TC
Google to invest up to $40B in Anthropic in cash and compute
Google plans to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic and support the AI firm’s growing computing needs, Bloomberg reports.
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TC
ComfyUI hits $500M valuation as creators seek more control over AI-generated media
ComfyUI, a startup that helps creators control image, video, and audio outputs from diffusion models with a node-based workflow, has raised a $30 million funding round at a $500 million valuation. The round was led by Craft Ventures, with participation from other investors including Pace Capital, Ch
TC
Meta’s loss is Thinking Machines’ gain
Weiyao Wang spent eight years at Meta — his first job out of college — helping build multimodal perception systems and contributing to open-world segmentation projects, including SAM3D.
MIT
Three reasons why DeepSeek’s new model V4 matters
On April 24, Chinese AI firm DeepSeek released a preview of V4, its long-awaited new flagship model. The model can process much longer prompts than its last generation, thanks to a new design that helps it handle large amounts of text more efficiently.
ARS
Google will invest as much as $40 billion in Anthropic
Google will invest at least $10 billion in Anthropic, and that amount could rise to $40 billion if Anthropic meets certain performance targets, Bloomberg reports. The investment follows Amazon’s $5 billion initial investment in Anthropic a few days ago; the Amazon deal also leaves the door open to f
AIN
How AI models use real-time cryptocurrency data to interpret market behaviour
AI systems are increasingly built around data that does not really pause. Financial markets are an obvious example, where inputs keep updating, not arriving in fixed batches.
WD
5 Reasons to Think Twice Before Using ChatGPT—or Any Chatbot—for Financial Advice
to help me build a budget before, and it was genuinely helpful. After I input my monthly salary as well as my standard utilities and recurring expenses, the chatbot drafted a few solid options, and I tweaked them into penny-pinching perfection.
MIT
Health-care AI is here. We don’t know if it actually helps patients.
I don’t need to tell you that AI is everywhere. Or that it is being used, increasingly, in hospitals. Doctors are using AI to help them with note-taking. AI-based tools are trawling through patient records, flagging people who may require certain support or treatments.
WD
The Men Behind Your Favorite AI Gay Thirst Traps
brown eyes, wide grin, and almost comically chiseled body, Jae Young Joon is the platonic ideal of a hunky male influencer.
TC
Bret Taylor’s Sierra buys YC-backed AI startup Fragment
Sierra, the customer service agent startup founded by Bret Taylor, announced on Thursday that it has acquired the YC-backed French startup Fragment, which helps businesses integrate AI into workflows. This is Sierra’s third public acquisition.
ARS
US accuses China of “industrial-scale” AI theft. China says it’s “slander.”
The US is preparing to crack down on China’s allegedly “industrial-scale theft of American artificial intelligence labs’ intellectual property,” the Financial Times reported Thursday. Since the launch of DeepSeek—a Chinese model that OpenAI claimed was trained using outputs from its models—other AI
TC
Era raises $11M to build a software platform for AI gadgets
Earlier in April, the startup Era held a gathering in New York for artists who had received its developer kit.
WD
At 'AI Coachella,' Stanford Students Line Up to Learn From Silicon Valley Royalty
influencers descended on southern California earlier this month for the annual Coachella Music Festival, a very Silicon Valley program dubbed “AI Coachella” was taking shape a few hundred miles north in Palo Alto.
TC
OpenAI releases GPT-5.5, bringing company one step closer to an AI ‘super app’
OpenAI on Thursday released GPT-5.5, its newest AI model, which the company calls its “smartest and most intuitive to use model” yet.
WD
Apple’s Next Chapter, SpaceX and Cursor Strike a Deal, and Palantir’s Controversial Manifesto
Uncanny Valley, the team discusses what’s next for Apple as Tim Cook steps down from his role as CEO. They also go into the reasoning behind SpaceX and Cursor’s surprising deal, and why Palantir’s self-published manifesto drew a lot of heat online.
TC
Meet Noscroll, an AI bot that does your doomscrolling for you
What if you could outsource your doomscrolling? That’s the premise behind the new startup Noscroll, which is offering an AI-powered bot that can browse your social feeds, news sites, and other online chatter, then text you when something important happens. “no feed. no brainrot.
MIT
Will fusion power get cheap? Don’t count on it.
Fusion power could provide a steady, zero-emissions source of electricity in the future—if companies can get plants built and running. But a new study suggests that even if that future arrives, it might not come cheap. Technologies tend to get less expensive over time.
TC
Beehiiv rolls out new creator tools, including webinars and customizable paywalls
It’s been clear for a while that Beehiiv wants to be more than just a newsletter platform. The L.A.-based company announced a slew of updates on Thursday that make that ambition even more obvious.
MIT
The Download: introducing the Nature issue
This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Introducing: the Nature issue When we talk about “nature,” we usually mean something untouched by humans.
AIN
NVIDIA and Google infrastructure cuts AI inference costs
At the Google Cloud Next conference, Google and NVIDIA outlined their hardware roadmap designed to address the cost of AI inference at scale.The companies detailed the new A5X bare-metal instances, which run on NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 rack-scale systems.