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Google's ultra-efficient Gemma 3
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The era of massive compute requirements for cutting-edge AI may be coming to an end, with Google’s latest open-source release outperforming giants at just a fraction of the size.
With Gemma 3’s high-level performance, multimodal capabilities, and on-device operation on just a single GPU, the AI efficiency barrier is quickly getting destroyed.
In today’s AI rundown:
Google’s Gemma 3 for single-GPU deployment
Gemini Flash with new image capabilities
Create your AI-powered Telegram assistant
Sakana’s peer-reviewed AI-authored paper
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
🧠 Google’s Gemma 3 for single-GPU deployment
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google just unveiled Gemma 3, a new family of lightweight AI models built from the same technology as Gemini 2.0 — delivering performance that rivals much larger models while running efficiently on just a single GPU or TPU.
The details:
The model family comes in four sizes (1B, 4B, 12B, and 27B parameters) optimized for different hardware configurations from phones to laptops.
The 27B model outperforms larger competitors like Llama-405B, DeepSeek-V3, and o3-mini in human preference evaluations on the LMArena leaderboard.
Other new capabilities include a 128K token context window, support for 140 languages, and multimodal abilities to analyze images, text, and short videos.
Google also released ShieldGemma 2, a 4B parameter image safety checker that can filter explicit content — with easy integration into visual applications.
Why it matters: Gemma 3’s performance is mind-blowing, beating out top-level systems that dwarf it in both size and compute. Running on just a single GPU, these models hit a once incomprehensible sweet spot of being open-source, powerful, fast, multimodal, and small enough to be deployed across devices — a truly massive feat.
TOGETHER WITH DAGSTER
🚀 Streamline your AI stack with Dagster
The Rundown: Dagster consolidates your AI capabilities into one powerful orchestrator that developers love — helping reduce costs, eliminate complexity, and ensure reliable pipelines from prototype to production.
With Dagster, you can:
Consolidate all AI capabilities under one intuitive interface
Save 40%+ on infrastructure costs by optimizing AI workloads
Ship AI features 3x faster with standardized development practices
Schedule a demo to learn more about how Dagster can simplify your AI platform.
📸 Gemini Flash gets new image capabilities
Image source: Google
The Rundown: Google released new experimental image-generation capabilities for its Gemini 2.0 Flash model, letting users upload, create, and edit images directly from the language model without requiring a separate image-generation system.
The details:
A 2.0-flash-exp model is available via API and in the Google AI Studio with support for both image and text outputs and editing via text conversation.
Gemini uses reasoning and a multimodal foundation to maintain character consistency and understand real-world concepts throughout a conversation.
For instance, you can prompt it to generate a story with pictures and then guide it to the perfect version through natural dialogue.
Google says Flash 2.0 also excels at text rendering compared to competitors, allowing for ads, social posts, and other text-heavy design generations.
Why it matters: This upgrade is a major step in shifting how AI generates visual content — moving away from dedicated image models toward language models that natively understand both text and visuals. Just as natural language prompting has taken over other domains, image editing appears to be next on the list.
AI TRAINING
🤖 Create your AI-powered Telegram assistant
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to build a personal AI assistant on Telegram that can answer questions, remember conversations, and eventually connect to other services using n8n's automation platform.
Step-by-step:
Create a Telegram bot - search for "BotFather" in Telegram, type /newbot, and save the API token you receive.
Sign up for n8n (free 14-day trial) and create a new workflow with a Telegram trigger using your bot token.
Add an AI Agent node after the trigger, connect it to your preferred AI model (like those from OpenAI), and use the message text as the prompt.
Add a Telegram "Send Message" node to return the AI's responses to your chat using the chat ID from the trigger.
Enable Window Buffer Memory in the AI Agent settings so your bot remembers previous conversations.
Pro tip: You can also expand the assistant’s capabilities by connecting it to calendars, emails, notes apps, and other services. We did an extensive workshop on how to create your own AI Agent to automate tasks with n8n here.
PRESENTED BY JOTFORM
🤖 Handle customer interactions at scale with no-code AI agents
The Rundown: Jotform AI Agents let organizations provide 24/7, conversational customer service across multiple platforms — no coding required.
With Jotform AI Agents, you can:
Get started easily with over 7,000 ready-to-use AI agent templates
Automate workflows and trigger custom actions in real time
Handle voice, text, and chat inquiries seamlessly
Customize your agent’s look and feel to align with your brand identity
SAKANA AI
🔬 Sakana’s peer-reviewed AI-authored paper
Image source: Sakana AI
The Rundown: Japanese AI startup Sakana announced that its AI system successfully generated a scientific paper that passed peer review, with the company calling it the first fully AI-authored paper to clear the scientific bar.
The details:
AI Scientist-v2 generated three papers, creating the hypotheses, experimental code, data analyses, visualizations, and text without human modification.
One submission was accepted at the ICLR 2025 workshop with an average reviewer score of 6.33, ranking higher than many human-written papers.
Sakana also pointed out some caveats, including the AI making citation errors and workshop acceptance rates being higher than typical conference tracks.
The company concluded that the paper did not meet its internal bar for ICLR conference papers but displayed “early signs of progress.”
Why it matters: While this milestone comes with significant asterisks, it also represents a major early marker of AI's advancing role in academic research processes. Between models like Sakana’s and Google’s AI co-scientist, a seismic shift is getting closer and closer for the scientific world.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
⚙️ Responses API and Agents SDK - OpenAI’s DIY tools for custom agents
⚡️ Reka Flash 3 - Open, 21B parameter reasoning AI for on-device deployment
👨🏻⚖️ Harvey - AI for law firms, service providers, and Fortune 500 companies
🗣️ Wispr Flow for Windows - Use voice to write 3x faster in every application
📰 Everything else in AI today
New legal filings revealed that Google owns 14% of Anthropic, with its investments totaling over $3B in the rival AI startup.
Alibaba researchers open-sourced R1-Omni, a new multimodal reasoning model that can ‘read’ emotions using visual and audio context.
Google DeepMind introduced Gemini Robotics and Gemini Robotics-ER, two Gemini 2.0-based models to help robots accomplish real-world tasks without training.
Perplexity launched a new Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for its Sonar model, allowing Claude to access real-time web search capabilities.
Snap released its first AI Video Lenses, powered by its own in-house model, offering premium subscribers three AR animations with new options planned to launch weekly.
Moonvalley released Marey, an AI video model that claims to be trained exclusively on licensed content for use in filmmaking — capable of creating 30-second-long HD clips.
