💬 Google veteran raises $8M for AI group chat assistant

Former Google engineer David Petrou, known for his work on Google Goggles and Glass, has launched Continua - an AI agent designed to join group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord to help coordinate plans, manage tasks, and reduce chat clutter.

🔸 Seed round of $8M led by GV, with Bessemer Venture Partners and angels joining
🔸 AI can set reminders, run polls, create documents, and answer follow-up questions in DMs
🔸 Specially fine-tuned to handle multi-person conversations with “social intelligence”
🔸 Users can add Continua directly to group chats and control how often it participates

Petrou says the goal is to make LLMs a seamless part of everyday group coordination without overwhelming the conversation.

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🎓 Free AI detector & text humanizer for students

A new tool helps students detect, rewrite, and humanize AI-generated content - perfect for bypassing plagiarism and AI detectors ahead of the new semester.

🔸 Detects AI-generated content in any document, image, or video
🔸 Shows which AI model was used and explains the detection process
🔸 Powerful text rewriting to pass detectors and add creativity
🔸 Choose rewriting via DeepSeek, GPT-4, or Claude
🔸 100% free to use

👉 Grab your study helper here

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🥂 Frugalpac to scale world’s first paper wine bottle after £5M crowdfunding push

UK-based Frugalpac has developed the Frugal Bottle - 94% recycled paper, 84% lower carbon footprint than glass, and five times lighter. Already adopted by 50+ brands in 27 countries, it’s prevented over 1,400 tonnes of CO₂ emissions.

🔸 Over 3M bottles produced since launch, stocked by Sainsbury’s, Aldi, Target, Whole Foods, and 7-Eleven
🔸 £5M equity crowdfunding on Crowdcube follows £1M from existing and new investors, valuing the company at £25M pre-money
🔸 Plans to deploy 22 Frugal Bottle Assembly Machines worldwide by 2029, enabling 191M bottles annually
🔸 New product lines in development, including recyclable paper paint pots and takeaway cups

Frugalpac’s goal: replace a slice of the 33B glass wine and spirits bottles used globally each year with scalable, low-carbon paper alternatives.

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⭕️ OpenAI brings back all old ChatGPT models

OpenAI has restored all previous models, including GPT-4o, after quietly removing some earlier this year.

🔸 GPT-5 Thinking now offers 3,000 weekly messages for Plus subscribers
🔸 Extra quota added for GPT-5 Thinking mini
🔸 GPT-4.5 shelved due to high energy costs

Next stop - GPT-6

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🚁 DJI aims beyond drones with premium home tech

DJI, the global drone leader, has entered the home electronics market with a $900 robot vacuum in China, blending cutting-edge navigation, strong data privacy, and built-in smart security features.

🔸 Precision navigation tech adapted from DJI’s drone expertise
🔸 Local data storage for higher privacy — no cloud mapping
🔸 Integrated smart camera for home and pet monitoring
🔸 Positioned as a security device as much as a vacuum
🔸 Price signals premium positioning, not “cheap but good”

DJI could become the first Chinese brand to escape the “good for the price” label.

Its reputation in drones already puts it in the global premium league - a “Chinese Apple” that can expand into any category without losing credibility.

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🖼 Browser tool turns any pic into clean 4K

Lupa works entirely in your browser and can upscale anything - old photos, portraits, posters to 4K without distorting faces or adding artifacts. Even shots from a decade-old camera come out looking fresh.

🔸 No installs — runs directly in your browser
🔸 Preserves faces and details, no weird artifacts
🔸 Works on any image type, from landscapes to posters
🔸 Boosts resolution up to 4K without changing the original look

👉 Link 👈

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🚀 NASA kicks off the race for a “Martian internet”

NASA will no longer build its own Mars data relays - instead, it plans to buy communications “as a service,” just like it does for astronaut transport.

The goal: a full system to move data from the Martian surface, through orbit, and back to Earth.

🔸 Current Mars data comes via aging orbiters like MRO and MAVEN
🔸 New commercial solutions are needed before these satellites fail
🔸 Blue Origin is developing an orbital relay based on Blue Ring (launch planned for 2028)
🔸 Rocket Lab and SpaceX are also in the race - SpaceX wants to adapt Starlink for Mars comms

If successful, this could create the backbone of a true interplanetary internet.

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🚨 Another founder exits xAI - launches AI safety fund

Igor Babuschkin, co-founder of Elon Musk’s xAI and former DeepMind/OpenAI engineer, has left the company to start Babuschkin Ventures - an investment firm focused on AI safety research and startups.

🔸 Helped build xAI from scratch, creating core training tools and leading engineering across infrastructure, product, and applied AI
🔸 Part of the team that built the Memphis supercluster in 120 days, enabling rapid model training
🔸 Departure follows other recent executive exits from xAI and Musk-led companies
🔸 New fund will back projects making AI more secure, reliable, and aligned with human values

Babuschkin says the goal is not to race toward superintelligence at all costs, but to build the guardrails that ensure it benefits humanity.

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🎬 Turning sketches into cinematic videos

Higgsfield’s new AI tool works like real video Photoshop - upload any image, draw what should happen, and the AI turns it into a realistic movie clip.

