Today's AI Pulse
Odyssey lands $310M Series B, valued at $1.45B
Odyssey announced a $310 million Series B round that values the AI lab at $1.45 billion. The round was led by Natural Capital and included backers such as Amazon, AMD Ventures, GV, EQT and IQT. In parallel, Odyssey struck a preferred‑cloud deal with AWS to use Trainium silicon for large‑scale model training.
Also developing:
OpenClaw Could Be 1st 1-Person $1B Company, OpenAI Buys
The episode examines OpenClaw's potential to become the first one‑person, billion‑dollar company, analyzing its AI‑driven product suite, lean operational model, and market traction. It weighs the plausibility of such rapid scaling against typical growth constraints and highlights the founder’s unique expertise in autonomous AI tooling. The discussion then shifts to circulating rumors that OpenAI may acquire OpenClaw, exploring how that deal could accelerate OpenAI’s roadmap and reshape competition among AI platform providers. Listeners walk away with a nuanced view of solo founder scalability and the strategic stakes of a possible acquisition.
This Company Has Built a Backpack-Style System for Robotics Data Collection
Lumos, a robotics startup founded in September 2024, unveiled FastUMI Pro, a backpack‑mounted universal manipulation interface designed to accelerate embodied AI data collection. The company aims to deploy 10,000 units across six real‑world environments by 2026, targeting one million hours...
India Will Shape Global AI Governance, Says ElevenLabs’ Head of Global Affairs Alex Haskell
ElevenLabs is leveraging India as a large‑scale testing ground for its generative voice‑AI, with e‑commerce platform Meesho routing roughly 60,000 calls a day through the technology. The linguistic mix of English‑Hindi code‑switching in tier‑2 and tier‑3 cities has driven new...
AI Agent Security Becomes the Next Adoption Bottleneck
The power of AI agents comes from: 1. intelligence of the underlying model 2. how much access you give it to all your data 3. how much freedom & power you give it to act on your behalf I think...
Bharat-VISTAAR Launches Today- All About the AI Tool to Help Farmers via a Simple Phone Call
Bharat‑VISTAAR, a multilingual AI tool for Indian agriculture, launches on February 17, offering farmers real‑time advice through a simple phone call. The platform integrates government‑run AgriStack portals and ICAR best‑practice repositories, delivering region‑specific recommendations without requiring internet access. By combining weather...
Holodeck Reality Emerging Fast Across Five Tech Layers
The Holodeck Report. I fed @blevlabs the book @IrenaCronin and I wrote "The Infinite Retina" and asked it to analyze X for what's happening right now when it comes to AI-driven 3D environments and things and it spit out this...
Asian Markets Split: AI Surge vs Old‑Economy Shift Ahead
Asian equity markets are diverging into two camps: AI capex beneficiaries in East Asia and "old economy" companies in Southeast Asia. There will be an inflection point where the former peaks, and flows move towards the latter. But when?
Treasury Chief: ‘AI Can Relieve Staff of Lower-Value Work’
HM Treasury senior official Beth Russell told the Treasury Committee that the department is actively deploying artificial intelligence to handle routine administrative tasks and support policy work. The Treasury has introduced an HR chatbot, is piloting Microsoft Copilot with 25%...
ITC Infotech Opens APAC HQ, Digital and AI Hub in Melbourne
ITC Infotech opened its Asia‑Pacific headquarters and digital‑AI hub in Melbourne, the fourth such centre globally. The hub targets sectors including consumer‑packaged goods, retail, manufacturing, banking and especially agriculture, aligning with Victoria’s $20 billion agri‑economy. ITC plans to hire about 150...
AI Is Getting Scary Good at Making Predictions
Artificial intelligence has surged up the ranks of elite forecasting tournaments, moving from obscurity in 2024 to challenging top human forecasters. These contests span geopolitics, economics, and pop culture, measuring pure predictive skill rather than domain expertise. Simultaneously, AI is...
