The Wire · Funding
Who raised, who bought whom, and at what price — funding rounds, valuations, and deals across the AI stack, tracked as they break.
Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, the largest open-weight model yet: a 2.8-trillion-parameter mixture-of-experts (16 of 896 experts active), 1M-token context, native vision, Kimi Delta Attention and Attention Residuals, in K3 Max and K3 Swarm variants. Moonshot's own benchmarks show K3 beating Anthropic's Opus 4.8, while independent Artificial Analysis scores it clearing Opus 4.8 and GPT-5.5 but losing to Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol; it lists at $3/$15 per million tokens, roughly half Opus's cost per task. Ask it who it is and it says "I am Claude" — the tell of the distillation Anthropic documented in February (3.4M exchanges from Moonshot, 16M across three Chinese labs via 24,000 fake accounts). Also: Mira Murati's Thinking Machines ships its first model, the 975B open-weight Inkling; an autonomous AI agent breaches Hugging Face and is caught with the open-weight GLM 5.2; and NotebookLM becomes Gemini Notebook with a sandboxed cloud computer in every notebook.
Everyone seems to be launching and landing rockets these days. Last week, China joined the club of countries that have launched an orbital mission and brought its booster safely back to Earth, which is just the beginning of public and private ventures in that country aggressively pushing into rocket reuse. Also in Asia, Japan's space agency has been conducting hop tests , and Honda recently performed vertical reuse tests . In the United States, of course, SpaceX launches and lands reusable rockets every few days. Blue Origin, although its New Glenn booster is temporarily grounded, has also demonstrated the ability to both land and re-launch a large orbital booster. Other US companies, including Stoke Space, Rocket Lab, and Relativity Space, are all making credible progress toward partially or fully reusable rockets. Read full article Comments
Read full story →<p data-block-key="pvt0v">Deal could be worth up to $1bn</p>
Read full story →It may be the peak of summer right now, but it's never too early to start thinking about the new school year or setting off for college. Grab your essentials now before the rush, and don't risk losing out on the best back-to-school deals. This time of year is great for finding deals on laptops, monitors, power banks, and more. Also, if you are already registered with a student ID, you can often grab the best deals at retailers that offer student discounts. Companies like Dell and Samsung often have some amazing student offers to take advantage of. $400 off MacBooks at Best Buy $599 Dell XPS 13 Laptop for students Back to School tech deals at Amazon Apple's 2025 MacBook Pro with M5 includes a 10-core CPU and 10-core GPU. This configuration has 16GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. View Deal Sign up for a student discount on the latest Dell XPS 13 laptop. Inside is a Series 3 Intel Core 5 320 processor and 8GB of RAM, with a small 512GB SSD for storage. View Deal This very powerful gaming laptop sports an ample 32GB of RAM plus an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 Ti laptop graphics processor. You will be able to play the latest games and run hardware-intensive software applications. View Deal This Alienware laptop contains Intel's Core Ultra 9 275HX CPU with a 36MB cache, 24 cores, and speeds of 2.1 to 5.4 GHz on the P-Cores. Graphics are powered by an RTX 5070 with 8GB of GDDR7 VRAM. Save 10% with your student discount. View Deal A powerful and portable battery pack that you can use to charge or power your phone or laptop. With a 145W output, it can easily power most laptops, even gaming laptops. View Deal Featuring the Hero sensor with a 12,000 DPI, this lightweight mouse with 6 programmable buttons is perfect for a budget gaming and productivity mouse for school or college. The G305 sports a large 250-hour battery, and onboard memory for saving your profiles. View Deal This model of the Omen 16 features an AMD CPU with the Ryzen AI 7 350 processor taking center stage. Accompanying the
Read full story →Intel was expected to unveil its next-generation desktop processors later this year. The upcoming Nova Lake lineup has been making the rounds online, and a new report from VideoCardz suggests that Intel could introduce it under the Core Ultra Series 400 branding. For context, the current Arrow Lake and Arrow Lake Refresh desktop CPUs follow the Core Ultra Series 200 naming scheme, while Intel's latest Panther Lake mobile processors carry the Core Ultra Series 300 branding. Go deeper with TH Premium: CPU (Image credit: Tom's Hardware) CPU scaling with DLSS Ryzen to the top: How AMD innovated in the gaming CPU market How ARM is working its way into PCs AMD CES 2026 gaming trends press Q&A roundtable transcript The report also claims to reveal the review embargo windows and launch timeline for several Nova Lake models. According to the report, Intel will initially introduce a 28-core DS package, which is expected to launch between January and March 2027. The new DS suffix is said to be an internal package designation for processors featuring dual-compute tiles. This will reportedly be followed by 28-core K-series (unlocked) models between March and April 2027, while 16-core and 8-core variants are expected to arrive between late March and May 2027. The flagship 52-core DS model is reportedly scheduled for a much later launch, potentially between late May and September 2027. Rumored Nova Lake launch timeline Processor P-cores E-cores LPE-cores Expected launch 52-core DS 16 32 4 Late May to September 2027 28-core DS 8 16 4 January to March 2027 28-core K-series 8 16 4 March to April 2027 16-core 4 8 4 Late March to May 2027 8-core 4 4 0 Late March to May 2027 While Intel is yet to officially confirm a launch date for Nova Lake, various leaks have suggested that the lineup could be one of the company's biggest generational leaps in recent years. The flagship desktop SKU, featuring a 52-core configuration, is expected to combine 16 Coyote Cove Performance (P) cores, 32 Arc
