Sriram Krishnan, who stepped down in June as the White House's senior policy advisor on AI, is seeking to raise around $500 million for a new venture capital fund, Axios has learned.
Zoom in: The fund, which is in its early stages, is expected to focus on growth-stage AI companies that have relevance to national security for the U.S. or allied nations.
Federal Reserve officials worried that higher costs tied to energy, AI investment and other shocks could spill over into broader, more persistent inflation, according to the minutes from the central bank's Sept. 15-16 meeting.
Why it matters: That meeting concluded with the Fed's first interest rate increase in three years. The minutes show that "several" officials thought rates were doing little to restrain the economy, raising the stakes for further increases down the line.
Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled a new class of Nvidia-powered Windows laptops, its latest effort to tie the operating system more closely to the AI boom.
Why it matters: Microsoft is trying to carve out a high-end laptop category for people who want to run demanding AI workloads locally, rather than rely entirely on the cloud.
The Trump administration is pledging to modernize headlight standards, addressing a growing complaint among drivers about glare from powerful LED lights.
Why it matters: Industry experts say U.S. headlight regulations are severely outdated, creating dangerous driving conditions.
Russia's war on Ukraine has sparked a boom in global defense-tech investing, particularly around drones. But very few of those startups are actually based and building in Ukraine.
Buntar Aerospace is an exception.
Driving the news: Buntar this week raised $16 million led by U.S.-based Freedom Fund VC, following a $10.4 million round earlier this year.
Mark Zuckerberg's Biohub is partnering with Google and the federal government in its ambitious effort to use AI for generating vast quantities of biological data that can predict how cells behave.
Why it matters: The ultimate goal is an AI model that lets scientists test potential experiments virtually, helping them identify the most promising ones before spending the time and money to perform them in the lab.
AI is capable of understanding proteins and other pieces of biology, but modeling an entire living cell is orders of magnitude more complex — and researchers don't yet have enough of the right data to do it.
Hedge funds are playing an increasingly important role in the two hottest markets of the moment — U.S. Treasury securities and AI stocks — and they're doing it with a lot of borrowed money.
Why it matters: In times of stress, unwinding that borrowing, or leverage, can turn a sell-off into a crisis that spreads beyond hedge funds into the banking system and the wider economy.
Near-future versions ofGeneral Dynamics' next-generation tank and XM30 combat vehicle could have voice controls onboard, letting crews manipulate sensors, radios, drones and more with plain English instructions.
Why it matters: Such a setup could simplify training, ease troop burdens and improve battlefield performance — or what the military so coyly calls lethality.
Overland AI on Wednesday debuts Ibex, an autonomous ground vehicle capable of shuttling thousands of pounds of materiel and designed for rapid relocation aboard V-22 Ospreys.
Why it matters: The Seattle startup is building the reconfigurable robo-resupplier for the Marine Corps as well as the Army and Special Operations Command.
The future ofAmerican fighter aircraft is now Boeing's to decide.
The big picture: The world's sixth-largest defense contractor by revenue has secured a monopoly on these sixth-generation warplanes, with the rights to build not only the U.S. Air Force's F-47 but also the Navy's F/A-XX.
A coalition of AI startups, cloud providers, researchers and investors is launching a National Compute Grid, an effort to pool AI computing to help address a supply crunch driving enormous spending on AI infrastructure.
Why it matters: Building AI infrastructure has become a multitrillion-dollar bet largely because of the high cost of accessing scarce computing resources. Yet many data centers run well below capacity, meaning extremely valuable chips sit idle while some startups and researchers struggle to get access.
The creators of the compute grid want to make it easier for idle computing capacity to be used, a goal that could significantly alter the direction of the AI boom if it were to take off.
Guardrails Alliance, a super PAC advocating for stronger AI rules, will spend $1.2 million against candidates backed by the AI industry.
Why it matters: The group, which has been instrumental in rallying tech workers to rein in AI, is going after Democrats and Republicans in competitive districts as the midterms near.
Common Sense Media is urging OpenAI to keep teens off ChatGPT, saying its new teen experience poses an "unacceptable risk" after extensive testing found shortcomings in safeguards meant to protect younger users.
Why it matters: OpenAI has made protecting younger users a central part of its effort to make ChatGPT safer, but the findings suggest some of those protections may give parents more confidence than they warrant.
"We welcome rigorous independent evaluation, but we do not believe Common Sense Media's testing accurately reflects how ChatGPT's teen safeguards work in practice," an OpenAI spokesperson said.