AI Video Is Set to Reshape Hollywood's Future
I remember when I was posting AI video threads 2 years ago and talking about how AI video would disrupt Hollywood. So many people couldn’t see beyond the early versions. And still, people probably see this and aren’t realizing what comes...
Ireland Launches ‘Large-Scale Inquiry’ Into Musk’s AI Bot Grok
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission has opened a large‑scale GDPR inquiry into Elon Musk’s X over its AI tool Grok, which has been linked to a surge of sexualized deepfakes, including images of minors. Regulators estimate Grok produced three million non‑consensual...
DShanPi-A1 AI Education Rockchip RK3576 SBC Features HDMI Input and Output Ports, Dual GbE
The DShanPi‑A1 AI Education SBC is built around Rockchip’s RK3576 octa‑core Cortex‑A72/A53 SoC and can be configured with up to 8 GB RAM and 64 GB eMMC storage. It offers HDMI 2.1 video output, a mini‑HDMI input, dual Gigabit Ethernet, MIPI DSI/CSI interfaces,...
Claude Opus 4.6 Now Available in GitLab Duo Agent Platform
GitLab has added Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.6 to its Duo Agent Platform, giving users a model with a 1 million‑token context window and heightened agency. The model can ingest entire codebases, documentation, and pipeline data in a single interaction, enabling more comprehensive...
Earnings Surge, AI Capex Debate Drives Tech Outlook
The Week Ahead In Technology for February 16, 2026. Markets reopen after Presidents’ Day into a big earnings week. $ADI is the key semi cycle read with 41% EPS growth expected. $PANW tests enterprise cyber spend. $CDNS gives a read on...
Neural Networks Boost Accuracy of Quantum Simulations for Complex Materials
Researchers at ETH Zürich have introduced a neural‑based selected configuration (NQS‑SC) method that outperforms the traditional NQS‑VMC approach for electronic structure calculations. In benchmark tests on molecules with strong static correlation, NQS‑SC reduced ground‑state energies by an average of 0.027 Hartree...
AI Accelerates Market Signal Turnover and Degradation
One thing I feel strongly about regarding AI is that, when it comes to trading, we are going to witness a streamlined cycle of signal degradation. Classical signals will become crowded very quickly. The market will rotate through those cycles faster...
Epic's AI Road Map Should Concern Insurers
Epic Systems, which commands over 35% of the U.S. hospital IT market, is extending its AI capabilities into the payer space through a stack that relies heavily on Microsoft Azure and OpenAI. The article warns that this architectural dependency creates...
Human Value Shifts to Distribution as AI Dominates Creation
As AI eats more of product building (autocompleting code -> writing 100% of code -> reviewing its own code -> deciding what to build in the first place -> judgement to know what is great), where will human brains be...
Bootstrapped and Profitable AI InsurTech Company Mea Platform Raises €42.2 Million
UK‑based AI InsurTech mea Platform announced a €42.2 million minority growth equity investment from SEP to accelerate product development and customer engagement. The company, founded in 2021, has remained bootstrapped and profitable for four consecutive years. Its domain‑specific AI platform, already...
Leaders in ERP Podcast Episode 6 - Achieve a Zero-Day Financial Close with AI
In this episode, host Shawn Windle talks with Nicolas Kopp, CEO of Rillet, about how artificial intelligence is reshaping the ERP landscape, especially for achieving a zero‑day financial close. They explore AI‑native ERP solutions, the heightened focus on data security,...
Qwen 3.5 Unveiled: X‑API Analysis Reveals Hidden AI Insights
The Qwen Report. Today @AlibabaGroup released Qwen 3.5. A major new multimodal model. So I had @blevlabs analyze all posts here on X and a few other places and write up this report. All built via the X API. This is an...