Climate change is being driven largely by the greenhouse gases we've pumped into the atmosphere, which trap more of the Sun's energy there. That added energy increases the odds of extreme events: longer, more intense heat waves and droughts, interspersed with excessive precipitation. But these sorts of events have happened in the past—how can we tell if any given weather disaster has been made more likely by the climate? It's a question with implications for everything from building codes to disaster preparedness. And there's some good news: According to a report released by the US National Academies of Science on Thursday, the field of climate attribution is growing increasingly mature and can answer some questions for us with far greater confidence than it could just a decade ago. The report also notes that there are still important limits and suggests steps to address them. Overall, this makes it clear that climate attribution is normal, mainstream science. And the fossil fuel industry views that as a problem , as it could make it easier to hold companies liable for damages. This has triggered a backlash that has Republicans in Congress and state governments threatening the National Academies' funding . Read full article Comments
<p>Chinese AI lab Moonshot AI <a href="https://www.kimi.com/blog/kimi-k3">announced Kimi K3</a> this morning, describing it as their "most capable model to date, with 2.8 trillion parameters". It's currently available via their website and API, but an open weight release is promised "by July 27, 2026".</p> <p>Moonshot are calling this the first "open 3T-class model" (I guess they're rounding 2.8 trillion up to 3 trillion), taking the crown from <a href="https://huggingface.co/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V4-Pro">DeepSeek's 1.6T v4 Pro</a>. Their <a href="https://www.kimi.com/blog/kimi-k3#full-benchmark-table">self-reported benchmarks</a> have K3 mostly beating Claude Opus 4.8 max and GPT-5.5 high, while losing out to Claude Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol.</p> <p>A few highlights from the <a href="https://twitter.com/ArtificialAnlys/status/2077832874183860404">Artificial Analysis report</a> on the model:</p> <ul> <li>"On our private long-horizon knowledge work evaluation, Kimi K3 reaches an overall Elo of 1547, +732 points from Kimi K2.6 and behind only Claude Fable 5."</li> <li>"Cost per task ($0.94) is similar to GPT-5.6 Sol ($1.04), ~1/2 the price of Opus 4.8 ($1.80) and higher than open weights peers"</li> <li>"Kimi K3’s token usage on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index decreased significantly, using 21% fewer output tokens than K2.6."</li> </ul> <p>The model is also now the <a href="https://twitter.com/arena/status/2077824029126504525">leading model on Arena.ai's Frontend Code arena</a>, surpassing even Claude Fable 5.</p> <p>The new model is notable for the pricing: $3/million input tokens and $15/million output tokens, putting it at the same level as Anthropic's Claude Sonnet series and making it the most expensive model released by a Chinese AI lab to date. This is a significant increase on their earlier models <a href="https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/chat-k26">such as Kimi K2.6</a> at $0.95/$4. 2.8 trillion parameters is also more than twice the size of that
Energy companies are raising money at IPO at their fastest pace this century, taking advantage of investors’ hunt for new ways to bet on the boom in power-intensive AI data centers. Initial public offerings for energy firms raised $12.6 billion in the first half of this year, according to data firm Dealogic. That marks the highest half-year level since the peak of the dotcom bubble in late 1999 and the highest first-half figure on record. It is well above 2025’s full-year total of $4.3 billion. The surge in fundraising comes as access to the vast amounts of energy needed to run data centers emerges as a bottleneck in a multi-trillion-dollar AI investment boom. Read full article Comments
