Tech

16 of the most interesting startups from YC W26 Demo Day

From redirecting doomscrolling to training humanoid robots, these 16 startups stood out as the most interesting ones from an overflowing YC cohort.

The open loop audit prompt that separates real delegation from simulated work + 3 more prompts for overnight execution

Anthropic shipped Dispatch and computer use this week. Together, they give you something that nearly a thousand people stood in line for in Shenzhen: you text Claude from your phone, it takes over your desktop, opens apps, clicks through screens, navigates tools that have no API, and delivers finished work while you’re away. Not a summary for you to review or a draft for you to edit. The finished work, handled.

Kandou AI raises $225M from SoftBank and Synopsys to solve AI's memory wall

Kandou AI, a Swiss semiconductor company that builds chip-to-chip interconnect technology, has raised $225 million in what it calls a Series A round, led by Maverick Silicon with strategic participation from SoftBank, Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, and Alchip Technologies. The round values the company at $400 million. The label is worth pausing on: Kandou was founded in 2011 and previously raised more than $163 million across Series B and C rounds under the name Kandou Bus. The “Series A” designation reflects a rebrand and leadership change, not a fresh start.

Meta Launches Prescription Ray-Ban Smart Glasses to Reach Billions of Eyewear Buyers

Meta is preparing to launch two new Ray-Ban smart glasses models designed specifically for prescription wearers, according to a Bloomberg report published on Thursday. The models, codenamed Scriber and Blazer, were first spotted in Federal Communications Commission filings and are expected to reach consumers as early as next week. They do not represent a new generation of hardware. They represent something potentially more important: a distribution strategy.

All 11 xAI co-founders have now left Elon Musk's AI company

Every co-founder Elon Musk recruited to build xAI has now reportedly left the company. Manuel Kroiss, who led the pretraining team, told people this month that he was departing. Ross Nordeen, described by Business Insider as Musk’s “right-hand operator,” left on Friday. They were the last two of eleven co-founders, all of whom have exited a company that was valued at $250 billion when SpaceX acquired it in February and that Musk himself described two weeks ago as having been “not built right the first time around.”

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The security of our systems and user data is Anthropic’s top priority. We appreciate the work of security researchers acting in good faith in identifying and reporting potential vulnerabilities.