Tag: Next Featured

Accel raises $5 billion for AI as venture capital bets reach infrastructure scale

In short: Accel has raised $5 billion in new capital, comprising a $4 billion Leaders Fund V and a $650 million sidecar, targeting 20-25 late-stage AI investments at an average cheque size of $200 million. The raise follows standout returns from its Anthropic stake (invested at $183B, now valued near $800B) and Cursor (backed at […]

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Anthropic attracts $800 billion valuation offers as revenue hits $30 billion annualised run rate

In short: Anthropic has received investor offers valuing the company at approximately $800 billion, more than doubling its $380 billion valuation from a $30 billion funding round closed just two months ago. The surge follows an unprecedented revenue trajectory that has taken Anthropic from $1 billion in annualised revenue at the end of 2024 to […]

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Jane Street commits $6 billion to CoreWeave and takes a $1 billion equity stake

In short: Jane Street has signed a $6 billion AI cloud agreement with CoreWeave and taken a $1 billion equity stake at $109 per share, making the quantitative trading firm one of CoreWeave’s five largest shareholders. The deal provides Jane Street with access to NVIDIA’s next-generation Vera Rubin compute and adds to CoreWeave’s growing contract […]

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Accenture bets on General Robotics to unify factory AI across robot brands

In short: Accenture Ventures has invested in General Robotics, whose GRID platform provides a unified AI intelligence layer across 40+ robots from different manufacturers including FANUC, Flexiv, and Ghost Robotics. The deal extends Accenture’s physical AI strategy alongside its NVIDIA-powered Physical AI Orchestrator and prior investments in Sanctuary AI and Schaeffler humanoid robotics partnerships. Accenture […]

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Astroport and Vermeer want to bring heavy construction equipment to the Moon

Astroport Space Technologies and Vermeer Corporation have announced a collaboration to adapt industrial surface mining equipment for autonomous lunar construction, a partnership that both companies frame as delivering the heavy machinery, or “Lunar Iron,” needed to build a permanent human presence on the Moon. The announcement, made at the 20th International Conference on Engineering, Science, […]

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OpenAI opens its cybersecurity model to thousands of defenders in race with Anthropic’s Mythos

In short: OpenAI is releasing GPT-5.4-Cyber, a model fine-tuned for defensive cybersecurity with lowered refusal boundaries and binary reverse engineering capabilities, and scaling its Trusted Access for Cyber programme to thousands of verified defenders. The move comes a week after Anthropic restricted its more powerful Mythos model to just 11 organisations, setting up a philosophical […]

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Spotify is selling physical books now, and it makes more sense than you think

In short: Spotify has launched physical book sales in the US and UK through a partnership with Bookshop.org, letting users buy print copies via affiliate links on audiobook pages within the app. The feature sits alongside Page Match, which now works in 30+ languages and lets readers scan a book page to sync with the […]

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Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft paid AI agent bug bounties, then kept quiet about the flaws

In short:Security researcher Aonan Guan hijacked AI agents from Anthropic, Google, and Microsoft via prompt injection attacks on their GitHub Actions integrations, stealing API keys and tokens in each case. All three companies paid bug bounties quietly, $100 from Anthropic, $500 from GitHub, an undisclosed amount from Google, but none published public advisories or assigned […]

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Google classifies back button hijacking as spam, enforcement starts June 2026

In short: Google is classifying “back button hijacking” as spam, targeting sites that abuse the browser History API to trap users when they try to navigate away. Enforcement begins 15 June 2026, with penalties ranging from manual spam actions to algorithmic ranking demotions. Site owners are liable even when the offending code comes from third-party […]

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Science Corp is preparing to place its first brain sensor in a human, betting biology will beat electrodes

Science Corporation, the BCI company founded by ex-Neuralink president Max Hodak, is preparing to place a pea-sized, 520-electrode sensor on a human brain’s surface during already-scheduled surgery. Yale neurosurgery chair Murat Günel will lead the programme; trials could begin in 2027. The company also has PRIMA, a retinal implant that restored vision in 38 patients […]

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YouTube will now pause livestream ads when chat engagement peaks

YouTube will now automatically hold back advertisements during livestreams when its systems detect that chat engagement has peaked, a change that prioritises collective viewer experience over ad impressions in real time. The platform announced the feature on Monday alongside a suite of updates to its live-streaming tools, including personal ad-free windows for viewers who purchase […]

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AppDirect buys PartnerStack to complete its ‘everything store’ for B2B software distribution

AppDirect has acquired Toronto-based PartnerStack, the partner relationship management platform with 138,000+ B2B partners and ~50% market share in the PRM category. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is AppDirect’s sixth acquisition in 12 months, following Tackle.io (cloud go-to-market, $20B+ in hyperscaler transactions), vCom Solutions ($100M+, network/mobility), and DNE Resources (energy). AppDirect ($438M raised, $1.5B […]

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Synera raises $40M to bring agentic AI into engineering workflows at NASA, BMW, Airbus, and Hyundai

The Bremen startup’s platform deploys teams of AI agents that autonomously execute engineering tasks across more than 75 existing tools, without replacing any of them. Revaia led the Series B; Capgemini joined through its ISAI Cap Venture vehicle. All Series A investors returned. Synera, the Bremen-based agentic AI platform for industrial engineering, has raised $40 […]

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Amazon agrees to acquire Globalstar in an $11.6B deal

