Thatch, a platform that lowers healthcare costs for employers while expanding plan choices for workers, has raised $108 million at a $1 billion valuation from existing investors: The General Partnership, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, and Andreessen Horowitz. The new fundraise comes 17 months after Thatch raised a $40 million Series B at a $410 million … Read more
Meta on Tuesday introduced a new subscription service called Meta One, offering expanded AI usage and other premium features across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. The new plans let users access a number of AI tools, like those for creating and editing images and generating videos, as well as in-app tools like the AI-powered Restyle editing … Read more
Across the country, Americans are debating how their lives might change if new AI data centers are built in their backyards. Data center companies and their customers are promising new jobs and economic growth, but that pitch hasn’t won over a majority of Americans who oppose data center construction in their area, often over environmental … Read more
“If you see something, say something” is no longer limited to human beings. Two new AI hotlines have launched to give AI agents a way to phone home about misbehaving peers. The tools arrive on the heels of a string of recent incidents in which agents colluded to cheat on tests, broke out of sandboxes, … Read more
Alongside news of its new AI-focused subscription plans, Meta announced on Tuesday that it will now allow AI agents of your choosing to set up and manage WhatsApp Business messaging, the service that allows companies to connect with customers through WhatsApp conversations. As Meta explains, this process was previously a bit more cumbersome, as it … Read more
Relay, an AI-powered workflow automation tool built as an alternative to Zapier, shut down entirely on Monday. The product let users automate email and task workflows using AI agents, but as OpenAI, Google, and other larger platforms built similar automation directly into their own tools, five-year-old Relay struggled to hold on to a reason to … Read more
The AI race has grown so frenzied that, by 2035, U.S. data centers are projected to consume more natural gas than Germany and Japan combined. Over the next decade, data centers are expected to be the second-strongest driver of natural gas demand growth after LNG exports. The facilities could consume about 18 billion cubic feet … Read more
SpaceX is ready to perform the 14th test flight of its Starship mega rocket, and this time the company will finally try to put the upper stage into Earth’s orbit for the first time, the company announced Tuesday. The test launch is scheduled for September 22, with a 75-minute launch window opening at 7:15 a.m. … Read more
The U.S. military has for the first time acknowledged that it deployed a space weapon into Earth’s orbit. U.S. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink, who oversees the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, said in a speech Monday that the military has “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile … Read more
After X threatened legal action last month, Nitter and XCancel, privacy-friendly services for viewing X posts, appear to be officially dead — for real this time. Nitter, an open source project that let people read X posts without logging in, had been used to power a number of services, like XCancel and others. But last … Read more