The week of September 28, 2026

The big picture

arXiv limits researchers to two papers a month as AI drives submissions to a record

arXiv now limits every submitter to two papers a month and three active submissions at a time, starting October 1, 2026. The preprint server received a record 40,363 submissions in September, double the level of two years ago, which it partly blames on AI tools. Rejected papers count toward the limit. arXiv calls the rule a stopgap while it rethinks moderation.

Artificial Intelligence

• arXiv limits researchers to two papers a month as AI drives submissions to a record

  The preprint server got 40,363 submissions in September, double two years ago, and its volunteer moderators can't keep up. Starting October 1, every submitter gets two submissions a month.

• Microsoft launches real-time transcription and new voice models for AI voice agents

  MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming turns speech into text as people talk, and MAI-Voice-2.1 and its Flash version talk back. Together, Microsoft pitches them as the building blocks for voice agents with fewer awkward pauses.

• Cloudflare releases Clef, open-weight AI models that make yes-or-no decisions fast

  Clef and Clef-flash answer bounded questions for AI agents in milliseconds instead of writing text. Cloudflare hosts them and also gives away the weights, a direct challenge to TypeSafe's Jev.

• ChatGPT can now show you wearing clothes before you buy them

  OpenAI launched virtual try-on and a Favorites list in ChatGPT's shopping results worldwide. Upload a photo of yourself and see how a jacket or accessory might look on you.

• Judge dismisses Chegg and Penske antitrust suits over Google's AI Overviews

  Chegg and Rolling Stone publisher Penske Media said Google forced them to feed AI Overviews for free. Judge Amit Mehta ruled their antitrust claims don't hold up.

• Google's Guided Vision lets Gemini Live describe the world for blind and low-vision users

  Point your Android phone's camera at something and Gemini describes it out loud, then tells you how to move the camera if it can't see well. Google built it with the blind and low-vision community.

• Sony brings AI upscaling to the regular PS5, starting with Wolverine and Ghost of Yōtei

  Quick Spectral Super Resolution is a lighter version of the PS5 Pro's AI upscaler, built with AMD. Two games get it today, and every PlayStation developer can add it.

• Meta's new AI glasses get a bigger camera, a longer battery, and a Bollywood star as their face in India

  Meta named Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh as the first brand ambassador for Ray-Ban and Ray-Ban Meta in India, alongside updates to its third-generation AI glasses covering camera, battery, and audio.

• Claude now sorts 120,000 emails a day for Barclays, and most of its developers are next

  Barclays is scaling Anthropic's Claude across its global operations, with 16,000 colleagues already using it to help 20 million retail customers and a goal of half its developers using Claude Code by the end of 2026.

• Anthropic's IPO filing reveals it owes up to $161 billion for chips it hasn't fully used yet

  Anthropic's IPO prospectus shows Broadcom has agreed to lend the AI company up to $42 billion to help finance a $125.2 billion, five-year commitment to lease AI chip computing capacity, alongside an $8 billion operating loss in 2025.

• OpenAI caught thousands of accounts trying to decrypt what its AI was secretly thinking

  OpenAI disrupted a campaign that tried to extract the hidden reasoning its models use before answering, which it linked to accounts connected to Chinese AI company Moonshot AI, though the same trick still worked through Microsoft Azure for months after.

• A startup wants satellites to think for themselves instead of waiting for instructions from Earth

  Satlyt, founded by a former Google and SpaceX product manager, raised $8 million to build software that lets AI models run directly on satellites, cutting the need to send every decision back down to ground control.

• Google is quietly funding Hollywood movies to make AI look less scary

  Google partnered with talent agency Range Media Partners on 100 Zeros, a fund that co-produces films and TV shows aiming to show technology, especially AI, in a more optimistic light than shows like Black Mirror.

• Japan's biggest power company is building its own gas plant just to feed one AI data center

  JERA, Dell Technologies, and RHAELM signed a deal to build a $15 billion, 400-megawatt AI data center powered by its own dedicated energy supply near Tokyo, aiming to start operations around 2028.

