Insider Brief Cornell University researchers have developed a robotic collective that behaves more like a flowing material than a traditional machine, allowing groups of simple robots to self-organize and adapt without centralized control. The study, published in Science Robotics, explores “mechanical intelligence,” where coordinated behavior emerges from the robots’ physical interactions and structure rather than…

Continue Reading

Insider Brief American Rheinmetall and Harbinger have partnered to develop robotic and uncrewed ground vehicles for U.S. military modernization programs, combining military vehicle integration expertise with autonomy-ready commercial platforms. Initial efforts will target autonomous tactical vehicles, contested logistics resupply and robotic systems aligned with Army priorities around autonomy and manned-unmanned teaming. American Rheinmetall contributes combat…

Continue Reading

Insider Brief Niantic Spatial and Spexi Geospatial have partnered to turn drone imagery into large-scale 3D intelligence for physical AI applications by combining Spexi’s aerial data network with Niantic Spatial’s reconstruction technology. The collaboration makes Spexi a preferred drone imagery provider for training Niantic Spatial’s real-world foundation models and is aimed at expanding 3D reconstruction…

Continue Reading

Insider Brief Inbolt is expanding its AI vision platform with new robot programming and motion-control capabilities designed to reduce the lengthy manual tuning typically required to deploy industrial robots on factory floors. Inbolt Robot Programming allows engineers to generate robot programs directly from CAD models, while Inbolt Robot Control streams real-time motion corrections into robot…

Continue Reading

Farther, the AI-native wealth management platform, has raised $150 million in Series D funding led by General Atlantic, bringing total capital raised to over $272 million and cementing its unicorn status. CEO and co-founder Taylor Matthews and CTO Brad Genser built the platform from scratch to replace fragmented legacy systems with a single AI-driven ecosystem,…

Continue Reading

There’s a number that keeps coming up in conversations about AI investment right now, and it’s so large it barely sounds real. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, investors poured $300 billion into roughly 6,000 startups globally (Crunchbase, April 2026). That’s not a typo. A single quarter. One 90-day window. And it eclipses the…

Continue Reading

Universal Music Group and TikTok have renewed their global licensing agreement, placing AI governance at the centre of the partnership. The deal commits both companies to removing unauthorised AI-generated music from the platform while strengthening attribution systems for artists and songwriters. The agreement marks a significant thaw after a public falling-out in 2024, when UMG…

Continue Reading

AI gateway startup OpenRouter has raised $113 million in a Series B round led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s growth venture fund, lifting its valuation to approximately $1.3 billion — more than double the $547 million it commanded just a year ago following a Series A backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia. Founded in 2023, OpenRouter gives enterprises AI-powered…

Continue Reading

Insider Brief Visium SA, a Swiss AI and data company serving highly regulated industries, has closed its first institutional funding round co-led by Columbus Venture Partners and Concentric, alongside a syndicate of prominent tech founders including Thomas Wolf of Hugging Face and Sam Bourton of QuantumBlack. Founded in 2018 and bootstrapped for eight years, the…

Continue Reading

Read Online | Sign Up | Advertise Good morning, {{ first_name | AI enthusiasts }}. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis thinks we’ll have AGI by 2030 — give or take a year. Some gaps remain, but he’s more confident now that we’re on track. We sat down with Hassabis at I/O to talk about what’s…

Continue Reading