Kepler Computing claims a new approach to chip design--and a proprietary material--can help end the supply bottlenecks that have sent memory prices surging. An ambitious chip startup that has spent more than seven years quietly trying to redesign the architecture for computer memory has just come out of stealth mode and believes its new approach can help ease the global memory-chip shortage --provided it can produce its technology at scale. Kepler Computing, a San Jose, California-based startup founded in 2018 by a team of physicists and computer scientists, says it has developed a new architecture for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) that directly addresses some of the chip supply bottlenecks that are constraining the computing market. While chipmakers typically rely on expensive extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUV) to shrink the transistors on a chip, thereby packing more technology into the same amount of space, Kepler claims that its "3D stacking" approach and a proprietary new material allow it to increase density without relying on EUV at all--and it can work with existing semiconductor fabrication plants. Kepler says it has made similar gains for the high-speed cache memory typically used in CPUs, GPUs, and XPUs.

Danijar Hafner has a startup in stealth and a long track record of teaching AI agents about our world. Danijar Hafner's office in San Francisco's SoMa district sits mostly empty. His brand-new startup is still in stealth mode and doesn't even have its name on the door. On the day I visit, there's only one other person there, and little in the way of furniture. But what it lacks in decor, it makes up for in robots. Humanoids of various shapes and sizes hang like marionettes from racks that run down the center of the wide-open space.

OpenAI recently estimated its Cursor partnership would make more than $1 billion in revenue a year, WIRED has learned. It still walked away after Elon Musk's SpaceX acquired the AI coding startup. In a late-night blog post last Friday, OpenAI said it would wind down its partnership with Cursor, the startup behind one of the most popular AI coding tools on the market. The reason OpenAI gave for the decision is effectively that it can't trust Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX recently acquired Cursor in a $60 billion deal. In doing so, OpenAI walked away from one of its most important customers. Cursor has long paid OpenAI fees to offer the ChatGPT-maker's models to developers using its AI coding editor.

A startup called Mostik has a wild new approach to combining the capabilities of AI models. I recently met with some brilliant Russian mathematicians who showed me a way for artificial intelligence models to communicate via something akin to machine telepathy. The mathematicians work for a startup called Mostik--the Russian word for bridge. It's a nod to the group's approach, which allows different models to interact using the mathematical values found in their weights --the things that determine how a prompt gets turned into an output. In practice, this means the capabilities of a larger model can be fed to a smaller model to ramp up its intelligence much more efficiently.

How an alliance of tech startups, MAHA operatives, and actual medical experts made millennial women the new face of hormone therapy. Lisa Schrenk didn't know it yet, as she trudged down a dirt trail last August, but her life was about to change. She'd set out late the night before with her hiking group, scrambling up Virginia's Old Rag Mountain in darkness. They reached the peak in time to watch the sun rise over the Blue Ridge range. Afterward, the women snapped photos. In one, Schrenk gazes out over the horizon, her long dark hair pulled into a ponytail. The image is deceptively triumphant. In reality, she had been contemplating suicide. Schrenk, a longtime IT specialist for the federal government, had started setting aside belongings for friends and family, organizing her financial affairs, and clearing out her office.

During a recent visit to Generalist AI, I watched a robotic arm improvise and use a banana as a tool. Last week, I ventured a whopping 15 minutes from my house to see robots do some mind-boggling, jaw-dropping stuff. I visited the Cambridge, Massachusetts, offices of a startup called Generalist AI, where I watched robot arms perform simple chores like stacking cups, putting blocks into bowls, and the like. I was astonished by how quickly they figured things out--it was reminiscent of a flesh-and-blood person. The arms mastered a range of tasks after ingesting a short, instructional video and, most impressively, no specific training for a given task.

German drone maker Helsing has enlisted Japanese e-commerce and finance firm Rakuten to help finalize a deal to sell its unmanned systems to Japan's army, a spokesperson for Rakuten said on Monday. Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force is currently testing Helsing's HX-2 strike drone, as Tokyo looks to modernize its military and counter an increasingly assertive China. The field tests will run until the end of September, the spokesperson said. Helsing struck an "initial agreement" for the Japanese government to use its systems earlier this year, a spokesperson for the Munich-based company said, adding that the move was made possible by an unnamed "local brokerage partner." Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SoftBank Group's $200 million investment in Swiss startup Gravis Robotics marks another major robotics bet as founder Masayoshi Son seeks to make the company a pivotal player in the global AI race. SoftBank Group has invested $200 million in Gravis Robotics, a Swiss startup that makes autonomous software for construction machinery. Zurich-based Gravis announced the Series A investment in a statement on Monday but didn't share a valuation. It was reported in July that SoftBank was considering an acquisition of Gravis that might be completed in several stages, which includes injecting fresh capital over time. The deal marks another splashy investment into robotics from SoftBank, whose founder, Masayoshi Son, is trying to make his firm a pivotal player in the global artificial intelligence race. The Japanese investor, which by October is set to own a 13% stake in OpenAI, has backed a range of robotics businesses, including with the acquisition of ABB's industrial unit last year.

Rakuten Group is working with defense AI startup Helsing to bring the German company's military drones to Japan. The Tokyo-based online shopping mall operator served as the point of contact between Helsing and the Japanese government, according to a Rakuten spokesperson. The country's Ground Self-Defense Force will conduct field tests of Helsing drones through the end of September, he said, without providing further details. The tie-up, which would be one of Helsing's first partnerships in the Asia-Pacific region, was first reported by the Nikkei. Japan, which for decades restricted arms exports, has been stepping up defense spending, and the country's companies have followed suit. E-commerce pioneer Rakuten has shifted some of its focus to the sector: It's partnered with a Ukrainian government agency to develop defense technologies, while subsidiary Rakuten Mobile has taken part in joint U.S.-Japan military trials of mobile technologies.

LemonLime cofounder Jordan Zietz hears your criticism loud and clear. That's why he got his startup's logo tattooed on his shoulder. Jordan Zietz wants to be clear: He has never, and will never, force anyone to tattoo his startup's logo on their body. The 24-year-old briefly became the internet's most hated person after LemonLime, his AI-for-small-business startup, hosted a party following Y Combinator's Startup School in late July. In a LinkedIn post, Zietz wrote that he brought an "actual tattoo artist" to the party, and "offered an instant interview to anyone who got a LemonLime tattoo."