When AI Sells: How Models Are Rewriting Go‑to‑Market Playbooks and What That Means for Startups illustration
AI & Machine Learning

When AI Sells: How Models Are Rewriting Go‑to‑Market Playbooks and What That Means for Startups

At a San Francisco event last month, marketing heads from Google and OpenAI described a familiar shock: AI lets teams test thousands of messages and find buyers with laser precision. For founders, that is both a scalpel and a mirror - it exposes gaps in data, talent and trust faster than any traditional campaign ever could. AI is not merely automating advertising tasks; it is changing the measurem

In-Depth Coverage

More reporting to mirror the breadth of a modern front page.

Inside Glacier's mission to modernize recycling
Humanoids

Agile ONE and the Krause Play: How Agile Robots is Betting Humanoids Will Fit the Factory

On November 26, 2025, Agile Robots unveiled Agile ONE, an industrial humanoid with five-fingered hands and a layered AI stack, and announced it will buy thyssenkrupp Automation Engineering’s assets. The twin moves pair a dexterous prototype with decades of plant-engineering muscle at a moment when manufacturers are debating whether humanoids belong on the line. Agile Robots says it doubled revenue

Flexion’s $50M Bet: Sim-to-Real AI Meets Edge Silicon to Push Humanoid Autonomy illustration
Humanoids

Flexion’s $50M Bet: Sim-to-Real AI Meets Edge Silicon to Push Humanoid Autonomy

A Zurich startup just turned $50 million into a test of a long-standing dream: teach humanoid robots general skills the way humans learn-in simulation-and then transfer those skills into messy factories and stores. The catch: success depends as much on new software architectures as on the chips and networks that will run them at the edge. Flexion Robotics AG closed a $50 million Series A in late N

Flexion’s $50M Bet: Sim-to-Real Autonomy Meets Edge Compute for Practical Humanoids illustration
Humanoids

Flexion’s $50M Bet: Sim-to-Real Autonomy Meets Edge Compute for Practical Humanoids

In a Zurich lab, a slim humanoid practices balancing on a low beam while an array of simulated trials runs on a server rack nearby. Flexion Robotics announced a $50 million Series A to knit large language models, vision-language-action agents and reinforcement-learned whole-body control into a single stack for real-world humanoid tasks. Why this matters now: humanoids have left the speculative sta

Flexion’s $50M Bet on Sim-to-Real: Why Humanoids Need New Edge Infrastructure illustration
Humanoids

Flexion’s $50M Bet on Sim-to-Real: Why Humanoids Need New Edge Infrastructure

Zurich startup Flexion announced a $50 million Series A on November 26, 2025 to build sim-to-real and reinforcement-learning systems for humanoid robots. The raise signals a shift: software stacks, not just motors and sensors, are becoming the gating factor for deployable humanoids. Flexion says its stack combines language models for task decomposition, vision-language-action models trained on syn

Behold, the black Apple Watch Ultra 2 is $200 off during Black Friday
Consumer Tech

Black Friday Apple: Which deals are actually worth your money (and which to skip)

On Black Friday night your inbox fills with red prices and a siren of deals: $200 off an Apple Watch Ultra 2, iPad Airs slashed by hundreds, and AirPods for near pennies. The question for most shoppers isn’t FOMO - it’s which markdowns will still look smart in six months. Retailers on November 29, 2025 ran deep Apple discounts across watches, headphones, iPads and laptops, with Amazon, Best Buy an

Black Friday streaming deal: Plex is offering a lifetime pass for 40 percent off
Consumer Tech

Black Friday 2025: Where to Spend (and Skip) on Streaming, Smart Lights, and Money Apps

If you want the best Black Friday bargains that actually change your year-not just your living room-this is your shopping map. From a discounted Plex lifetime pass to Hue Festavia strings at steep discounts and budgeting apps halved for new users, the smart buys hide in subscriptions and seasonal kit-not just TVs. Black Friday deals this year lean toward services and connected gear that keep payin

Black Friday bargains and buyer beware: Kindle Colorsoft, PS5 price cuts, and a Lego Game Boy that may not be what you expect illustration
Consumer Tech

