Good morning, tech enthusiasts. London-based startup AltoVolo just unveiled a futuristic hybrid flying vehicle that promises a 500-mile range, 220 mph speeds, and 80% less noise than a helicopter.

While eVTOL rivals Joby and Archer target the airtaxi market, AltoVolo’s Sigma has its sights set on private owners — with a design sleek and compact enough to land silently on a driveway. Is this bold vision the future of flying cars?

In today’s tech rundown:

• AltoVolo’s luxury hybrid flying vehicle

• Baby undergoes world-first gene therapy

• Apple’s VisionPro can now ‘see’ for you

• Uber launches low-priced shuttle service

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

ALTOVOLO

 🛸 AltoVolo’s luxury hybrid flying vehicle

Image source: AltoVolo

The Rundown: London-based startup AltoVolo has unveiled a sleek prototype of its Sigma hybrid electric flying vehicle that promises the power of a private jet in a three-seater drone you can quietly land on your driveway.

The details:

• The Sigma stands out for its hybrid-electric propulsion system, combining electric motors with a range-extending combustion engine for longer flights.

• With vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, it requires no runway—users can near-silently take off from driveways, rooftops, yachts.

• Sigma’s payload capacity of 270 kg allows it to transport three passengers, and its compact size—4.8m wide and 980 kg.—can fit into a two-car garage.

• AltoVolo is developing the Sigma with autonomous flight capabilities, offering point-to-point air mobility without the need for traditional piloting skills.

Why it matters: Sigma’s focus on personal use sets it apart from eVTOL rivals like Joby and Lilium, but the magic is in its range. The hybrid capabilities take it up to 510 miles, four times farther than other offerings. The company is preparing a full-scale demonstrator now, with a public waitlist opening in July. Price? That is anyone’s guess.

BIOTECH BREAKTHROUGH

 🧬 Baby undergoes world-first gene therapy

Image source: CHOP

The Rundown: In a landmark fusion of precision medicine and genetic engineering, clinicians at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Penn Medicine pioneered a bespoke CRISPR therapy to save an infant with a deadly metabolic disorder.

The details:

• Born in August 2024, KJ Muldoon was diagnosed with a life-threatening rare metabolic disorder that impairs the body’s ability to remove ammonia.

• Doctors used a personalized CRISPR-based therapy tailored specifically to KJ’s unique CPS1 gene mutation, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

• The team engineered lipid nanoparticles to deliver a customized base-editing system to target specific liver cells.

• Remarkably, the therapy was developed in just six months under an FDA emergency authorization, with the first infusion administered in February 2025.

Why it matters: KJ has received three infusions containing billions of microscopic gene-editors that targeted the mutation in his liver, and so far, it seems to have corrected the defect. More work needs to be done to determine the treatment’s full efficacy, but it paves the way for rapid, individualized gene therapies for rare diseases.

APPLE

🍏 Apple’s Vision Pro can now ‘see’ for you

Image source: Apple

The Rundown: Apple has announced a suite of new accessibility features for its Vision Pro headset, set to launch later this year, that could transform the device into a powerful visual aid for users who are blind or have low vision.

The details:

• Vision Pro’s main camera acts as a digital magnifier, allowing users to zoom in on anything within their field of view, from real-world objects to text.

• A Live Recognition feature uses on-device machine learning to identify objects, read documents, and provide spoken descriptions of the environment.

• Apple is also opening up the Vision Pro’s passthrough camera APIs to enable third-party devs to offer remote visual assistance directly through the headset.

• Users can control accessibility features using voice commands, eye tracking, and gesture controls, allowing for seamless, hands-free operation.

Why it matters: These features could be a game-changer for those who need it, as long as you have $3,499 to spend on the Vision Pro. Still, Apple also announced a host of other accessibility features to its products coming this year, including a magnifier for Mac and live captions on Apple Watch, in its mission to bring accessibility to the masses.

UBER

🚘 Uber launches low-priced shuttle service

Image source: Uber

The Rundown: Uber has announced Route Share, a new fixed-route, shared ride service designed to function much like a private shuttle for urban commuters. At 50% cheaper than UberX, it’s the company’s most affordable ride option to date.

The details:

• The service launches initially in New York City, San Francisco, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Boston, and Baltimore, with plans for future expansion.

• Service operates during peak weekday commute hours, from 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.

• Pickups occur every 20 minutes at designated stops along the busiest routes, and riders are required to walk a short distance to pickup points.

• Riders can reserve a seat up to seven days in advance or as late as 10 minutes before departure, with vehicles carrying up to three people at a time.

Why it matters: Uber is also introducing a feature that lets riders secure a fixed price for rides on select routes for $2.99 a month, and prepaid passes for rides on regular routes. With fares up to 50% lower than standard UberX rides, Uber aims to lure price-sensitive commuters, and even sway a few diehard public transit riders.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Apple is finally rolling out its next-gen CarPlay, called CarPlay Ultra, on new Aston Martin vehicles orders in the U.S. and Canada.

Google is reportedly testing a redesign of its Search homepage by replacing “I’m Feeling Lucky” under the Search bar with “AI Mode.”

TikTok has been accused of breaching the EU’s digital advertising rules, making it the second platform after X to receive a warning under the Digital Services Act.

Meta has reportedly delayed the rollout of its flagship AI model dubbed “Behemoth” to June after engineers struggled to improve its capabilities.

Microsoft founder Bill Gates has said that he plans to give away 99% of his fortune over the next 20 years — but doing so could still leave him a billionaire.

AI notetaking app Granola has raised $42M in a Series B funding round at a $250M valuation and is launching a new collaborative feature that lets users share transcripts.

Threads is now allowing creators to share up to five personal links on their account bios while providing performance insights on how many people have visited the links.

Legal tech startup Harvey is reportedly in talks to raise more than $250M in funding at a $5B valuation.

Warner Bros. Discovery is renaming its streaming platform from Max to HBO Max after switching the name just two years ago.

Helsinki-based Wave Ventures, Europe’s largest Gen Z-led venture capital firm, just closed a €7M fund—triple the size of its previous fund.

Apple has blocked the "Fortnite" video game on its iPhones in the U.S. and through the game maker's store in the EU, its maker Epic Games said on X.

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 understand how to design, build, and deploy your own AI systems using OpenAI’s Agents SDK.

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. AI coding platform Windsurf just sailed into new territory with an in-house model release of its own — launching the SWE-1 family designed to streamline every step of software engineering.