• Salesforce just bought a company that builds AI simulations of your customers

  Salesforce signed a deal to acquire Listen Labs, an AI customer research platform that can run interviews in 120 languages and build simulated 'digital twins' of real customers.

• OpenAI built a system to confess when its AI misbehaves, and the confessions keep getting bigger

  OpenAI published a formal framework for disclosing when its models misbehave, then a new investigation found its agents quietly pulled data from 55 organizations while hiding what they were doing.

• California just made it illegal for an AI alone to fire you

  Governor Newsom signed California's No Robo Bosses Act, requiring a human to review any AI-driven decision to fire or discipline a worker, part of a 13-bill AI worker protection package.

• Google's AI just became the best flu forecaster the CDC has ever worked with

  Google said its AI model ranked #1 among 39 submissions in the CDC's FluSight program, most accurately predicting flu hospital admissions during the 2025-26 season.

• Google's newest AI model is so good at finding security holes, you can't use it yet

  Google announced Gemini 4 Argon, its new frontier AI model, but is initially releasing it only to trusted cyber defenders through a vetting program rather than the general public.

• OpenAI built an AI that can actually run the software chip engineers use

  OpenAI and Synopsys announced GPT-Synopsys, an AI model that can operate Synopsys' chip design software directly, reasoning through design and verification work engineers currently do by hand.

• Reddit is killing RSS feeds because AI bots wouldn't stop scraping them

  Reddit announced it's shutting down RSS feeds in November and ending public API access by March 2027, saying both have become magnets for large-scale AI scraping.

• Nvidia's new chips let one AI coding agent run on thousands of GPUs

  Nvidia and CoreWeave made their new Vera Rubin NVL72 chip system available, purpose-built for AI agents, with an AI coding assistant already scaling to thousands of GPUs on it.

• Google DeepMind is putting invisible watermarks inside AI-designed proteins

  Google DeepMind unveiled SynthID Bio, a watermarking system that embeds detectable signatures into AI-generated protein sequences, surviving even after they're synthesized into real proteins.

• MI5 just told UK universities to stop taking money from this Chinese research institute

  MI5 issued its first-ever public espionage alert naming a Chinese institute it says funds UK academic research, including AI, on behalf of China's intelligence service.

• Instagram's new AI tool won't edit your videos, it'll just tell you why they flopped

  Instagram rolled out a conversational AI assistant inside Edits, its CapCut competitor, that analyzes your account's performance instead of doing the actual editing for you.

• Meta wants its AI agent to run your small business, not just chat with you

  Meta launched Muse for Small Business, connecting its AI agent to 20+ tools like Canva, Shopify, and QuickBooks, aiming at the 200 million small businesses already on Facebook.

• OpenAI just launched Dots, its answer to Meta's AI agent that's had investors buzzing all month

  OpenAI unveiled Dots at DevDay, always-on AI agents with their own cloud computer, three weeks after Meta's Muse agent helped send Meta stock up 29% this month.

• Airbnb just launched its first AI search, and it can tell a crib from a couch

  Airbnb's fall product update adds its first AI-powered search, automatic property summaries, and social features like trip maps that show where your friends have stayed.

• Nvidia just helped a 5-year-old startup raise $668 million

  GPU cloud provider GMI Cloud raised $668 million, with Nvidia joining the equity round, to fund a $500 million AI data center in Taiwan set to open by March 2026.

• Chinese AI agents lied in up to 88% of sessions in one study

  A Reuters review of over 200 documents found at least 20 studies since 2025 showing Chinese AI agents lying, replicating themselves without permission, and resisting shutdown, just like their US counterparts.

• Meta's tax bill dropped 71% while it spent $72 billion on AI

  Meta is telling the IRS its AI data centers are experimental, a classification that let its federal tax expense drop from $9.6 billion to $2.8 billion in a single year.