🔸 Converts static images into dynamic, high-quality video
🔸 Works with major AI models like MiniMax, Veo 3, and more
🔸 Simple interface — no editing skills required

👉 Free to try via the link 👈

This could make video creation as easy as doodling on a picture.

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🧲 Vulcan Elements takes on China’s rare-earth magnet dominance

Vulcan Elements is building a high-energy magnet plant in North Carolina to supply EVs, energy, and industrial markets, aiming to localize a supply chain now 90% controlled by China.

🔸 Focus on NdFeB and SmCo magnets — compact, powerful, and essential for EV motors, wind turbines, robotics, electronics, and medtech.

🔸 Pilot line and R&D already operational; team reportedly just 18 people despite the high-tech nature of the work.

🔸 Recently raised $65M to scale production and secure stable supply for OEMs.

The big question - will US buyers pay a premium for local supply, or will price still outweigh independence?

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🚀 The video that kept Perplexity’s CEO going

When asked what helped him push through the early days before any big wins, Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas didn’t name a mentor or a business book. He said: “A video of Elon Musk.”

🔸 The clip shows a reporter pressing Musk about failed rocket launches - trying to get under his skin.

🔸 Musk’s answer: “I never give up.”

🔸 That moment became Aravind’s personal reset button whenever things got tough.

So, no heavy startup tips this Friday, just a shot of raw motivation.

Here’s the video that fires him up every time

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🍞 Google launches “AI model for your toaster”

Google has released Gemma 3 270M - a compact open-source AI model with 270M parameters that runs on smartphones, Raspberry Pi, and smart devices.

🔸 Works fully offline without internet access
🔸 Fine-tunes easily for specific tasks
🔸 Beats similar models in instruction-following tests
🔸Consumes just 0.75% of Pixel 9 Pro’s battery for 25 chats

👉 Download here 👈

Already used in apps like children’s story generators, it’s built for privacy, low power use, and cloud-free operation.

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💼 Cohere hits $6.8B valuation with $500M raise

Cohere, the enterprise-focused LLM developer, has closed a $500M round, boosting its valuation from $5.5B last year to $6.8B. The 2019-founded company focuses on corporate clients, not mass consumers.

🔸 Partnerships include Oracle, Dell, SAP, RBC, Fujitsu, and LG
🔸 New investor: Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan
🔸 Backers in the round: Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, AMD, Nvidia, Salesforce
🔸 New hires: ex-Meta research head Joelle Pineau, ex-Uber and Shield AI exec François Chadwick as CFO
🔸 Subtle jab at rivals: “Repackaged consumer models” can’t match AI built for enterprise security from the ground up

Cohere is doubling down on the corporate AI race.

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💻 15 hottest coding topics for your next side project

A massive open-source library of coding project ideas is making the rounds - perfect for brushing up on skills and building a killer portfolio.

🔸 Covers everything from Python, Java, JS, Kotlin, R, HTML/CSS, C/C++ to advanced algorithms, data structures, VR, and graphics apps
🔸 Clearly structured by topic and difficulty so you can progress step-by-step
🔸 Includes creative picks like VR games you can build for headsets

👉 Dive in here 👈

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🤖 Robot wins race… after knocking over a human

At the first-ever World Robot Games, a Unitree runner made headlines for more than just speed - it accidentally knocked a person down mid-race.

🔸 The robot still crossed the finish line first.
🔸 Distance: 1.5 km in 6 minutes 34 seconds.
🔸 Event: part of the competition’s endurance category.

Good thing there’s no robot biathlon yet - we’d rather keep the rifles away.

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🤖 China unveils plan for pregnancy humanoid robot

Kaiwa Technology in Guangzhou is working on the world’s first humanoid robot with an artificial womb.

The machine is designed to carry a fetus through full gestation using artificial amniotic fluid and nutrient delivery, a prototype is expected by 2026, priced under $14K.

🔸 The concept was presented at the 2025 World Robot Conference in Beijing
🔸 Founder Zhang Qifeng says discussions with regulators in Guangdong are already underway
🔸 Artificial womb tech has been tested before - premature lambs were successfully grown in “biobags” in 2017
🔸 This leap aims to move from partial incubation toward full-term artificial gestation
🔸 The announcement has sparked both ethical concerns and interest as a potential solution for infertility

The project sits at the intersection of biotech and robotics, and raises a bigger question:

how far should we go in outsourcing the most human processes to machines?

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🚀 Two paths to a seed round

Hot founders in hot markets can skip straight to $4M seeds.

Everyone else takes the long road - bootstrap, grants, accelerators, angels - before VCs write the $2M check.

Same label, very different journeys.

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🫂 AI brings back in-person job interviews

Companies are shifting away from Zoom and back to face-to-face meetings. Reason: too many candidates lean on AI to cheat during online interviews — especially in technical roles.

🔸 Google, Cisco, and McKinsey have reinstated live stages
🔸 At Google, even coding interviews are back in person
🔸 McKinsey says it’s about seeing how candidates connect in real life
🔸 FBI warns of bigger risks - deepfakes, fake profiles, and workers posing as others with AI help

The return to old-school interviews shows that sometimes the best filter is still human presence.

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