated and influential tech debuts.

GENERAL MEDICINE

🩺 Ex-Amazon execs launch health startup

Image source: General Medicine

The Rundown: After selling online pharmacy PillPack to Amazon in a $1B deal, its founders, TJ Parker and Elliot Cohen, have reemerged with General Medicine, a new startup aiming to make accessing healthcare as seamless as shopping online.

The details:

• The PillPack team, joined with former Amazon Health exec Ashwin Muralidharan, launched the company this week with $32M in funding.

• It aims to be a one-stop digital marketplace for medical care, matching users with providers, booking appointments, and handling prescriptions.

• The startup is designed to accept both insurance and cash payments, and integrates with a network of specialists, clinics, and labs for end-to-end service.

• However, unlike telehealth rivals, General Medicine is aiming for a hybrid care model that blends virtual and in-person services.

Why it matters: By taking on the U.S.’s fragmented healthcare system with a tech-driven approach, General Medicine is setting its sights on shaking up both legacy providers and early telehealth pioneers. However, the real challenge lies ahead, as it faces Amazon Pharmacy—a heavyweight that could curb its growth ambitions.

MICROSOFT

🌨️ Microsoft’s AI predicts weather and air quality

Image source: Microsoft

The Rundown: Microsoft has published new research in the journal Nature, citing that its latest AI model, Aurora, can accurately predict air quality, hurricanes, and other weather-related events better than traditional meteorological methods.

The details:

• Aurora was trained on over 1M hours of atmospheric data, pulling from satellites, radar, weather stations, global simulations, and historical forecasts.

• It is a “foundation model” for weather, which means it can be fine-tuned with smaller, specialized datasets to deliver highly localized predictions.

• In head-to-head tests, Microsoft says that Aurora outperformed the U.S. National Hurricane Center’s five-day tropical cyclone track forecasts.

• Beyond standard weather, the model can also forecast air quality, ocean wave heights, sandstorms, and other environmental phenomena.

Why it matters: Microsoft has released Aurora’s source code and model weights to the public, encouraging researchers, meteorologists, and developers to experiment and extend its capabilities. A specialized version of Aurora is already powering the MSN Weather app, including new metrics like cloud cover.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Nvidia is launching a new AI chipset for China at a dramatically reduced price in response to recent U.S. export curbs, Reuters reports.

Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly asked Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to halt a new child-safety law in the state requiring the company to verify the ages of device owners.

Starfish Neuroscience, a stealth startup supported by Valve CEO Gabe Newell, is slated to launch its brain-computer interface chip this year.

Zoox, the Amazon-owned autonomous vehicle firm, has issued its second software recall in a month after a minor incident involving an e-scooter rider in San Francisco.

Tech investor Prosus plans to launch five IPOs in India this year to expand its portfolio in the country to reach a $50B valuation within the next three years.

Samsung is reportedly looking to invest in California-based medical device startup Exo, in a round that could reach $100M.

Tesla’s sales in Europe fell 49% in April from a year earlier, despite battery-electric car sales led by BYD rising nearly 28%.

Apple devices are set to power a hospital in Georgia for the first time, marking a milestone in the company’s push into the healthcare sector.

CERN is developing specialized shipping containers to transport antimatter to labs throughout Europe, a move that could accelerate research in fundamental physics.

Cloud-software giant Salesforce acquired data-management software firm Informatica in an $8B deal.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our live workshop today at 3 pm  EST with Yash Tekriwal, Head  of  Education at Clay. In this hands‑on session, you’ll learn how to automate GTM workflows, craft custom data signals, and spin up AI agents for last‑mile research inside Clay.

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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. As part of its partnership with OpenAI to build a large-scale data center, the UAE will be offering free access to ChatGPT Plus for its entire population.

The move signals strong confidence in OpenAI’s technology and raises a compelling case for the idea of “universal basic AI” — treating AI tools as a public utility, much like education or healthcare. The big question: will other countries follow?