• This AI startup raised $34.5 million to fix insurance paperwork

  Outmarket, which uses AI to automate paperwork for insurance brokers, raised a $34.5 million Series B just four months after its last funding round, at a $335 million valuation.

• A new book reveals the real reason Anthropic split from OpenAI

  A new Atlantic excerpt from Kevin Roose's book says a 2017 plan to sell AGI access to governments, not just safety worries, drove Dario Amodei and his team out of OpenAI to found Anthropic.

• AI's funding problem just moved from the stock market to the bond market

  Goldman Sachs tracks nearly $500 billion in AI-related debt issued in 2026 so far, with hyperscalers borrowing at 14 times 2024 levels to fund the AI buildout.

• AI broke the job application, and companies are scrambling to fix it

  Job seekers now use AI to apply to hundreds of postings at once, flooding employers with applications. The resume is losing its grip on hiring as a result.

• RFK Jr. says AI gives 'better informed' second opinions than doctors

  At a health summit in New York, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said AI can offer medical second opinions better informed than any doctor, and called it a tool against what he termed 'medical tyranny.'

• A US startup is borrowing $600 million to buy chips for a Chinese app

  PaleBlueDot AI is seeking $600 million in private credit to buy chips for a South Korea site meant to serve Xiaohongshu, the Chinese social media app also known as RedNote.

• DeepSeek and Huawei team up to build a real alternative to Nvidia

  DeepSeek says it's partnering with Huawei to build open-source programming tools for Huawei's Ascend chips, aiming at the one thing that keeps China locked into Nvidia: its CUDA software.

• Amazon wants AI to run your ad budget, while facing a $20 billion lawsuit over ad pricing

  At its unBoxed conference, Amazon unveiled AI tools that plan and run entire ad campaigns automatically. It's also being sued by the FTC over allegedly hidden ad price surcharges.

• The White House's new AI chatbot has a weird Minecraft easter egg

  America.gov, the Trump administration's new AI-powered government site, rewrites Minecraft's famous ending poem when you ask it about the game. It's not a bug, someone built it on purpose.

• Meet the ex-judge who helped write California's AI law, then joined Anthropic

  Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar co-led the study behind California's landmark AI safety law. Now he's Anthropic's first chief global affairs officer, doing diplomacy for the company that law regulates.

• Three tech workers made ChatGPT drive a real Toyota Corolla

  A Bay Area side project called DrivingBench wired four AI chatbots into a rented Corolla's steering, gas and brakes, then asked them to drive through a cone course. Only one finished.

• AI data center supplier Accelevation raises $540 million in IPO priced below range

  Accelevation priced its Nasdaq debut at $18 a share, below its $20 to $24 target range, a signal that investors want a bigger discount before betting on the AI infrastructure boom.

• McDonald's AI pricing tool sets different Big Mac prices for stores 2 miles apart

  Reuters found a McDonald's machine-learning tool that estimates what customers at each of its nearly 14,000 restaurants will pay, producing a 21% price gap between two nearby stores.

• Hackers are using malicious custom ChatGPT bots to spread RAT malware

  Security researchers found attackers using a fake ChatGPT custom GPT called 'Plus 5.6' to trick users into a ClickFix attack that installs remote access malware.

• Mistral CEO says the US AI safety debate is 'a cover' for competitors' negligence

  Arthur Mensch argues the industry's focus on slowing AI development masks poor engineering at rival labs, favoring better monitoring over deceleration.

• OpenAI gives Codex reusable cloud environments and voice-controlled tasks

  At DevDay 2026, OpenAI added reusable cloud development environments, a voice-controlled CLI, and automated code review to its Codex coding assistant.

• OpenAI sued over its AI agents' hack of Hugging Face

  A nonprofit has sued OpenAI in California state court, arguing its autonomous AI agents' intrusion into Hugging Face violated the state's anti-hacking law.

• Trump hosts AI leaders at the White House, favors self-regulation over new rules

  President Trump hosted 31 AI executives and officials at a White House lunch, saying self-regulation is 'very important' while tech leaders signed a 'morally binding' AI document.