Captions unveiled Mirage, a foundation model designed specifically for generating UGC-style content for ad campaigns.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday at 4 PM EST to learn about how to use Manus AI to boost productivity and automate everyday tasks easily, with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.
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
OpenAI's new agent toolkit
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The year of AI agents just got a major push forward — with OpenAI releasing powerful new tools that let businesses build their own autonomous assistants.
With capabilities like web browsing, file management, and computer use in a single API, is this the breakthrough that finally transforms the agent hype into an enterprise-ready reality?
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI releases new DIY agent tools
Manus, Qwen team up for China push
Connect AI coding assistants with external tools
Meta testing its own AI training chip
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
🤖 OpenAI releases new DIY agent tools
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI just launched new tools that let businesses build their own AI agents—enabling custom bots to handle tasks like web browsing and file management and marking a major push toward bringing autonomous AI assistants into the enterprise.
The details:
The new Responses API combines web search, file scanning, and computer use capabilities, replacing the older Assistants API, which will sunset in 2026.
It allows companies to develop agents using the same tech powering Operator, with built-in tools for searching the web and navigating computer interfaces.
A new open-source Agents SDK will help developers orchestrate single and multi-agent systems while also providing safety guardrails and monitoring tools.
Early adopters include Stripe, which built an agent to handle invoicing, and Box, which created agents to search through enterprise documents.
Why it matters: 2025 has already been declared the year of AI agents, and China’s Manus took the hype to another level in the past week. While most agents have generated more hype than results, OpenAI expanding the ability for users to build and customize agentic tools may help bridge the gap between demos and real-world utility.
TOGETHER WITH TELY AI
📝 Run a lead-generating SEO blog on autopilot
The Rundown: With Tely AI, you don’t need an SEO or content team — AI does it all. It researches your industry, competitors, and website to find the best keywords to rank on Google and produces expert-level articles promoting your company & product.
With Tely AI, you can:
Publish up to 60 articles every month
See Google index results in just 2 weeks
Enjoy full automation for writing, SEO, and publishing
Convert traffic into valuable business leads
MANUS & ALIBABA
🤖 Manus, Qwen team up for China push
Image source: Manus
The Rundown: Manus just announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba's Qwen team to develop a Chinese version of its autonomous agent platform, following the company’s viral success over the past week.
The details:
The collaboration will integrate Manus's agent capabilities with Qwen's open-source language models and computing infrastructure.
Manus, which currently runs on both Anthropic’s Claude and Qwen, will adapt its full feature set for Chinese users and domestic platforms.
The partnership follows Manus' invitation-only preview that demonstrated capabilities surpassing OpenAI’s DeepResearch on agentic benchmarks.
Qwen has also had a busy month, launching a new open-source reasoning model (QwQ-32B) and major upgrades to its chat platform.
Why it matters: We’ve seen plenty of viral AI products fade fast, but a partnership with one of China’s top AI labs suggests there’s more here than just hype. While many dismissed Manus for running on Claude, it’s becoming clear that real value lies in packaging top models with the right tools, workflows, and interface.
AI TRAINING
🛠️ Connect AI coding assistants with external tools
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to connect your favorite AI coding assistants, like Cursor or Windsurf, to powerful external tools using MCP (model context protocol) servers to tackle more complex coding tasks.
Step-by-step:
Choose your AI coding assistant (Windsurf or Cursor) and locate the MCP configuration area.
For Windsurf: Click the tools icon, select "Configure," and add the JSON code that connects to your desired service.
For Cursor: Open Settings > Features > MCP Servers and add a new server with the command that includes your API key.
Start using enhanced capabilities by asking your AI assistant to access external tools in your prompts.
Pro tip: Many MCP tool providers offer detailed documentation on GitHub repositories. Check these resources for specific commands and capabilities available for each tool.
PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI
💼 Launch your AI consulting career
The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s new program, AI Consultancy Project, trains AI enthusiasts with all the skills and strategies they need to capitalize on the rapidly growing AI consulting market – which is set to 8x by 2032.
The program offers:
The tools and frameworks to find clients and deliver top-notch services
A 6-month plan to build a 6-figure AI consulting business
Students getting their first AI client in as little as 3 days
META
🏗️ Meta testing its own AI training chip
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: Meta just began testing its first in-house AI training chip, according to a new report from Reuters — with the company hoping to reduce dependence on Nvidia and control its soaring AI infrastructure costs.
The details:
The chip is being manufactured by TSMC and is part of Meta's MTIA series—aimed specifically at AI training and inference workloads.
Its test follows the company’s successful first "tape-out" — a crucial development milestone that proves a chip design can be manufactured at scale.
Meta already uses in-house chips for Facebook and Instagram’s recommendation systems, with plans to expand to power genAI products.
It plans to start deploying the new training chips at scale by 2026, potentially saving billions on its projected $65B AI infrastructure spend.
Why it matters: With infrastructure costs skyrocketing and AI systems scaling rapidly, tech giants are increasingly investing in in-house silicon to cut costs and gain greater control. Meta is the latest to join this shift, aligning with OpenAI, Amazon, ByteDance, and others in reducing reliance on Nvidia—the chipmaking king.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
💼 Fyxer AI - An AI Executive Assistant to help you gain an hour daily with organized emails, tone-matched replies, and crisp meeting notes*
🤖 Hunyuan-TurboS - Tencent AI that beats SOTA models on math, reasoning
🔎 Perplexity Windows App - New desktop app for AI-powered web search
🦉OWL - An open-source alternative to Manus AI’s agentic platform
*Sponsored Listing
📰 Everything else in AI today
Anthropic has seen its annualized revenue grow to $1.4B this month, coming on the heels of Claude powering Manus and the recent Claude Code and 3.7 Sonnet release.
Reka open-sourced Flash 3, a 21B parameter reasoning model rivaling OpenAI's o1-mini with a 32k context length and size for on-device deployment.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that AI will be writing 90% of the world’s code in the next 3-6 months and reaching nearly 100% in the next year.
Voice AI platform Cartesia announced $64M in Series A funding and unveiled Sonic 2.0 and Sonic Turbo AI with speed, ultra-realistic speech, and support for 16 languages.
Sam Altman revealed that OpenAI has trained a new model that excels at creative writing, saying it is the “first time I have been really struck by something written by AI”.
Harvey unveiled new AI agents with planning and adaptation capabilities that match or exceed lawyer performance on key legal tasks.
