DeepMind's AlphaEvolve can search millions of mathematical constructions in hours, not weeks. Fields Medalist Terence Tao already builds on its outputs. But the system finds candidates, not proofs. The real shift: math discovery at industrial scale.
Moonshot trained an AI model for $4.6 million that beats OpenAI's GPT-5 on reasoning tests. While OpenAI seeks trillion-dollar infrastructure, Chinese labs prove the math no longer works. The twist: even they worry the tech works too well.
Venture capital firms are hitting pause on new investments, reports Lauren Goode at WIRED. The reason? Donald Trump's erratic trade policies have thrown Silicon Valley into a cold sweat.
Major VC firms pulled back nearly 40% of planned investments this quarter. First-time funding rounds took the biggest hit, dropping to their lowest level since 2019. Startups developing hardware or relying on Chinese manufacturing face particular scrutiny.
"We're seeing deals fall apart in real time," Sarah Chen tells WIRED. Her firm, Sequoia Capital, just shelved three late-stage investments worth $200 million combined. Hardware startups feel the squeeze most. A San Francisco-based robotics company had to slash its valuation by half after Trump threatened new semiconductor tariffs.
Even software companies can't escape the chaos. Cloud infrastructure costs could jump 15-25% if Trump's proposed tech tariffs take effect. For cash-burning startups, that's a potential death sentence.
Why this matters:
VCs have $290 billion in dry powder sitting on the sidelines – enough to fund the next Google or Facebook. But this money won't flow while trade policy looks like a game of darts played blindfolded.
When VCs get spooked, innovation suffers. Today's frozen funding could mean fewer breakthrough technologies tomorrow.
Bilingual tech journalist slicing through AI noise at implicator.ai. Decodes digital culture with a ruthless Gen Z lens—fast, sharp, relentlessly curious. Bridges Silicon Valley's marble boardrooms, hunting who tech really serves.
Three Stanford professors just raised $50M to prove OpenAI and Anthropic generate text wrong. Their diffusion models claim 10x speed by processing tokens in parallel, not sequentially. Microsoft and Nvidia are betting they're right.
Ex-Tencent AI scientist Wei Liu chose Singapore for unrestricted Nvidia chip access, raising $50M for Video Rebirth. The geography play matters more than the physics pitch—it's about training on Blackwell while China can't.
Microsoft's venture arm doubled funding for a German startup that cuts datacenter cooling costs by up to 40% using software alone. The timing: North American operators face years-long power constraints while AI demand climbs.
FurtherAI closed $25M from Andreessen Horowitz six months after seed to automate insurance workflows—from submission intake to claims processing. The velocity signals a shift from AI pilots to production deployment, with early customers reporting measurable ROI.