October 06, 2026

Furientis lands $25M from Benchmark to mass-produce low-cost missile interceptors: The storied Silicon Valley firm makes its first pure defense investment. Read More

India's JioHotstar takes partnership route for Middle East expansion: JioHotstar will be offered inside Starzplay rather than through a stand-alone service. Read More

Silicon Valley's AI wunderkind launches Underdog, the most private Instinct/Muse competitor yet: Sigil Wen, backed by a Silicon Valley who's who, has built an on-device AI assistant that promises to be free, fully private, and capable for everyday tasks. Read More

Meet Virginia Tech's Computer Science and Applications faculty in person at our Open House on Thursday, October 8, 6–8 PM, at Academic Building One in Alexandria. Ask about focus areas like applied AI, cybersecurity, and software systems, and learn about scholarships for Spring 2027.

Our biggest event of the year is coming next week, and now's the time to lock in your ticket to learning how to build successfully in the AI era. You'll get expert insights from leaders from Anthropic, Nvidia, OpenAI, Google Cloud, and hundreds of other sessions across three days. 

Save 50% on a second ticket, or if you've been laid off recently, get an Expo+ Pass for just $75.

Anthropic is giving startups a free year of Claude Team and $1,000 in credits: "We created this program because we believe the benefits of AI will reach most people through the companies that build on top of models, rather than through the models alone." Read More

How AI decision models could change content moderation: On Tuesday, Musubi announced a lightweight decision model made for real-time moderation called PolicyLM-1.7B, released with open weights. Read More

Uber is spending $2.3B to get into catering: It's the latest in a string of deals meant to grow Uber Eats into a food delivery behemoth. Read More

Vinod Khosla believes ex-DeepMind engineer's Wajo will win agent market on trust: Wajo's Fo agent can hire humans to complete a task. Read More

Mirror Particle is building a ‘world model’ of human behavior: Mirror Particle will launch at TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield 200 with a world model built from scratch to predict human behavior, arguing that LLM role-play falls short for market research and brand strategy. Read More

Carriers, forwarders and warehouses still juggle separate tools for dispatch, stock, fleet and billing. Rapido, from Romania, connects TMS, WMS, ERP, CRM, eCMR and fleet on the same live data, so delivered trips become invoices in one click. Already live with a carrier and five manufacturers, it's raising €1.5M to scale across Europe and the U.S.

Bluesky wants to give you your own domain on the open web: Bluesky says the process will still take 18-24 months, so don't expect your new, shortened 'bsky' handle any time soon. Read More

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October 06, 2026

Uber is spending $2.3B to get into catering: It's the latest in a string of deals meant to grow Uber Eats into a food delivery behemoth. Read More

Paramount closes historic Warner Bros. merger to form Skydance: The deal brings together two major streaming platforms, Paramount+ and HBO Max, along with networks including CBS, CNN, MTV, TBS, Comedy Central, and Food Network. Read More

Lucid Motors' EV output falls to lowest level in almost 2 years: The company is deliberately limiting production after years of struggling to find mass-market demand for its EVs. Read More

A message from R1

The biggest opportunity for AI in healthcare isn't automation, it's observability. R1’s Payer Atlas analyzes payer behavior across millions of interactions to uncover hidden patterns and detect reimbursement risk, helping health systems move from reactive recovery to predictive action. 

Our biggest event of the year is coming next week, and now's the time to lock in your ticket to learning how to build successfully in the AI era. You'll get expert insights from leaders from Anthropic, Nvidia, OpenAI, Google Cloud, and hundreds of other sessions across three days. 

Save 50% on a second ticket, or if you've been laid off recently, get an Expo+ Pass for just $75.

Bluesky wants to give you your own domain on the open web: Bluesky says the process will still take 18-24 months, so don't expect your new, shortened 'bsky' handle any time soon. Read More

Glimpse wants to give hardware companies an X-ray view of every critical part: Called Explore, Glimpse's new image processing software lets hardware makers speed up quality control checks using CT scanners. Read More

Flai's AI dealership software is booking 50,000 appointments per month: Flai's revenue has grown 20x in a year, and the company just closed a $27 million Series A funding round. Read More

Mistral’s new 1T model aims to leapfrog closed and open rivals: French AI lab Mistral AI has released Mistral Large 4, a new large multimodal model aiming to leapfrog both American and Chinese rivals. Read More

Facebook tests going Reels-first in India: Meta is testing a new Facebook UX in India that sends some users directly into full-screen video when they open the app, putting Reels front and center. Read More

A message from RoMADE

Great tech often ships with a forgettable brand. Clody.design, a Romanian creative studio founded in 2019, has built identities for the European Film Market, Marché du Film and TIFFCOM — and at Disrupt 2026 it's offering exclusive on-site logo concepting, turning MVPs into market-ready brands in real time. Find the team at Pavilion P99.

Pinterest's AI now turns beauty Pins into action plans: Pinterest’s new AI-powered Beauty Guides translate hair and nail Pins into salon terminology, with estimated costs, appointment times, and maintenance needs. Read More

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