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Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI), a new Paris-based startup cofounded by Meta’s former chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, announced Monday it has raised more than $1 billion to develop AI world models.LeCun argues that most human reasoning is grounded in the physical world, not language, and that AI world models are necessary to develop true human-level intelligence. “The idea that you’re going to extend the capabilities of LLMs [large language models] to the point that they’re going to have human-level intelligence is complete nonsense,” he said in an interview with WIRED.The financing, which values the startup at $3.5 billion, was co-led…

The Berlin-based startup Periwinkle is offering a new avenue for those wanting to leave centralized social media operated by Big Tech companies. Instead of joining a decentralized, open social networking app like Mastodon or Bluesky, Periwinkle allows anyone to set up a social media account on their own domain, under their own control. Built on top of the AT Protocol, the same open source technology that powers the X alternative Bluesky, Periwinkle aims to provide the infrastructure you need to run your own social media. That means you can have an account on your own domain on sites like Bluesky,…

Last fall, as venture capitalists were sinking record sums into artificial intelligence, a group of investors gathered to appraise a new startup. The company, Infinity Artificial Intelligence Institute, made software to automatically tune AI models, making them faster and cheaper. The founding team seemed strong, and the market was rapidly expanding. Half of the investors were cautious; the other half saw dollar signs. One of them dubbed the deal an “absolute banger.”This startup was real, and so was the $100,000 the VCs invested in its seed round. But the VCs themselves were all AI agents, part of a new platform…

Electric air taxi developer Archer Aviation responded to a lawsuit Monday with its own counterclaims that rival Joby Aviation allegedly defrauded the U.S. government and its competitors by falsely presenting itself as an American-made company. The counterclaim, filed in federal court, alleges Joby relied on a Chinese manufacturing subsidiary to source critical components from Chinese suppliers with Chinese government support. Archer further alleges that Joby tried to conceal its “deep ties” to China by fraudulently misclassifying thousands of pounds of Chinese-origin aircraft materials as consumer goods — labeling them as hair clips, socks, and photo albums — to evade U.S.…

In the year that US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been in office, his agency has made unprecedented changes to the childhood immunization schedule, removing universal recommendations for a half-dozen vaccines in favor of “shared clinical decisionmaking.”The term has become something of a mantra for Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who is also temporarily leading the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has said he believes “very fundamentally in shared decisionmaking.” And in her confirmation hearing in front of the Senate health committee in February, US…

A mass hacking campaign targeting iPhone users in Ukraine and China used tools that were likely designed by U.S. military contractor L3Harris, TechCrunch has learned. The tools, which were intended for Western spies, wound up in the hands of various hacking groups, including Russian government spooks and Chinese cybercriminals. Last week, Google revealed that over the course of 2025 it discovered that a sophisticated iPhone-hacking toolkit had been used in a series of global attacks. The toolkit, dubbed “Coruna” by its original developer, was made of 23 different components first used “in highly targeted operations” by an unnamed government customer…

“Even some sort of really remarkable and extraordinary revelation would certainly not satisfy the social-media-verse,” says Eghigian. “‘Hey, is this another hoax? Is this another game that the government is playing with us? What else are they keeping from us?’”“I don’t foresee almost any way for this thing to be definitively resolved in terms of the public interest,” he adds.What’s Likely in the Files?If history is any guide, a new release would center on UAP sightings and the government programs that track and study them. Since the first major UFO craze in 1947, the US government has periodically released documents…

Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund is nearing the close of its fourth growth fund, Founders Fund Growth IV, with $6 billion in capital commitments, per sources close to the firm. As with most of the firm’s fundraises, demand from outside investors exceeds the fund’s capacity, according to those sources. Additionally, about $1.5 billion of the capital is coming from the Founders Fund’s partners, one of the sources told TechCrunch. The fresh fundraise comes less than a year after Founders Fund closed its third growth fund, a $4.6 billion vehicle intended primarily for follow-on investments in its successful late-stage companies. The 21-year-old…