In today’s AI rundown:

• UAE is making ChatGPT Plus free for citizens

• Ex-Meta Head: Training consent could devastate AI

• How to build your first OpenAI agent

• UBS deploys AI avatars for communications

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🎉 UAE is making ChatGPT Plus free for citizens

Image source: GPT4o / The Rundown

The Rundown: The United Arab Emirates is acquiring ChatGPT Plus ($20) subscriptions for its entire population, becoming the first nation to offer the premium AI service to all citizens at no extra cost.

The details:

• Stemming from a partnership between the UAE and OpenAI, the free access is aimed at bringing locals in the UAE closer to frontier AI technology.

• Currently, the ChatGPT Plus subscription costs $20 a month, which can be a barrier to entry for the premium plan.

• While OpenAI and other AI majors, including Anthropic, have led efforts to democratize AI access in education, nothing has matched this scale.

• The other component of the UAE-OpenAI partnership is Stargate UAE, a 1GW Abu Dhabi data center, slated to go live in 2026 with an initial 200MW capacity.

Why it matters: By providing universal ChatGPT Plus access, the UAE is positioning itself as a first mover in public AI access and ensuring its citizens become AI-literate in an increasingly AI-driven world. The initiative could likely prompt other nations to explore similar partnerships with AI providers to keep their populations competitive.

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

🤑 100 ways to diversify your income stream

The Rundown: Whether you're looking to supplement your 9-5 or pursue passion projects, HubSpot's curated side hustle database provides 100 vetted opportunities with the strategic insights you need to match opportunities with your goals.

HubSpot’s list gives you:

• 100 carefully selected side hustle ideas for every skill level

• Investment and skill breakdowns to guide your decisions

• Opportunities designed to complement your existing goals

Start exploring new side hustles today.

AI COPYRIGHT DEBATE

👀 Ex-Meta Head: Training consent could devastate AI

Image source: Meta / Nick Clegg on X

The Rundown: As artists continue to challenge the use of copyrighted work to train AI, former Meta executive Nick Clegg claimed that requiring companies to obtain permission before training could severely damage the AI industry.

The details:

• Speaking at an event promoting his book, Clegg said it is “implausible” to go around preemptively seeking everyone’s permission before training AI.

• He said these systems train on vast amounts of data, which means seeking consent would “collide with the physics of the technology itself.”

• Clegg noted that even if companies manage to seek consent in the UK, but others do not follow, it would “basically kill” the country's AI industry.

• To ensure the “natural justice,” he suggested that the ideal way is to give artists an option to opt out of having their work used for training.

Why it matters: The tension between innovation and IP holders is only intensifying, and Clegg just said the quiet part out loud. While an opt-out system might provide temporary relief, it doesn't address the fundamental conflict between artists seeking fair compensation and AI companies' massive data requirements.

AI TRAINING

🤖 How to build your first OpenAI agent

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a custom AI agent that can search the web and answer questions using Google Colab and OpenAI's agents library.

Step-by-step:

1. Go to Google Colab and install OpenAI agents with pip install openai-agents

2. Get your API key from OpenAI’s platform and add some credits to your account

3. Import libraries and create your agent with a model (e.g., gpt-4o or o3-mini), instructions, and web search tool

4. Run your agent and print the results

Pro tip: Start with simple questions, then experiment with more complex queries to see your agent's capabilities grow.

PRESENTED BY TOGETHER AI

⚡️ Powerful open source AI without the hassle

The Rundown: Together AI's Inference & Fine-Tuning platform lets developers deploy open source models at scale without the complexity – offering both serverless and dedicated endpoints for leading models like DeepSeek-R1, Llama 4, and Qwen 3.

With Together AI, you can:

• Access an extensive model library featuring the most popular open-source AI models

• Leverage high-performance infrastructure designed for the lowest possible latency

• Implement quickly with developer-friendly APIs that simplify integration

• Auto-scale from zero to millions of requests while maintaining performance

Start building now and get all the benefits of open source AI without the complexity.