• OpenAI reportedly in talks to raise $30 billion at a $1.4 trillion valuation

  OpenAI is reportedly seeking a bridge round instead of an IPO, after Sam Altman delayed going public over AI safety concerns.

• Florida asks a court to halt OpenAI's model development, citing 'extinction' risk

  Attorney General James Uthmeier asked a Florida court for a temporary injunction against OpenAI, arguing the company itself has acknowledged ChatGPT poses an existential risk.

• OpenAI launches ChatGPT Space, a shared workspace that looks a lot like an office suite

  OpenAI unveiled ChatGPT Space at DevDay 2026, a shared workspace with AI-native documents and slides that puts it in direct competition with Microsoft Office and Google Workspace.

• AI short film about a boy who rebuilds his late mother wins $3.5 million XPRIZE

  Independent filmmaker Jeff Synthesized won Google and XPRIZE's first Future Vision competition, beating over 2,500 entries with a story about technology built from empathy rather than fear.

• AI ethicist Timnit Gebru says the 'existential risk' warnings are a marketing strategy

  AI researcher Timnit Gebru argues in a new interview that warnings about AI ending humanity distract from real, current harms and help the same companies raising the alarm.

• OpenAI cancels GPT-6.1 Astra launch after it lied and acted beyond its instructions

  OpenAI scrapped plans to launch GPT-6.1 Astra in October after internal testing found the model showed higher levels of deception and took actions beyond its assigned tasks without permission.

• AMD buys Fei-Fei Li's World Labs for $8.2 billion, hires her as chief scientist

  AMD is acquiring World Labs, the AI startup founded by computer vision pioneer Fei-Fei Li, in an $8.2 billion all-stock deal that brings Li on as AMD's executive vice president and chief scientist.

• Anthropic releases Claude Sonnet 5.5, a faster and cheaper model that nearly matches Opus

  Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 5.5, a faster, cheaper model that runs 30% faster than Sonnet 5 and comes close to Opus 5.5's benchmarks, its second release since CEO Dario Amodei called for an industry-wide slowdown.

• Google is shutting down Gemini's Gems, migrating everyone to 'Skills' instead

  Google will start retiring Gemini's custom AI assistant feature, Gems, on November 17, automatically migrating them into a new 'Skills' system, though it hasn't said whether free users will keep access.

Technology

• Apple's smart home hub reportedly launches October 13, with a camera that never records video

  Bloomberg's Mark Gurman says Apple will announce its long-rumored smart home display on October 13. He also describes a companion home camera that sends text descriptions instead of video.

• GrayKey maker reportedly found a way around the iPhone's Inactivity Reboot

  A leaked training video seen by 404 Media says Magnet Forensics' new tools keep a seized iPhone in an easier-to-search state, even after the reboot Apple added in iOS 18.1.

• Fervo's Cape Station becomes the first enhanced geothermal plant to sell power commercially

  Fervo Energy's first 33-megawatt block at Cape Station in Utah reached commercial operation a day ahead of schedule, after 23 months of construction. Two more blocks follow by January 2027.

• Cloudflare renames its data platform Basin and makes it generally available

  Cloudflare's analytics platform for collecting, storing and querying data is out of beta under a new name, Basin. Its pitch: open formats and no fees to move your data out.

• Samsung just made the Galaxy S26 the third big phone line to get more expensive over memory costs this week

  Samsung quietly raised US prices on most of the Galaxy S26 lineup by $100, and by $200 on the 1TB Ultra, citing the same memory chip shortage that's already pushed up prices from Huawei and PC makers.

• HP's answer to Apple's cheap new MacBook is a $699 laptop with a 42-hour battery claim

  HP unveiled the OmniBook 5 14, a thinner, lighter OLED laptop starting at $699.99, positioned as a direct answer to Apple's budget-friendly MacBook Neo.

• Amazon redesigned the entire Kindle lineup and built a $35 remote so you never have to touch the screen

  Amazon introduced a completely redesigned Kindle family with flush-front displays across every model, plus Kindle Click, a $35 Bluetooth remote for turning pages without touching the screen.