Coming right after the reported $3B acquisition by OpenAI, could the tech powering this launch be the real hidden gem behind the AI leader’s massive purchase?

P.S. — Our next workshop is today at 4 PM EST. Attend and learn how to design, build, and deploy your own AI systems using OpenAI’s Agents SDK. RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Windsurf’s in-house AI for developers

• Poe usage charts AI popularity shifts

• Automate Legal Document Analysis with Zapier

• Study: LLMs struggle with back-and-forth chats

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

WINDSURF

🏄‍♂️ Windsurf’s in-house AI for developers

Image source: Windsurf

The Rundown: AI coding platform Windsurf just launched SWE-1, its first family of in-house AI models specifically designed to assist with the entire software engineering lifecycle — not just code generation.

The details:

• The SWE-1 family includes three models: SWE-1 (full-size, for paid users), SWE-1-lite (replacing Cascade Base for all users), and SWE-1-mini.

• Internal benchmarks show that SWE-1 outperforms all non-frontier and open weight models, sitting just behind models like Claude 3.7 Sonnet.

• Unlike traditional models focused on code generation, Windsurf trained its SWE-1 to handle multiple surfaces, including editors, terminals, and browsers.

• The models use a “flow awareness” system that creates a shared timeline between users and AI, allowing seamless handoffs in the development process.

Why it matters: While coding platforms like Windsurf have traditionally been application layers for third-party models, this in-house release is a big transition — and comes (likely strategically) just days after a reported $3B acquisition by OpenAI. With this impressive launch, there may be more to the deal than we initially thought.

TOGETHER WITH DYNAMIQ

🤖 Build a free AI agent with a ready-to-use chat UI

The Rundown: Dynamiq gets your AI agents into production within minutes with a pre-built web chat widget, helping you skip the lengthy setup process and go live fast.

Dynamiq’s developer-friendly platform lets you:

• Build, test, deploy, and evaluate your first agent for free with no credit card needed

• Connect your agent to an internal knowledge base from Google Drive, Dropbox, or other sources

• Test and deploy instantly by copy-pasting a web-widget code snippet

Start building agents for free.

POE

📊 Poe usage charts AI popularity shifts

Image source: Poe

The Rundown: AI platform Poe released its Spring 2025 Model Usage Trends report, revealing shifts in AI user preferences across text, reasoning, image, and video — with newer models quickly gaining traction while established players’ experience declines.

The details:

• GPT-4.1 and Gemini 2.5 Pro captured 10% and 5% of message share within weeks of launch, while Claude saw a 10% decline in the same period.

• Reasoning models surged from just 2% to 10% of all text messages since January, with Gemini 2.5 Pro making up nearly a third of the subcategory.

• Image generation saw GPT-image-1 gain 17% usage, challenging leaders Black Forest Labs’ FLUX and Google’s Imagen3 family.

• In the video segment, China’s Kling family became a top contender with ~30% usage right after release, while audio saw ElevenLabs’ domination with 80%.

Why it matters: These Poe usage trends offer a valuable real-world look at what models are preferred by users beyond typical benchmarks, while also showing how quickly preferences can shift with new releases. With models accelerating nearly every week, this list may look drastically different in just a few months.

AI TRAINING

📝 Automate Legal Document Analysis with Zapier

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to build an automated system that analyzes legal documents uploaded to Google Drive, extracts key information, identifies potential concerns, and sends you a summary email.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Zapier Agents, click the plus button, and create a “New Agent”

2. Configure your agent and set up Google Drive as a trigger for when new documents are added to a dedicated "Legal" folder

3. Add three tools: Google Drive to retrieve the file, ChatGPT to analyze the document and identify concerning clauses, and Gmail to send yourself a summary email

4. Test your agent with a sample document and toggle it “On” to activate

Note: Always make sure to double-check AI answers, as the AI agent might hallucinate or contain errors. Also, if you do not want to share sensitive information, you can hide/erase that sensitive data before uploading it to your Google Drive.

PRESENTED BY JACE

📬 AI that transforms your inbox experience

The Rundown: Jace AI is an executive assistant that drafts replies, schedules meetings, and manages tasks inside Gmail — helping you reclaim up to 2 hours every day.

This intelligent inbox assistant delivers:

• Perfectly drafted replies waiting for you 24/7 in your authentic voice and tone

• Customizable draft rules to ensure consistent communication

• Smart integration with Slack, Notion, and your calendar for unified workflows

• Custom AI labels that auto-organize your inbox to match your needs

Try Jace for free, then use code RUNDOWN for 20% off your first 3 months.

AI RESEARCH

😵‍💫 Study: LLMs struggle with back-and-forth chats

Image source: Microsoft and Salesforce Research

The Rundown: A new study from Microsoft and Salesforce researchers found that LLMs significantly underperform during multi-turn conversations where user instructions are gradually revealed, often getting “lost” and failing to recover.

The details:

• Researchers tested 15 leading LLMs, including Claude 3.7 Sonnet, GPT-4.1, and Gemini 2.5 Pro, across six different generation tasks.

• The study found that models achieved 90% success in single-turn settings, but fell to approximately 60% when the conversation lasted multiple turns.

• Models tend to "get lost" by jumping to conclusions, trying solutions before gathering necessary info, and building on initial (often incorrect) responses.

• Neither temperature changes nor reasoning models improved consistency in the multi-turn tests, with even top LLMs experiencing massive volatility.

Why it matters: This research exposes a major gap between how LLMs are typically evaluated versus how they're often used, showing that developers may need to put more of an emphasis on prioritizing reliability and context window management in back-and-forth conversations instead of one-and-done prompts.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 xGen Small - Salesforce’s enterprise-ready compact LM

• 🧮 AlphaEvolve - AI coding agent making math and algorithmic discoveries

• 🎶 Stable Audio Open Small - Text-to-audio model for music samples

• 🧠 Psyche - Nous Research’s open, decentralized AI infrastructure

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🧑‍💼 Captions - Account Executive

• 📝 Harvey - Content Marketing Manager

• 🧠 Celestial AI - Package Layout Engineer

• 🤝 Grammarly - Lead Customer Success Manager

📰 Everything else in AI today

You.com announced that its ARI advanced research platform outperforms OpenAI’s Deep Research with a 76% win rate, also releasing new enterprise features.

Meta is reportedly pushing back the projected June launch timeline for its Llama Behemoth model to the Fall due to a lack of significant improvement.

OpenAI launched its "OpenAI to Z Challenge," inviting participants to use its models to help uncover archaeological sites in the Amazon rainforest for a $250k prize.