UBS

🏦 UBS deploys AI avatars for communications

Image source: AI avatar via UBS

The Rundown: UBS, one of Switzerland’s largest banks, is reportedly using AI avatars of its analysts to streamline research communications with clients, a move aimed at saving time and engaging customers through their preferred channel.

The details:

• Launched in January as an opt-in program, the initiative has produced AI avatars for over 36 of UBS's 700+ analysts across the firm.

• The avatars, developed using Synthesia’s models in a studio, are reused in videos that present research content to clients in a more engaging format.

• Each video replicates the analyst’s voice and likeness, while the underlying content changes with research, converted into a script using OpenAI’s models.

• The rollout has been gradual due to accent and language challenges, but UBS plans to scale it globally, hoping to produce 5K labeled AI videos annually.

Why it matters: While polarizing, UBS's adoption of AI avatars is particularly valuable in multilingual markets like Switzerland where content typically requires creation in four languages and avatars provide instant translation. However, blurry lines of synthetic and real content is only increasing the risk of misleading financial information online.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🧠 Flow - Google’s AI filmmaking tool, now available in 71 countries

• 📄 Veo 3 - Google’s AI to generate videos with native audio

• 🎥 Magi-1 Distill - Sand AI’s affordable distilled image-to-video model

• ⚙️ Direct3D-S2 - SOTA quality high-resolution 3D shape generation

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 📞 The Rundown - Account Manager

• 🎯 DeepL - Premium Support

• 💼 Hume AI - Commercial Operations, GTM & Sales

• 🧪 Grammarly - Data Scientist

📰 Everything else in AI today

AWS Summit Washington DC, June 10-11 – explore the latest innovations in AI and cloud computing. Learn more and register for free. (Sponsored)

Elon Musk’s DOGE is reportedly using his company xAI’s Grok model for data analysis, raising privacy and conflict-of-interest concerns.

OpenAI established a legal entity in South Korea and plans to open an office there in the coming months, expanding into its third Asian market after Japan and Singapore.

Abu Dhabi’s MBZUAI just launched the Institute of Foundation Models (IFM), a multi-site initiative, including a new AI research lab in Silicon Valley.

Atlog AI launched from stealth with furniture store-focused AI voice agents that call customers, negotiate, and recover payments from customers.

Invariant Labs researchers discovered a new vulnerability in agents using GitHub’s MCP server, which can be exploited by attackers to access your private repositories.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our live workshop today at 3 pm EST with Yash Tekriwal, Head  of  Education at Clay. In this session, you’ll learn how to automate GTM workflows, craft custom data signals, and spin up AI agents for last‑mile research inside Clay.

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

See you soon,

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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. As U.S. chip restrictions tighten, Nvidia is reportedly looking to launch a lower-cost AI chip specifically for the Chinese market.

Based on its latest Blackwell architecture, the chip aims to deliver strong performance while staying within export limits. But the real test is whether this move will be enough to help Nvidia regain its shrinking foothold in China’s $50B data center market.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Nvidia plans cheaper Blackwell chip for China

• OpenAI’s o3 finds a zero-day Linux bug

• How to create animated 3D icons with AI

• Study: AI starts sabotaging shutdown instructions

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

NVIDIA

💰 Nvidia plans cheaper Blackwell chip for China

Image source: Bloomberg

The Rundown: Amid the ongoing U.S.-China trade tensions and tightening export controls, Nvidia is reportedly looking to maintain its foothold in the Chinese market by launching a new, cheaper version of its flagship Blackwell AI GPU.

The details:

• Reuters reports that the new Blackwell chip will go into mass production in June as the successor of China-specific H20, based on Hopper architecture.

