🗞️ YOUR DAILY ROLLUP

Top Stories of the Day

🤖 Thinking Machines Lab Tackles AI’s Unpredictable Side
Mira Murati’s well-funded startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has broken its silence with a new research post—“Defeating Nondeterminism in LLM Inference.” The team argues that the root of AI randomness lies in how GPU kernels—tiny programs powering inference—are orchestrated. By controlling that layer more tightly, they believe it’s possible to make AI outputs deterministic.

💰 Replit Raises $250M, Hits $3B Valuation
AI coding startup Replit has raised $250M, tripling its valuation to $3B. The round, led by Prysm Capital, backs Replit’s growth into agentic AI development tools like Agent 3. With 40M users and $150M in revenue, Replit plans to expand hiring and product capabilities. Its goal: make programming radically more accessible.

🔑 New Protocol Aims to License AI Training Data
RSS co-creator Eckart Walther has launched Real Simple Licensing (RSL), a new protocol to help publishers license their content for AI training. Backed by Reddit, Quora, and Yahoo, RSL combines machine-readable terms with a collective licensing body to manage royalties. It’s a bid to prevent AI from defaulting to free, unlicensed scraping.

🖼️ ByteDance Unveils Seedream 4.0 to Rival Google
ByteDance launched Seedream 4.0, claiming it beats Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash Image in prompt accuracy, alignment, and aesthetics. The tool merges generation and editing features, priced at $30 per 1,000 outputs. Results are based on internal tests, with no published technical report yet.

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🧬 HEALTH

How One Man Built His Own AI Medical Team, and Transformed His Cancer Care

When tech entrepreneur Steve Brown was diagnosed with an aggressive blood cancer, he didn’t just follow standard protocols—he built an AI-powered medical team from scratch. Using customized agents trained on his health data, Brown’s system flagged issues missed by doctors and suggested alternative, more effective treatment paths.

His approach didn’t replace human physicians but gave him a clearer, faster, and more personalized roadmap—one that led to a dramatic improvement in his condition. Brown’s story underscores a shift in medicine: from one-size-fits-all to AI-augmented, patient-driven precision. → Read the full article here.

🔐 PRIVACY

Meredith Whittaker Sounds Alarm on AI Agents: “They’re Coming for Your Privacy”

Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, warns that AI agents—promoted as digital assistants of the future—pose an immediate threat to privacy, security, and fair competition. These systems require deep access to users’ devices and data, blurring boundaries between apps and operating systems in ways that could undermine encryption and bypass standard security protocols.

As Apple, Google, and Microsoft embed agents into their platforms, the concern is less about convenience and more about control. Whittaker calls for structural safeguards: privacy-by-default settings, developer-level controls, and architectural transparency—before AI convenience guts cybersecurity norms. → Read the full article here.

🌌 SCIENCE

NASA Taps AI to Forecast Solar Storms That Threaten Satellites

NASA’s Frontier Development Lab has partnered with AI firm KX Systems to predict solar storms—those same forces behind auroras—that can disrupt critical satellite systems. By training machine learning models on real-time data from the ionosphere, solar activity, and Earth’s magnetic field, the team achieved 24-hour forecasts of signal-disrupting space weather.

The initiative showcases how AI originally built for financial markets is now safeguarding satellites—and even influencing predictive tech in manufacturing. It's a smart fusion of public science and commercial speed, aimed at staying ahead of the sun’s unpredictable temper. → Read the full paper here.

🛰️ NEWS

What Else is Happening

Ꮤ Volkswagen Bets Big on AI: The automaker will pour $1.2B into AI by 2030 to accelerate car development, boost efficiency, and upgrade its IT backbone across global operations.

☢️ Nuclearn Lands $10.5M to Power AI in Nuclear: The startup's tools already support 65+ reactors, helping automate tedious tasks—without replacing humans or risking safety.

👨‍⚖️ Judge Halts Anthropic’s $1.5B AI Lawsuit Deal: A federal judge slammed the landmark copyright settlement as unfair, demanding clearer terms before authors see a dime.

😎 Ellison Becomes World’s Richest: A record $101B surge in wealth puts Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison ahead of Elon Musk after AI-driven earnings sent Oracle shares skyrocketing 41%.

📈 Mercor Eyes $10B Valuation: AI training startup Mercor is nearing $500M in revenue and profitability as it courts investors, despite a lawsuit from rival Scale AI over trade secrets.

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🤠 THE DAILY BYTE

Britain’s AI Wrench: Fixing Manufacturing’s Labor Shortage

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Matthew Berman & The Forward Future Team

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