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AI coding startup Factory has raised $200 million in new funding, pushing its valuation past $5 billion—more than triple its previous mark. Investors in the round include Khosla Ventures, Blackstone and Marc Benioff.
WIRED is producing a special issue on gender and power in Silicon Valley and will record a live episode of its Uncanny Valley podcast in San Francisco on October 8. The event, co-presented with KQED, features a conversation between former WIRED writer Paulina Borsook and editorial director Katie Drummond, followed by a panel with Brian Barrett, Zoë Schiffer and Lauren Goode discussing Goode's search for the most powerful woman in tech.
AI-search marketing startup Profound announced a $180 million Series D funding round led by Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins, valuing the company at $1.8 billion. The raise comes less than seven months after its $96 million Series C, with existing backers Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, and South Park Commons also joining in. Profound says revenue has tripled in six months and it now serves over 1,000 enterprise clients, including Comcast, Estée Lauder, and Walmart.
A new State of Open Source AI report from Mozilla, shared with Ars ahead of its September 15 release, finds that top open-weights models from Chinese developers now perform nearly on par with closed frontier models from US firms like Anthropic and OpenAI. It cites Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 scoring only three points below Anthropic's Fable 5 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, despite costing roughly 30 percent as much to run.
New cost-per-frame analysis across 10 countries shows Nvidia's GeForce cards have risen in price more sharply than AMD's Radeon or Intel's Arc lineups, eroding Nvidia's value proposition for gamers. At original MSRP, Intel's Arc B580 and AMD's Radeon RX 9060 XT offered the best value in the budget segment, while AMD's RX 9070 XT beat Nvidia's RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti on cost per frame in the mid-to-high end.
Valve has begun taking reservations for its Steam Frame VR headset, which runs Linux-based SteamOS on an ARM chip. The device starts at $1,059 for the 256GB model and $1,299 for 1TB, with every order including a free copy of Half-Life: Alyx. Reservations close Sept. 17 at 10 a.m. PT, after which customers will be randomly assigned a place in the purchase queue.
A flash flood caused by a glacial collapse tore through Nepal's Bhotekoshi valley on August 26, killing more than 1,000 people with many still missing. Satellites captured the collapse and are now aiding recovery efforts, confirming that monitoring technology exists and works.
Valve designer Pierre-Loup Griffais told IGN the company is still working out 'how and when' to release a next-generation Steam Deck, even after unveiling its full 2026 hardware lineup including the Steam Controller, Steam Machine, and Steam Frame. He said the current RAM shortage hasn't really changed Valve's thinking on developing the handheld, though no timeline was given.
Entrepreneur contributor analysis finds that AI search visibility platforms don't actually capture the full stream of questions buyers ask AI assistants. Instead, vendors like Otterly and Ahrefs generate estimated question sets using tools such as Search Console data and keyword expansion, then present results as if they reflect real buyer behavior. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's 2026 guidance confirms that over 20 vendors use inconsistent measurement methods for AI visibility.
Valve has begun taking reservations for its Steam Frame VR headset, nearly a year after first unveiling it and three months after launching the Steam Machine. Engineers Pierre-Loup Griffais and Jeff Leinbaugh told Tom's Hardware that the project began right after the Index shipped, aiming to make VR lighter, more comfortable, and easier to use through wireless streaming rather than chasing raw performance at any cost. The device arrives during a period of sharply rising memory and storage costs, which Valve says influenced its pricing.
Valve engineers Jeff Leinbaugh and Pierre-Loup Griffais spoke with Tom's Hardware about the Steam Frame headset, explaining that development began right after the Index shipped. They said the focus shifted from raw VR performance to comfort, ease of use, and wireless streaming across a user's whole Steam library, resulting in a lighter, more accessible device than the Index.
Valve has opened reservations for its standalone Steam Frame VR headset, priced at $1,059 for 256GB storage or $1,299 for 1TB, with sign-ups closing September 17 and invitations sent starting September 18. Every unit includes two controllers, a 6GHz wireless adapter, and a native Arm64 rebuild of Half-Life: Alyx that runs directly on the device.