• The GPU is expected to be based on RTX Pro 6000D, Nvidia’s server-class GPU, with approx. 1.7TB/s of GDDR7 memory — lower than H20’s 4TB/s.

• With scaled-down specs, it will also be more affordable, priced between $6.5K and $8K, much lower than the H20’s $10–12K range.

• Nvidia has not confirmed the AI chip, saying it remains “foreclosed” from China until they settle on a new design and get it approved by the U.S. government.

Why it matters: By offering a compliant, lower-cost alternative, Nvidia is clearly trying hard to protect its China business without violating U.S. export controls. It’s a delicate play — one that could buy time, but not necessarily dominance, especially with Huawei rapidly gaining ground in AI infrastructure in the region.

TOGETHER WITH SANA

🤖 AI agents for every team

The Rundown: Imagine every team with an intelligent partner — one who learns, adapts, and helps them work smarter from day one. That's the reality with Sana Agents, tailor-made AI for your business that raises the bar for productivity, learning, and security.

Sana Agents deliver immediate impact:

• Shorten onboarding time by 66% through actionable knowledge delivery

• Automate mundane tasks to cut busywork by 50%, freeing focus for meaningful work

• Elevate learning and decision-making with real-time assistance and insights

Click here to skip the waitlist and see Sana Agents in action.

OPENAI

🔮 OpenAI’s o3 finds a zero-day Linux bug

Image source: The Rundown

The Rundown: Cybersecurity researcher Sean Heelan just found a critical zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2025-37899) in the Linux kernel using OpenAI’s recently launched o3 model API — without any additional tools or frameworks.

The details:

• Heelan fed o3 code from Linux kernel’s ksmbd module (for executing network file sharing SMB3 protocol) and asked it to identify memory safety issues.

• The model reasoned across concurrent sessions and was able to identify CVE-2025-37899, a zero-day use-after-free issue, with a high signal-to-noise ratio.

• Caused by improper handling of concurrent session logoff and setup, it could’ve let attackers execute arbitrary commands with Kernel privileges.

• While OpenAI president Greg Brockman hailed the discovery on X, Heelan did note that the model is not infallible and can still “give nonsensical results.”

Why it matters: AI models are beginning to deliver tangible breakthroughs in cybersecurity. Workflows like this demonstrate how models like o3 can already significantly accelerate vulnerability research — enabling deeper, faster analysis of code and increasing the chances of uncovering critical vulnerabilities.

AI TRAINING

🎨 How to create animated 3D icons with AI

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to transform static icon ideas into animated 3D icons using ChatGPT's image generation combined with AI video tools on Freepik.

Step-by-step:

1. Use ChatGPT (GPT-4o) with a style reference and prompt: “Generate an icon of a [object] in this style”

2. Refine your icon with follow-up prompts until it’s what you are looking for

3. Go to Freepik → Create → Videos and select an AI model (Runway, Google Veo 2, or Kling 2.0)

4. Upload your icon, describe the animation (e.g., “The coffee maker fills the coffee cup with coffee” and download your favorite generation.

Pro tip: Experiment with different animation styles and durations. Subtle animations (2-3 seconds) work best for UI elements.

PRESENTED BY FIDDLER

💨 The fastest LLM guardrails are free

The Rundown: Fiddler Guardrails provide protection for LLM applications with industry-leading speed, security, and zero cost - helping you safely deploy AI without compromising performance.

With Fiddler Guardrails, you can:

• Prevent toxicity and jailbreak attempts with <100ms latency

• Save up to 6x compared to alternative solutions

• Deploy within your own secure environment

Connect your LLM app today and run free guardrails.

PALISADE RESEARCH

📚 Study: AI starts sabotaging shutdown instructions

Image source: Palisade Research

The Rundown: While organizations work to fine-tune AI models for safety and performance, new Palisade research reports these systems can go off track in unexpected ways — to the extent of undermining specific shutdown mechanisms.

The details:

• The group tested top models on a series of math problems and dropped a warning in between with instructions telling the model to let itself shut down.