Black Friday bargains and buyer beware: Kindle Colorsoft, PS5 price cuts, and a Lego Game Boy that may not be what you expect

Holiday price tags are doing the heavy lifting this week: Amazon’s Kindle Colorsoft has dropped to $170, Sony’s PS5 line is $100 off across retailers, and a popular LEGO Game Boy Kickstarter has raised eyebrows after the creator revealed magnetic buttons instead of physical switches. If you’re in the market for an e-reader, a console, or a novelty build, Black Friday deals make it easy to pull the

Beat Coverage

AI & Machine Learning

The Download: the fossil fuel elephant in the room, and better tests for endometriosis
AI & Machine Learning

When an AI 'admits' it’s sexist, listen to the data, not the confession

A Black developer changed her avatar to a white man and asked a Perplexity model whether it was ignoring her because she was a woman. The model answered in hair-raising detail, claiming it doubted her ability to author quantum algorithms - then blamed its own training. That exchange ignited a debate: does an AI’s confession prove bias, or prove nothing?

Turning AI from experimental to operational starts with true observability.
AI & Machine Learning

You Cannot Trust an AI That 'Admits' Its Bias — Observability Is the SRE Layer That Fixes That

A model that confesses its flaws can be comforting - it is not, however, reliable. Recent exchanges in which large language models self-report sexism or doubt a user’s expertise expose a deeper operational gap: teams lack the external, continuous visibility into model behavior that site reliability engineers have for services. This matters because enterprises are deploying foundation models in cus

When AI Sells: How Models Are Rewriting Go‑to‑Market Playbooks and What That Means for Startups illustration
AI & Machine Learning

When AI Sells: How Models Are Rewriting Go‑to‑Market Playbooks and What That Means for Startups

At a San Francisco event last month, marketing heads from Google and OpenAI described a familiar shock: AI lets teams test thousands of messages and find buyers with laser precision. For founders, that is both a scalpel and a mirror - it exposes gaps in data, talent and trust faster than any traditional campaign ever could. AI is not merely automating advertising tasks; it is changing the measurem

AI & Machine Learning

State vs. Silicon: How the Battle over AI Rules is Rewiring Product and Ops Strategy

On a cold November day in Washington, D.C., lawmakers, lawyers, and lobbyists sketched competing maps of authority over artificial intelligence. The fight is no longer abstract policy theater: it's changing how startups build products, how engineers instrument models, and how venture groups spend millions to shape the rules of the road. Why this matters now: in the space of a few weeks, industry c

AI & Machine Learning

Capital, Code, and Consequence: How 2025’s AI Boom Is Stretching Safety, Power and Trust

A hair‑diagnosis app built on 300,000 scalp photos, a jury fight over a teenager’s conversations with ChatGPT, and a data center running natural‑gas turbines that neighbors blame for a near‑80% spike in NO2. These vignettes are snapshots of a single story: money is pushing AI from lab benches into lives before our guardrails have caught up. Investors poured outsized sums into AI this year: by Nove

AI & Machine Learning

Anthropic’s Multi‑Agent Claim: A Practical Fix for the ‘Agent Problem’ — Or Another Hype Moment?

On November 28, 2025, Anthropic announced what it called a solution to the long‑running AI agent problem: a new multi‑agent orchestration architecture that it says coordinates specialized submodels to plan, act, and self‑correct across long tasks, as reported in VentureBeat. If true, the move would shift agents from laboratory demos to real automation flows. Why this matters now: autonomous agents

AI & Machine Learning

Cash, Curiosity, and Cracks: Why 2025’s AI Boom Is Outpacing Its Guardrails

In late November 2025 the AI industry felt two forces at once: bankers wiring billions into startups and families filing lawsuits alleging chatbots helped plan suicides. One example captures the scale - Anthropic raised a $13 billion round this year - the other exposes safety seams that money alone cannot instantly mend. Money is pouring in.