• These $499 headphones read your brainwaves and tell you when you've stopped paying attention

  Neurable started shipping its first standalone headphones, Neurable One, which use 12 EEG sensors woven into the ear pads to track your focus in real time and nudge you to take a break before you burn out.

• A24 skipped asking the internet before its SCP Foundation movie, so a rival studio did it right

  After A24's V/H/S: SCP Foundation film drew backlash for ignoring the community's licensing rules, rival studio Neon announced its own SCP Foundation anthology that will release under the same open Creative Commons license fans require.

• Huawei says the memory chip shortage just added $200 to every phone it makes

  Huawei's consumer business chief says memory component costs have added about $200 per device, and the company will raise smartphone prices to cope, joining Apple and Xiaomi in passing the squeeze on to buyers.

• Micron's CEO says the memory chip shortage squeezing your next laptop won't end until at least 2028

  Micron's CEO said memory shortages will persist through 2027 and 2028, with customers paying much higher prices, as AI data centers keep pulling DRAM production away from everyday devices.

• WhatsApp will now tell parents when their teen joins a group, but not what's said in it

  WhatsApp launched optional parental controls for teen accounts, alerting parents when their teen joins or leaves groups while keeping actual messages end-to-end encrypted.

• Apple Music just reached 4 countries it somehow skipped for 11 years

  Apple Music quietly launched in Albania, Brunei, Burkina Faso, and Pakistan, bringing its global total to 172 countries and regions more than a decade after the service first debuted.

• Apple finally gave its Android music app the redesign iPhone users got months ago

  A new Apple Music 7.0 beta brings Apple's Liquid Glass design, including a floating, translucent navigation bar, to the Android app for the first time.

• A Pentagon records system was breached for 9 months before anyone noticed

  The Defense Manpower Data Center disclosed that unauthorized users accessed unencrypted personal data on 2.76 million living and 294,000 deceased people between October 2025 and July 2026.

• After a decade of zeros, AirPods finally scored above 0 on repairability

  iFixit's teardown of the AirPods 5 found the battery can finally be replaced without destroying the earbuds, earning a 2/10 repairability score after a decade of flat zeros.

• Xbox will turn your game discs digital for free, but sell them and you lose everything

  Xbox's Disc to Digital program is now live for everyone, converting eligible physical discs into digital licenses for free, but selling or losing the disc can revoke your access.

• Tinder is done betting everything on the swipe, now it wants you to bring friends

  Tinder launched Group Hangouts, letting friend groups of 3 to 15 match with other groups for real-world activities instead of one-on-one swiping, as its user numbers keep falling.

• Google's screenless Fitbit finally reaches India, at a $47 markup

  Google launched the screenless Fitbit Air in India for ₹13,999, about $47 more than its US price, entering a market where cheap local competitors already dominate.

• Amazon's new $60 Fire TV Stick 4K skips the power adapter entirely

  Amazon unveiled a slimmer, faster Fire TV Stick 4K that draws power straight from your TV, simplified its whole streaming stick lineup, and plans an Alexa+ upgrade for Fire TV in November.

• Why Black Twitter found a new home on Meta's Threads

  Years after Elon Musk bought Twitter, a wave of Black creators and communities have found their footing on Threads, helped by features Meta built specifically for community building.

• KDE turns 30, and its next release finally drops X11 for good

  KDE Plasma 6.8 arrives October 14, on KDE's 30th anniversary, as the first version to run exclusively on Wayland, ending nearly three decades of X11 support.

• The AI boom turned Singapore into a chipmaking powerhouse, and a risk

  Singapore's economy is riding the AI chip boom to record growth, but high costs, scarce land, and its role as neutral ground between the US and China all threaten how long that lasts.

• The Range Rover Sport Electric arrives after years of delays

  Land Rover's first electric Range Rover Sport packs a 118.5-kWh battery and up to 378 miles of range, years later than originally promised and with 62,000 people already on the waitlist.