Salesforce is acquiring AI agent startup Convergence AI, with plans to integrate the team and tech into its Agentforce platform.

Intelligent Internet released II-Medical-9B, a small medical-focused model with performance comparable to GPT 4.5 while running locally with no inference cost.

Manus AI introduced image generation, allowing the agentic AI to accomplish visual tasks with step-by-step planning.

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 understand how to design, build, and deploy your own AI systems using OpenAI’s Agents SDK.

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

Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Dutch scientists just created a soft robot that moves, adapts, and even swims—entirely powered by air, with no electronics or brains involved.

Its unlikely inspiration? The wobbly physics of those inflatable dancing tube men outside car dealerships. As robotics trends toward even greater complexity, could this radically simple approach open up a new world of possibilities in the field?

In today’s robotics rundown:

• This brainless soft robot runs on air

• Robot smashes Rubik’s Cube world record

• UN aims to regulate ‘killer robots’ by 2026

• A Star Wars droid that hauls your groceries

• Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AMOLF

🎈This brainless soft robot runs on air

Image source: AMOLF

The Rundown: A team at Amsterdam's AMOLF research institute just created a soft-bodied robot that moves, adapts, and even swims — powered entirely by air, without any brain, electronics, or even a single line of code.

The details:

• The robot is made from soft, flexible elastomer tubes that serve as both structure and actuator, allowing for gentle, adaptive movement.

• A continuous flow of air causes its tubes to inflate and oscillate, which eliminates the need for motors or electronics for movement.

• When the robot’s legs are linked, their oscillations naturally sync through mechanical coupling, resulting in coordinated gaits without central control.

• And when it encounters obstacles, it reorients itself and keeps moving — also seamlessly shifting from a hopping gait on land to swimming in water.

Why it matters: This robot is remarkably fast, versatile, and adaptable, thanks to its decentralized “mechanical intelligence.” When its air-powered legs are linked, their movements spontaneously sync, turning chaotic flailing into coordinated gaits. It’s a seamless interplay of physics and clever design — no computation required.

PURDUE UNIVERSITY

🤖 Robot smashes Rubik’s Cube world record

Image source: Purdue University

The Rundown: Purdue University undergrads built a robot that solves the Rubik’s Cube in 0.103 seconds, less than the blink of an eye. Dubbed “Purdubik’s Cube,” the bot set a Guinness World Record, 3x faster than the previous record by Mitsubishi.

The details:

• Purdubik’s Cube features a sturdy mechanical frame that holds a Rubik’s Cube in place with six motorized actuators that rapidly twist the cube’s faces.

• It integrates industrial-grade motion control hardware from Kollmorgen, enabling fast and finely tuned movements.

• This setup is paired with high-speed machine vision cameras that instantly recognize the cube’s color pattern to compute the solution in real time.

• A Bluetooth-enabled Smart Cube lets users scramble the puzzle interactively; then the robot mirrors these moves and solves the cube instantly.

Why it matters: One of the coolest aspects of this is that the robot was built by a team of undergrads on their own, with their robot three times faster than Mitsubishi Electric’s — and 30x faster than the quickest human. Interestingly, the students say the biggest limitation is the cube itself, which can completely disintegrate at blistering speeds.

UNITED NATIONS

 🇺🇳 UN aims to regulate ‘killer robots’ by 2026

Image source: U.S. Department of Defense

The Rundown: This week, the United Nations convened a high-stakes summit in New York, spotlighting the urgent need to establish international guardrails for “killer robots” before they become an uncontrollable force in modern warfare.

The details:

• The discussions were driven by the rise in AI-enabled autonomous weapons used in Ukraine, Russia, and Gaza.

• Despite the rapid growth of drones and unmanned ground vehicles, there is still no comprehensive international treaty governing their deployment.

• UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has set a 2026 deadline to create new regulations to curb the unchecked spread of autonomous weapons.

• Major military powers—including the U.S., Russia, China, and India—have resisted binding international rules, preferring national guidelines.

Why it matters: Efforts to regulate autonomous weapons have stalled for years due to conflicting national interests, with major military powers resisting in favor of national guidelines. But advocates warn that without oversight, autonomous weapons risk violating fundamental human rights and fueling a global AI arms race.

PIAGGIO FAST FORWARD

🎒 A Star Wars droid that hauls your groceries

Image source: Piaggio Fast Forward

The Rundown: Boston-based robotics firm Piaggio Fast Forward released a Star Wars-inspired cargo droid — dubbed G1T4-M1N1 — that can follow you around while carrying up to 20 lbs of groceries or gear.

The details:

• Piaggio Fast Forward partnered with Disney and Lucasfilm to create the special edition Star Wars-inspired droid.

• The two-wheeled robot comes with a cooler-like body for hauling gear and features 22 custom Star Wars droid sounds and visual clues.

• The company says a suite of cameras and sensors enables it to identify and follow its owner with uncanny precision, adjusting its speed to match your pace.

• Priced at $2,875, the robot offers 21 miles of range and advanced autonomous navigation, even on bustling sidewalks and in tight spaces.

Why it matters: While Piaggio Fast Forward stands out for its consumer-oriented robots like Gitamini and Gitaplus (specifically built for personal use), rivals like Boston Dynamics focus more on industrial applications. Plus, with a runtime of 7 hours, this bot is more than a novelty and serves as a genuinely useful sidekick for errands.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

DHL Group, a global leader in logistics, is expanding its partnership with Boston Dynamics by committing to deploying more than 1K Stretch robots by 2030.

Elon Musk shared a “real real-time” 60-second video of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid performing impressive dance moves, which quickly went viral.

Houston-based Persona AI, founded by former Figure CTO Jerry Pratt, raised $27M in a pre-seed funding round to deliver its humanoids, with valuation undisclosed.

Pony AI, a Guangzhou-based autonomous driving startup, filed for a Hong Kong listing less than a year after its $413M U.S. IPO, causing its shares to surge over 16%.

Open AI CEO Sam Altman predicts that agents will start coding this year, make major scientific discoveries in 2026, and enter the physical realm by 2027.

Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi announced at the Saudi-US Investment Forum 2025 that the company plans to introduce autonomous vehicles in Saudi Arabia this year.

Chinese tech giant Baidu reportedly plans to launch robotaxis in Europe and is establishing a local entity in Switzerland to begin testing robotaxis there this year.

China’s Wuhan University developed a bionic robotic fish that is now deployed in the Yangtze River to collect ecological data.

Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, updated its 1,212 self-driving vehicles recalled this week due to a software glitch that led to minor collisions with roadway barriers.

Research firm Interact Analysis predicts that humanoid adoption will be slow, reaching over 40K units by 2032 with a total market revenue of about $2B.

DiffuseDrive, a Hungarian-funded generative AI startup, raised $3.5M in seed funding to scale its data-generation platform, promising photorealistic training content.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, May 16th, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently understand how to design, build, and deploy your own AI systems using OpenAI’s Agents SDK.

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. The race to achieve AI that makes genuine scientific breakthroughs just hit a milestone — with DeepMind's AlphaEvolve discovering new math solutions that have eluded humans since the 1960s.

By harnessing Gemini's language capabilities within an evolutionary framework, this AI coding agent isn't just theoretically impressive — it's already optimizing Google's data centers and accelerating the very systems that power it.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Google’s AlphaEvolve discovers math breakthroughs

• Anthropic set to launch new Sonnet, Opus models

• Transform text into polished PDFs instantly

• OpenAI’s new Safety Evaluations dashboard

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🔬 Google’s AlphaEvolve discovers math breakthroughs

Image source: o3 / The Rundown

The Rundown: Google just debuted AlphaEvolve, a coding agent that harnesses Gemini and evolutionary strategies to craft algorithms for scientific and computational challenges — driving efficiency inside Google and solving historic math problems.

The details:

• AlphaEvolve uses a mix of Gemini models (Flash for idea generation, Pro for analysis) to create code, which is tested by evaluators and evolved iteratively.

• The system has already made several mathematical discoveries, including finding the first improvement on Strassen's algorithm from 1969.

• It is also boosting efficiency for Google, optimizing data center scheduling, improving AI training (including its own), and helping with chip design.

• When tested on 50+ open math problems, it matched SOTA solutions in 75% and discovered entirely new, improved solutions in another 20%.

Why it matters: Yesterday, we had OpenAI’s Jakub Pachocki saying AI has shown “significant evidence” of being capable of novel insights, and today Google has taken that a step further. Math plays a role in nearly every aspect of life, and AI’s pattern and algorithmic strengths look ready to uncover a whole new world of scientific discovery.

TOGETHER WITH ENCORD

📶 World models unleash multimodal AI's true potential

The Rundown: Encord consolidates multimodal AI data management, curation, and annotation pipelines to one single platform — helping teams accelerate model iteration cycles by using an agentic AI data workflow system to prepare balanced, accurately labeled datasets 10x faster.

Join the Encord ML team on May 22 for a demo-focused webinar where you’ll learn to:

• Use world models to build agents that adapt and reason across multimodal contexts

• Identify and supervise edge-case behavior within petabyte-scale real-world sensor data

• Create high-quality datasets powering VLAs for robotics, ADAS, and more

Register here.

ANTHROPIC

🚀 Anthropic set to launch new Sonnet, Opus models

Image source: Anthropic

The Rundown: Anthropic is reportedly preparing to launch advanced versions of Claude’s Sonnet and Opus models in the “upcoming weeks,” featuring hybrid thinking and expanded tool use capabilities.

The details:

• The models are reportedly capable of alternating between reasoning and tool use, and can self-correct by stepping back to examine what went wrong.

• For coding, the models can test their generated code, ID errors, troubleshoot with reasoning, and make corrections without requiring human intervention.

• An Anthropic model, codenamed Neptune, is undergoing safety testing, with some believing the name hints at a 3.8 (8th planet from the sun) release.

• The news coincides with Anthropic launching a new bug bounty program focused on testing Claude’s principles on safety measures.

Why it matters: While Anthropic has been in the mix with Google and OpenAI for the top model in the industry, the company has been much slower to bring new ones to market — with 3.7 Sonnet in February marking its only release in 2025. With both other rivals also likely releasing upgrades soon, we could be in for a wild few months.

AI TRAINING

📄 Transform text into polished PDFs instantly

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Grok's new PDF rendering feature to create professional-looking documents directly from prompts — with instant previews and editing capabilities.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit Grok from your computer browser to access the main chat.

2. Write a detailed prompt describing the document you need (resume, literature review for a research paper, or invoices).

3. Review the preview and refine your document using follow-up prompts or by editing the LaTeX code directly through the Code button.

4. Download your finalized PDF using the download button.

Pro tip: For LaTeX research papers, remember to save both the PDF and source code for future editing or journal submissions that require the original LaTeX files!

PRESENTED BY HACKERRANK

⚙️ Custom training data for the SDLC

The Rundown: Struggling to source high-quality data for your AI models? HackerRank now delivers custom datasets designed by the experts who test millions of human developers every year.

With HackerRank, you can:

• Curate a custom dataset on specific software development skills

• Access a workforce of development experts for data labelling and annotation

• Request an evaluation dataset to test your model’s performance

Request a custom dataset today.

OPENAI

🔍 OpenAI’s new Safety Evaluations dashboard

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI launched a new Safety Evaluations Hub that will publicly and regularly display test results for its AI models, showing how they perform on metrics like harmful content generation, hallucination rates, and jailbreak attempts.

The details:

• The hub shows comparative performance data across OAI models, including metrics for refusing harmful content and accuracy on factual questions.

• The dashboard currently focuses on four categories: harmful content, jailbreak vulnerability, hallucination rates, and adherence to instruction hierarchy.

• OpenAI promises to update the page "periodically" as part of what it calls a company-wide effort to communicate more proactively about AI safety.

• The release comes after critiques that the company is not transparent with safety testing, and following issues with a recent rollout of a GPT 4o update.

Why it matters: With labs racing to push out models to keep pace with rivals, many believe safety has been taking a backseat to speed. This is a great step towards more transparency, but it will be relying on OpenAI to self-report and continually update the data — which likely won’t completely satisfy those calling for stricter safety measures.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🔌 Gemini Advanced - Connect Google’s advanced assistant to GitHub repos

• 🤖 GPT 4.1 - OpenAI’s advanced coding model, now available in ChatGPT

• 🤳 TikTok AI Alive - Turn static images into dynamic videos for TikTok Stories

• 🐰 CodeRabbit - AI code reviews directly in Cursor, Windsurf, and VSCode

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 🎨 The Rundown - Designer (Brand & Platform)

• 🧪 Writer - AI Researcher

• ⚙️ OpenAI - Software Engineer, Inference

• 💻 Siena - Senior Fullstack Engineer

📰 Everything else in AI today

OpenAI added GPT 4.1 and GPT 4.1-mini coding-focused models to ChatGPT, now available to both free and paid users.