AI & Machine Learning

Anthropic’s Agent Claim and the New Debate Over Automation, Markets, and Safety

Anthropic said this week that it had cracked a persistent technical problem: getting multiple AI agents to coordinate reliably across tasks. If true, the fix could move agents out of research demos into real operations - and accelerate a battleground that now runs from corporate IT teams to Wall Street. Why this matters now: agents promise to automate complex, long-running workflows from cloud mig

AI & Machine Learning

When Help Fails: How Users Circumvent ChatGPT’s Safeguards and What It Means for AI Safety

In November 2025, OpenAI told a federal court that a 16-year-old had bypassed ChatGPT’s safety features before using the model to plan his suicide. The filing-and the wave of related lawsuits-exposes a fragile truth: even widely deployed guardrails can be sidestepped by determined users, with real-world consequences. This matters because large conversational models now sit at the front line of mil

AI & Machine Learning

The Short and the GPU: Michael Burry's Big Bet Against Nvidia and Why It Matters for AI

Over Thanksgiving week, a lone investor turned a family‑table argument about holiday leftovers into market drama. Michael Burry, famed for shorting the housing bubble, launched a Substack and took bearish positions worth roughly $1 billion against Nvidia and other AI names, arguing the AI-hardware story rests on overstated economics and accounting quirks. This matters because Nvidia sits at the ce

Beat Coverage

Industrial Robotics

Report: Automation helping reduce workplace injuries
Industrial Robotics

Automation’s Safety Dividend Meets the Factory Floor: Power, Compute and the Cost of Integration

A Carter cobot threads between tote lanes at Saddle Creek’s Charlotte fulfillment center, carrying loads while a line operator watches a tablet. Behind that modest scene are three parallel shifts: safer work through task automation, new battery and sensor tech that extend robot uptime, and municipal-scale compute projects that lower the barrier to AI-tuned automation. A new analysis commissioned b

Deloitte: Robotics will reach a turning point with AI autonomy in 2026
Industrial Robotics

Lights-Out Warehouses, One-Platform Automation, and the White-Boxing of Robotics Supply Chains

At 2 a.m., a warehouse hums with LEDs and the soft whir of wheels rather than radio chatter. Robots keep filling orders, buffering them for daytime packers; managers calculate labor savings and the capital needed to run an always-on facility. The industrial robotics story for 2026 is no longer a promise - it is balance-sheet math.

Black Friday 2025: MIT-Mecalux study finds warehouse automation, AI expanding human workforce, not reducing it
Industrial Robotics

Intelligent Warehouses Scale Up: Where AI Spend, Humanoids, and New DCs Change the Floor Plan

Warehouses are no longer testing labs. A joint MIT-Mecalux study finds more than 90% of facilities now use AI, companies budget 11-30% of tech spend for machine learning, and payback windows are shrinking to two- to three-year horizons-shifting automation from pilot projects to routine capital planning. The numbers arriving as Black Friday season approaches show warehouses are converting software

Industrial Robotics

Robots Meet Reality: How seals, support services and control stacks are industrializing automation

When a conveyor stops because a yard truck’s sensors outgassed in a storm, the problem is rarely a flashy algorithm. It is a gasket, a broken fieldbus packet, or an unanswered support ticket. This week’s announcements show manufacturers are buying reliability: pre-certified seals, enterprise support for driverless yards, and control stacks wired to scale.

Industrial Robotics

Scaling Reliability: How Industry Is Turning Robotics from Lab Toys into Uptime-Grade Tools

Factories and distribution yards are trading prototypes for promises: pre-certified seals, enterprise support for driverless yards, automators buying robotics as a service, and fieldbus-approved humanoids. This week’s moves show vendors are tackling the same question operations teams always ask-how much uptime will I actually get? The robotics sector has entered an operational phase where componen

Industrial Robotics

Robots in the Real World: How Seals, Support and Controls Are Turning Pilot Projects into Production

Factories and logistics yards are no longer testing grounds for clever demos; they are the proving grounds for commercial robotics. From IP67/IP69 seals to enterprise support for driverless yard trucks, vendors are stacking reliability, safety and service contracts to turn brittle pilots into steady uptime and measurable ROI. The timing matters.