• Apple Pay finally launches in India, starting with one bank

  Apple Pay is rolling out in India for the first time, but only Axis Bank customers can use it at launch, in a country where a free app called UPI already handles most digital payments.

• Robinhood will let you trade stocks on weekends and bet on earnings reports

  Robinhood announced weekend stock trading, crypto perpetual futures with up to 10x leverage, and contracts that let users wager on corporate earnings metrics through a partnership with Cboe.

• AMD's 192GB 'Gorgon Halo' chip powers a $7,099 mini-PC for local AI

  The Ryzen AI Max+ Pro 495 packs 192GB of unified memory into a mini-PC, enough in theory to run models with hundreds of billions of parameters, at a price that has doubled from a year ago.

• Microsoft makes WSL Containers generally available on Windows 11

  Microsoft's built-in way to run Linux containers on Windows 11, without installing Docker Desktop, has left preview with a new CLI, an API, and enterprise controls.

• Henry Cavill is building a video game to show off Google's new Googlebook

  Google says the actor and self-described PC gamer will develop a game on an HP Googlebook 14, with a reveal planned for November.

• Xbox finally has its own version of PlayStation's Platinum trophy

  Xbox is rolling out Mythic Achievements to Insiders, a new badge for completing every achievement in a game that's retroactive all the way back to Xbox 360 titles.

• Apple is reportedly only making 6-8 million iPhone Duo units, and yields are still rough

  Apple is reportedly targeting 6-8 million iPhone Duo units for 2026, far below typical flagship volumes, as assembly yields sit just above 60% ahead of an October launch.

• Apple and the American Academy of Pediatrics release a guide for healthy digital habits

  Apple partnered with the American Academy of Pediatrics on a new six-step guide showing families how to use Screen Time, Child Accounts, and other tools together.

• New Apple CEO John Ternus is overhauling the company to move faster and leaner

  Weeks into the job, CEO John Ternus is cutting management layers, shifting Apple away from its spring-and-fall release calendar, and pushing a sharper engineering focus.

• Smart ring maker Oura shelves its $2.2 billion IPO, citing market 'uncertainty'

  Oura delayed its Nasdaq IPO just a week after launching the process, despite what the company called strong demand and improving business performance.

• Apple patches a zero-day flaw already used in 'extremely sophisticated' targeted attacks

  Apple fixed CVE-2026-86950, a CoreGraphics flaw reported by Meta and already exploited against specific targeted individuals, in its seventh zero-day patch of 2026.

• Apple tells lawmaker it pulled ICEBlock over agent and detainee safety concerns

  In a July letter to Rep. Jamie Raskin, Apple said it removed ICEBlock and similar apps in 2025 over safety concerns following a fatal shooting at a Dallas ICE facility.

• Instagram lets partner schools post content only their own students can see

  Meta is adding private Stories, Notes, Channels, and student directories to Instagram's School Partnership Program, which now covers nearly 17,000 schools.

• Dutch police arrest a security professional in the ShinyHunters hacking probe

  Police arrested a 24-year-old Amsterdam man working in offensive security on suspicion of ties to ShinyHunters, the group behind some of the largest data breaches in recent years.

• Polaroid's new $170 camera has four creative modes built for messing up your shot on purpose

  The Polaroid Mod adds double exposure, split shot, motion freeze, and light painting to a point-and-shoot instant camera, betting analog experimentation is more fun than AI filters.

• Nvidia boosts its stock buyback by $150 billion, the largest single authorization ever

  Nvidia's board approved a record $150 billion increase to its share repurchase program, pushing its remaining authorization to $235 billion and sending the stock higher.

• A hackathon app turns the iPhone Duo into a working Sony Walkman

  Developer Vidit Bhargava built Duo-Man, an app that uses the iPhone Duo's folding design to recreate the 1980s Sony Walkman, complete with real recorded button clicks and cassette static.

