Chinese manufacturers shipped 39% of global humanoid robots in 2025. Tesla shipped 1%. At CES 2026, the gap between American roadmaps and Chinese products defined the exhibition floor. The supply chain tells a story pricing alone can't explain.
Boston Children's Hospital is deploying OpenAI's new healthcare product. The executive leading the rollout says an AI casualty is "very likely." He's doing it anyway. The math behind that decision reveals how hospitals are thinking about risk.
Track where AI money actually moves, not where the hype points. We decode funding rounds, acquisition patterns, and strategic bets that reveal what investors believe will win. From mega-rounds in foundation models to quiet exits in automation plays, the capital flows expose which technologies attract patient money versus quick flips. Watch who's doubling down on agents, who's backing infrastructure, and which VCs are silently repositioning. The checks don't lie.
OpenAI closes $8.3B funding round months early, led by Dragoneer's record $2.8B single check. Early investors got squeezed as demand hit 5x capacity. Revenue jumped to $13B while Microsoft negotiations loom over IPO future.
Israeli startup Teramount raised $50M to solve AI's hidden bottleneck: connecting processors. While everyone builds faster chips, these physicists found the real problem in the wires between them. Their optical solution promises 100x speed gains.
Anthropic raised $5 billion at a $170 billion valuation after CEO admitted the company's "no bad person should benefit" policy was too difficult to maintain. The AI safety champion now takes Middle East money to compete with OpenAI.
Chinese startup Z.ai's new AI model costs 87% less than DeepSeek while running on half the chips. Built despite US trade restrictions, GLM-4.5 uses 'agentic' approach that breaks tasks into steps—potentially reshaping how AI works.
Philadelphia robotics startup Asylon raised $26M after nearly dying in 2021 when their demo drone crashed the night before a Fortune 500 showcase. Now their robot security guards patrol facilities nationwide.
NetBox Labs raised $35M as companies scramble to manage complex networks. The AI boom creates massive infrastructure demand, and legacy tools can't keep up. The open-source platform now serves Fortune 500 firms.
Chinese startup Moonshot AI released Kimi K2, an open-source model that matches GPT-4.1 performance while costing five times less. Silicon Valley's response? OpenAI delayed their planned open-source release hours after K2 launched.
French AI startup Mistral hunts $1 billion from Abu Dhabi investors as Europe pushes for tech independence. The France-UAE partnership challenges US-China AI dominance, but questions remain about true sovereignty when foreign funds drive domestic innovation.
Former Manchester City captain raises $42M to fix Britain's broken delivery system with AI and electric trucks. Her startup Hived claims 99% on-time delivery while legacy carriers struggle with outdated technology built for letters, not e-commerce.
Grammarly bought email app Superhuman for an undisclosed sum, part of its plan to build an AI productivity empire. With $1 billion in fresh funding, the grammar company wants to put AI agents at the center of your workday.
A Marine-led startup that reads stress patterns in voices just raised $60M from ex-CIA chief David Petraeus. Clearspeed detects fraud and security risks without listening to words - just tone and hesitation patterns across any language.
While Congress debates TikTok's future, ByteDance quietly built America's #2 education app. Gauth helps 200 million students cheat on homework by solving problems from photos. Same company, same data concerns, zero scrutiny.
