CuspAI raised $450M at a $2.6B valuation, backed by Bezos, Nvidia and AMD, to build a ‘search engine for atoms’ that finds new materials with AI. It is the AI boom funding the search for the materials the AI boom needs.
Moonshot AI paused new Kimi K3 subscriptions after demand overwhelmed its compute. The model works; the servers ran out. It is US chip export controls biting in the least obvious way: China can build the models, but not always run them at scale.
Alibaba previewed Qwen3.8-Max, a 2.4-trillion-parameter model it calls second only to Anthropic’s Fable 5. There is no model card, no benchmark table and no launch post yet. The real story is the open-weight firehose coming out of China.
A Schmidt Ocean Institute team sent a robot into the midwater off Brazil and confirmed more than 30 new species in two weeks, including a gossamer worm and nine new jellyfish, using laser imaging to study fragile deep-sea life without destroying it.
Omega Centauri should hold about 10,000 stellar-mass black holes. For decades nobody could find one. Hubble and Webb just caught the first, oMEGACat BH-2, by watching a star waltz with an invisible 4.46-solar-mass partner for 20 years.
NASA’s James Webb telescope found a hidden giant planet in the Beta Pictoris system, not by seeing it, but by detecting the carbon-monoxide barcode of its atmosphere. It had been sitting in the data since 2014.
This week’s movers and shakers: New York froze new data centres, xAI bolted on 59 unpermitted gas turbines, TSMC sold out the future, DeepSeek hit $71B, and 69% of Americans said seize half of big AI. It all comes back to power, silicon and money.
Reflection AI signed a $1B+ compute deal with Nebius through 2029, weeks after a reported $150M-a-month SpaceX deal. In modern AI, the moat is not the model. It is a confirmed delivery date for chips.
Amazon is closing Mechanical Turk to new customers on 30 July. The platform that paid humans pennies to label the data that trained modern AI is being retired because the AI no longer needs them.
xAI installed 59 gas turbines to power its Colossus project in Tennessee, reportedly without federal clean-air permits, next to predominantly Black neighbourhoods near Memphis. The AI race is now an air-quality story.