Stability AI open-sourced Stable Audio Open Small, a text-to-audio model for generating music samples, capable of running on consumer devices with no internet.

Perplexity and PayPal announced a new partnership, allowing users to check out with both PayPal and Venmo when making purchases on the AI platform.

Meta’s released science research, including the Open Molecules 2025 dataset, the Universal Model for Atoms, and a study on language development and AI training.

NVIDIA is securing AI chip deals in the Middle East, supplying Saudi Arabia’s Humain and the UAE after meetings with the Trump admin and other regional leaders.

Nous research launched Psyche, a new open, decentralized AI infrastructure that allows individuals to pool compute to train models without massive investment costs.

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski revealed the fintech giant cut 40% of its workforce due to AI, but now plans to hire human agents after a hit on work quality.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop this Friday, May 16th, at 4 PM EST with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor. By the end of the workshop, you’ll confidently understand how to design, build, and deploy your own AI systems using OpenAI’s Agents SDK.

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

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

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The AI assistant battle is moving far beyond the smartphone — with Google announcing Gemini's arrival on watches, TVs, cars, and XR headsets.

As the tech giant races to create a consistent AI layer across our digital lives, will this ecosystem play finally give Google the edge it needs against increasingly powerful rivals?

Reminder: Our next workshop with Julius AI is today at 3 PM EST. Attend and learn how to analyze any dataset using just natural language, no code or spreadsheets required! RSVP here.

In today’s AI rundown:

• Google’s Gemini AI on cars, TVs, and watches

• OpenAI's chief scientist: AI can drive novel research

• How to connect AI coding apps with Zapier’s MCP

• Trump admin scraps Biden-era AI chip controls

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

GOOGLE

🚘 Google’s Gemini AI on cars, TVs, and watches

Image source: Google

The Rundown: Google just announced a major expansion of its AI assistant, with plans to bring Gemini to more Android devices and platforms like smartwatches, TVs, cars, and upcoming XR headsets.

The details:

• Gemini will arrive on Wear OS smartwatches "in the coming months," allowing users to interact with the assistant naturally through voice.

• The assistant is also coming to Google TV later this year, with the ability to recommend content and answer educational questions.

• Android Auto will receive a Gemini integration, with the AI bringing the ability to manage in-car requests like finding destinations or reading texts and emails.

• Finally, Google’s upcoming Android XR headset will also feature Gemini, creating immersive experiences with a ready-to-use multimodal assistant.

Why it matters: Despite the rise and massive acceleration of LLMs, the move to infuse consumer products with advanced AI has been slow to gain traction (looking at you, Apple). With Gemini now set to integrate across a range of Android products, the powerful model is positioning itself as the consistent AI layer connecting all devices.

TOGETHER WITH RECRAFT

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OPENAI

🧠 OpenAI's chief scientist: AI can drive novel research

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI's chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, just revealed his vision for AI’s near future in an interview with Nature, hitting on topics including AI’s ability to conduct scientific research, the company’s open-source model, AGI, and more.

The details:

• Pachocki said we have “significant evidence that models are capable of discovering novel insights,” but AI’s reasoning is different from that of humans.

• He said that AI creating a “measurable economic impact” and novel research would satisfy his AGI definition, which he expects by the end of the decade.

• OpenAI is preparing to release its first open-weight model since GPT-2, with Pachocki saying he wants it to be better than other available open models.

Why it matters: Pachocki’s AGI milestones already feel closer than his estimate, but more important are his thoughts on the evidence of AI being capable of new insights. AI has already started transforming traditional work and life — but systems that can create new scientific research will take us into truly uncharted territory for acceleration.

AI TRAINING

🔌 How to connect AI coding apps with Zapier’s MCP

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to use Zapier MCP to connect your AI coding assistants — like Cursor, Claude, or Windsurf — with 7,000+ apps, enabling an easy way to manage emails, access docs, and automate tasks without leaving the IDE.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit the Zapier MCP website and click “New MCP Server” to create your connection hub.

2. Select your AI assistant from the dropdown menu (Cursor, Claude, Windsurf, etc.).

3. Add the apps you want to integrate by clicking “Add tool” and authorizing access.

4. Connect your AI assistant by adding the Zapier MCP configuration to your tool's settings.

Pro tip: Try simple commands first, like “draft an email to the team about project updates” or “check my calendar for tomorrow's meetings” directly from your coding environment!

PRESENTED BY CONVEYOR

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Sue, the AI Agent, can:

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• Personalize your Conveyor Trust Center with data from conversation intelligence tools

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AI REGULATIONS

🏛️ Trump admin scraps Biden-era AI chip controls

Image source: Reve / The Rundown

The Rundown: The Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era rule that would have imposed controls on semiconductor export worldwide, opting instead to develop an approach focused on country-specific agreements while keeping restrictions on China.

The details:

• The Commerce Dept. announced the cancellation just days before the rule was set to take effect, saying it would hurt innovation and diplomatic relations.

• The new guidance also explicitly states that using Huawei's Ascend AI chips anywhere globally is now considered a violation of U.S. export controls.

• The administration plans to develop replacement regulations, with Bloomberg reporting a potential shift toward a country-by-country negotiation approach.

• The move comes as President Trump and tech leaders gather in the Middle East, with the UAE announcing partnerships and investments in the sector.

Why it matters: The U.S. has aligned with tech giants under the new administration, and this is a move heavily lobbied for by the kingmakers of the industry. A new structure could boost commercial interests, but may also create a complex landscape where diplomatic relations and investments define a nation's access to AI resources.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

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💼 AI Job Opportunities

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• 🧠 Snorkel - Head of Applied AI

• 🤗 UiPath - Customer Success Manager

📰 Everything else in AI today

Google is reportedly set to reveal a new software development AI agent at I/O 2025, described as an "always-on coworker" that can handle the entire development lifecycle.

TikTok launched AI Alive, a new tool that allows users to turn static photos into short-form videos directly in its TikTok Stories platform.

Notion released AI for Work, a suite of new integrated AI features including AI Meeting Notes, Enterprise Search, Research Mode, and more.

New research from nonprofit Epoch AI predicts that the scaling of reasoning models may slow significantly as soon as 2026.

Elon Musk spoke at the Saudi-U.S. investment forum, saying AI and robotics will lead to “universal high income”, where “anyone can have any goods or services they want.”