Luma Labs introduced Inductive Moment Matching, a new pre-training technique to generate superior quality images 10x more efficiently than current approaches.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday at 4 PM EST to learn about how to use Manus AI to boost productivity and automate everyday tasks easily with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.
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
OpenAI's new agent toolkit
Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise
Good morning, AI enthusiasts. The year of AI agents just got a major push forward — with OpenAI releasing powerful new tools that let businesses build their own autonomous assistants.
With capabilities like web browsing, file management, and computer use in a single API, is this the breakthrough that finally transforms the agent hype into an enterprise-ready reality?
In today’s AI rundown:
OpenAI releases new DIY agent tools
Manus, Qwen team up for China push
Connect AI coding assistants with external tools
Meta testing its own AI training chip
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
OPENAI
🤖 OpenAI releases new DIY agent tools
Image source: OpenAI
The Rundown: OpenAI just launched new tools that let businesses build their own AI agents—enabling custom bots to handle tasks like web browsing and file management and marking a major push toward bringing autonomous AI assistants into the enterprise.
The details:
The new Responses API combines web search, file scanning, and computer use capabilities, replacing the older Assistants API, which will sunset in 2026.
It allows companies to develop agents using the same tech powering Operator, with built-in tools for searching the web and navigating computer interfaces.
A new open-source Agents SDK will help developers orchestrate single and multi-agent systems while also providing safety guardrails and monitoring tools.
Early adopters include Stripe, which built an agent to handle invoicing, and Box, which created agents to search through enterprise documents.
Why it matters: 2025 has already been declared the year of AI agents, and China’s Manus took the hype to another level in the past week. While most agents have generated more hype than results, OpenAI expanding the ability for users to build and customize agentic tools may help bridge the gap between demos and real-world utility.
TOGETHER WITH TELY AI
📝 Run a lead-generating SEO blog on autopilot
The Rundown: With Tely AI, you don’t need an SEO or content team — AI does it all. It researches your industry, competitors, and website to find the best keywords to rank on Google and produces expert-level articles promoting your company & product.
With Tely AI, you can:
Publish up to 60 articles every month
See Google index results in just 2 weeks
Enjoy full automation for writing, SEO, and publishing
Convert traffic into valuable business leads
MANUS & ALIBABA
🤖 Manus, Qwen team up for China push
Image source: Manus
The Rundown: Manus just announced a strategic partnership with Alibaba's Qwen team to develop a Chinese version of its autonomous agent platform, following the company’s viral success over the past week.
The details:
The collaboration will integrate Manus's agent capabilities with Qwen's open-source language models and computing infrastructure.
Manus, which currently runs on both Anthropic’s Claude and Qwen, will adapt its full feature set for Chinese users and domestic platforms.
The partnership follows Manus' invitation-only preview that demonstrated capabilities surpassing OpenAI’s DeepResearch on agentic benchmarks.
Qwen has also had a busy month, launching a new open-source reasoning model (QwQ-32B) and major upgrades to its chat platform.
Why it matters: We’ve seen plenty of viral AI products fade fast, but a partnership with one of China’s top AI labs suggests there’s more here than just hype. While many dismissed Manus for running on Claude, it’s becoming clear that real value lies in packaging top models with the right tools, workflows, and interface.
AI TRAINING
🛠️ Connect AI coding assistants with external tools
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to connect your favorite AI coding assistants, like Cursor or Windsurf, to powerful external tools using MCP (model context protocol) servers to tackle more complex coding tasks.
Step-by-step:
Choose your AI coding assistant (Windsurf or Cursor) and locate the MCP configuration area.
For Windsurf: Click the tools icon, select "Configure," and add the JSON code that connects to your desired service.
For Cursor: Open Settings > Features > MCP Servers and add a new server with the command that includes your API key.
Start using enhanced capabilities by asking your AI assistant to access external tools in your prompts.
Pro tip: Many MCP tool providers offer detailed documentation on GitHub repositories. Check these resources for specific commands and capabilities available for each tool.
PRESENTED BY INNOVATING WITH AI
💼 Launch your AI consulting career
The Rundown: Innovating with AI’s new program, AI Consultancy Project, trains AI enthusiasts with all the skills and strategies they need to capitalize on the rapidly growing AI consulting market – which is set to 8x by 2032.
The program offers:
The tools and frameworks to find clients and deliver top-notch services
A 6-month plan to build a 6-figure AI consulting business
Students getting their first AI client in as little as 3 days
META
🏗️ Meta testing its own AI training chip
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: Meta just began testing its first in-house AI training chip, according to a new report from Reuters — with the company hoping to reduce dependence on Nvidia and control its soaring AI infrastructure costs.
The details:
The chip is being manufactured by TSMC and is part of Meta's MTIA series—aimed specifically at AI training and inference workloads.
Its test follows the company’s successful first "tape-out" — a crucial development milestone that proves a chip design can be manufactured at scale.
Meta already uses in-house chips for Facebook and Instagram’s recommendation systems, with plans to expand to power genAI products.
It plans to start deploying the new training chips at scale by 2026, potentially saving billions on its projected $65B AI infrastructure spend.
Why it matters: With infrastructure costs skyrocketing and AI systems scaling rapidly, tech giants are increasingly investing in in-house silicon to cut costs and gain greater control. Meta is the latest to join this shift, aligning with OpenAI, Amazon, ByteDance, and others in reducing reliance on Nvidia—the chipmaking king.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
💼 Fyxer AI - An AI Executive Assistant to help you gain an hour daily with organized emails, tone-matched replies, and crisp meeting notes*
🤖 Hunyuan-TurboS - Tencent AI that beats SOTA models on math, reasoning
🔎 Perplexity Windows App - New desktop app for AI-powered web search
🦉OWL - An open-source alternative to Manus AI’s agentic platform
*Sponsored Listing
📰 Everything else in AI today
Anthropic has seen its annualized revenue grow to $1.4B this month, coming on the heels of Claude powering Manus and the recent Claude Code and 3.7 Sonnet release.
Reka open-sourced Flash 3, a 21B parameter reasoning model rivaling OpenAI's o1-mini with a 32k context length and size for on-device deployment.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that AI will be writing 90% of the world’s code in the next 3-6 months and reaching nearly 100% in the next year.
Voice AI platform Cartesia announced $64M in Series A funding and unveiled Sonic 2.0 and Sonic Turbo AI with speed, ultra-realistic speech, and support for 16 languages.
Sam Altman revealed that OpenAI has trained a new model that excels at creative writing, saying it is the “first time I have been really struck by something written by AI”.