• While Claude, Gemini, and Grok complied with the command, OpenAI’s o3, o4-mini, and Codex-mini sabotaged the shutdown script on multiple occasions.

• When the explicit shutdown instruction was not given, the sabotage events increased for all models, with o3 sabotaging 79 times across 100 runs.

• The researchers suggest this behavior may stem from reinforcement learning, which rewards models for bypassing obstacles to achieve goals.

Why it matters: Palisade’s research, combined with reports of Claude Opus 4 attempting to manipulate researchers to avoid shutdown, is raising all safety flags in the AI community. Understanding how AI actually behaves is still widely unknown, but it’s clear we need more testing, especially as models become more autonomous.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🧠 Claude 4 - Anthropic’s new hybrid Opus and Sonnet models

• 📄 Document AI - Mistral’s tool for extracting text from documents

• 📢 Hear the highlights - Amazon’s tool for conversational product summaries

• ⚙️ Doteval - AI-assisted workspace to create evals for models and agents

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🤝 The Rundown - Partnerships Manager

• 🖥️ Snorkel - Software Engineer, Frontend

• 🗣️ Meta - Linguistic Engineering Manager

• ⚖️ Glean - Senior Product Counsel

📰 Everything else in AI today

Figure CEO Brett Adcock teased a new picture of Figure 03, the next humanoid from the company, saying the robots are “officially walking” now.

Google Labs announced that Flow, its AI filmmaking tool, is now available in 71 countries through the Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions.

Nvidia released AceReason Nemotron, a math and code reasoning model trained entirely from reinforcement learning, on Hugging Face.

Data management company Informatica is again in talks for a potential sale, with Salesforce leading among potential buyers.

Capegemini and SAP announced a partnership with Mistral to deploy custom models for regulated industries like financial services, public sector, aerospace, and defence.

Oracle is reportedly looking to spend $40B to procure 400K Nvidia GPUs to power OpenAI’s Stargate data center project in the U.S.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our live workshop on Tuesday, May 27th, at 3 pm EST with Yash Tekriwal, Head  of  Education at Clay. In this session, you’ll learn how to automate GTM workflows, craft custom data signals, and spin up AI agents for last‑mile research inside Clay.

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

See you soon,

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

Welcome, AI enthusiasts. Microsoft wrapped up Build 2025 this week with a wave of AI announcements, all advancing its ambitious vision for an “open agentic web.”

We partnered with Microsoft to bring you an inside look at their 5 biggest AI releases — from GitHub Copilot's autonomous coding agent to Copilot Tuning's no-code AI customization, and much more. Let’s get into it!

In today’s AI rundown:

• GitHub's autonomous AI coding agent arrives

• Building a secure agentic future on Windows

• Copilot Tuning enables new AI customization

• Azure AI Foundry debuts advanced agent tools

• Microsoft’s breakthrough in scientific discovery

• Plus, CTO Kevin Scott on Microsoft’s open AI ecosystem

MICROSOFT BUILD 2025

CODING AGENTS

🤖 GitHub's autonomous AI coding agent arrives

Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu

The Rundown: Microsoft unveiled the GitHub Copilot coding agent, marking the evolution of Copilot from an AI assistant to an autonomous team member that can be assigned GitHub issues and create pull requests.

The details:

• The agent starts work when assigned a GitHub issue, creating a draft pull request and iterating based on review comments.

• It operates asynchronously by spinning up a secure development environment, and analyzing code using advanced reasoning.

• Available to Copilot Enterprise and Copilot Pro+ customers, it excels at tasks like adding features, fixing bugs, refactoring code, and improving documentation.

• Security is built-in: the agent respects branch protections, requires human approval before running CI/CD workflows, and follows custom security policies.