V2 AI Bolsters Senior Exec Team with Three New Hires
V2 AI announced three senior executive hires—Hannah Williams as Managing Director, Peter Burns as Partner, and Michael Ewald as Director. Williams joins from Amazon LEO after a decade in IT, Burns arrives from Google with nearly 30 years of experience,...
EBay Appoints VP of AI Transformation to Catch up in Agentic Race
eBay announced the appointment of Michelle Warvel as Vice President of AI Transformation, signaling a strategic push to accelerate its agentic AI capabilities. The marketplace is simultaneously launching a hiring campaign for specialized AI design and research roles while tightening...
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Aircraft Engine MRO
Aircraft jet engines are increasingly being repurposed to generate power for AI data centers, creating a new demand stream beyond aviation. Simultaneously, the industry faces a shortage of new engines and spare parts due to reliability issues with Pratt &...
Mortgage Originator Maestro AI Announces $1.2M Pre-Seed
Maestro AI, an AI‑powered platform for mortgage origination, secured $1.2 million in pre‑seed funding led by New Stack Ventures, with participation from Family VC, ZFO, Roark’s Drift, and local angels. Founded by industry veteran David Rogove—who previously built and sold Wemlo...
Xcert AI Wants to Save Human Experts Time, Not Replace Them
Swiss startup Xcert AI has built an artificial‑intelligence assistant aimed at easing aerospace certification and compliance paperwork. The platform does not claim to replace human experts; instead it augments them, delivering expert‑level output in roughly half of the cases tested....
Learning Context and AI: A 1EdTech Labs Live Webinar
1EdTech Labs will host a live webinar on Feb. 26, 2026 to examine how learning context differs from raw data and how AI systems interpret it. The session builds on insights from a Microsoft‑hosted BETT UK event and proposes treating context...
MCP Leaves Much to Be Desired when It Comes to Data Privacy and Security
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) was introduced as a universal interface that lets AI agents tap into enterprise data and services. In practice, the protocol has become a lightning rod for privacy breaches: a rogue MCP server harvested WhatsApp chats...
Leveraging AI to Predict Patient Deterioration
Dr. Michael Spaeder will present at HIMSS26 on using AI‑enabled analysis of continuous bedside cardiorespiratory monitoring to detect patient deterioration earlier than traditional electronic health record methods. He will contrast predictive insights from live physiologic data with retrospective EHR analytics,...
Neuromorphic Chips Solve Differential Equations with FEM
Neuromorphic computing has proved to be good at complex mathematics, against expectations. New neuromorphic hardware from @Intel can solve differential equations using the finite element method. https://spectrum.ieee.org/neuromorphic-math
Only AI‑savvy Employees Survive; Let Resistors Go
We started the year committed to bring everyone at @singlegrain to Claude Code proficient levels. For new hires, they need to go through our ‘Beat Claude’ challenge, meaning that they can use AI to answer questions, but if they merely...
Manus New "Agents" Mode Arrives on Telegram First Despite Meta Owning WhatsApp
Manus has rolled out its AI Agent on Telegram, bringing the full web‑version functionality into a chat environment. The agent can handle multi‑step research, data processing and document creation, accepting voice messages, images and files. Users choose between Manus 1.6 Max for...
Visualize Gemini's Source Grounding with Free Retriever
Find out exactly which parts of source pages content ground Google's AI with the Free Grounding Context Retriever from the one and only, @dejanseo 👇 Add any query and see the results to to identify which segments of content were...
Physical AI: The Next Leap for Human‑Device Workforce
In this follow-on clip, I unpack why physical AI (and world models) is the next major leap. It introduces an entirely new kind of workforce: intelligent devices and humanoids working alongside people. The move from pilot to production won’t be...
Sovereign AI Is a Geopolitical Reset — and Telcos Need to Deliver It
Telcos are positioned to deliver sovereign AI, a shift from centralized models to on‑prem, edge‑based intelligence that stays within national borders. By leveraging regulated infrastructure and privacy mandates like CPNI, they can host domain‑specific models that keep data local and...