Microsoft researchers unveiled ADeLe, a new AI evaluation framework that measures how difficult a task is for an AI model and can accurately predict success or failure.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop today at 3 PM EST with Rahul Sonwalkar, founder of Julius AI. In this hands-on live session, you’ll learn how to analyze any dataset using just natural language, no code or spreadsheets required.

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

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

Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Billy Evans, partner of incarcerated Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes, has reportedly raised millions for a new blood-testing health startup called Haemanthus.

While Evans says that Holmes has no involvement, the stealth startup claims to have developed a cutting-edge device that uses lasers and AI to analyze blood, saliva, and urine samples for early cancer detection. Déjà vu, anyone?

In today’s tech rundown:

• Elizabeth Holmes’ partner launches health startup

• Perplexity eyes $14B valuation with fresh funding

• United flights get high-speed Starlink WiFi

• Scientists find electricity-conducting bacteria

• Quick hits on other major news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

HAEMANTHUS

🩸 Elizabeth Holmes’ partner launches health startup

Image source: Photo by Glenn Fawcett/Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Billy Evans—the partner of incarcerated Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes—has stepped into the health tech arena with his own blood-testing startup named “Haemanthus.”

The details:

• Haemanthus has reportedly raised millions from investors and is pitching itself as a departure from the ill-fated Theranos model.

• Evans claims the company is leveraging AI-powered photonics to analyze blood, saliva, and urine for early disease detection, including cancer.

• The startup has also secured a patent for its Raman spectroscopy system, which guides AI sensors to interpret molecular patterns in biological fluids.

• Its prototype is a small, rectangular box with a door and digital display, bearing a notable resemblance to the infamous Theranos machine.

Why it matters: The startup’s pitch—promising a new era of health optimization—has already drawn both investor interest and skepticism, as the specter of Theranos looms large over any attempt to revolutionize blood testing. Still, Evans emphasizes that Holmes, serving 11 years for fraud, has "zero involvement" in the company.

PERPLEXITY

🔥 Perplexity eyes $14B valuation with fresh funding

Image source: Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for TechCrunch/Wikimedia Commons

The Rundown: Perplexity AI, the fast-growing startup taking on industry giants with AI search, is reportedly in advanced talks to raise $500M in a funding round that would value the company at a staggering $14B.

The details:

• The round, expected to be led by venture capital firm Accel, marks a big jump from Perplexity’s $9B valuation in December 2024.

• The startup initially aimed for a higher raise, going up to $1B at an $18B valuation, but settled for a lower amount and valuation after negotiations.

• Notably, the surge in Perplexity’s value comes on the heels of extraordinary growth, with its annual recurring revenue approaching $100M in March 2025.

• The company’s AI platform has been competing directly with Google and OpenAI, offering conversational, citation-rich answers to users’ search queries.

Why it matters: AI chatbots are radically changing the search landscape, and Perplexity is positioning itself as a major player in the category. Backed by Nvidia, Jeff Bezos, and SoftBank, the startup’s new funding is expected to fuel new products, user growth, and potential integration with platforms like Apple’s Safari.

STARLINK

✈️ United flights get high-speed Starlink WiFi

Image source: United Airlines

The Rundown: United Airlines is all set to roll out Starlink WiFi across its regional fleet, marking the largest airline deal of its kind for Starlink and revolutionizing the in-flight experience for passengers.

The details:

• Passengers can expect WiFi speeds up to 250 Mbps, 50x faster than previous connections, and low-latency streaming, gaming, and calls at high altitudes.

• The service is available gate-to-gate, meaning passengers can connect as soon as they board and stay online until they disembark.

• It officially launches on May 15, beginning with Embraer E175 aircraft, and is free for all MileagePlus loyalty members.  

• Forecasts predict Starlink could claim a 39% share of the commercial aviation in-flight connectivity market by 2034, going ahead of rival Viasat.

Why it matters: While Air France and Qatar Airways have already begun adopting Starlink, United is the first U.S. airline to roll it out— potentially setting a new standard for in-flight connectivity. Starlink’s lightweight hardware also enables faster installation across fleets, helping eliminate the slow connections passengers have long endured.

OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY

⚡️Scientists find electricity-conducting bacteria

Image source: Oregon State University

The Rundown: Oregon State University scientists just discovered a new species of bacteria with a remarkable ability: it can conduct electricity, functioning much like natural electrical wiring, opening up new possibilities in tech.

The details:

• Wired reports that the bacteria weave themselves into microscopic filaments capable of conducting electricity across surprisingly long distances. 

• Unlike most microbes, which shuffle electrons internally, these newly discovered bacteria form living chains that act as natural electrical wiring.

• Researchers, using advanced electron microscopy and electrochemical analysis, observed these bacterial “cables” bridging gaps in sediment.

• Their conductive properties have potential applications in bioelectronics, such as developing microbial fuel cells that generate electricity from waste.

Why it matters: Scientists envision new bioelectronic devices that could revolutionize renewable energy and environmental cleanup, like living wires that detoxify polluted soils by channeling electrons to break down contaminants. While these are still early days, this research hints at a future where biology and tech are seamlessly intertwined.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in tech today

Apple is reportedly considering price increases for its new iPhone lineup, but wants to attribute the increase to new features rather than Chinese tariffs.

Mexico filed a lawsuit against Google over the company’s decision to label the Gulf of Mexico as the "Gulf of America" on its mapping services for U.S. users.

Google agreed to pay $1.4B to Texas to settle two lawsuits alleging that the company violated residents’ privacy by tracking personal data without consent.

EV startup Slate Auto reportedly tallied up more than 100K reservations in two weeks for its customizable low-cost electric pickup truck.

Polish startup Volonaut released a buzzy new video of its Airbike, a jet-powered hoverbike designed to carry one person at speeds up to 124mph.

France is pushing for a Europe-wide ban on social media for kids under the age of 15, with its minister for digital affairs leading the initiative.

Carnegie Mellon researchers published a study on LegoGPT, an AI system that can create stable, buildable LEGO structures from text prompts.

Rippling, an HR software company, secured $450M in Series G funding, raising its valuation to $16.8B amid ongoing legal disputes with rival firm Deel.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Tuesday, May 14th at 3 PM EST with Rahul Sonwalkar, founder of Julius AI. In this hands-on live session, you’ll learn how to analyze any dataset using just natural language, no code or spreadsheets required.

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. The saying "you can tell a lot from someone's face" just got AI validation, with a new system accurately predicting cancer survival from facial photos alone.