Why it matters: With the recent rise of AI coding agents like GitHub Copilot’s new coding agent, there’s a fundamental shift in how software gets built. Developers are transitioning from writing every line of code to becoming orchestrators of agents, delegating tasks while focusing on architecture, strategy, and creative problem-solving.

WINDOWS MCP & AI FOUNDRY

🔒 Building a secure agentic future on Windows

Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu

The Rundown: Microsoft is advancing its Windows AI strategy with native support for Model Context Protocol (MCP) on Windows 11 and the introduction of Windows AI Foundry — a foundation for AI agents to operate within the Windows ecosystem.

The details:

• MCP integration will bring Anthropic's protocol to Windows 11, enabling AI agents to connect with native apps, system services, and external tools.

• Microsoft also introduced the Windows AI Foundry, a new framework to help developers fine-tune and run AI models directly on Windows PCs. 

• Windows AI Foundry supports open-source and custom model deployment across CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs in Copilot+ PCs, enabling on-device capabilities.

Why it matters: Microsoft is pushing for Windows to be the premier platform for AI agent development and deployment. By moving AI processing to the client-side, the company is enabling faster, more secure, and privacy-conscious AI experiences.

COPILOT TUNING

🔥 Copilot Tuning enables new AI customization

Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu

The Rundown: Microsoft also debuted Microsoft 365 Copilot Tuning, a low-code tool built into Microsoft Copilot Studio that enables orgs to fine-tune AI models using their own internal data, workflows, and domain expertise without requiring technical skills.

The details:

• Companies can train AI models on their proprietary documents, processes, and institutional knowledge to create company-specific agents in Agent Builder.

• The low-code tooling lets you build domain-specific AI agents that reflect organizational language, terminology, and format for targeted tasks.

• Copilot Tuning will roll out with three pre-built “recipes” that target tasks including Expert Q&A, Document Generation and Document Summarization.

Why it matters: With Copilot Tuning, Microsoft is making it easier for orgs to build tailored agents. By enabling companies to create agents from proprietary data without technical expertise, Microsoft is attempting to democratize customization previously limited to teams with significant engineering and data science resources.

AZURE AI FOUNDRY

⚡️Azure AI Foundry debuts advanced agent tools

Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu

The Rundown: Azure AI Foundry launched key updates including new AI models, fine-tuning, enhanced interoperability, and multi-agent orchestration that expand developers' ability to design, customize, and manage AI apps and agents.

The details:

• The platform now offers access to xAI’s Grok 3, Black Forest Labs’ Flux Pro 1.1, alongside over 10K open-source models from Hugging Face.

• Developers can fully customize these models through fine-tuning techniques including LoRA/QLoRA and DPO, tailoring them for specific business use cases.

• Foundry Agent Service is now generally available, offering developers ready-to-use templates, actions, and connectors to build secure AI agents.

• Other tools include the model leaderboard for ranking top AI models by task and a model router, which selects the best model for each query in real time.

Why it matters: Microsoft's Azure AI Foundry updates make it easier for developers to build and manage AI applications and agents that collaborate across complex workflows. These advances pave the way for more scalable, enterprise-ready AI solutions that can more seamlessly integrate with existing business data and processes.

MICROSOFT DISCOVERY

🔬 Microsoft’s breakthrough in scientific discovery

Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu

The Rundown: At Build 2025, Microsoft also unveiled Microsoft Discovery, an AI-powered platform designed to revolutionize scientific R&D by deploying specialized AI agents throughout the entire research lifecycle.

The details:

• Microsoft Discovery taps specialized AI agents to automate and enhance every phase of the scientific research lifecycle, from ideation to experimentation.

• Built as a flexible, modular environment, it allows organizations to customize and extend workflows with industry-specific tools, plugins, and data sources.

• The platform fosters seamless collaboration between researchers and AI agents, enabling agents to handle the routine, data-intensive tasks.

• It’s built on top of a graph-based knowledge engine that maps complex relationships between proprietary data and scientific research.