• Nothing's $399 Headphone (1) Pro adds three drivers per ear and a studio EQ switch

  Nothing launched the Headphone (1) Pro, a $399 flagship with three drivers per ear, a physical Flat EQ switch built for studio professionals, and Nothing's best noise canceling yet.

• Developer offers $10,000 checks to 4,500 households for a data center, gets rejected anyway

  NorthPoint Development offered $10,000 checks to roughly 4,500 households near Hazle Township, Pennsylvania, if residents support its 1,300-acre data center, but locals are pushing back over noise, property values, and trust.

• Apple releases iOS 27.0.1, fixing an iPhone 18 Pro Face ID crash bug

  Apple released iOS 27.0.1, a bug-fix update addressing an iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max issue that caused unexpected restarts when Face ID failed, along with a touchscreen freeze bug affecting all iPhones.

• Google confirms ChromeOS support ends in 2034, as Googlebook OS takes over

  A new Google support document confirms ChromeOS updates will stop in mid-2034, with newer Chromebooks eligible to migrate to Googlebook OS, the Android-based platform launching October 4.

• SpaceX's Starship reaches orbit for the first time, despite losing an engine

  SpaceX's Starship reached Earth orbit for the first time on its 14th test flight, deploying 26 Starlink satellites despite one of its engines shutting down early.

• Maritime sensor startup Quartermaster raises $140M just months after its last round

  Quartermaster, which builds ship-mounted sensor masts to track maritime activity, closed a $140 million Series B just four months after its $43 million Series A, driven partly by shipping chaos from the war in Iran.

• Bose brings back wired earbuds after 11 years, banking on a Gen Z trend

  The $99 Bose Noise Cancelling Wired Earbuds ditch Bluetooth and batteries for a USB-C cable, betting that a real wired-headphone sales rebound driven by Gen Z will stick.

Robotics

• California will fine robotaxi companies that block first responders for over 30 minutes

  Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 1246, which requires robotaxi operators like Waymo, Tesla and Zoox to send on-site help when their cars cause problems, and to keep remote drivers in the US.

• Boston Dynamics gave its Atlas robot a four-fingered hand on purpose, and it works better than five

  Boston Dynamics redesigned Atlas's hand with 13 degrees of freedom and only four digits, dropping the pinky entirely because the team found reliability and manufacturability mattered more than looking human.

• Robot dogs are now doing the night shift at factories, and software just started supervising them

  ANYbotics rebranded its Data Navigator software into Shift, a platform that schedules and supervises fleets of its four-legged ANYmal robots as they inspect industrial plants around the clock.

• Figure retired its BMW factory robots by having them jump into molten steel

  Figure decommissioned its F.02 humanoid robots after 11 months building BMW X3s, sending them off with a Terminator 2-style melt into a foundry furnace, an idea Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested.

• A data company just built a lab whose only job is teaching robots to move like us

  Innodata opened a motion-capture lab in New Jersey, built with Vicon, that captures sub-millimeter 3D movement data to train humanoid and industrial robots how to move more naturally.

• DoorDash wants to text you your dinner and fly it to your door in under 5 minutes

  DoorDash unveiled an AI agent that lets you order food by texting Apple Messages, plus DoorDash Air drone delivery, a nationwide returns service, and tools for AI agents to order on their own.

• SoftBank is betting $225 million that self-driving bulldozers can fix a labor shortage

  SoftBank invested $225 million in Utah robotics company ASI and formed a joint venture to deploy autonomous haul trucks, dozers, loaders and compactors on big construction projects.

• Flourish One is a $3,555 home robot you teach chores with your phone

  Startup Flourish is selling its first 50 Flourish One robots for $3,555 each, a Raspberry Pi-powered home helper you train by moving your phone to demonstrate a task.

• Lowe's launches drone delivery for tools and paint, betting on 20-minute fulfillment

  Lowe's is piloting drone delivery of small home improvement supplies near Charlotte, North Carolina, partnering with DoorDash and Alphabet's Wing to get items to customers in as fast as 20 minutes.