Insider Brief Tesla is building a dedicated Optimus production line in Fremont, Calif., with initial output expected later this year, though CEO Elon Musk said scaling the humanoid robot will be harder than any manufacturing program the company has attempted. The company is developing Optimus to perform generalized tasks from spoken instructions or demonstrations, using…

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Google reported that its AI assistant Gemini has surpassed 950 million monthly active users, tripling its user base over the past year, according to the company’s Q2 2026 earnings call. The milestone follows Gemini crossing 750 million monthly users in February and positions it closer to rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which reached 1 billion monthly users…

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Meta released a new advertisement promoting an optimistic vision of AI’s impact on society, featuring imagery of people connecting, celebrating, and experiencing joyful moments, set to David Bowie’s song “Five Years.” CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the video, stating that Meta has always aimed to give people the power to connect and shape their world, and…

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Enterprises have started treating tokens the way they treat capital, tracking consumption, routing workloads to the cheapest model that will do the job, and holding teams accountable for what they spend. That discipline solves a cost problem. It does not solve a very different problem hiding underneath it. The same AI systems burning through compute…

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Indian AI coding startup Emergent has raised $130 million in a Series C round at a $1.5 billion post-money valuation, a five-fold increase in six months. The round was led by Creaegis, with participation from new investors MNI Ventures-Claypond and Sentinel Global, alongside existing backers Khosla Ventures, SoftBank’s Vision Fund 2, Lightspeed, and Y Combinator,…

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ServiceNow, the U.S. enterprise workflow automation company, has invested $40 million in Indian banking software specialist BusinessNext, valuing the firm at $700 million and giving ServiceNow a roughly 5% stake. The deal expands the companies’ partnership around AI-driven financial services and grants BusinessNext access to ServiceNow’s global sales infrastructure. BusinessNext, based in Noida and generating…

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Monday.com, the Israeli workplace software company, is laying off approximately 630 employees, roughly 20% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring effort aimed at concentrating resources on its AI Work Platform. The company said the move is intended to create a leaner, more focused operating model centered on AI development. The layoffs follow a…

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IBM reported disappointing quarterly earnings Wednesday, with results falling well short of Wall Street expectations despite $17.2 billion in revenue and $2.2 billion in net earnings. CEO Arvind Krishna had previously warned investors that results would miss projections, a disclosure that preceded the stock’s steepest single-day drop on record. The company also lowered its full-year…

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Miles Wang, an OpenAI researcher known for work applying AI to scientific and biological discovery, is leaving the company to start a new venture focused on AI models for drug discovery, according to people familiar with his plans. Several other OpenAI researchers are expected to join him. Wang is reportedly in talks to raise approximately…

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Justin McLeod, the founder of Hinge, announced an $18 million fundraise for his new company, Overtone, backed by Hinge owner Match Group along with FirstMark Capital and Pace Capital. McLeod stepped down from his Hinge CEO role last year to launch the venture. Overtone describes itself as a voice- and audio-forward service powered by AI…

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