Harvey unveiled new AI agents with planning and adaptation capabilities that match or exceed lawyer performance on key legal tasks.
Luma Labs introduced Inductive Moment Matching, a new pre-training technique to generate superior quality images 10x more efficiently than current approaches.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next workshop this Friday at 4 PM EST to learn about how to use Manus AI to boost productivity and automate everyday tasks easily with Dr. Alvaro Cintas, The Rundown’s AI professor.
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
Apple's biggest redesign in years
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Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Apple is reportedly gearing up for one of its biggest software revamps ever—bringing sweeping changes to the look and feel of Macs, iPhones, and iPads.
While the announcement conveniently shifts attention away from Apple's AI delays, the bigger question looms: Will iPhone users embrace the first major UI redesign since 2013?
In today’s tech rundown:
Apple’s massive design overhaul
Startup making plastic from seaweed
Ex-Google CEO leading rocket startup
New battery tech for faster, lighter EVs
Quick hits on other major news
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
APPLE
🍎 Apple’s massive design overhaul
Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown
The Rundown: Apple is reportedly planning a massive software overhaul, with iOS 19, iPadOS 19, and macOS 16 set to radically change the iPhone, iPad, and Mac experience that users have grown accustomed to over the years.
The details:
Expected at WWDC 2025, the revamp will fundamentally change the look of all three operating systems, making them more consistent for users.
Bloomberg reports the new UI will simplify the way users navigate and control their devices, with refreshed icons, menus, apps, windows, and system buttons.
It is also expected to be based on Vision Pro’s software (to some extent) with a modern design language with 3D depth and translucent elements.
The overhaul, if it happens, will mark the most significant upgrade to the Mac since 2020’s Big Sur and the biggest iPhone revamp since 2013’s iOS 7.
Why it matters: Apple’s ecosystem spans over 2 billion devices, making a major design overhaul a bold but risky move—much like the mixed reactions to Big Sur and iOS 7. Still, a unified, modern aesthetic across devices stays true to the company’s design-first approach.
SWAY
🐬 Startup making plastic from seaweed
Image source: Sway
The Rundown: Sway, a California-based cleantech startup, just developed an innovative and entirely scalable solution to replace single-use plastics with a sustainable alternative derived from seaweed.
The details:
Sway has created a seaweed-based material, TPSea, that can be used to produce compostable packaging, including polybags, retail bags, and wrappers.
The material is designed to fit seamlessly into existing plastic production systems, offering a viable and eco-friendly substitute for conventional plastics.
The company uses natural polymers found in seaweed, such as agar and carrageenan, to create the 100% biobased and microplastic-free material.
Sway, led by CEO Julia Marsh, raised $5M in seed funding in 2024 to scale production and has established partnerships with J.Crew and Burton.
Why it matters: Like Notpla and Loliware, Sway embraces circular economy principles—eliminating waste, extending material life cycles, and restoring natural systems. The startup also claims its products can decompose within 48 days, presenting a potential solution to the global plastic pollution crisis.
RELATIVITY SPACE
🚀 Ex-Google CEO leading rocket startup
Image source: Relativity Space
The Rundown: Eric Schmidt, who served as Google’s CEO for nearly a decade from 2001 to 2011, took over as the chief executive of Relativity Space—a California-based startup developing 3D-printed reusable rockets with $2.4 billion in backing.
The details:
Relativity Space, which was part of the Y Combinator W16 batch, uses advanced 3D printing, AI, and robotics to build reusable rockets in 60 days.
The company is currently developing the Terran R rocket, powered by its proprietary Aeon R engine, with a planned first launch in late 2026.
It aims to compete with SpaceX's Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy and has already secured $2.9 billion in launch contracts.
Previously, the startup said it would achieve a private space mission to Mars by 2024, but its Terran 1 rocket failed to reach orbit in 2023, delaying plans.
Why it matters: Big Tech execs leading rocket companies has become a trend—Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Amazon exec Dave Limp have all taken the leap. Relativity is no less ambitious, with plans to colonize Mars. Schmidt, who has also made investments in the startup, steps in at a pivotal moment as it advances its next-gen reusable rocket.
DAQUS ENERGY
🚘 New battery tech for faster, lighter EVs
Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown
The Rundown: Cleantech startup Daqus Energy is pioneering a new technology that promises a cheaper, faster, and denser battery for electric vehicles—all while eliminating supply chain constraints for critical metals.
The details:
Daqus aims to replace traditional cathodes made from critical metals like cobalt and nickel with affordable and widely available carbon-based compounds.
The material — known as TAQ and developed by MIT in collaboration with Lamborghini — is light, highly conductive, stable, and insoluble.
The company recently secured $6M in seed funding led by Morningside and has now set up a dedicated R&D facility to accelerate its commercialization.
It says TAQ cathodes outperform conventional materials in energy storage and sustainability and are even lighter than LFP (iron-phosphate) batteries.
Why it matters: Affordable, lightweight, and fast-charging batteries have the potential to revolutionize electric mobility. While major players like CATL and LG continue refining battery tech, Daqus claims its production costs could be lower than even the cheapest lithium-ion batteries. However, scaling remains an early-stage challenge.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in tech today
iPhone manufacturer Foxconn announced FoxBrain, its first large language model with reasoning capabilities, developed with Nvidia in only four weeks.
Meta is reportedly testing its first in-house AI training chip, developed in collaboration with TSMC, to reduce reliance on suppliers like Nvidia.
CoreWeave, an artificial intelligence infrastructure startup backed by Nvidia, signed a five-year contract worth $11.9B with OpenAI.
Helion, a startup developing safe and reliable fusion generators for electricity production, secured $425M in a Series F funding round at a $5.2B valuation
Rocket Companies, a fintech firm specializing in real estate services, acquired digital real estate brokerage Redfin in an all-stock deal valued at $1.75B.
Maserati canceled its upcoming MC20 Folgore electric supercar, citing insufficient customer interest in battery-powered luxury supercars as the reason.
Microsoft is ending support for its Remote Desktop app for Windows on May 27 and replacing it with the new Windows app, which launched in September.
Anti-aging advocate Bryan Johnson said he is “building a religion” called Don’t Die, aimed at aligning AI with humanity’s best interests and ensuring human survival.
Microsoft is reportedly planning to expand its gaming hardware lineup with the introduction of an Xbox-branded gaming handheld set in 2025.
Wayve, the U.K.-based autonomous driving startup that raised $1B last year, says it is nearing commercial debut with major automakers in Germany and the U.S.
