Silicon Valley’s AI wunderkind launches Underdog, the most private Instinct/Muse competitor yet; plus, name Ex-Ramp engineers raise $20M for platform Melius

Plants can speak using electricity, so this startup built an AI model to decipher their language

Oct. 21, 2026

Electric Plant has built an AI-powered translator to help humans listen to what plants are saying with the subtle electricity coursing through their stems. Also, OpenAI says it's adding Orchestra's team and technology to work on Rosalind, its AI model for life sciences research, and to its related…

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Amazon is taking its biggest shot at Nvidia yet; plus, Town nabbed unicorn valuation, and Tolan snags $30M for its AI companion

Oct. 20, 2026

Amazon wants to break Nvidia’s hold on PyTorch, the free toolkit used to build most AI apps, so that more developers run their apps on alternative chips like its own. Also, AI assistant startup Town nabbed a unicorn valuation on Monday, announcing a $108 million Series B round co-led by Forerunner…

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Veritas expands its anti-counterfeit chip to jewelry, trophies, and fragrance bottles; plus, Elorian’s first AI model wants to reason with images

Oct. 19, 2026

Counterfeiters are getting better at replicating brands' marks and passing off dupes, known as "superfakes," as genuine items. A startup called Veritas wants to tackle the problem with its own chip that verifies goods. Also, according to Elorian's evaluations, Glimpse outperforms even GPT-6 Astra …

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AI lab Flapping Airplanes raises $1B at a $6B valuation; plus, Recursive launches Flint, a laptop coding model it says was largely built by AI

Oct. 22, 2026

Just 9 months after raising an $180 million seed round, Flapping Airplanes has landed $1 billion Series A for its mission to build AI models "without ingesting half the internet." Also, startup Recursive has released Flint, a free, laptop-sized coding model built largely by its own AI research sys…

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