Tech & Science

Anthropic’s Mythos preview spurred DeepSeek’s $7.4B raise

Chinese AI lab DeepSeek closed a $7.4 billion fundraising round — its first ever external capital raise — after Anthropic's Mythos model preview alarmed its leadership about a growing capability gap between U.S. and Chinese frontier AI, according to The…

AWS to raise GPU cloud prices 20% on July 1

Amazon Amazon.com, Inc. Web Services will increase prices on its EC2 Capacity Block reservations for machine learning GPU instances by approximately 20% effective July 1, 2026, according to an update posted to the company's official pricing documentation page. The increase…

OpenAI launches GPT-5.6 but limits access at U.S. request

OpenAI on Friday unveiled GPT-5.6, its next-generation model family organized into three capability tiers — Sol, Terra, and Luna — but said it is limiting initial access to a small group of vetted partners at the request of the U.S.…

Apple’s touchscreen MacBook to use M5 chips, not M6

Apple is set to launch its long-anticipated touchscreen MacBook with existing M5 Pro and M5 Max chips rather than next-generation silicon, according to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, as the company reshapes its chip roadmap to prioritize on-device artificial intelligence.

Leaker says Apple is developing ‘iRing’ smart ring

A brief post on X from Apple hardware tipster Kosutami has reignited speculation that Apple is developing a smart ring, potentially called the "iRing," setting the stage for a new front in the wearable technology market.

Pope Leo XIV says AI cannot be ‘morally neutral’

Pope Leo XIV posted on X on Thursday that artificial intelligence cannot be considered "morally neutral," extending his campaign to position the Catholic Church as a leading ethical voice in the global AI debate.

Google ties publisher payments to AI training rights

Google Alphabet Inc. is pushing news publishers to grant broad rights over their content — including the use of articles for training AI models — as a condition of joining its "AI-powered article overviews" pilot program, according to reporting by…

Bundibugyo Ebola tops 1,100 cases as clinical trials near

Scientists trying to develop vaccines and treatments for the fast-growing Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in Central Africa are running into a basic problem: too little is known about the strain, and the response is being shaped by delayed detection, limited diagnostics…

Z.ai tops $128B valuation as Chinese AI model rivals Anthropic’s shuttered systems

Days after the U.S. government forced Anthropic to pull its most advanced AI models from the market, Chinese startup Z.ai has released an open-source model that rivals the best closed-source systems from Western labs, narrowing what analysts say is the…

Jefferies analyst calls Z.ai’s GLM-5.2 model ‘another DeepSeek moment’

Beijing-based Zhipu AI has rattled Silicon Valley with the release of GLM-5.2, a 744-billion-parameter open-weight model that rivals Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 on coding benchmarks at a fraction of the cost. Jefferies strategist Christopher Wood described the past week as…

US assures allies on Anthropic AI access at Pax Silica Summit

The European Union and India have both opened diplomatic channels with the Trump administration over access to Anthropic's most advanced AI models, after a U.S. export control directive forced the company to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all…

Five Eyes warns China’s open-source AI model poses cyber threat

A frontier-class AI model released by Chinese lab Z.ai (formerly Zhipu AI) is raising fresh cybersecurity concerns among intelligence officials and security researchers, who warn that open-source systems nearly as capable as the most advanced commercial models are already being…

Reddit trolls trick AI search into reporting fake Trump death

A Reddit community of roughly 45,000 members has successfully duped AI-powered search engines into repeating a fabricated story claiming President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance died of rabies, exposing the fragility of AI systems that rely on user-generated…

Australia to tighten teen social media ban as study shows 85% still online

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told Parliament on Thursday that his government would strengthen enforcement of Australia's world-first ban on social media for children under 16, pledging digital duty of care legislation and backing regulatory action against major platforms that have…

NEJM study finds hemorrhagic symptoms rare in Bundibugyo Ebola patients

A correspondence published in The New England Journal of Medicine on June 24 presents clinical data from 405 confirmed Bundibugyo virus disease patients in the Democratic Republic of Congo, finding that hemorrhagic symptoms — long considered a hallmark of Ebola…

Second hacker group demands ransom from Klue breach victims

Market intelligence platform Klue is now caught in a double extortion scenario after the original hackers behind its June 12 breach claim to be deleting stolen data while a second criminal group has surfaced demanding ransom from affected customers.