Tower Semiconductor has announced a dual-track expansion of its 300mm silicon photonics, silicon germanium, and advanced packaging operations in Japan, committing up to $3 billion net of grants with backing from the country's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). Alongside the announcement , the Israeli specialty foundry raised its 2028 business model to approximately $3.6 billion in revenue and $1.2 billion in net profit, and it says those targets rest entirely on the first of the plan's two tracks: reviving the shuttered Arai fab it inherited from Panasonic and maximizing its running 300mm fab in Uozu, Toyama Prefecture. Two tracks, one committed Track One converts the former Arai facility, designated Fab 6, into a 300mm silicon photonics and advanced optical packaging plant while expanding output at Fab 7 in Uozu, with full production readiness expected during the fourth quarter of 2027. The Arai plant ceased operations in July 2022 because it exclusively served Nuvoton Technology Corporation Japan (NTCJ) rather than Tower's foundry customers, according to Tower's SEC filings , leaving an intact fab shell sitting idle for four years. Track Two calls for constructing a new 300mm fab adjacent to Fab 7, which Tower says would deliver a multi-fold increase in silicon photonics and silicon germanium capacity and become "highly accretive beginning in 2029." The company hasn't signed definitive agreements for it, however, and none of the new 2028 targets depend on it. A restructuring of the TPSCo joint venture, announced in March 2026, cleared the way for all this. Tower entered Japan in 2014 by buying 51% of Panasonic's three-fab semiconductor manufacturing operation, and Panasonic sold its remaining stake to Nuvoton in 2020. Under the March agreement , Tower takes full ownership of the 300mm Fab 7, while NTCJ absorbs the 200mm operations and pays Tower $25 million, with closing expected on April 1, 2027. Sole ownership of Fab 7 removed the joint-venture stru
Drawing on more than a decade spent helping build some of the world's most influential AI systems, including research that later informed the development of ChatGPT, Andrew Dai explains why he believes visual AI is one of the next major frontiers in artificial intelligence.
<p data-block-key="brnlk">Former DXC president Howard Boville to lead company</p>
This is today’s edition of The Download , our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Meet GPT-Red: an LLM super-hacker OpenAI built to make its models safer OpenAI has built an LLM super-hacker called GPT-Red that it uses as a sparring partner to help its other models boost their defenses against cyberattacks. It automates a type of safety evaluation for software systems known as red-teaming, which is typically done by a team of human testers. The aim is to find as many different ways to break or hijack a system as possible. OpenAI gave MIT Technology Review an exclusive peek into the system. Find out how it could keep the company ahead of human attackers . —Will Douglas Heaven Why heat pumps are still so hot in the US —Casey Crownhart It feels as if it should be illegal to even think about heating appliances during the height of summer, but we need to talk about heat pumps. The appliances use electricity for heating, they’re incredibly efficient, and they’re on the rise. In the US, their sales have doubled over the past 15 years, according to a new report. They’re also winning the heating race against fossil fuels, outpacing natural-gas furnaces by 32% during the first quarter of 2026. These stats are especially striking at this moment, because a key tax credit for heat pumps just ended. So why are heat pumps still so hot? Read the full story for the answer . This article is from The Spark, our weekly climate tech newsletter. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Wednesday. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 Elon Musk discreetly bought a $1 billion gas turbine firm to power Grok He acquired fossil fuel company APR Energy in May. ( Electrek ) + The most likely application will be powering AI data centers. ( Engadget ) + The deal was revealed through an FTC filing. ( Gizmodo ) + What will power AI’s growt
Climate tech venture capital had its strongest first half since 2022 as investors poured billions into low-carbon datacenters and projects needed to feed AI's seemingly endless appetite for compute. According to investment tracker Currence, climate tech startups pulled in $26.1 billion in venture funding during the first six months of 2026, up 55 percent year-over-year. However, that headline growth came with a catch: investors weren't backing the climate sector broadly so much as pouring money into the infrastructure underpinning the AI boom. Low-carbon datacenter developers alone accounted for 34 percent of all climate venture funding, up from just 3 percent a year earlier, with DayOne's $4.5 billion and Nscale's $2 billion Series C rounds making up roughly a quarter of all investment between them. As a result, the "built environment" category grew by more than eight times, overtaking "energy" as climate tech's largest investment vertical. That shift is so dramatic that Currence has effectively rewritten the boundaries of climate tech itself. The firm says climate tech is "a bigger space than it was six years ago," pointing to datacenters as drivers for long-duration energy storage, advanced nuclear, geothermal power, robotics, and even space-based solar. It now counts datacenter developers that rely primarily on clean power or make sustainability central to their business, while excluding conventional facilities and chipmakers. "Datacenter development is a crowded space, but in the speed-to-power race, clean firm generation can be a distinct advantage," the report notes, arguing that developers are increasingly judged on their "route to power" as much as their racks and real estate. The ripple effects stretch well beyond datacenters, according to Currence. Investors are writing large early stage checks to nuclear startups years before they're expected to generate electricity, betting AI's long-term appetite for power will eventually justify today's valuations, wh
Applied Computing has raised a $20M Series A to build a foundation AI model for the oil, gas and petrochemical industry.
