Coalition demands federal Grok ban over nonconsensual sexual content

Nonprofits urge the U.S. government to suspend Grok in federal agencies after the xAI chatbot generated thousands of nonconsensual sexual images, raising national security and child safety concerns.

Bye-bye corporate conglomerates. Hello personal conglomerates.

Elon Musk’s reported merging of SpaceX, xAI, and Tesla harkens back to the heyday of General Electric — or maybe the robber barons of the Gilded Age.

HomeBoost’s app will show you where to save on your utility bills

The startup is partnering with utilities to help homeowners determine the best upgrades to cut their energy use.

Physical Intelligence, Stripe veteran Lachy Groom’s latest bet, is building Silicon Valley’s buzziest robot brains

If co-founder Lachy Groom has any doubts, he doesn’t show it. He’s working with people who’ve been working on this problem for decades and who believe the timing is finally right, which is all he needs to know.

SpaceX’s IPO could open the floodgates — and secondaries are booming in the meantime

To unpack what SpaceX’s IPO chatter means, how private liquidity works before a debut, and what investors are looking for in today’s pre-IPO giants, we spoke with Greg Martin, managing director at Rainmaker Securities, a broker-dealer specializing in s…

I built marshmallow castles in Google’s new AI world generator

Starting Thursday, Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. can play around with Project Genie, which is powered by a combination of Google’s latest world model Genie 3, its image generation model Nano Banana Pro, and Gemini. 

Luminar sale approved despite last-minute mystery bid

An unidentified bidder submitted a Hail Mary offer that was “substantially higher” than the winning bid at auction. Founder Austin Russell has been circling a bid, but it’s not clear he was behind it.

San Francisco Police Department investigating Zoox collision with a parked car

The investigation is looking into a January 17 crash where a Zoox robotaxi hit the driver’s side door of a parked car, which Zoox said was “suddenly opened.”

Modelence raises $13 million to smooth out the vibe-coding stack

How do you build tooling for the AI software stack? A company called Modelence has an interesting answer.

Waabi raises $1B and expands into robotaxis with Uber

Waabi has secured a $750 million Series C round to accelerate autonomous trucking, and another roughly $250 million commitment from Uber to deploy 25,000 robotaxis exclusively on its platform.