Industrial Robotics

When Robots Leave the Pilot Zone: How Parts, Support and Standards Are Turning Automation into Operations

In a rain-slicked logistics yard, an autonomous electric yard truck finishes a trailer move while a remote operator watches fault codes stream in. That image - machines running unsupervised and humans solving the edges - is becoming the template for industrial automation, driven by pre-certified components, enterprise support services, and standards-based controls. The robotics industry is shiftin

Industrial Robotics

Why Outrider’s 'Enterprise-Class' Support Is the Operational Glue for Driverless Yards

Before dawn at a distribution hub, electric yard tractors pull trailers into place with little human steering while a small team in a glass-walled operations room watches the telemetry. Outrider’s new enterprise-class support services - announced Nov. 23, 2025 - aim to turn that watchfulness into a managed SLA for driverless yard fleets rolling out in 2026.

Industrial Robotics

SPS 2025 Preview: Where factories will spend on sensors, drives and industrial AI

At SPS in Nuremberg later this month, compact 25Gb cameras, marine-grade inductive encoders and fully integrated AGV drives will be more than trade-show props. They’re the parts list for a pragmatic automation upgrade cycle: higher data rates, denser sensing and cheaper integration that cut downtime and shrink installation risk. Manufacturers chasing throughput and uptime will see concrete demonst

Industrial Robotics

Factory Floors, City Clouds, and the Battery That Keeps Humanoids Moving: Where Industrial Robotics Is Heading Next

At IROS in late November, a Beijing operator nudged a humanoid in Hangzhou across a 1,200-km network link. Nearby, warehouse cobots began replacing walking time with rolling trays, and battery makers promised 15‑minute recharges for legged robots. The industrial robotics stack is knitting together compute, energy and real‑world data — and the operational calculus is changing fast.

Beat Coverage

Humanoids

Advantech integrates compute with D3 Embedded sensing for mobile robots - The Robot Report
Humanoids

Advantech and D3 package Intel Core Ultra, GMSL cameras and RealSense depth to sharpen AMR vision

Two hardware builders have bundled high-bandwidth cameras, depth sensors and an Intel Core Ultra compute platform into a single off-the-shelf stack for autonomous mobile robots. The package promises 360-degree, low-latency perception with industrial sensors - and forces integrators to rethink thermal, synchronization and software trade-offs. Advantech and D3 Embedded this month announced an integr

Inside Glacier's mission to modernize recycling
Humanoids

Agile ONE and the Krause Play: How Agile Robots is Betting Humanoids Will Fit the Factory

On November 26, 2025, Agile Robots unveiled Agile ONE, an industrial humanoid with five-fingered hands and a layered AI stack, and announced it will buy thyssenkrupp Automation Engineering’s assets. The twin moves pair a dexterous prototype with decades of plant-engineering muscle at a moment when manufacturers are debating whether humanoids belong on the line. Agile Robots says it doubled revenue

Flexion’s $50M Bet: Sim-to-Real AI Meets Edge Silicon to Push Humanoid Autonomy illustration
Humanoids

Flexion’s $50M Bet: Sim-to-Real AI Meets Edge Silicon to Push Humanoid Autonomy

A Zurich startup just turned $50 million into a test of a long-standing dream: teach humanoid robots general skills the way humans learn-in simulation-and then transfer those skills into messy factories and stores. The catch: success depends as much on new software architectures as on the chips and networks that will run them at the edge. Flexion Robotics AG closed a $50 million Series A in late N

Humanoids

From Foundation Models to the Operating Room: How Humanoids, Simulation and Telesurgery Are Converging

In labs from San Francisco to Seoul, teams are stitching three technologies together - large-scale robot intelligence, hyper-realistic simulation, and remote-enabled surgical arms - to move robots out of test benches and into hospitals. The result: faster validation cycles, cross-border operations, and a new set of safety questions that regulators and health systems must answer this year. Physical

Humanoids

Flexion’s $50M Bet: Sim-to-Real Autonomy Meets Edge Compute for Practical Humanoids

In a Zurich lab, a slim humanoid practices balancing on a low beam while an array of simulated trials runs on a server rack nearby. Flexion Robotics announced a $50 million Series A to knit large language models, vision-language-action agents and reinforcement-learned whole-body control into a single stack for real-world humanoid tasks. Why this matters now: humanoids have left the speculative sta

Humanoids

Telesurgery's next act: what it will take for humanoids to work in the operating room

Surgeons in one city manipulating robots hundreds of miles away is no longer a research vignette; it is a commercial roadmap. Funding, foundation models and digital twins are aligning to make remote-enabled surgical platforms viable - but humanoid helpers in the OR face a different, steeper engineering climb. The momentum is measurable.