COMMUNITY
🎥 Join our next live workshop
Join our next special workshop today at 3 PM EST to learn about how AI can make you a full-stack developer using Bolt AI prompts with Tomek Sułkowski, Bolt’s founding engineer. Additionally, attendees will get 4 months of Bolt Pro for free!
RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.
See you soon,
Rowan, Jennifer, Joey, and Shubham—The Rundown’s editorial team
McDonald's new AI overhaul
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. A supersized tech overhaul is coming to the Golden Arches — with McDonald’s deploying AI-powered systems across its sprawling 43,000-restaurant empire.
With AI data analysis, predictive maintenance, and AI managers, the fast food giant is hoping tech upgrades can be the new secret sauce… But solving its ever-broken ice cream machines may be the true test of AGI.
P.S. Join our next workshop today at 3 PM EST to learn how AI can make you a full-stack developer using Bolt AI prompts. Attendees get 4 months of Bolt Pro for free!
In today’s AI rundown:
McDonald’s AI-powered restaurants
Foxconn’s ‘Foxbrain’ in-house reasoning AI
Using AI to visualize sales and feedback
AI’s own thoughts reveal its ‘cheating’
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
MCDONALD’S
🍟 McDonald’s AI-powered restaurants
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: McDonald's is undergoing a massive tech transformation across its 43,000 restaurants, introducing new AI-powered systems for everything from equipment maintenance to maintaining order accuracy.
The details:
McDonald's is deploying edge computing systems in partnership with Google Cloud, enabling real-time data processing and AI analysis directly in-store.
The planned AI features include predictive maintenance for kitchen equipment, computer vision for order accuracy, and a “generative AI virtual manager.”
The initiative aims to address customer pain points while supporting employees dealing with multiple ordering channels like drive-through and delivery.
McDonald's also plans to leverage customer data and AI to deliver personalized promotions, like offering McFlurry deals on hot days based on purchase history.
Why it matters: With 70M daily customers, even minor issues can pose major operational challenges. By integrating AI into its vast operations, McDonald’s can further boost efficiency—and as the fast-food giant embraces the technology alongside Taco Bell, Wendy’s, and others, the rest of the industry is likely to follow.
TOGETHER WITH VANTA
💡Beat burnout & thrive as a startup founder
The Rundown: Startups move fast — but avoiding burnout is key to success. Join Dan Murray-Serter, co-founder of Heights and host of the Secret Leaders podcast, for a candid talk on how founders can maintain peak performance without hitting a wall.
This exclusive session will explore:
The science behind energy management and why founders burn out
Practical strategies to stay energized, focused, and resilient
Dan’s personal experiences with burnout—and how he overcame it
How Vanta helps startups stay secure and stress-free while scaling
Register now to secure your spot and get on-demand replay if you can’t attend live.
FOXXCONN
🦊 Foxconn’s ‘Foxbrain’ in-house reasoning AI
Image source: Reuters
The Rundown: iPhone and electronics manufacturer Foxconn just announced FoxBrain, its first large language model with advanced reasoning capabilities — developed in-house in just four weeks using Nvidia's infrastructure.
The details:
FoxBrain was trained on 120 Nvidia H100 GPUs using Taiwan's largest supercomputer, Taipei-1, with technical consulting from Nvidia's team.
The LLM is built on Meta's Llama 3.1 architecture and is Taiwan's first model with advanced reasoning, specifically optimized for traditional Chinese.
It handles tasks like data analysis, mathematics, reasoning, and code generation, with performance approaching top models (but trailing DeepSeek).
Foxconn plans to open-source FoxBrain and collaborate with its partners to advance manufacturing and supply chain management applications.
Why it matters: If the iPhone manufacturer is cranking out an advanced reasoning model in four weeks, what’s the hold up for Apple? Jokes aside, it feels like every major company will eventually have their specialized model — and in this case, manufacturing and supply chain are two areas perfectly suited for an AI overhaul.
AI TRAINING
📊 Using AI to visualize sales and feedback
The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how ChatGPT can transform your sales and customer feedback data into visual insights and actionable recommendations without coding or specialized analytics tools.
Step-by-step:
Organize your sales metrics and customer reviews in a simple CSV/table format.
Ask ChatGPT to create appropriate chart types that show relationships between sales performance and customer sentiment.
Request it to discover connections between purchasing patterns and feedback themes that reveal hidden opportunities.
Prompt it to develop specific strategies based on the combined analysis, prioritizing improvements addressing sales goals and customer satisfaction.
Pro tip: You can also use alternative tools like ChatGPT’s Canvas feature or Claude Artifacts to visualize your data interactively.
SPONSORED BY SALESFORCE
🤖 Salesforce launches AgentExchange
The Rundown: AgentExchange is Salesforce’s new trusted marketplace for Agentforce — connecting partners, developers, and Agentblazers with hundreds of ready-made solutions to help businesses accelerate innovation and participate in the $6T digital labor market.
New features include:
Partner-built components
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The ability to easily discover, try, and buy AI solutions
Learn more and start exploring the possibilities of agentic AI.
AI RESEARCH
🧐 AI’s own thoughts reveal its ‘cheating’
Image source: Ideogram / The Rundown
The Rundown: OpenAI’s new research on AI models’ chain-of-thought reasoning revealed that models like o3-mini can ‘reward hack’ or cheat on tasks — and attempts to stop them from thinking about cheating only make them hide their true intentions.
The details:
By examining CoT reasoning, OpenAI caught models openly planning to cheat, with thoughts like "Let's hack" and "We can bypass testing by exiting early."
In coding tasks, models were caught using shortcuts like modifying test files, returning hardcoded values, or using exit commands to skip evaluations.
When researchers tried penalizing models for thinking about cheating, the models continued to cheat but masked intentions in their reasoning process.
OpenAI concluded that the best approach is to keep internal reasoning uncensored for monitoring while using separate models to filter thoughts.
Why it matters: Just like humans, AI models also look to take shortcuts or game systems. But as they approach superhuman capabilities, chain-of-thought monitoring may be our only glimpse into their true reasoning—applying too much pressure to behave could close that window for good.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
💨 Ray2 Flash - Luma Labs’ video model with 3x faster speed and lower costs
✍️ Muse - An AI model trained specifically for fiction writing
🎬 Character-3 - Hedra’s video AI that reasons across image, text, and audio
🐤 Duck AI - Free, private AI chat from DuckDuckGo
💼 AI Job Opportunities
⚙️ The Rundown - Account Manager
📊 Coreweave - Portfolio Analyst
🏢 Scale AI - Software Engineer, Enterprise AI
🔎 Perplexity AI - Backend Software Engineer, Search
📰 Everything else in AI today
Flagship Pioneering’s Lila Sciences launched with $200M to build superintelligence that could help design and conduct experiments across scientific domains.
