Furo, a startup building software for industrial battery storage systems, has raised $4 million from mostly U.S. investors including TQ Ventures, Neo, and Sheryl Sandberg's Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners. The three 28-year-old founders, originally from Germany, moved back home after studying and briefly operating in the Bay Area, and within a year landed enterprise clients like Deutsche Bahn. Co-founder Lena Sophia Voß says the company is scaling faster in Europe than it would have in the U.S.
WIRED's Uncanny Valley podcast examines a viral resignation from an Anthropic researcher who argued AI could plausibly cause human extinction within ten years. The episode also covers Apple's newly unveiled $2,000 foldable iPhone Duo, privacy concerns around 'always listening' Apple Watch features, and a WIRED investigation into flawed Census Bureau data cited by the Trump administration.
Elon Musk's tunneling company The Boring Co. announced a $23 billion valuation late Wednesday, alongside plans to expand into the Middle East. The firm, spun out of SpaceX in 2018, currently operates just one public loop in Las Vegas while pursuing roughly a dozen other city projects, including a contested 20-mile tunnel system under construction in Nashville.
Starz announced that P-Valley's third and final season will premiere with two episodes on December 4, over two years after season 2 ended. The show, created by Katori Hall, will resolve its cliffhangers, including Diamond's fate after being locked in a car trunk and Keyshawn's jail storyline following an escape attempt from her abuser.
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that mass-personalized AI outreach, like generic cold LinkedIn messages and spam emails, is damaging brand credibility rather than building it. Instead, the piece advocates for marketing built on educational content and showcasing real client success stories to attract buyers who are already primed to purchase.
A new analysis finds Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet collected roughly $28 billion in federal contracts between 2018 and 2022, with the five largest tech contracts from 2019-2022 carrying combined ceilings of at least $53 billion. Separately, venture capital poured nearly $100 billion into defense tech startups from 2021 to 2023, a 40 percent jump over the prior seven years combined.
Italian software company Bending Spoons is acquiring workplace collaboration platform Miro in a $1.36 billion cash deal, valuing the equity at $1.79 billion. That figure represents a roughly 92% drop from the $17.5 billion valuation Miro commanded in late 2021 during the pandemic-driven remote work boom. Despite the steep markdown, Miro reports $600 million in annual recurring revenue, over four million paying users, and profitability with $435 million in net cash.
AI chipmaker Positron secured $875 million in new funding, backers including NEA, Atreides Management, and Jim Clark, valuing the startup at $5 billion. The company designs specialized chips aimed at running AI models quickly, positioning itself against dominant GPU providers as demand for inference-focused hardware grows.
Defense tech startup Mach Industries raised $600 million in a Series C extension, pushing its valuation to $3.7 billion just three months after a $300 million round valued it at $1.8 billion. Backers in both rounds include Ribbit Capital, Infinite Capital, Bedrock Capital and Sequoia. The company makes unmanned military vehicles, including VTOL drones, long-range strike systems and counter-drone tech, from its Huntington Beach, California facility.
A new analysis argues that large language models have driven the cost of producing average-quality writing, code and analysis down to nearly zero. What once required specialized skills, time and organizational infrastructure can now be generated instantly by anyone with access to an LLM, making merely competent output an abundant commodity rather than a differentiator.
Starting September 9, Australian law requires online game and app storefronts to verify that buyers are over 18. Steam is meeting this requirement by asking users to link a bank card rather than submit government ID or biometric data, mirroring the approach it already uses in the UK. Credit cards work reliably since Australian issuers only give them to adults, but debit cards—often held by minors—only pass verification under narrower conditions tied to specific bank and network flags.
A reviewer tested Vari's Ergo electric standing desk over several months, finding it easy to assemble in about 10 minutes and stable across its full height range of 25 to 50.5 inches. The desk uses a quiet dual-motor lift system, supports up to 200 pounds, offers four programmable height presets, and comes with a lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects.
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