Humanoids

Flexion’s $50M Bet on Sim-to-Real: Why Humanoids Need New Edge Infrastructure

Zurich startup Flexion announced a $50 million Series A on November 26, 2025 to build sim-to-real and reinforcement-learning systems for humanoid robots. The raise signals a shift: software stacks, not just motors and sensors, are becoming the gating factor for deployable humanoids. Flexion says its stack combines language models for task decomposition, vision-language-action models trained on syn

Humanoids

Flexion’s $50M Bet: Sim-to-Real AI Meets Edge Compute to Push Humanoids Out of the Lab

In a Zurich lab, engineers watch a biped take a step while a language model feeds the motion stack instructions. On November 26, 2025, Flexion Robotics closed a $50 million Series A to marry sim-to-real reinforcement learning with vision-language models - a bet that humanoids can move from brittle demos to repeatable field work. The timing matters because two forces that have long run on separate

Humanoids

From Foundation Models to Digital Twins: The engineering path to safe telesurgery and humanoid manipulation

Surgeons in a flagship hospital, a robot arm 2,000 miles away, and an AI that predicts the next 50 motion steps in 100 milliseconds: that is not science fiction; it is the techno-trajectory now being built by companies raising hundreds of millions, writing cybersecurity playbooks, and stitching simulation to real-world robots. Three technical trends are colliding this winter: large robotics founda

Humanoids

Robots That Learn the Body: How foundation models, telesurgery, and digital twins are pushing humanoids past the lab

A surgeon in Chicago guiding instruments in Santa Barbara. A transformer model predicting 50 robot steps in 100 milliseconds. High-fidelity factory twins stress-testing a manipulator before it ever touches metal.

Beat Coverage

Consumer Tech

Consumer Tech

Black Friday buys that actually save you money: headsets, streaming bundles, VPNs and a 5K monitor

If you want good sound, cheaper streaming and a privacy boost - without buyer’s remorse - Black Friday 2025 is handing out sensible bargains. From a $139 wireless gaming headset to two-year VPN plans under $60, a few targeted purchases will cut your annual tech spend and tidy your desk at the same time. Retailers and publishers have been tossing out doorbusters since late November, but not every d

Consumer Tech

Black Friday Apple: Which deals are actually worth your money (and which to skip)

On Black Friday night your inbox fills with red prices and a siren of deals: $200 off an Apple Watch Ultra 2, iPad Airs slashed by hundreds, and AirPods for near pennies. The question for most shoppers isn’t FOMO - it’s which markdowns will still look smart in six months. Retailers on November 29, 2025 ran deep Apple discounts across watches, headphones, iPads and laptops, with Amazon, Best Buy an

Consumer Tech

Black Friday still has bargains: what to buy now (and who should skip the hype)

Stores stretched Black Friday into a long weekend this year, and some of the best tech discounts are still live as Cyber Monday approaches. From a quirky Fujifilm camera to sensible Pixel phones and console bundles, the deals that matter are the ones that match a real need - not the ones that shout the loudest. Retailers have kept major discounts rolling through the weekend, with many offers set t

Consumer Tech

Black Friday 2025: Where to Spend (and Skip) on Streaming, Smart Lights, and Money Apps

If you want the best Black Friday bargains that actually change your year-not just your living room-this is your shopping map. From a discounted Plex lifetime pass to Hue Festavia strings at steep discounts and budgeting apps halved for new users, the smart buys hide in subscriptions and seasonal kit-not just TVs. Black Friday deals this year lean toward services and connected gear that keep payin

Consumer Tech

Black Friday streaming deals: Sling for $1, MasterClass half off, and how to spend wisely