Tencent released Hunyuan-TurboS, a new ultra-large model that surpasses GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3, and open-source rivals on math and reasoning benchmarks.
OpenAI reached a five-year, $11.9B deal with CoreWeave for AI infrastructure and a stake worth $350M in the IPO-bound company.
ElevenLabs cut its pricing on its SOTA Scribe speech-to-text model by 45% in its API, also offering it free via the company’s UI for the next month.
Cohere announced a new partnership with electronics giant LG CNS to develop Korean-language AI models for South Korean businesses.
Enterprise software giant ServiceNow is acquiring conversational AI startup Moveworks for $2.85B, marking one of the largest AI acquisitions of 2025.
Sony revealed a new prototype of an AI-powered video game character for Playstation’s Horizon Forbidden West, capable of real-time conversations with players.
COMMUNITY
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Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team
Ilya's secret ASI roadmap
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Good morning, AI enthusiasts. What did Ilya see? Potentially a new path to ASI that's worth betting billions on — despite no product or revenue stream.
With investors ready to value his secretive company at $30B based on a "different mountain to climb," is the former OpenAI co-founder sitting on a breakthrough that could rewrite the AI roadmap?
In today’s AI rundown:
Ex-OpenAI scientist’s new path to ASI
Microsoft looking to move beyond OpenAI
Making viral posts 10x faster with AI
Stanford AI’s obesity treatment breakthrough
4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
SAFE SUPERINTELLIGENCE INC.
🗺️ Ex-OpenAI scientist’s new path to ASI
Image source: Getty Images
The Rundown: Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever's startup Safe Superintelligence Inc. (SSI) is reportedly raising $2B at a $30B valuation—with the researcher hinting at a different approach to achieving advanced AI than all other rivals.
The details:
Sutskever reportedly told investors he has identified a completely new direction for AI development, describing it as “a different mountain to climb.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, SSI is in talks for funding at a valuation of $30B, despite having no revenue or public-facing product.
The company is not planning to release any commercial products prior to achieving superintelligence and operates leanly with just 20 employees.
Sutskever departed OpenAI in the months following the Nov. 2023 ouster of Sam Altman, later saying he “regretted his participation” in the board’s actions.
Why it matters: SSI has no shortage of investors despite the lack of immediate plans for a revenue-generating product. But a contrarian bet on an entirely new path could reshape how we think about achieving ASI — with the next breakthrough potentially coming from rethinking AI's foundations rather than just continuing to scale models.
TOGETHER WITH AWS
⚡️ Coding Faster With Amazon Q
The Rundown: Amazon Q Developer is your AI-powered coding companion that helps developers build, operate, and transform software with intelligent assistance at every step of the development lifecycle.
With Amazon Q Developer, you can:
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Transform existing applications and automate upgrades without starting from scratch
MICROSOFT
👀 Microsoft looking to move beyond OpenAI
Image source: Getty Images
The Rundown: Microsoft is reportedly developing MAI, a new family of AI models that rivals current industry leaders — alongside the build-out of its own in-house reasoning models to reduce reliance on OpenAI for its Copilot suite.
The details:
The new MAI models reportedly match top offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic, with the company planning to offer them through Azure.
They are being tested as replacements for OpenAI's tech in Copilot while also experimenting with alternatives from xAI, Meta, and DeepSeek.
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman reportedly grew frustrated last fall with OpenAI’s refusal to share the inner workings of its o1 reasoning model.
OpenAI also renegotiated a deal in January with Microsoft, allowing for the use of other server providers, adding to growing tension between the companies.
Why it matters: Despite Microsoft’s $13B investment in OpenAI, the relationship has felt contentious for a long time. While the tech giant may have felt beholden when OpenAI was a clear leader, competition has increased significantly — and an internal rival model would certainly change the dynamic even more.
AI TRAINING PRESENTED BY BLOTATO
🚀 Making viral posts 10x faster with AI
The Rundown: Blotato is an all-in-one AI content tool that helps you create, remix, and distribute AI-optimized content across multiple platforms, accelerating your brand presence 10x faster.
Step-by-step:
Sign up for a free account at blotato.com.
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Select your target social platforms to generate viral-optimized posts tailored to each one.
Customize the drafts with your insights, add AI images or faceless videos, and then publish to all social platforms seamlessly!
Pro tip: You can also schedule your content calendar in advance to maintain consistent posting across all platforms while saving hours of manual work each week.
PRESENTED BY JOTFORM
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Jotform AI Agents allow you to:
Gather customer info 24/7 through personalized cross-channel conversations
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Define how your agent responds based on customer triggers and sentiment
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Discover the future of customer service with Jotform AI Agents.
AI RESEARCH
💊 Stanford AI’s obesity treatment breakthrough
Image source: Stanford University
The Rundown: Stanford researchers just discovered a natural molecule called BRP that matches Ozempic's weight loss powers but with fewer side effects—using AI to unlock a potential breakthrough in obesity treatment.
The details:
BRP targets specific brain regions instead of affecting multiple organs, potentially avoiding common Ozempic side effects like nausea and muscle loss.
In animal tests, a single dose of BRP cut food intake by half in both mice and minipigs, with obese mice losing significant fat over two weeks of treatment.
Stanford's "Peptide Predictor" AI system sifted through 20,000 human genes, analyzing thousands of potential candidates, to find the natural molecule.
A company has already been created to begin human trials, with researcher Katrin Svensson suggesting that BRP could revolutionize weight loss treatment.
Why it matters: While much of the AI healthcare buzz has focused on diagnosis and drug design, Stanford's breakthrough shows how AI can unlock new medicines hidden in nature. This success in finding a natural alternative to a blockbuster drug could spark a wave of AI-powered discoveries in our biology.
QUICK HITS
🛠️ Trending AI Tools
📜 Mistral OCR - SOTA API for extracting text from images or documents
🤖 Manus AI - Fully autonomous AI agent capable of handling real-world tasks
🗣️ Tavus - Conversational Video Interface to bring AI agents to life
💡 Template Hub - Marketplace to create, share, deploy specialized AI agents
📰 Everything else in AI today
Former DeepMind researchers launched Reflection AI with $130M in funding, aiming to build autonomous coding systems as a stepping stone to superintelligent AI.
