Anthropic, OpenAI, and the Pentagon: a cautionary tale for democratic AI governance
Anthropic, OpenAI, and the Pentagon: a cautionary tale for democratic AI governance

On the afternoon of 27 February 2026, Pete Hegseth picked up his phone and posted to X. The US Secretary of Defense had just designated Anthropic, a San Francisco AI company, a “supply chain risk to national security.” The label, under 10 USC 3252, had…

Science Corp is preparing to place its first brain sensor in a human, betting biology will beat electrodes
Science Corp is preparing to place its first brain sensor in a human, betting biology will beat electrodes

Science Corporation, the BCI company founded by ex-Neuralink president Max Hodak, is preparing to place a pea-sized, 520-electrode sensor on a human brain’s surface during already-scheduled surgery. Yale neurosurgery chair Murat Günel will lead the pro…

YouTube will now pause livestream ads when chat engagement peaks
YouTube will now pause livestream ads when chat engagement peaks

YouTube will now automatically hold back advertisements during livestreams when its systems detect that chat engagement has peaked, a change that prioritises collective viewer experience over ad impressions in real time. The platform announced the feat…

AppDirect buys PartnerStack to complete its ‘everything store’ for B2B software distribution
AppDirect buys PartnerStack to complete its ‘everything store’ for B2B software distribution

In short: AppDirect has acquired Toronto-based PartnerStack, the partner relationship management platform with 138,000+ B2B partners and ~50% market share in the PRM category. Terms were not disclosed. The deal is AppDirect’s sixth acquisition in 12 mo…

Hexagon pays $1.45 billion for Baker Hughes’ inspection tech unit in biggest European industrial deal of 2026
Hexagon pays $1.45 billion for Baker Hughes’ inspection tech unit in biggest European industrial deal of 2026

Hexagon AB, the Swedish industrial technology group ($29B market cap, €5.4B revenue), is acquiring Waygate Technologies from Baker Hughes for $1.45 billion in cash. Waygate is the world’s leading non-destructive testing (NDT) company, with ~$630M in re…

Synera raises $40M to bring agentic AI into engineering workflows at NASA, BMW, Airbus, and Hyundai
Synera raises $40M to bring agentic AI into engineering workflows at NASA, BMW, Airbus, and Hyundai

The Bremen startup’s platform deploys teams of AI agents that autonomously execute engineering tasks across more than 75 existing tools, without replacing any of them. Revaia led the Series B; Capgemini joined through its ISAI Cap Venture vehicle. All …

Amazon agrees to acquire Globalstar in an $11.6B deal
Amazon agrees to acquire Globalstar in an $11.6B deal

Amazon and Apple have also signed a separate agreement for Amazon Leo to continue powering satellite features on iPhone and Apple Watch. The deal gives Amazon the spectrum, infrastructure, and operational expertise to launch direct-to-device satellite …

Helical closes $10M seed to turn bio foundation models into systems
Helical closes $10M seed to turn bio foundation models into systems

The Luxembourg-founded startup is already in production with multiple top-20 global pharma companies, including a public collaboration with Pfizer. Its $10M seed round is led by redalpine, with the CEOs of Cohere and HuggingFace among the angel investo…

France bets €500 million that quantum computing is the tech race Europe can finally win
France bets €500 million that quantum computing is the tech race Europe can finally win

Europe has spent a decade watching American and Chinese companies capture every major technology wave, cloud, mobile, social, AI. Quantum computing may be the exception. A cluster of French startups, backed by €500 million in government funding and und…

Stanford’s annual AI report finds a widening gap between AI insiders and everyone else
Stanford’s annual AI report finds a widening gap between AI insiders and everyone else

The 2026 AI Index from Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered AI documents a deepening disconnect between expert optimism and public anxiety. Gen Z anger about AI is rising fast. Employment in AI-exposed fields among younger workers is already declini…