Amazon and Apple have also signed a separate agreement for Amazon Leo to continue powering satellite features on iPhone and Apple Watch. The deal gives Amazon the spectrum, infrastructure, and operational expertise to launch direct-to-device satellite services from 2028, and compresses years of development into a single transaction. Amazon has agreed to acquire Globalstar in […]

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Helical closes $10M seed to turn bio foundation models into systems

The Luxembourg-founded startup is already in production with multiple top-20 global pharma companies, including a public collaboration with Pfizer. Its $10M seed round is led by redalpine, with the CEOs of Cohere and HuggingFace among the angel investors. Helical, a London-based pharma AI startup founded by three Luxembourgish childhood friends, has raised $10 million in […]

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France bets €500 million that quantum computing is the tech race Europe can finally win

Europe has spent a decade watching American and Chinese companies capture every major technology wave, cloud, mobile, social, AI. Quantum computing may be the exception. A cluster of French startups, backed by €500 million in government funding and underpinned by some of the world’s strongest physics research, is positioning France as a serious contender in […]

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Stanford’s annual AI report finds a widening gap between AI insiders and everyone else

The 2026 AI Index from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI documents a deepening disconnect between expert optimism and public anxiety. Gen Z anger about AI is rising fast. Employment in AI-exposed fields among younger workers is already declining. And the US has the lowest trust in its government to regulate AI of any country surveyed. […]

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The Wallenberg family rescues Europe’s flagship green steel project with a €1.4 billion financing round

Stegra,  formerly H2 Green Steel,  has agreed in principle on new financing led by a Wallenberg Investments consortium including Temasek and IMAS. Construction at its Boden plant had slowed during months of fundraising. The Wallenbergs will become the company’s largest shareholder. Stegra, the Swedish green steel company formerly known as H2 Green Steel, has agreed […]

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OpenAI’s $852 billion valuation is under scrutiny from its own investors as the company pivots to enterprise

Some backers say OpenAI has revised its product roadmap twice in six months and risks losing focus ahead of an IPO expected as early as Q4 2026. OpenAI’s new CRO has accused Anthropic of overstating its $30B run rate by $8B through gross accounting on cloud partner revenue. Both companies say they follow standard accounting […]

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Kelluu raises €15M to build a persistent aerial intelligence layer for Europe

The Finnish deep tech company, which operates the world’s largest autonomous airship fleet, has closed a Series A led by the NATO Innovation Fund, the Fund’s first investment in a Finnish company. Its airships can cover 30,000 square kilometres from a single base and have been tested in live NATO exercises. Kelluu, a Finnish deep […]

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Meta is building an AI version of Mark Zuckerberg so employees can ‘talk to the boss’

The photorealistic digital character is trained on Zuckerberg’s mannerisms, tone, and his own thinking on company strategy. He is personally involved in testing it. The effort, described by four people familiar with the matter, is separate from a ‘CEO agent’ that handles tasks for Zuckerberg directly. Meta is building a photorealistic, AI-powered version of Mark […]

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The Trump administration blacklisted Anthropic – and is now telling banks to use its AI

In short: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Fed Chair Jerome Powell are urging Wall Street’s biggest banks to test Anthropic’s Mythos AI model for cybersecurity vulnerabilities, even as the Pentagon fights Anthropic in court after branding it a supply chain risk for refusing to remove safety guardrails on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance. JPMorgan Chase, […]

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Roblox splits its user base into three age-gated tiers as lawsuits mount over child safety

In short: Roblox is introducing three mandatory age-gated account tiers -Kids (5-8), Select (9-15), and standard (16+) – starting mid-May, segregating content and chat access by age group. The move follows lawsuits from eight US state attorneys general over child safety failures and builds on the facial age verification system mandated in January. Developers must […]

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Apple testing four frame designs for AI smart glasses ahead of 2027 launch

In short: Apple is testing at least four frame styles for its upcoming AI-powered smart glasses, according to a Bloomberg report by Mark Gurman published 12 April 2026. The designs include a large rectangular style similar to Wayfarer frames, a slimmer rectangular style comparable to those worn by CEO Tim Cook, a larger oval or circular […]

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ElevenLabs VP warns sales candidates: 20x quota, long hours, or get out

In short: Carles Reina, ElevenLabs’ head of go-to-market and one of the company’s earliest employees, has issued a candid warning to candidates considering sales roles at the $11 billion voice AI company: expect long hours, constant travel, and an annual quota worth 20 times your base salary, with termination as the direct consequence of missing it. […]

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Nesto raises €11m from Expedition to scale AI workforce management for restaurant groups

In short: Nesto Software GmbH, a Karlsruhe-based workforce management platform for restaurant groups, has raised €11 million in growth equity from Expedition Growth Capital, a London and Boston-based fund that targets bootstrapped European software businesses with more than €5 million in annual recurring revenue. The company, founded by engineers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, manages […]

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Basic-Fit hit by hack affecting members across multiple countries, including 200,000 in the Netherlands

The breach exposed names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, dates of birth, and bank account details. No passwords or identity documents were accessed. The Dutch Data Protection Authority has been notified. Basic-Fit operates over 1,300 clubs across seven European countries. Basic-Fit, Europe’s largest budget fitness chain by club count, has disclosed a data breach affecting […]

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Round raises $6M to automate the finance workflows that still require a human to press a button

The London fintech, used by Cleo and PostHog, has closed a seed round led by Alstin Capital, with Backed VC and Love Ventures participating. The co-founder of Indeed also joined as an angel. Passion Capital, an early backer of Monzo, Tide, and GoCardless, doubled its investment. Round, a London fintech that automates treasury management, payments, […]

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