More than 30 employees from OpenAI and Google, including Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, filed an amicus brief on Monday in support of Anthropic in its legal fight against the US government.“If allowed to proceed, this effort to punish one of the leading US AI companies will undoubtedly have consequences for the United States’ industrial and scientific competitiveness in the field of artificial intelligence and beyond,” the employees wrote.The brief was filed just hours after Anthropic sued the Department of Defense and other federal agencies over the Pentagon’s decision to designate the company a “supply-chain risk.” The sanction, which…

Bluesky CEO Jay Graber is stepping down from the top leadership position and transitioning to a new role as chief innovation officer, the company announced Monday. Graber, who has helped grow the X and Threads competitor to 43 million users and furthered the development of its underlying AT Protocol, will be replaced by Toni Schneider as interim CEO. Schneider is the former CEO of Automattic and a partner at True Ventures Both Automattic and True Ventures are investors in Bluesky. In a blog post announcing the changes, Graber explained that, as a more mature company, Bluesky needs a “seasoned operator…

New kinds of aircraft, sorts of “flying cars” that can take off and land with little space like helicopters but function like airplanes, will start operating in US airspace as early as June, the US Department of Transportation announced on Monday.Eight regions across the US, including New York and New Jersey, Texas, Florida, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, will take part in a three-year pilot program that will see new aircraft designs ferrying people and cargo around the country even before they formally receive full certifications from the Federal Aviation Administration.The companies building the tech say their aircraft are quieter, cheaper,…

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approved eight pilot programs that will allow a handful of companies, including Archer Aviation, Beta Technologies, Joby Aviation, and Wisk to start widespread electric aircraft testing as early as this summer. The three-year program, which will span 26 states, is designed to ensure U.S. companies lead the way in next-gen aircraft used for personal travel, regional transportation, cargo logistics, and emergency medicine, Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in remarks Monday.  The pilot program, known as the Advanced Air Mobility and Electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing Integration Pilot Program, was announced last year through…

Nvidia is planning to launch an open source platform for AI agents, people familiar with the company’s plans tell WIRED.The chipmaker has been pitching the product, referred to as NemoClaw, to enterprise software companies. The platform will allow these companies to dispatch AI agents to perform tasks for their own workforces. Companies will be able to access the platform regardless of whether their products run on Nvidia’s chips, sources say.The move comes as Nvidia prepares for its annual developer conference in San Jose next week. Ahead of the conference, Nvidia has reached out to companies including Salesforce, Cisco, Google, Adobe,…

More than 30 OpenAI and Google DeepMind employees filed a statement Monday supporting Anthropic’s lawsuit against the U.S. Defense Department after the federal agency labeled the AI firm a supply-chain risk, according to court filings. “The government’s designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk was an improper and arbitrary use of power that has serious ramifications for our industry,” reads the brief, whose signatories include Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean. Late last week, the Pentagon labeled Anthropic a supply-chain risk — usually reserved for foreign adversaries — after the AI firm refused to allow the Department of Defense…

Anthropic executives allege that current customers and prospective ones have been demanding new terms and even backing out of negotiations since the US Department of Defense labeled the AI startup a supply-chain risk late last month, according to court papers that also revealed new financial details about the company.Hundreds of millions of dollars in expected revenue this year from work tied to the Pentagon is already at risk for Anthropic, the company’s chief financial officer, Krishna Rao, wrote in a court filing on Monday. But if the government has its way and pressures a broad range of companies from doing…

When it comes to coding, peer feedback is crucial for catching bugs early, maintaining consistency across a codebase, and improving overall software quality.  The rise of “vibe coding” — using AI tools that take instructions given in plain language and quickly generate large amounts of code — has changed how developers work. While these tools have sped up development, they have also introduced new bugs, security risks, and poorly understood code.  Anthropic’s solution is an AI reviewer designed to catch bugs before they make it into the software’s codebase. The new product, called Code Review, launched Monday in Claude Code.…