CERN study finds plankton produce far more cloud seeds than models predicted

For nearly 50 years, scientists have suspected that microscopic marine plankton play a role in cloud formation over Earth's oceans. Now, a new experiment has confirmed their influence is far greater than anyone anticipated — potentially reshaping how climate models…

Italy’s Domyn plans open-source frontier AI model within a year

Italian AI company Domyn will release a fully open-source frontier AI model within a year, CEO Uljan Sharka announced on Thursday, in a bid to reduce Europe's dependence on American and Chinese artificial intelligence technology.

ISO adopts quantum-resistant encryption standard

The International Organization for Standardization has formally adopted Classic McEliece, a quantum-resistant encryption standard co-designed by an international team that includes Dr Varun Maram from the University of Warwick's Department of Computer Science. The adoption, announced this month, marks the…

Penn researchers use AI to find new CAR T therapy targets

Researchers at Penn Medicine have developed an artificial intelligence framework that combines large language models with human scientific expertise to systematically discover new targets for CAR T cell therapy, publishing their findings Wednesday in the journal Cell.

‘Botanical Pompeii’ rewrites origin of flowering plants

A trove of fossilized fruits and seeds buried under volcanic ash nearly 75 million years ago has upended a long-held assumption in paleobotany: that flowering plants rose to dominance only after the asteroid strike that killed the dinosaurs.

OpenAI leans toward delaying IPO until 2027, NYT reports

OpenAI is leaning toward postponing its initial public offering until 2027, the New York Times reported on Thursday, citing three people involved in the company's internal deliberations. The delay marks a reversal for the artificial intelligence company, which had positioned…

OpenAI says Codex approach up for 99.8% of its AI work

OpenAI published a research paper on Wednesday detailing how its Codex platform has evolved from a developer-focused coding tool into the dominant AI interface across all departments within the company, with non-developer adoption growing at rates that far outpace its…

New cell death mechanism found in Alzheimer’s brains

Researchers at King's College London have identified a previously unknown form of programmed cell death called karyoptosis in the brains of patients with Alzheimer's disease and frontotemporal dementia, a discovery that could reshape understanding of how neurons are lost in…

Microsoft raises Xbox prices as memory shortage hits tech hardware

Microsoft announced on Thursday that it will raise Xbox console prices worldwide starting August 1, citing the ongoing global memory chip shortage that has roiled the consumer electronics industry. The announcement came just hours after Apple rolled out sweeping price…

Apple to skip M6 Pro and Max chips, jump to M7 in 2027

Apple is breaking from its established chip cadence by forgoing higher-end versions of its upcoming M6 processor and instead fast-tracking an AI-centric M7 line, according to a Bloomberg report published Tuesday.

Google’s Android alert system warned Venezuela before twin earthquakes hit

Millions of Android smartphone users in Venezuela received early warning notifications seconds before two devastating earthquakes struck the country's northern coastline on Wednesday evening, providing critical moments to seek safety before buildings began to collapse.

Cambridge team uses base editing to study gene function in human embryos for first time

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have used base editing for the first time to study gene function in human embryos, demonstrating that the NANOG gene is essential for the formation of pluripotent cells during the earliest days of development.…

AI race shifts to ‘world models’ as startups and tech giants invest billions

A new front is opening in the artificial intelligence race as researchers, startups, and tech giants pivot from chatbots toward "world models" — AI systems designed to understand physical environments, spatial relationships, and the passage of time. The shift marks…

DeepSeek plans to double its 170-person team after raising $7.4B

Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek announced plans to at least double the size of all its departments, marking the company's most aggressive hiring push since its founding. The Hangzhou-based firm shared the recruitment drive through a statement on WeChat on…