On Jan. 28, 1986, the world stood still. Seventy-three seconds after liftoff, Space Shuttle Challenger was lost, along with its seven-member crew: Francis “Dick” Scobee, Michael Smith, Ronald McNair, Ellison Onizuka, Judith Resnik, Gregory Jarvis and Christa McAuliffe. The tragedy unfolded live on television, imprinting itself on a generation and forever changing the trajectory of…
Anthropic is known for its stringent safety standards, which it has used to differentiate itself from rivals like OpenAI and xAI. Those hard-line policies include guardrails that prevent users from turning to Claude to produce bioweapons—a threat that CEO Dario Amodei described as one of A.I.’s most pressing risks in a new 20,000-word essay. “Humanity…
As A.I.’s capabilities grow, the technology is creeping into workplaces, schools, homes and possibly dentists’ chairs soon. Dentio, a Swedish startup betting on dental clinics as a prime use case for A.I. assistants, has just secured $2.3 million in fresh financing to support its ambitions. Andreessen Horowitz led the startup’s pre-seed funding round, with other…
Synthesia, a U.K.-based startup making lifelike digital avatars for enterprise communications, just raised a $200 million series E at a $4 billion valuation, making it one of the most valuable A.I. startups in Britain. The round was led by Alphabet’s venture capital arm. Other participants included Nvidia’s venture capital arm, Evantic, Accel, Kleiner Perkins and…
Ryanair will eventually equip its planes with in-flight wifi, according to CEO Michael O’Leary—but only when installation and consumer costs drop to a sufficient level. The admission comes after a heated back-and-forth between O’Leary and Elon Musk over the budget airline’s refusal to install Starlink on its fleet of roughly 650 aircraft. The feud was…
A.I. models are becoming more than just chatbots—an important step in their evolution that will have repercussions for the global economy in 2026 and beyond, says Marco Argenti, Goldman Sachs’ chief information officer. “In my 40 years in technology, 2025 saw the biggest changes I have seen in my career,” Argenti says. “And what’s crazy is…
Jeff Bezos’ space company, Blue Origin, is the latest entrant into the booming satellite internet business. This week, it announced TeraWave, a megaconstellation project promising to deliver data speeds of up to 6 terabits per second (Tbps) anywhere on Earth—technology that could also lay the groundwork for future data centers in space. The move is…
OpenAI’s Jan. 16 announcement that it will introduce ads in some ChatGPT plans surprised even its closest competitors. Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told Axios in Davos this week that while advertising has funded much of the consumer internet, “there’s a question about how ads fit into the [chatbot] model.” Hassabis added that Google has…
Much has been said about A.I.’s potential to replace jobs. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is more concerned about A.I. creating a labor shortage—at least in the short term. As tech companies race to build data centers across the U.S. and around the world, they will need tradespeople such as plumbers, electricians and construction workers…
A.I. assistants feel friendly because they remember. They keep a running list of preferences, pet peeves and half-finished ideas, enough to finish your sentence or book your flight. That convenience hides the real question: If your A.I. can remember you, who else can? Until recently, generative A.I. chatbots had shallow or fragmented memory, resetting context…
