Databricks, Perplexity co-founder pledges $100M on new fund for AI researchers
Andy Konwinski, computer scientist and co-founder of Databricks and Perpelexity, announced on Monday that his personal company, Laude, is forming a new AI research institute backed with a $100 million pledge of his own money.
Laude Institute is less an AI research lab and more like a fund looking
Apple’s Liquid Glass interface improves with release of iOS 26 Beta 2
With Monday’s release of iOS 26 Beta 2, Apple has fixed one of the more glaring issues with Liquid Glass, its divisive new user interface design for the iPhone, iPad, and other Apple devices, announced earlier this month at its WWDC 2025.
The refreshed user interface modernizes the operating
Over a million people now have access to the gen-AI powered Alexa+
More invites to Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant, Alexa+, powered by generative AI, have been steadily rolling out. The service, first announced in February, now reaches over a million users, Amazon confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. However, Alexa+ is not yet publicly available.
Instead
New York State wants more nuclear power in a big way
New York governor Kathy Hochul announced Monday that her state will host a large new nuclear power plant designed to generate at least 1 gigawatt of electricity.
“If you take nuclear off the table, you have to burn more fossil fuels,” Hochul said at a press conference. “That's not going
AllSpice’s platform is the GitHub for electrical engineering teams
There is no shortage of workflow collaboration tools — like Slack or Google Docs, in addition to industry-specific ones like GitHub — for software developers. A startup called AllSpice successfully bet that electrical hardware engineering teams need their own collaboration platform, too.
AllSp
Japanese shipping firm NYK acquires Kadmos, a salary payment platform for seafarers
Japanese shipping company Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, or NYK Line, is acquiring Germany’s salary payment platform for seafaring workers, Kadmos, as it seeks to further expand the reach of its fintech services in the maritime sector.
The companies did not disclose the financial terms of t
Tesla launches robotaxi rides in Austin with big promises and unanswered questions
Tesla has started giving rides in driverless Model Y SUVs in Austin, a decade after CEO Elon Musk began making — and breaking — myriad promises about his company's ability to launch such a service.
The rollout will become the first big test of Musk's belief that it's possible
The stablecoin evangelist: Katie Haun’s fight for digital dollars
In 2018, when Bitcoin was trading around $4,000 and most Americans, at least, thought cryptocurrency was a fad, Katie Haun found herself on a debate stage in Mexico City opposite Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist who had dismissed digital assets as near worthless. As Krugman focused o