World model maker Odyssey nabs $1.45B valuation backed by Amazon and other big names |

In Brief Posted: 10:43 AM PDT · June 17, 2026 Odyssey, a world model AI startup founded by self-driving vehicle pioneers CEO Oliver Cameron and…

Pramaana Labs raises $27M seed round from Khosla Ventures to bring formal verification to AI |

7:15 AM PDT · June 17, 2026 As enterprises struggle to turn AI pilot programs into functional parts of their business, reliability has taken center…

Collecting robot training data is dirty, unglamorous work. Some AI labs are already paying XDOF to do it. |

Two weeks ago, OpenAI said it would relaunch the robotics program it shuttered in 2021 — the latest signal that the biggest AI labs are…

DeepL acquires Mixhalo for live-event audio streaming and translation |

At conferences, speakers are often delivering their keynote or panel discussions in languages that many attendees might not know. That leads to users scrambling for…

Anthropic’s latest feud with the Trump admin may actually help it, sales data suggests |

Anthropic is having a month. The AI lab finished May by surpassing OpenAI in market share of business spending for the first time, Ramp just…

This startup’s super metals could soon be in military drones, luxury watches, and chef’s knives |

How humans alloy metals is essentially the same today as it was in the Bronze Age: Melt some different metals in a pot and mix…

Probably raises $9M to build a more reliable kind of AI |

6:15 AM PDT · June 16, 2026 As LLMs have grown more powerful, hallucinations have proven stubbornly difficult to avoid. Errors pop up in even…

Payments startup Flutterwave hits $3.2B valuation, backed by Ripple |

In Brief Posted: 8:35 AM PDT · June 16, 2026 African payments infrastructure company Flutterwave announced Tuesday a Series E round that values the company…

Malaysia’s AI agent-powered messaging app Respond.io raises $62.5M, eyes acquisitions |

In 2017, Respond.io set out to solve a simple problem: businesses couldn’t keep up with customers who had moved to messaging apps. Today Respond, with…

Sarvam becomes India’s newest AI unicorn with $234 million funding round led by HCLTech |

Sarvam has raised $234 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. The Bengaluru-based company is now India’s newest AI unicorn, as…