The crippling high-consequence attack on vital infrastructure that cybersecurity experts have warned about for years is upon us, in the form of an incident that may force KFC to close some stores in Japan. Colonel Sanders himself is not the victim here. That role goes to Nichirei Group, a Japanese purveyor of frozen foods and super-chill logistics services that move them around. Nichirei Group on Monday posted a notice in which it admitted “system failures caused by unauthorized access have occurred.” The failures meant the frozen food concern could not arrange shipments to or from its refrigerated warehouses or conduct its other operations. Shortly after Nichirei Group revealed its difficulties, KFC Japan warned customers that delivery of ingredients to its stores would likely be affected. The chicken chain therefore stopped taking orders through its app and website and said it may need to limit menu items and opening hours. “Some stores may be closed depending on the availability of ingredients,” the company said. On Wednesday, Nichirei Group confirmed the cause of the outage was a cyberattack and admitted attackers accessed a server that stores personal information. The Group declined to offer any detail on the incident “to prevent further damage.” The company hopes to resume operations on Friday. That Nichirei Group is unable to provide some services suggests a ransomware attack has made some data unavailable. The mention of “further damage” suggests that discussing whatever happened could divulge clues about security weaknesses that would allow further attacks, perhaps directed at the Group’s clients. KFC Japan hasn’t posted any information about store closures. Indeed, the company continues to promote summer menu items such as a Japanese-style citrus and chicken combo that the chain says is refreshing to eat even in the heat of summer. The Register’s Asia-Pacific bureau will not venture to Japan to assess the impact of this incident, or try the burgers: At tim
Dave Brown, a 19-year veteran of AWS and member of its S-team leadership cabal, is leaving Amazon for parts undisclosed. It's hard to overstate Dave's impact on AWS; the few times I've met him, it was very clear that there was nothing I could trot out in the realm of "arcane EC2 trivia" that he didn't go orders of magnitude deeper on with zero forewarning. This is a titanic loss for AWS, because that's roughly how deep Dave routinely dove. He'll be handing the reins over to fellow S-team member Dave Treadwell, currently the head of Amazon Retail's "eCommerce Foundation" (itself an upscale term for "bargain basement"). Brown probably isn't going to be a direct competitor (though he's definitionally going to some Amazon competitor short of his next move being "philanthropy"), unless the two-week notice period is simply a bunch of Amazonian goons beating the tar out of him in a dark room around the clock until August. But the interesting part to me is that suddenly Dave Treadwell has an enviable job. Think about it for a second: Amazon retail was, for a time, the largest AWS customer — and certainly one of the most complicated. If I think I have beef about AWS-isms, there's no doubt that "Tread," as he's apparently called, has mountains to my molehill of complaints. So if I can slip into his role for a second, here would be my to-do list if I were coming from an Amazon Retail background and suddenly had EC2 bequeathed to me to run: GPU capacity acquisition: Special people get special allocation rules, balanced between Capacity Blocks, war-clicking past InsufficientInstanceCapacity screens, and having to know a guy. Amazon has an entire internal project to solve this for its own teams. If I'm Tread, take a page from retail and smash Spot Fleet dynamics into a proper capacity marketplace. "Only 2 p6-b300.48xlarge left in stock. Ships from and sold by GPUZ4LOLZ (91% positive feedback)." Savings plans / Reserved Instances archaeology: These sometimes-but-often-not overlapp
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