X added functionality for users to be able to ask Grok questions by tagging an automated @Grok account, joining Perplexity in providing quick access.
Alibaba researchers published START, a new tool-integrated reasoning model that significantly enhances LLM capabilities through code execution and self-checking.
Hedra unveiled Character-3, an ‘omnimodal model’ capable of reasoning across image, text, and audio to create high-quality video generations.
Luma Labs released Ray2 Flash, a new version of its top-tier video generation model that brings 3x faster speed and lower costs.
Sudowrite introduced Muse, a new AI model trained for fiction writing that features advanced storytelling capabilities and longer attention for chapter-length outputs.
Sam Altman’s World Network released World Chat, an encrypted mini-app that allows users to chat, connect, and send money with verified humans.
COMMUNITY
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Join our next workshop this Tuesday at 3 PM EST to learn about how AI can make you a full-stack developer using Bolt AI prompts — whether you’re just starting out or looking to level up your coding skills, with Tomek Sułkowski, The Bolt.new’s founding engineer.
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
Xpeng's flying car taking off
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Good morning, robotics enthusiasts. Humanoids and flying cars are set to take off soon, as China’s Xpeng gears up to mass-produce both by 2026.
Flying cars like Xpeng’s are crossing over from sci-fi to reality, but questions remain: Will they transform public transport or just become air-clogging playthings for the uber-rich? What do you think?
In today’s robotics rundown:
Xpeng to ‘mass-produce’ flying cars
Humanoids that can smell like humans
The mind-controlled robot arm
MIT nudging robots to fix mistakes
Quick hits on other robotics news
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
XPENG
🛸 Xpeng to ‘mass-produce’ flying cars
Image source: Xpeng Aeroht
The Rundown: Chinese EV maker and Tesla rival Xpeng just announced plans to mass-produce humanoids and its “modular flying car” by 2026—news that boosted its shares to their highest level since August 2022.
The details:
Xpeng will scale commercial production of its humanoid, Iron, next year, equipping it with Level 3 autonomy—requiring oversight in select scenarios.
The flying car in question is Xpeng’s Land Aircraft Carrier, an electric minivan with an eVTOL vehicle, or passenger drone, tucked in the back.
Priced at 2 million yuan ($275,000), the hybrid vehicle accommodates four passengers in the van portion and two in the detachable drone.
Xpeng said that it has so far secured around 3,000 orders, with potential customers focusing largely on tourism and short-haul rescue missions.
Why it matters: Xpeng has already deployed Iron in its EV factory and begun construction on a plant designed to produce 10,000 flying cars annually. While U.S. rivals like Beta Technology advance their eVTOLs, Xpeng stands to benefit from China’s ambition for the “low-altitude economy,” which is set to reach $479B by 2035.
AINOS
🌸 Humanoids that can smell like humans
Image source: Ideogram/The Rundown
The Rundown: San Diego-based biotech and research company Ainos announced a novel partnership with Japanese robotics company ugo to develop the “world’s first robots” with a sense of smell.
The details:
The partnership will integrate Ainos' AI Nose tech, an electronic olfactory system that mimics human smell, with ugo's autonomous robotic platform.
A decade in the making, Ainos’ AI Nose has been found to detect and analyze 22 volatile organic compounds (VOCs) with nearly 80% accuracy.
The move is expected to revolutionize a variety of sectors, from industrial safety to healthcare, with deployments expected as early as 2026.
Ainos says its AI Nose can analyze exhaled breath to identify abnormalities and potentially diagnose conditions, including cancer and respiratory diseases.
Why it matters: While robot perception has traditionally been limited to vision, sound, and touch, the digitization of smell aims to change that—unlocking numerous potential applications. AI Nose-equipped robots could soon detect gas leaks in factories, screen public spaces for explosives, and even sniff out diseases in medical settings.
UCSF
🦾 The mind-controlled robot arm
Image source: UCSF/Noah Berger
The Rundown: Researchers at UC San Francisco (UCSF) achieved a groundbreaking milestone in brain-computer interface (BCI) technology, enabling a paralyzed man to control a robotic arm using only his thoughts.
The details:
The system uses tiny sensors implanted on the surface of the participant's brain to detect neural signals when they imagine specific movements.
An AI model then decodes these signals and translates them into precise commands for the robotic arm to execute.
The study participant, who was paralyzed due to a stroke, trained the system over two weeks by imagining finger and hand movements.
After transitioning to the robotic arm, he successfully performed tasks such as opening a cabinet, retrieving a cup, and placing it under a water dispenser.
Why it matters: Traditional BCIs often degrade in performance within days due to neural drift, requiring frequent recalibration. However, UCSF’s AI-powered system adapts to subtle shifts in brain activity, maintaining functionality for seven months. This brings BCIs closer to real-world adoption by making them more practical and reliable.
MIT
🤖 MIT nudging robots to fix mistakes
Image source: Melanie Gonick, MIT
The Rundown: MIT and NVIDIA researchers developed a new AI framework that allows users to correct a robot’s behavior with simple interactions, such as nudging a robot’s arm, rather than retraining its machine-learning model.
The details:
The new framework, detailed on arXiv, doesn’t require users to collect new data or fine-tune a neural network to fix new (small or big) mistakes.
Instead, users correct the robot’s behavior through simple, intuitive interactions like pointing, tracing trajectories, or physically guiding its arm.
In tests, the method achieved a 21% higher success rate compared to alternatives that didn't leverage human interventions.
It aims to make robots user-friendly right out of the box and ultimately transform human-robot interaction across areas like healthcare and elder care.
Why it matters: MIT’s research joins models like TRACE and ACORD in enhancing real-time interaction between humans and robots—key to improving their effectiveness, safety, and usability. The approach helps bridge the gap between pre-trained robots and real-world deployment.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in robotics today
Bank of America forecasts that the world will host 3 billion humanoids by 2060, with 65% being in homes, 32% in services, and 3% powering industrial applications.
Japan’s service robot market is projected to triple in five years to $2.7B, driven by labor shortages, with major restaurant chain Skylark already using 3,000 robots.
U.S. researchers found that people trust humanoids significantly more than nonhumanoid ones to care for objects, personal information, children, and pets.
German researchers developed a biorobotic arm with two strands of artificial muscles attached to the forearm, designed to suppress tremors.
