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On Wednesday, at an event held in San Francisco during the city’s Tech Week, Microsoft revealed the specs and price for its new Surface Laptop Ultra. The PC comes in two base models, one that starts at $2,600 and one with a more powerful chip that starts at $3,700. Prices rise from there with options for more memory and storage, up to $5,900. (Microsoft says the highest-end device is already out of stock.) Microsoft also revealed its new workstation powere

Boyu Capital and IDG Capital led the funding round, and existing shareholders Tencent, HSG (formerly known as Sequoia China), ZhenFund, and others also participated. The AI company said it will continue hiring both at home and abroad. Manus did not disclose its valuation, but last month was said to be in talks with investors to raise $500 million at a $4 billion valuation. Manus, which went viral following a demo of its AI agent last year, relocated its st

The Mac app can work completely offline, utilizing the on-device EmbeddingGemma 2 model, with 740 million parameters, to capture meeting notes across apps, including those from in-person meetings. The app is similar to the popular AI note-taker Granola because it has a split-screen view with the ability to write shorthand notes on one side and AI-generated notes on the other side. Like Granola, it also lets you take manual notes while transcribing the meet

In March, MyFitnessPal acquired Cal AI for an undisclosed sum after it zoomed ahead of the older calorie app in the app store rankings. The deal was big enough to convince Yadegari and his co-founders to sell the company after it had pulled in over $30 million in annual revenue in under two years, MyFitnessPal told TechCrunch at the time. Yadegari and his co-founders originally went to work for their new owner, continuing development on Cal AI, but he left

Final discounted rates are still available before event doors open at 8 a.m. PT on October 13, with pass savings of up to $100. Coming as a pair? Get 50% off a second pass of the same type. Or take advantage of more savings with a group of four or more. Six stages and 200+ sessions — build your own Disrupt If insightful content is what you’re coming for, Disrupt gives you 200+ sessions across six stages to choose from. Explore the agenda to get to know the

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, Ben Longmier, CEO of Ambrosia Energy, and Bill Thayer, SVP and Head of Datacenter Solutions at Bloom Energy, come together on the Smart Systems Stage for a conversation on “Where the AI Infrastructure Boom Is Creating Winners.” Image Credits:TechCrunch This industry stage session will examine which constraints are creating durable business opportunities, where new categories are beginning to emerge, and what founders can build a

Goodfire, a startup focused on interpretability (figuring out how AI models work internally), launched a cheaper option on Thursday: monitors that watch what’s happening inside an AI model as it works, rather than just reading what it writes. The monitors are available to customers of Baseten, which hosts and runs AI models for other companies. Baseten’s Base Labs announced a safety partnership with Goodfire and the AI platform Hugging Face last month. The

The startup was founded by Carlo Edoardo Ferraris, who previously founded tech accessories company Rolling Square. After years of building consumer hardware, he became convinced that rapidly advancing AI needed a new kind of interface that lets people ask for what they want the way they’d ask a person. The idea behind Interface is to help people look up from their phones while getting everyday tasks done more quickly and naturally. At launch, the ring will

But OpenAI fell short of those standards, particularly where the mathematicians emphasized the need for human understanding of a mathematical result. That’s especially concerning after a new paper highlighted gaps between the natural language and formally expressed solution to a million-dollar problem ostensibly solved by OpenAI’s models. The Advisory Group on Mathematics and Artificial Intelligence (AGMAI), hosted by the Institute for Advanced Study, is m

The move comes as AI tools have been moving beyond being just conversational experiences to those that can take ownership of assigned tasks, generate code, schedule meetings, book appointments and travel, and more. It also follows the rise of consumer-facing agents like Meta’s Muse and those that operate over messaging, like Instinct and others, as well as the recent debut of ChatGPT’s Dots. The company still has a good shot at achieving scale for its agen

This comes after the company said it reached $100 million in annualized run-rate revenue in June. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures, with Salesforce Ventures, 01 Advisors, Dell Technologies Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, a16z, Felicis, and others joining in. Arena previously announced a $150 million Series A in January at a $1.7 billion post-money valuation. At the time, its annualized revenue was $30 million, it said. So th

He can even write a little Python, he says. The movie star delved into his interest in technology most recently on an episode of GQ’s “One More Question” series this week, where he humbly started with “I’ve always been kind of into computers since I was young,” before nerding out on the development of AI as it relates to filmmaking, while using AI terminology like machine learning, neural networks, transformers, tensors, GPUs, inference, and more. In a cli

“We have become concerned that internal and external communications around our firing have made our former colleagues afraid to speak and operate in ways that, until last week, were an integral part of working at OpenAI,” the researchers wrote Thursday in an open letter to OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group, and Mission Advisory Council. The researchers were dismissed last week after allegedly sharing confidential company informa

(Every day, I am grateful to the American legal system for making the discovery process public.) i built a website where you can sit at elizabeth holmes’ deskopen her macbook, scroll her iphone, run the theranos edison machineher texts, emails, slides, documents, and theranos machine records are real, sourced from exhibits in the united states v. holmes criminal trial pic.twitter.com/5At9T5m3UV— bo lau (@bolau_) October 8, 2026 The environment that Lau cre

Ticket savings of up to $100 will end when doors open on October 13 at 8 a.m. PT. Don’t forget to get a second pass of the same ticket types at 50% off. Or if you’ve been affected by a layoff, then grab your Expo+ Pass at just $75. Your next opportunity could be one conversation away at Disrupt Different people come to Disrupt looking for different outcomes. For founders, the Expo Hall or the founder-investor exclusive Deal Flow Café could mean meeting an

New Artificial Analysis index widens the gap between open and closed models Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner Oct 28, 2026 Artificial Analysis overhauled its Intelligence Index, causing Kimi K3.1 Pro to drop five spots in the rankings. The model originally launched in fourth place, but it falls to ninth behind eight closed models in version 5. Artificial Analysis now puts the gap between open models and the top of the l

Nvidia's open Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe combines transcription, translation, and speaker recognition Jonathan Kemper View the LinkedIn Profile of Jonathan Kemper Oct 28, 2026 Nano Banana Pro prompted by THE DECODER Key Points Nvidia has released Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe, an open speech model that follows text commands and combines transcription, translation, and speaker recognition for up to 40 languages. The model has 30 billion parameters, but only 4 billio

Claude for Legal now verifies sources automatically, then hands the file to a lawyer Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian Oct 28, 2026 Anthropic is expanding Claude Enterprise for legal professionals with pre-built templates. The company introduced new "artifacts" for Claude for Legal, features legal teams have requested since its May launch. These interactive overviews and tables streamline routine tasks like verifying citations,

Google opens Android development to third-party AI agents and unveils new Gemini APIs Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner Oct 28, 2026 Nano Banana Pro prompted by THE DECODER Key Points Google is opening its Android Studio development environment to more than 40 external coding agents like Claude and Codex via the "Bring Your Own Agent" feature, while expanding terminal tools to cut down on development time and token usag

Google Deepmind releases Gemini 4 Carbon just two weeks after Argon with gains across the board Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian Oct 28, 2026 Key Points Just two weeks after Gemini 4 Argon, Google DeepMind released Gemini 4 Carbon, its next frontier model. Carbon tops the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index v5 with 59 points, up from Argon's 50. Google says Carbon is built for multi-day, autonomous development workflows. It