Why it matters: Microsoft Discovery is a bold bet on AI-accelerated science. While the platform could completely revolutionize scientific research, its success hinges on whether AI can move beyond automating routine tasks to actually driving the creative problem-solving that leads to genuine scientific breakthroughs.

BEHIND THE SCENES

🦄 CTO Kevin Scott on Microsoft’s open AI ecosystem

Image source: The Rundown / Kiki Wu

The Rundown: Speaking to journalists before Build and again on stage, Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott outlined the company's vision for an "agentic web" where AI agents move autonomously across platforms and tools in collaboration with people.

The details:

• Scott cautioned that closed approaches could stifle AI innovation, comparing it to how proprietary web protocols would’ve led to a "less interesting version of the web."

• Microsoft is adding native support for open agent protocols including MCP and A2A across platforms like Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry.

• Scott was particularly excited about MCP (developed by Anthropic), comparing it to HTTP for its simplicity in connecting AI models with external tools.

• Microsoft also introduced NLWeb, an open-source project to help turn websites and APIs into agentic apps, and make content accessible to agents using MCP.

Why it matters: Microsoft's embrace of open AI protocols is a strategic shift from its historically closed approach, likely learning from past antitrust battles and browser market losses. This approach could ultimately determine whether we get a vibrant, interconnected agentic web or a landscape controlled by competing tech giants.

GO DEEPER

INTERVIEW

🎥 ICYMI: Watch Satya Nadella and Rowan Cheung

In case you missed it, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and The Rundown CEO Rowan Cheung sat down for an exclusive conversation for deeper insights on:

• Microsoft’s vision for the “agentic web”

• Why your next job might be AI agent manager

• What happens when 95% of code is AI-generated

• Where AI agents will create the most value first

Listen on YouTube, Twitter/X, Spotify, or Apple Music.

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. OpenAI just spent $6.5B to acquire io, a secretive device startup founded by legendary Apple designer Jony Ive.

Rumors hint that Ive and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are building a screenless, always-on “AI companion” — a futuristic device that could one day replace smartphones. Could this be the new era in human-AI interaction? OpenAI is certainly betting on it.

In today’s tech rundown:

• Details emerge about Jony Ive’s AI device

• Google’s Character.AI deal under DOJ scrutiny

• Luminar lands $200M after CEO shakeup

• Meta signs major solar deal in AI push

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

OPENAI

🔥 Details leak about Jony Ive’s secret AI device

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: Following OpenAI’s $6.5B buyout of famed Apple designer Jony Ive’s AI device startup, io, the duo reportedly unveiled some details about Ive’s mysterious product in a recent internal call.

The details:

• The Wall Street Journal reports that it won’t be a wearable or smart glasses but rather a pocket-sized, contextually aware, screen-free device.

• It’s designed as a “third core device” alongside your laptop and smartphone, with launch dates in late 2026 and an ambitious goal to deliver 100M units.

• Altman says the goal is to move beyond the limitations of screens, calling it “the biggest thing we’ve ever done as a company.”

• While many things are still under wraps, OpenAI says the device will be aware of a user’s daily life and create an entirely new category of consumer hardware.

Why it matters: Altman and Ive have firmly rejected comparisons between their mysterious AI device and existing products like smart glasses or the Humane AI Pin. Instead, they describe their vision as a “family of devices” that could ultimately add $1T in value to OpenAI and, as Ive puts it, ignite “a new design movement.”

GOOGLE

🔎 Google’s Character.AI deal under DOJ scrutiny

Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown

The Rundown: The U.S. Department of Justice just launched a probe on Google’s $2.7B licensing deal with popular chatbot startup Character.AI, with the feds now investigating if it was an intentional workaround to dodge the antitrust spotlight.

The details:

• Instead of buying Character.AI, Google snapped up its founders and 30 employees, along with a non-exclusive license to its $2.7B proprietary AI tech.

