Tech 24 - July 23, 2026

ROBOTICS • YESTERDAY

Travis Kalanick's robot company raises $1.7 billion

Travis Kalanick is back. His new company, Atoms, just raised $1.7 billion. Andreessen Horowitz led the round.

Uber joined too. That is the same company that pushed Kalanick out in 2017. Ben Horowitz takes a board seat. Bain Capital and Fifth Wall also put in money.

Atoms wants to build robots for heavy industry. Kalanick calls it a wheelbase for robots. The goal, he says, is software that can understand and control the physical world.

Money is chasing robots that move things, not just chat. If Atoms works, factories and warehouses change first. Your delivery times, your prices, and your job could follow.

AI • 2 DAYS AGO

Nvidia's new chip goes after AMD and Intel

Nvidia pulled back the curtain on its next chip. It is called Vera, and it is a CPU, not a GPU.

Nvidia says Vera runs AI agents up to 1.8 times faster than a standard x86 chip. It packs 88 custom cores and moves 1.2 terabytes of data per second. It is already in full production.

OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX got the first units in June. That points Nvidia straight at AMD and Intel, who have owned the server chip for decades. AI agents need fast chips to run, not just to train, and Nvidia now wants to sell you both halves.

DEV TOOLS • YESTERDAY

A security startup hit $1.2 billion on day one

A new security startup came out of hiding on Wednesday. Glow raised $180 million. That values it at $1.2 billion.

Sequoia, Greenoaks, and Redpoint backed it. The founders came from Meta and Snowflake. Glow watches company laptops for risky software and rogue AI agents, and tries to block bad code before it installs.

Attackers now use AI to write malware fast. Every company you trust with your data is racing to keep up, and investors are paying up to help them.

PRODUCTS • 2 DAYS AGO

Jack Dorsey wants to replace Slack

Jack Dorsey is coming for the office chat. His company Block released Buzz on Monday.

Buzz is a group chat for teams and their AI agents. It runs on Nostr, an open protocol no single company owns. Most work apps bolt AI on as a sidebar. Buzz treats agents as full members of the room, able to read the code and post alongside people.

Agents are moving from answering questions to doing the work. The tools built for that will decide how your team runs.

MEDIA & LAW • 3 DAYS AGO

A judge froze the $110 billion Paramount-Warner deal

A federal judge hit pause on the biggest media deal in years. Paramount Skydance wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery for $110 billion.

The judge says the merger likely breaks antitrust law. She ordered both sides to stop for 14 days. A group of state attorneys general, led by California, brought the case.

The deal would put HBO Max, CBS, CNN, and Paramount+ under one roof. A hearing on August 3 decides what happens next. One company would own a huge slice of what you watch, and the states want to stop it.

CONSUMER • YESTERDAY

Substack will now guess if your writer used AI

Substack added an AI detector on Tuesday. It uses a tool called Pangram. Writers can scan any post over 100 words.

The timing is odd. New research this month found detectors miss up to 18 percent of AI text written in someone's style. Substack calls the result an estimate, not a verdict, and it does not ban anyone over a score.

Readers want to know what a human wrote. The tools that promise to tell them still guess more than they know.

PRODUCTS • 2 DAYS AGO

The flip phone is back, and it costs $299

Light just revealed a flip phone. It is colorful, it costs $299, and it leaves the apps out.

The Vergecast got hands on it. Watch the clamshell open in under a minute. The 2.8-inch screen and keypad are the whole point. Light is betting people will pay to use their phones less.

Stat of the Day

The money keeps chasing AI

Global startup funding hit a record $510 billion in the first half of 2026. OpenAI and Anthropic alone raised $217 billion of it.