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Today’s edition is a tour of where the hype hardens into hardware.
CES parades AI pandas and holograms, devs lean on AI daily (and inherit the security bill), Discord edges toward IPO territory, and Caterpillar lets excavators think for themselves. Meanwhile, Intel’s Articul8 shows enterprise AI budgets are real, lithium quietly strains Chile’s desert, and fusion inches closer to something you can actually build.
Less vibes, more consequences.
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Eight bullets of updates
🤖 CES 2026 spotlights AI-powered panda pets, holographic assistants, and other wild gadgets as over 4,000 brands show off the future of weird tech.
🌡️ Advanced sensors help Quilt engineers squeeze 10% more efficiency from heat pumps by analyzing real-time data.
🎬 Warner Bros. Discovery rejects a $108.4B takeover, warning it’d pile on $87B in debt in what they call a leveraged buyout.
🧑💻 Global users must verify their age to access chat in age-matched groups, part of a platform-wide safety push.
💻 Nearly half of devs now use AI daily, prompting fresh worries about recursive security risks for teams.
🚜 Caterpillar is piloting self-driving excavators using Nvidia’s physical AI, aiming for automation on massive construction projects.
🗣️ Discord prepares for its Wall Street debut, working with top banks on a confidential IPO filing after hitting 200M+ active users.
❓ An AI model taught itself by generating questions after training, boosting learning rates by 30% and hinting at self-improving systems.
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Articul8 Spinout from Intel Achieves Rapid Valuation Growth with Funding
Credit: articul8.ai
Intel spinout Articul8 raised more than half of a planned $70M Series B at a $500M pre-money valuation; roughly 5x its $100M post-money Series A (Jan 2024).
The pitch: specialized, on‑prem AI apps/agents for regulated industries, because not every CIO wants to share a GPU with the internet.
If the round completes, expect faster Europe/Asia expansion and trickier channel dynamics with hyperscalers that are both partners and competitors. For founders, this underscores real enterprise GenAI budgets and a tilt toward control, auditability, and predictable outcomes over generic, shared models.
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Inside Chile's $4 Trillion Lithium Mines
Deep in the Atacama, the lithium powering our clean-energy future is quietly draining the desert, and this video reveals the stakes—and the tech that could stop it.
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The End of the In-House Back Office
High-growth founders are hitting a ceiling. When you scale, operational drag becomes a liability. Scrap the W2 model and offload your back office to one trusted partner.
BELAY provides the high-caliber leverage required to lead at a strategic level.
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💪 86% of senior women leaders feel more ambitious—sharing 3 ways to rewrite the rules on their own terms, today.
💸 Many founders can raise private capital, but fewer know how to invest it—here’s what you need to know (min: $250k).
🗂️ Coding agents will fetch context on demand and store tool output as files , cutting tokens by 46.9%.
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Commonwealth Fusion Systems Advances SPARC Fusion Reactor with Nvidia Collaboration
Fusion moves from vibes to hardware: SPARC construction is on schedule; it just installed the first magnet and is partnering with Nvidia/Siemens to build a digital twin to tune operations faster. If physics cooperates, the machine aims to turn on in 2027.
Why it matters: AI’s power hunger makes firm, clean baseload strategic. Digital twins compress commissioning, trim CAPEX/OPEX surprises, and sharpen control loops; helpful before first grid electrons in the early 2030s. Nearly $3B raised; 18 20‑tesla magnets slated this year.
Stakeholders: utilities get familiar plant economics; regulators get safer knobs; startups get a reminder that breakthrough + grind wins, see PMF didn’t happen from Hunter Walk; working IRL > slideware.
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