In less than a decade, the serial entrepreneur best known for his EV company Rivian has raised more than $12.3 billion from venture capital firms, as well as from strategic and institutional investors for his three ' and counting ' startups. If the latest $400 million raise for his new venture Mind Robotics is an indicator, investors are still happily piling in. Outsized raises for newly minted startups have become more common in recent years. But those hundred-million-plus seed rounds have generally been reserved for buzzy defense tech startups or AI companies founded by former OpenAI or Anthropic employees. Those supersized seeds certainly weren't flowing toward something as niche as an electric micromobility startup. And yet in 2025, Scaringe raised $105 million for exactly that ' a startup called Also, which he founded that same year. The total has since surpassed $300 million, with DoorDash among its backers. Jiten Behl, partner at Eclipse and former chief growth officer at Rivian, has spent years watching and learning from Scaringe. His firm is now one of Scaringe's biggest backers, leading rounds in both Also and Mind Robotics ' Scaringe's industrial AI and robotics startup that he also founded last year....

This week, MIT launches a new initiative ' titled Science Is Curiosity on a Mission ' to make the case for the long-horizon, curiosity-driven science that has powered generations of American innovation. Through stories of scientists pursuing open-ended questions, the project highlights how fundamental discovery research sparks advances in medicine, technology, national security, and economic growth. MIT News spoke with Alfred Ironside, the Institute's vice president for communications, about what inspired the effort, what's at stake for the U.S. research enterprise, and why curiosity remains one of America's greatest strengths. A: Science has been under threat for some time now, and public investment in discovery science has been flagging. We want to remind people in Washington and across the country what curiosity-driven science is all about, and why it matters so much in our individual lives and in the life of the country. Science begins with curiosity ' someone asking a question and refusing to let it go. History's most important discoveries did not begin with a commercial objective or a guaranteed outcome. They began because someone wanted to understand how the world works. Think Ben Franklin and his kite: This drive to discover goes back to the beginnings of the United States....

OpenAI is so frustrated with Apple over a ChatGPT integration that failed to deliver the subscribers and prominence it expected that the company is now actively exploring legal action against the iPhone maker, Bloomberg News reported Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. According to Bloomberg, OpenAI has enlisted an outside law firm to work through its options, which could include sending Apple a formal breach-of-contract notice without necessarily escalating to a full lawsuit (at least not immediately). Any legal move would likely wait until after the conclusion of OpenAI's ongoing trial with Elon Musk. Still, it's a reminder of what a difficult partner Apple can be for major software companies. The iPhone is an enormously attractive platform for growth, but it's fully under Apple's control ' and companies that build there are only guests. From Google to Adobe, there's a long history of Apple showing guests the door when they seem as if they're getting too comfortable. The OpenAI partnership, announced at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in June 2024, wove ChatGPT into Apple's operating systems as an option within Siri and as part of the iPhone's Visual Intelligence feature (allowing users to use their camera to analyze their surroundings and send photos to ChatGPT with related questions)....

Short-form video is a format that's built for mobile ' these vertically oriented videos are designed to fit the shape of a smartphone. But according to YouTube, this kind of content has become quite popular on the big screen. It seems counterintuitive, but the data is hard to argue against: YouTube viewers watch over 2 billion hours of YouTube Shorts ' the platform's clips that run up to three minutes ' on TVs each month. 'The living room is YouTube's fastest-growing screen, and the Shorts experience is further helping connect viewers with the world's most active creator community from the comfort of their couch,' said Kurt Wilms, YouTube's senior director of product management for YouTube on TV. 'We've found that audiences increasingly want to watch their favorite content on the biggest screen at home, whether it's long-form content, a podcast, or a Short.' The living room has become a major growth target for YouTube overall. U.S. viewers alone are watching over 200 million hours of YouTube content daily. YouTube shows Shorts in search results from users watching on TV, so even if they didn't set out to watch a minute-long clip on the big screen, they might end up checking one out anyway. Google TV, a platform from YouTube's parent company Alphabet, recently announced a 'Short videos for you' row on the Google TV feed, which is supposed to further boost watch time....