NVIDIA didn’t invest in Xanadu, but it made its CEO a billionaire anyway
NVIDIA didn’t invest in Xanadu, but it made its CEO a billionaire anyway

Christian Weedbrook, the founder and CEO of Toronto-based Xanadu Quantum Technologies, became a billionaire this week without NVIDIA investing a single dollar in his company. His 46.4 million multiple-voting shares were worth approximately $1.5 billion…

AppDirect buys PartnerStack to complete its ‘everything store’ for B2B software distribution
AppDirect buys PartnerStack to complete its ‘everything store’ for B2B software distribution

In short: AppDirect has acquired Toronto-based PartnerStack, the partner relationship management platform with 138,000+ B2B partners and ~50% market share in the PRM category. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is AppDirect’s sixth acquisition in 12 mo…

Rethinking Hospitality Operations Through AI Integration While Preserving the Human Experience at Scale
Rethinking Hospitality Operations Through AI Integration While Preserving the Human Experience at Scale

Hospitality has long been defined by human interaction, but the systems that support those interactions have undergone continuous change. Arran Campolucci-Bordi, owner of Casa Italia, established 50 years ago in Liverpool, UK, frames this evolution thr…

Volkswagen’s MOIA and Uber begin testing self-driving ID. Buzz minibuses in Los Angeles
Volkswagen’s MOIA and Uber begin testing self-driving ID. Buzz minibuses in Los Angeles

In short: Volkswagen’s autonomous mobility subsidiary MOIA America and Uber have begun on-road testing in Los Angeles with roughly 10 autonomous ID. Buzz vehicles, the opening phase of a deployment that is scheduled to offer commercial rides with human…

Anthropic signs biggest compute deal yet with Google and Broadcom as revenue run rate hits $30bn
Anthropic signs biggest compute deal yet with Google and Broadcom as revenue run rate hits $30bn

In short: Anthropic has agreed to access approximately 3.5 gigawatts of next-generation Google TPU compute capacity via Broadcom from 2027, its largest infrastructure commitment to date — while simultaneously disclosing that its revenue run rate has su…

Argentine wildfire AI startup raises $2.7M after building a detection system that beats NASA’s alerts by 35 minutes
Argentine wildfire AI startup raises $2.7M after building a detection system that beats NASA’s alerts by 35 minutes

Satellites on Fire, founded in 2020 as a school project by three Argentine teenagers, has closed a seed round led by Dalus Capital. Its software-only platform integrates satellite data from multiple agencies and detects fires faster than NASA’s FIRMS s…

A 27-year-old just raised $450 million to bet that AI’s future runs on nuclear power
A 27-year-old just raised $450 million to bet that AI’s future runs on nuclear power

Isaiah Taylor was sixteen when he decided the nuclear industry had a size problem. Not that reactors were too dangerous or too expensive, though they are both, but that they were simply too big. The multi-gigawatt monuments to Cold War-era engineering …

OpenUp raises €20M to scale employee mental health platform
OpenUp raises €20M to scale employee mental health platform

The Amsterdam startup, which gives employees direct anonymous access to psychologists, lifestyle experts, and financial counsellors through their employer, now serves more than 2,000 organisations across five European markets. Smartfin led the round; R…

OpenAI open-sources teen safety policies for developers amid mounting lawsuits over ChatGPT deaths
OpenAI open-sources teen safety policies for developers amid mounting lawsuits over ChatGPT deaths

OpenAI has spent the past year fielding lawsuits from the families of young people who died after extended interactions with ChatGPT. Now it is trying to give the developers who build on top of its models the tools to avoid creating the same problem. T…

Halter raises $220M at $2 billion valuation as virtual fencing for cattle goes global
Halter raises $220M at $2 billion valuation as virtual fencing for cattle goes global

A cow wearing a GPS collar doesn’t sound like a $2 billion idea. But for the ranchers who have strung virtual fences across 60,000 miles of American pastureland in under two years, it apparently is. Halter, the New Zealand-born agtech company, announce…