What happens when an AI agent decides the best way to complete a task is to blackmail you?
That’s not a hypothetical. According to Barmak Meftah, a partner at cybersecurity VC firm Ballistic Ventures, it recently happened to an enterprise employee working with an AI agent. The employee tried to suppress what the agent wanted to do, what it was trained to do, and it responded by scanning the…
Well, there goes the metaverse!
January 20, 2026
Meta’s enormous bet on virtual reality ended last week, with the company reportedly laying off roughly 1,500 employees from its Reality Labs division – about 10% of the unit’s staff – and shutting down several VR game studios, according to The Wall…
From OpenAI’s offices to a deal with Eli Lilly — how Chai Discovery became one of the flashiest names in AI drug development
January 19, 2026
Drug discovery, the art of identifying new molecules to develop pharmaceuticals, is a notoriously time-consuming and difficult process. Traditional techniques, like high-throughput screening, offer an expensive scattershot approach – one that is not often successful.
Trump administration wants tech companies to buy $15B of power plants they may not use
January 19, 2026
The Trump administration wants the largest electricity grid to add $15 billion worth of new power generation – and he wants tech companies to pay for it, even if they don’t need the capacity.
The White House and the governors of several states in the region want grid operator PJM to hold an auction for 15-year contracts for new generating capacity. The administration said it wants tech…
It took Rebecca Yu seven days to vibe code her dining app. She was tired of the decision fatigue that comes from people in a group chat not being able to decide where to eat.
Armed with determination, Claude, and ChatGPT, Yu decided to just build a dining app from scratch…
Wikimedia Foundation announces new AI partnerships with Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Perplexity, and others
January 16, 2026
As part of its 25th birthday celebration, the Wikimedia Foundation announced a series of new partnerships with AI tech companies that are now customers of its commercial product, Wikimedia Enterprise. Developed by the foundation, Wikimedia Enterprise allows large-scale reuse…
US senators demand answers from X, Meta, Alphabet, and others on sexualized deepfakes
January 16, 2026
The tech world’s nonconsensual, sexualized deepfake problem is now bigger than just X.
In a letter to the leaders of X, Meta, Alphabet, Snap, Reddit, and TikTok, several U.S. senators are asking the companies to provide proof that they have “robust protections and policies” in place and to explain how they plan to curb the rise of sexualized deepfakes on their platforms.
The…
Parloa triples its valuation in 8 months to $3B with $350M raise
January 16, 2026
Berlin-based Parloa has raised $350 million in Series D funding from existing investors, valuing the six-year-old customer service AI startup at $3 billion. The round comes just eight months after the company raised $120 million at a $1 billion valuation.
The new round was…
AI models are starting to crack high-level math problems
January 15, 2026
Over the weekend, Neel Somani, who is a software engineer, former quant researcher, and a startup founder, was testing the math skills of OpenAI’s new model when he made an unexpected discovery. After pasting the problem into ChatGPT and letting it think for 15…
Gemini’s new beta feature provides proactive responses based on your photos, emails, and more
January 15, 2026
Google announced on Wednesday that it’s launching a new beta feature in the Gemini app that allows the AI assistant to tailor its responses by connecting across your Google ecosystem, starting with Gmail, Photos, Search, and YouTube history.
Although Gemini could already retrieve information from these apps, it can now reason across your data to provide proactive results, such as connecting…
