OpenAI’s new always-on AI agent, Dots, has drawn an unexpected twist online after users discovered that the domain dot.com belongs to Elon Musk’s xAI and redirects to the download page for its Grok chatbot app. Musk, an OpenAI co-founder who later left, built competitor Grok and unsuccessfully sued the company. According to the Whois domain…

Continue Reading

Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}, and welcome to the 5,879 new readers who joined us yesterday. Google spent most of 2026 on the sidelines of the frontier, with a scrapped Gemini 3.5 Pro and a steady stream of Flash models filling a widening gap. Gemini…

Continue Reading

Insider Brief Tangent Robotics raised $4.5 million in pre-seed funding led by Fly Ventures and Toyota Ventures to develop robotic manipulation systems for high-precision industrial tasks. The Columbia Engineering spinout combines robot hands, light-based touch sensing and motor learning to target tasks including assembly, threading, connector mating, gasket seating, snap fitting and gear meshing. Tangent…

Continue Reading

Insider Brief Inbolt raised $12.5 million to expand its AI-powered 3D vision software for industrial robots, with plans to grow in the U.S. and Asia-Pacific and move into data centers and electronics manufacturing. Shift4Good led the round, with participation from Bridges Climate Transition Partners, BNP Paribas Développement and Ora Global, bringing Inbolt’s total funding to…

Continue Reading

OpenAI is in talks with investors to raise at least $30 billion in a pre-IPO funding round that would value the ChatGPT maker at roughly $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. If completed, the raise would serve as a bridge round ahead of the company’s anticipated public market debut next year. Investor appetite has been fueled by…

Continue Reading

OpenAI used its DevDay event in San Francisco on Tuesday to reposition ChatGPT as a central platform where people and AI agents can discover, launch and use software, introducing a new model, autonomous agents called Dots, office productivity tools and an expanded app ecosystem. The headline model release was GPT-6.1 Sol, arriving just a week…

Continue Reading

AI security startup Reco has raised $55 million, extending a $30 million Series B from February, with participation from AT&T’s venture arm, Forestay and Quadrille Capital. The funding brings its total raised to $140 million. Co-founder and CEO Ofer Klein said the company’s valuation has more than doubled since February, placing it in the high…

Continue Reading

Dyna Robotics has launched Dyna 2.1, a semi-humanoid robot designed to autonomously complete full commercial work such as laundry shifts, food preparation and data-center tasks. According to Dyna, the robot is being deployed in hotels, laundromats and restaurants and ather than automating a single task, Dyna 2.1 is designed to handle sequences of physical jobs…

Continue Reading

AI inference infrastructure provider Modal Labs is nearing a $750 million funding round led by Accel at a $15.75 billion valuation, according to a source familiar with the deal. The round would more than triple the valuation the company reached four months ago when it raised $355 million at $4.65 billion. Modal declined to comment.…

Continue Reading

Peak XV Partners, the venture firm managing more than $10 billion across markets including India and Southeast Asia, has increased its per-company investment ceiling through Surge, its seed-stage platform, to $5 million from $3 million. Surge 12, the first cohort under the new limit, comprises 18 startups, with Peak XV investing more than $50 million…

Continue Reading