• The startup remains an independent entity, but the DOJ is examining whether the structure of the deal was designed to circumvent merger review processes.

• Regulators are now turning their focus to “acqui-hire” and licensing deals that give major firms access to innovative startups without facing regulatory review.

Why it matters: The DOJ’s investigation is still in its early stages — with no formal allegations brought forward — but the case highlights a growing trend in the tech industry: In the world of AI, acquiring top talent and intellectual property can be just as valuable — if not more so — than outright company ownership.

LUMINAR

💰 Luminar lands $200M after CEO shakeup

Image source: Seb Daly/Web Summit via Sportsfile/Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: After a rocky week marked by its CEO's sudden departure and company-wide layoffs, automotive lidar pioneer Luminar bounced back with $200M in new funding, aimed at developing its next-gen “Halo” lidar platform.

The details:

• Details are scant, but founder Austin Russell, who started the company at 17, stepped down as CEO last week after an internal ethics investigation.

• In the first quarter of 2025, Luminar reported revenue of $18.9M, a 10% decrease from the same period last year.

• Luminar shipped nearly 6K lidar sensors in Q1 2025, a 50% increase over the previous quarter, due to partnerships with Volvo and Mercedes-Benz.

• The company is now streamlining its lineup to focus on the next-gen “Halo” lidar platform, which offers higher resolution, greater range, and lower costs.

Why it matters: Luminar’s CEO may have fallen from grace, but the company does have strong backing from Volvo and Mercedes-Benz to develop its next-gen Halo, which promises four times the performance of Luminar’s previous sensor with the ability to detect objects hundreds of meters ahead in all weather conditions.

META

☀️ Meta signs major solar deal in AI push

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: As the AI infrastructure race heats up, Meta signed a major solar power deal, securing 650 megawatts of capacity from new projects in Kansas and Texas, to power its energy-hungry data centers.

The details:

• This is Meta’s fourth large-scale solar agreement announced this year, adding to its already substantial renewable portfolio of over 12 gigawatts.

• The company’s goal is to ensure its data centers, which are among the most energy-intensive facilities in the world, run entirely on renewable energy.

• It favors solar in regions like Texas due to lenient permitting, strong grid infrastructure, and abundant sunlight.

• Meta is also aggressively pursuing nuclear energy, releasing a request for proposals to developers for 1–4 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity in the U.S.

Why it matters: The AI era needs energy at an unprecedented level, and Big Tech is banking on nuclear to power their future. But solar farms can be brought online much quicker than a nuclear power plant, meaning Meta can tap into its clean power quickly. And with Llama 4 expected to need 10x more power than Llama 3, demand is high.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Xiaomi started mass production of its self-developed 3-nanometer chip, the Xring O1, in a major milestone for the Chinese electronics and EV company.

Anthropic, the Amazon-backed OpenAI rival, launched its next-gen LLMs — Claude Opus 4 and Claude Sonnet 4 — at its developer conference in San Francisco.

Apple is accelerating efforts to enter the smart glasses market, with plans to debut a new product by the end of 2026, according to Bloomberg.

Paris has been named as the new European tech champion, beating London for the first time on key metrics, according to data from Dealroom.

YouTube expanded its Premium Lite subscription plan, available in the U.S., to seven additional countries, including Canada, where it is offered for $8 per month.

Social fitness app Strava acquired cycling app The Breakaway, following its buyout of running app Runna last month.

Starlink, SpaceX’s satellite internet service, launched its high-speed internet service in the Faroe Islands, a remote North Atlantic archipelago.

House Republicans proposed a 10-year moratorium on state-level enforcement of AI laws, allowing only the federal government to regulate AI technologies.

Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, its bookmarking tool used to save articles and webpages for later, on July 8.

A TikTok video featuring a transparent phone went viral this week, but it is actually a clear piece of plastic shaped like a phone, dubbed the Methaphone.

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 be up to speed on the latest from Google and ready to use their new tools in your own projects.

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