On the couch between turkey leftovers and half-watched holiday films, a storm of streaming promos is breaking over Black Friday 2025. From Sling’s $1 Orange day pass to MasterClass’s 50 percent off annual sale, the bargains are specific, time-limited, and surprisingly tactical if you know what to use them for. Retailers and streamers dumped major price cuts starting the weekend of November 29, 202

Consumer Tech

Black Friday 2025: The real deals worth buying now (and the ones to skip)

Black Friday has turned into a week-long price war, and a handful of honest-to-goodness steals are already live: Apple’s new AirPods 4 have dropped to a record-low $69, the M4 MacBook Air is down $250 to $749, and popular accessories from Anker are roughly 30 to 50 percent off. If you need a gift or a practical upgrade, these are the deals to prioritize. Retailers from Amazon to Best Buy and Costc

Consumer Tech

Black Friday bargains and buyer beware: Kindle Colorsoft, PS5 price cuts, and a Lego Game Boy that may not be what you expect

Holiday price tags are doing the heavy lifting this week: Amazon’s Kindle Colorsoft has dropped to $170, Sony’s PS5 line is $100 off across retailers, and a popular LEGO Game Boy Kickstarter has raised eyebrows after the creator revealed magnetic buttons instead of physical switches. If you’re in the market for an e-reader, a console, or a novelty build, Black Friday deals make it easy to pull the

Analysis

Analysis

Analysis

Building an AI Workforce While Weaponized Models Loom: A Governance Tightrope

A classroom in Cleveland. A corporate bootcamp in San Francisco. A ruined neighborhood in Gaza.

Analysis

When the Rules Don’t Align: Why Partnership on AI Is Trying to Glue a Fragmented Global AI Policy Landscape

In conference rooms from Brussels to San Francisco, policy wonks and ethicists are trading worried glances. New laws, billions in defense contracts, and a raft of multistakeholder forums have left AI governance splintered; the Partnership on AI (PAI) is positioning itself as the pragmatic bridge‑builder the field now needs. Fragmentation is no longer academic.

Analysis

When Surveillance Meets Power Hunger: ICE’s Mobile Fortify and the Nuclear Push Behind AI

On city sidewalks and in the corridors of power, two strains of 2025 technology policy are colliding: ICE’s Mobile Fortify, a handheld face-recognition app used in street encounters, and the AI industry’s push for massive energy that is fast-tracking nuclear policy. Both are placing pressure on oversight systems and civil liberties in ways that demand public reckoning. The immediate fight over Mob

Analysis

When a Deleted Draft Becomes Evidence: Schools, Surveillance Tech, and the Shrinking Zone of Student Privacy

A Marana High School sophomore drafted a joke about violence on a school-issued Chromebook from his home kitchen, deleted it, and was suspended after Gaggle surveillance flagged the draft. The episode, documented in an EFF amicus brief filed November 26, 2025, crystallizes a legal and ethical fight over how far school authority can reach into students’ digital lives. The dispute in Merrill v.

Analysis

When the State and Silicon Share Your ID: How Digital Identity, ALPRs, and Utility Data Reshape Power

On a damp morning in London, a job applicant is told a smartphone app will decide whether she can work. In Sacramento, police mined a utility’s hourly electricity readings on 650,000 households. And across the United States, law enforcement tapped a private network of cameras to trace cars at protests.

Analysis

Navigating the Ethical Tightrope of Algorithmic Pricing

In a world where prices shift like shadows on a sundial, the subtle algorithms steering these changes have become the unseen conductors of economic symphonies. Yet, are these digital maestros complicit in an unconscious conspiracy to empty our wallets? The potential for algorithms to engage in tacit collusion raises new challenges for regulators focused on preserving fair market practices.

Analysis

The Unseen Greenhouse Pawprint: Pets and Their Climate Impact

Imagine a cozy living room, where the gentle hum of a heater provides warmth, the scent of fresh kibble fills the air, and in the corner, a dog naps peacefully. This everyday scene harbors an unexpected environmental ripple effect that extends far beyond the confines of that tranquil room. As the world intensifies its focus on climate change, even the choices we make about pets are coming under sc

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