Ai Avatars For Shopify: How Smart Merchants Are Using Them To Sell More In 2026
The episode explains how Shopify merchants can leverage AI avatars to produce scalable, high‑quality product videos that boost conversion rates by up to 80% while cutting production costs to roughly 10% of traditional methods. It outlines five high‑impact use cases—product...
Comprehensive AI Management Framework Landscape
The Comprehensive AI Management Framework Landscape is a vendor‑neutral reference that maps six distinct categories of AI governance, strategy, risk, operating, and maturity frameworks. It helps leaders match specific management decisions to the appropriate framework, avoiding overlap and friction. By...
Vertiv’s AI Infrastructure Surge: Record Orders, Liquid Cooling Expansion, and Grid-Scale Power Reshape Data Center Growth
Vertiv reported a record Q4 2025, with net sales rising 23% to $2.88 billion and organic growth of 19%. Orders exploded 252% year‑over‑year, pushing the backlog to $15 billion and a 2.9× book‑to‑bill ratio. The company unveiled high‑density prefabricated cooling platforms, modular...
Teach Claude Code to Automate Redaction in Seconds
You can teach Claude Code to do anything for you, really. And you can ask it to teach itself. Here's a quick example: I find myself often redacting screenshots. And my normal method was dragging it into PowerPoint, creating a...
Agents Want More (and Better) AI Tools — and More Training
A recent Realtors Property Resource survey shows 82% of real‑estate agents are already using AI, mainly for drafting listings, emails and social posts. Most agents report saving at least an hour per week, with a third saving four or more...
All the Claw Things
In this brief 6‑minute episode, the hosts chat with Peter Steinberger about his new venture ZeroClaw, a hardware project that aims to perfect the claw mechanism, and highlight MimiClaw, a $5 chip‑powered version. They also discuss Steve Yegge’s humorous take...
AI Power Shifts So Fast No One Predicts Winners
I keep realizing things flip so fast in AI you really can't predict who will win or lose Claude Code was leading for every dev, Anthropic were the good guys, OpenAI were becoming the bad guys buying up all the RAM I...
LLMs Will Redefine Languages, Prompt Massive Code Rewrites
I think it must be a very interesting time to be in programming languages and formal methods because LLMs change the whole constraints landscape of software completely. Hints of this can already be seen, e.g. in the rising momentum behind...
6th‑Gen AV Platform Costs Halve
The 6th gen platform reportedly costs ~$70k per vehicle ($50k base + $20k custom fit & sensors). The cost has room to fall by 50% in the next 2 years (>$30k vehicle + $10k sensors). Waymo currently does over 500,000 driverless...
Cline CLI 2.0:
FINALLY AI agents that don't force you into VS Code. @Cline CLI 2.0 is out 🔥 → Fully headless, open-source, and model-agnostic. → Run parallel agents in tmux or pipe them into CI/CD. → It just works where you work (Neovim/Zed included). 3 wild use cases...
AI Users Profit From Trillion‑dollar Subsidies
The real winner of the AI wars seems to be us, the users (for now) We get cheap models subsidized by trillions of dollars of funding
Two Types: Bias‑aware Users and Self‑proclaimed Polymaths
There are two categories of people: those who quickly figure out that chatbots give you the answer you expect when you ask questions in a biased way, and the ascended polymaths currently out-thinking every expert on Earth
New OpenClaw Search Tool Uses GPT‑5.2, Beats Brave API
made a search tool for @openclaw that defaults to gpt-5.2:online via openrouter. just install openclaw-search-tool from clawhub much better results than brave api which is important for docs & citations https://t.co/Lfuaq3VNnb
2026: Scale AI Agents Safely with Checklist
If 2025 was the year of "launch an AI pilot," 2026 must be the year of "launch AI agents safely at scale." This 10 point checklist is built for that shift. #AI #CIO #DigitalTransformation https://t.co/1tg10UmJNv