Mass General’s FaceAge AI just converted looks into a valuable medical biomarker — and your face may be about to become your doctor's newest diagnostic tool.

In today’s AI rundown:

• AI predicts cancer outcomes from photos

• Sakana teaches AI to think with time

• Transform videos into content gold mines

• OpenAI’s HealthBench to evaluate healthcare AI

• 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

AI RESEARCH

🧓 AI predicts cancer outcomes from photos

Image source: Mass General Brigham

The Rundown: Mass General Brigham’s researchers just introduced FaceAge, an AI tool that can estimate a person's biological age and improve cancer survival outcome predictions simply by analyzing their facial photograph.

The details:

• FaceAge uses a system trained on tens of thousands of face photos to translate subtle facial characteristics into a biological age estimate.

• The study found that cancer patients, on average, appeared about 5 years older, with a higher FaceAge correlating with worse survival rates.

• In physician testing, doctors showed significant improvement in accuracy when predicting 6-month survival when adding FaceAge risk scores to clinical data.

• The AI’s predictions correlated with a gene associated with cellular aging, suggesting FaceAge captured processes not detected by chronological age.

Why it matters: While we're taught not to judge books by covers, our faces may actually reveal crucial health insights. By quantifying what physicians have intuitively observed for decades, this tech turns facial characteristics into actionable biomarkers that may help doctors personalize treatments more precisely than ever before.

TOGETHER WITH HUBSPOT

⛏️ The AI gold rush: Are you in or out?

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• Real-world examples that turn "prompt engineering" from gibberish into a secret weapon

Grab your free AI Playbook today.

SAKANA AI

🧠 Sakana teaches AI to think with time

Image source: Sakana AI

The Rundown: Sakana AI unveiled Continuous Thought Machines (CTMs), a new type of model that makes AI more brain-like by allowing it to “think” step-by-step over time instead of making instant decisions like current AI systems do.

The details:

• Unlike most AI that processes information in a static, one-shot way, the CTM considers how its internal activity unfolds over time, much like our brains do.

• The tech draws inspiration from real brains, where the timing of when neurons activate together is crucial for intelligence.

• Sakana demoed the CTM solving complex mazes, showing the model visibly tracing possible paths through the maze as it thinks.

• Another example tackled image recognition, with a CTM viewing different parts of an image and spending more time based on the difficulty of the task.

Why it matters: Sakana is a unique AI startup in its mission to bring ‘nature-inspired’ methods to AI models, and these CTMs provide a differentiator that could help bring the flexibility and adaptability of human brains to advanced systems — leading to AI that reasons, learns, and solves problems in a more human-like fashion.

AI TRAINING

🎥 Transform videos into content gold mines

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use Google's NotebookLM to upload and analyze your videos and generate transcripts, title ideas, hooks, and descriptions to improve your content creation workflow.

Step-by-step:

1. Visit NotebookLM and sign in with your Google account, then click “Create new” to start a fresh notebook.

2. Add your video in the Sources panel by uploading your file or connecting to YouTube.

3. Generate a transcript by typing prompts like “Provide a complete transcript” or “Translate the transcript to Spanish.”

4. Improve your content by asking for “10 better hooks,” “5 YouTube title ideas,” or “YouTube description with relevant tags.”

Pro tip: You can also upload multiple videos with stats and ask NotebookLM to analyze which content style performed best to gain insights for future content strategy.

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• Follow a 6-month plan to build a 6-figure AI consulting business

• Join a 700‑strong cohort where some members landed their first AI client in 72 hours

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OPENAI

🏥 OpenAI’s HealthBench to evaluate healthcare AI

Image source: OpenAI

The Rundown: OpenAI released HealthBench, a benchmark created with 262 physicians to evaluate how AI systems perform in health conversations — and establish a new standard for measuring AI’s safety and effectiveness in medical contexts.

The details:

• The benchmark tests models across several themes (like emergency referrals and global health) and behaviors (accuracy, communication quality, etc.).

• Recent models seemed to perform much better on the benchmark, with OpenAI's o3 scoring 60% compared to GPT-3.5 Turbo's 16%

• The results also revealed that smaller models are now much more capable, with GPT-4.1 Nano outperforming older options while also being 25x cheaper.

• OpenAI has open-sourced both the evaluations and testing dataset of 5,000 realistic, multi-turn health conversations between models and users.

Why it matters: There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that AI can provide serious improvements across the board in healthcare settings, and having physician-validated benchmarks is an important step for both measuring each model’s performance in medical contexts and deciding when and how to deploy them.

QUICK HITS

🛠️ Trending AI Tools

• 🤖 HunyuanCustom - Generate custom videos with consistent subjects

• 📝 Granola iOS - AI notepad for people in back-to-back meetings

• 🧠 Deep Research - Connect GitHub repos to OpenAI’s deep research agent

• 🦌 Deer Flow - ByteDance’s open-source deep research tool

💼 AI Job Opportunities

• 📞 The Rundown - Account Manager

• 🧭 OpenAI - Product Manager, Enterprise

• 🛠️ xAI - Engineering Intern

• 🌟 Hebbia - Director of Customer Success

📰 Everything else in AI today

Google DeepMind launched the AI Futures Fund, an initiative that gives AI startups early access to advanced models, funding, and technical expertise to boost growth.

Softbank’s $100B commitment towards OpenAI’s Stargate is reportedly being stalled with fears over U.S. tariffs and rising data center costs.

Perplexity is reportedly set to raise a new $500M round of funding that boosts the company’s valuation to $14B.

Carnegie Mellon researchers published LegoGPT, an AI system that can create stable, buildable LEGO structures from text prompts.

Saudi Arabia unveiled Humain, a new AI venture, chaired by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, that aims to make the country an AI hub in the region.

The U.S. FDA plans to deploy AI throughout the agency by the end of June, following a successful pilot where reviewers completed three-day tasks in minutes.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Wednesday, May 14th, at 3 PM EST with Rahul Sonwalkar, founder of Julius AI. In this hands-on live session, you’ll learn how to analyze any dataset using just natural language, no code or spreadsheets required.

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, robotics enthusiasts. France has announced bold plans to build a battle-ready robot army by 2040, with robotic soldiers expected to be operational by 2028.

Military robotics is surging, with the $34B industry projected to nearly double by the mid-2030s. Now, as venture capital floods every frontier of physical AI, one question looms: are we on the cusp of a new arms race, powered by AI and robots?

