Cursor is building a Claude Cowork rival, and Musk may decide its fate
Cursor is building a Claude Cowork rival, and Musk may decide its fate

The race to automate the office just gained a third runner. Cursor is building Sand, a general-purpose agent to rival Claude Cowork. Whether it ever ships may come down to Elon Musk. Cursor made its name as a tool for people who write code. Now it is b…

Yann LeCun’s new VC fund lasted eight hours. Then it vanished
Yann LeCun’s new VC fund lasted eight hours. Then it vanished

A shiny new VC firm named the AI pioneer as a partner on Friday morning. By Friday night, the fund did not exist. Yann LeCun has had a busy year. Now he has had a strange one. On Friday, a new venture firm called Extelligence Invest named the man often…

A four-year-old has seen more of the world than ChatGPT. Yann LeCun is betting $1bn on that
A four-year-old has seen more of the world than ChatGPT. Yann LeCun is betting $1bn on that

Yann LeCun is not a natural contrarian, but he is playing one right now. The man often called a godfather of AI built the convolutional neural network in the late 1980s. That design still powers phone cameras, medical scans, and driver-assistance syste…

Robots swept RoboCup 2026, and they’re coming for the human World Cup by 2050
Robots swept RoboCup 2026, and they’re coming for the human World Cup by 2050

While the world watched the World Cup, robots played their own version in Incheon. RoboCup 2026 ran from 30 June to 6 July in Songdo, drawing teams from dozens of countries. When the whistle blew, one name was behind every winner. Teams using robots fr…

This EU-first robocar tests at 120 km/h, and uses no AI to drive
This EU-first robocar tests at 120 km/h, and uses no AI to drive

Aidoptation can now test a fully self-driving car at highway speed on Belgian public roads. It is the first Level 4 permit of its kind in the European Union. The company announced the approval, which covers 100 km of the E313 and E314 motorways in Limb…

Ollama raises $65M as its open-model runner hits nearly 9M developers
Ollama raises $65M as its open-model runner hits nearly 9M developers

Ollama has raised a $65M Series B led by Theory Ventures. Benchmark, 8VC, Y Combinator and others joined. The round takes the company’s total funding to $88M, three years after it launched, and Ollama set out the plan in a blog post on Thursday. Founde…

Databento raises $97M to take on Bloomberg’s terminal
Databento raises $97M to take on Bloomberg’s terminal

Databento has raised $97M in Series B funding to build what it calls the market data platform for modern finance. The round was led by New Enterprise Associates, with DRW, Redpoint Ventures, and Tribe Capital joining. The company announced the raise on…

AI money watch: five funding rounds that matter today
AI money watch: five funding rounds that matter today

A busy 24 hours for AI and deep-tech money, from a $300m quantum bet to Paris voice AI and Europe’s energy startups. Here are the rounds worth knowing. The cash keeps flowing into AI and deep tech. The past day alone brought a $300m quantum raise, a fr…

This AI startup pays $1.7M a year in rent so staff will work 72-hour weeks
This AI startup pays $1.7M a year in rent so staff will work 72-hour weeks

Tech loves a perk, but few go this far. Rilla, an AI startup that makes coaching software for sales teams, spends about $1.7m a year on housing stipends so staff can live near its New York office, Fortune reports. The trade-off is a 72-hour week. Emplo…

Fi’s new collar taps Starlink’s direct-to-cell to track dogs off the grid
Fi’s new collar taps Starlink’s direct-to-cell to track dogs off the grid

Smart-collar maker Fi is putting Starlink in a dog collar. Its new Fi Ultra taps SpaceX’s direct-to-cell satellites. A bolting dog stays trackable even where phone towers cannot reach. The next device to run on satellites is not a phone. It is a dog co…