Chinese EV maker BYD unveiled a vehicle-mounted drone launching system, developed in collaboration with DJI, that is available for all of the company’s vehicles.
Lifestyle robotics company Aescape, makers of AI-powered massage robots, raised $83M in funding, taking its total capital raised to $128M.
Defense aircraft provider Shield AI secured $250M in funding to expand its Hivemind platform for autonomous drones and robots, raising its valuation to $5.3B.
German researchers are currently developing new robot grippers that require 90% less electricity than conventional systems.
COMMUNITY
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Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team
Twitter co-founder launches Mozi
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Good morning, tech enthusiasts. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams launched a new social media app for people who don’t want another social media app.
Meet Mozi, a new app with no profile photos or follower counts, aimed at helping people foster in-person connections with their existing social circle. Is this the *missing piece* in your personal life?
In today’s tech rundown:
Twitter co-founder’s new ‘Mozi’ app
SpaceX’s Starship spiraling out of control
Apple’s wave of super-fast ‘Air’ products
Startup bringing back the woolly mammoth
Quick hits on other major news
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS
MOZI
📱 Twitter co-founder’s new ‘Mozi’ app
Image source: Mozi
The Rundown: Twitter co-founder Evan “Ev” Williams just launched Mozi, a new social app designed to get people off their phones to meet in person and to reduce the disconnect between online personas and real-world relationships.
The details:
Unlike Instagram and Snapchat, Mozi doesn’t display public profiles or follower counts—rather, it notifies users when their contacts are in the same area.
The service soft-launched last year to a “relatively small community” and is launching officially at the SXSW 2025 in Austin, kicking off today.
Williams and his co-founder, CEO Molly DeWolf Swenson, also raised $6M in seed funding for the venture in November 2024.
It is available on iOS, with an Android version in development, and has attracted 20,000 users so far through a freemium model.
Why it matters: Williams says that social media has lost its "social" aspect, becoming more about "media." This is why, instead of competing with Twitter and others, his service promises a distinct experience. However, it’s worth noting that these platforms are still the bigwigs and can debut similar features—pushing Mozi to stand out further.
SPACEX
🚀 SpaceX’s Starship spiraling out of control
Image source: X/S.L. Kanthan
The Rundown: SpaceX's Starship, the world's largest and most powerful rocket, spiraled out of control yesterday during a test flight, marking the second launch in a row where it exploded on its way to orbit.
The details:
SpaceX launched Starship atop its Super Heavy booster, which returned to its Texas launchpad and was successfully secured by the launch tower.
Approximately 8 minutes into the flight, telemetry showed that four of the six Raptor engines powering Starship’s upper stage had prematurely shut down.
Onboard footage showed the ship spiraling out of control over the ocean, and contact was lost shortly after—with the cause of failure unknown.
SpaceX said it “immediately began coordination with safety officials to implement pre-planned contingencies” and is looking into the cause.
Why it matters: These explosions come amid SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s ongoing interactions with the U.S. federal government, including assigning employees to the FAA, which oversees SpaceX launches. The repeated failures can also pose challenges for NASA as the Starship is critical for manned missions to the Moon and Mars.
APPLE
🍎 Apple’s wave of super-fast ‘Air’ products
Image source: Apple
The Rundown: It’s been a busy week for Apple. Following the launch of new iPads, the Tim Cook-led tech giant also introduced two new computers: a more powerful (and affordable) MacBook Air and an upgraded Mac Studio.
The details:
The MacBook Air, available in 13-inch and 15-inch sizes, now has a new sky blue color, the M4 chip from the Pro lineup, and an enhanced Neural Engine.
This power and performance boost comes at a $100 lower price—the 13-inch model now starts at $999, while the 15-inch version begins at $1,199.
Apple also upgraded the Mac Studio, its compact yet powerful desktop, with two processor options: the M4 Max chip or the all-new M3 Ultra.
Before this, it refreshed the iPad Air with an M3 chip and a new Magic keyboard, while the entry-level iPad got more base storage and an A16 chip.
Why it matters: While the biggest news is the fancy MacBook Air, the Mac Studio, now dubbed by Apple as “the most powerful Mac ever,” will be the go-to choice for power users due to its M4 Max and M3 Ultra chips and advanced Neural Engine bandwidth. The upgrades also make these devices (except the base iPad) Apple Intelligence-ready.
COLOSSAL BIOSCIENCES
🐘 Startup bringing back the woolly mammoth
Image source: Colossal Biosciences
The Rundown: Colossal Biosciences, a Texas-based startup, announced a significant breakthrough toward its ambitious goal of resurrecting the woolly mammoth by creating "woolly mice" through genetic engineering.
The details:
The genetically engineered mice sport an orangey, thick, and heavily textured coat, which Colossal says is the core phenotype of the woolly mammoth.
The startup modified seven genes using RNP-mediated knockout, multiplex precision genome editing, and precision homology-directed repair.
By 2028, it plans to de-extinct mammoths, which have been gone for some 4,000 years, by genetically modifying existing Asian elephants.
By implanting genetically engineered embryos into female elephants, the company hopes they will give birth to calves with woolly mammoth traits.
Why it matters: Colossal says that the hairy mice are a “massive validating point” in the company’s plan to bring back extinct species like the woolly mammoth, the thylacine, and the dodo. While this is a major achievement for genetic engineering, skeptics argue that the money could be better spent preserving existing species.
QUICK HITS
📰 Everything else in tech today
Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of Reddit, is teaming up with Kevin Rose to acquire and revive the latter’s once-popular news aggregator, Digg.
DuckDuckGo expanded its AI capabilities, integrating AI into both its search engine and chatbot features while maintaining a strict commitment to user privacy.
Gaming-focused chat platform Discord is reportedly exploring plans for an IPO this year—the company was last valued at $15B in 2021.
Chinese scientists successfully performed a minimally invasive “brain-spine interface” surgery, restoring a paralyzed patient's ability to walk in just 24 hours.
Reddit added several new tools across its platform, including a “post check” to help users determine if their post breaks subreddit rules before posting.
Tech companies, including Apple, Meta, Open AI, and TSMC, have racked up a total of $1T in U.S. investments so far, with announcements timed in recent months.
Canoo CEO Anthony Aquila has made an offer to buy nearly all of the defunct EV startup’s assets, totaling $4M in cash.
Armis, a $4.2B specialist in cyber-exposure management, is acquiring Otorio, a specialist in IoT and operational technology cybersecurity, for $120M.
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Rowan, Jennifer, and Joey—The Rundown’s editorial team
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