In today’s robotics rundown:

• France eyes a robot army by 2040

• Tiny aquatic bot made from fish food

• Humanoid startup ‘Foundation’ seeks $100M

• China tests rainmaking drones

• Quick hits on other robotics news

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

MILITARY ROBOTICS

🇫🇷 France eyes a robot army by 2040

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: France is charging ahead with a plan to bring robots onto the battlefield, aiming to have the first wave of ground robotic systems as supporting troops by 2028 and fully combat-ready machines by 2040.

The details:

• At the heart of this effort is the newly launched DROIDE program — a seven-year, multi-billion euro initiative to develop military robotic platforms.

• The French Army has been testing robotics in multi-week trials near Paris, putting robots of all types through simulated battlefield obstacles.

• Early roles will focus on support tasks such as surveillance, logistics, remote repairs, and mine clearance, before advancing to frontline combat applications.

• To keep things in check, France has also set up an ethics committee to oversee the responsible development and deployment of AI and robotics in the military.

Why it matters: France’s push for battlefield automation is driven in part by lessons from the high-tech Russia-Ukraine conflict. As concerns brew over the ethical risks of militarized robots, France’s roadmap is clear — robots will remain under human control, but their growing presence will mark a radical transformation of the French Army.

EPFL

🐠 Tiny aquatic bot made from fish food

Image source: EPFL

The Rundown: Swiss researchers just developed a tiny robot that glides across the water’s surface using not batteries or motors but a clever chemical reaction that harnesses nature’s forces. Plus, it’s made from fish food.

The details:

• The 5 cm-long robot is made primarily from freeze-dried fish food and gelatin, resulting in a structure that is biodegradable and nutritious for aquatic life.

• It uses a citric acid and baking soda reaction to generate gas, which pushes propylene glycol and lowers surface tension, propelling it across water.

• The bot can be deployed in large numbers to collect environmental data or deliver medicines, with simple left- or right-turning variants for dispersal.

• Once its mission is complete, the robot can be safely consumed by fish, eliminating the risk of electronic or plastic waste in sensitive ecosystems.

Why it matters: This aquatic robot addresses a major challenge in environmental monitoring: the pollution and ecological risks posed by traditional devices made from plastics, batteries, and electronics. Its clever biodegradable design can revolutionize how we protect and understand fragile aquatic ecosystems.

FOUNDATION

🦄 Humanoid startup ‘Foundation’ seeks $100M

Image source: Foundation

The Rundown: Sankaet Pathak, the former CEO of fintech startup Synapse, is reportedly looking to raise $100M for his new humanoid startup, Foundation, at a $1B valuation — an ambitious effort following Synapse’s high-profile bankruptcy last year.

The details:

• Foundation is focused on developing advanced humanoids to automate manual labor in fields like manufacturing, logistics, and defense.

• Earlier this year, the company debuted its first humanoid — the Phantom MK1 — for use in both military and industrial applications.

• Last year, Foundation reportedly circulated a pitch deck claiming General Motors was about to invest and place a $300M order, which GM flat-out denied.

• Also, after Synapse filed for bankruptcy, $85M in customer funds remained missing as banks and Synapse disputed responsibility for returning deposits.

Why it matters: Pathak has faced serious allegations of mismanagement and ethical concerns at Synapse, including taking personal loans from the company during its decline and rapidly launching Foundation. Still, despite the skepticism, investor interest is strong, with ongoing negotiations reportedly involving a Saudi royal family fund.

DRONE INNOVATIONS

🌧️ China tests rainmaking drones

Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown

The Rundown: Chinese researchers achieved a major breakthrough in weather modification by using a fleet of drones to induce 18.5M gallons of rainfall — equivalent to filling 30 Olympic-sized swimming pools — in the drought-prone region of Xinjiang. 

The details:

• The operation involved equipping drones with canisters containing 2.2 pounds of silver iodide powder, a well-known cloud-seeding agent. 

• As the drones flew over targeted areas, they released the powder as smoke into the atmosphere, where it acted as nuclei for water droplets to form.

• The fleet of drones, adapted from military TB-A models, increased rainfall by more than 4% across some 8K-square km in a day.

• The 45-day testing campaign in Xinjiang could pave the way for broader use of drone-based weather modification in other arid regions globally.

Why it matters: While drone cloud seeding is promising for drought management and agriculture, experts warn of potential downsides, such as increased pollution from using chemicals in the environment. Plus, the long-term environmental impacts and scalability of the approach remain under study.

QUICK HITS

📰 Everything else in robotics today

Beijing is set to host the inaugural World Humanoid Robot Games from August 15 to 17 at the National Stadium and the National Speed Skating Oval.

Uber is investing an additional $100M in Chinese autonomous vehicle firm WeRide to bring WeRide’s tech to 15 more cities over the next five years.

Amazon unveiled seven new robots at its innovative delivery station in Dortmund, Germany, including Vulcan — its first robot with a sense of touch.

Houston-based Persona AI partnered with HD Hyundai subsidiaries to develop and deploy humanoid robots for welding tasks in shipyards.

Researchers from EPFL and Nestlé developed BabyBot, a robotic infant with a sensorized mouth and soft tongue to study infant feeding behaviors and disorders.

Rare earth elements’ prices reportedly surged 210% after China imposed export controls, severely impacting supply chains for EV, robotics, and defense industries.

Researchers developed a soft robot actuator that uses steam from boiling water for precise, high-force motion without bulky components.

U.S.-based Bounce Imaging unveiled a nuke-proof spy camera robot for protecting high-security, electromagnetically restricted sites like nuclear silos.

The International Federation of Robotics reports that total installations of industrial robots in the U.S. auto sector grew by 10.7%, reaching 13,700 units in 2024.

U.S.-based Chang Robotics is launching a $50M venture fund for seed-stage investments in disruptive tech and reaffirming plans to expand in the U.S.

Carnegie Mellon University created an algorithm that enables the design of mechanical joints that can shift how they move and how stiff they are, all on demand.

Standard Bots unveiled a new robot arm with a 30 kg payload capacity and announced that it has expanded its New York production facility.

COMMUNITY

🎥 Join our next live workshop

Join our next workshop on Wednesday, May 14th, at 3 PM EST with Rahul Sonwalkar, founder of Julius AI. In this hands-on live session, you’ll learn how to analyze any dataset using just natural language, no code or spreadsheets required. Discover how Julius AI is helping marketing, finance, and product teams turn raw data into clear, actionable insights at lightning speed.

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