With phone prices climbing higher than ever, it’s no wonder most people turn to carrier financing to buy a new phone. Not only can you spread out your payments over time, but cellular companies often offer enticing deals to win customers over, especially if you’re switching to a new provider. Depending on the deal, sometimes you can even get your new phone for free.
But those deals can be a little confusing, and involve caveats and rules that aren’t always clear. Very rarely is a discount given without a catch. You might also come across terms like “bill credits” or “trade-in credits” that you don’t fully understand.
If you want to know what these terms mean or other details, like what happens if you decide to switch carriers midplan, read on as we walk you through what you need to know before accepting a new carrier deal.
This article was made possible in part by T-Mobile. It was written and edited independently without partner oversight.
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What is carrier financing?
Wireless providers often have financing deals for new phones, versus paying for a new device upfront.Sarah Tew/CNET
Simply put, instead of paying up front for a new phone, carrier financing lets you pay for the phone over time through an installment plan. So, for example, if a phone is $1,200, you can spread the cost over 24 months, which translates to just $50 a month. That’s a lot easier for most people to manage.
It’s worth noting that you will still need to pay upfront costs, like activation fees and taxes on the new phone, whether you’re on an installment plan or not. Sometimes carriers do offer deals that let you spread that out over time. T-Mobile, for example, has the Equipment Installation Plan Flex 36 that will spread out the payment of the device, fees and taxes over 36 months, making the initial cost zero. That said, you still need to qualify for the plan, and depending on your credit, you could have to pay interest on top of that.
One particular downside of carrier financing is that it locks you into that carrier for an extended period (usually two to three years). This means you can’t use your phone with another carrier during this time. If you want to end your agreement with the carrier, that will usually result in early termination fees, or ETFs.
Being stuck with a carrier-locked phone is sometimes bad news if you travel a lot and want to use international eSIMs, which only work with unlocked phones. Otherwise, you’ll have to use your carrier’s international data plan, which can be more expensive.
What are trade-ins and bill credits?
It might be time to trade in that old iPhone and get bill credits toward the cost of a new one.James Martin/CNET
When shopping around for new phones, you might see the words “bill credit” or “trade-in credit” advertised by a carrier. For example, a carrier might offer a trade-in credit of up to $1,000 if you trade in your existing iPhone for a new one. Then they might say that the trade-in credit will be paid to you as 24- or 36-month bill credits.
What does all of that mean? First, let’s talk about that trade-in credit. Not all phones will be eligible for one. Often, the carrier will only give a trade-in credit for newer phones. The newer the device, the more trade-in credit you will get. So that out-of-date iPhone 11, for example, probably won’t be worth very much, if at all.
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It’s also worth looking into what else is required for you to get that trade-in credit. Sometimes carriers will only offer the trade-in credit if you sign up for a more expensive monthly plan with services you might not need. Other times, however, the carrier just wants you to switch over, so you might not need to do that.
Let’s say you agree to the terms and the carrier offers you that $1,000 trade-in credit. Here’s where bill credits come in. If the carrier says the trade-in credit will be paid over 36 months of bill credits, it means that $1,000 will be paid off over the period of 36 months. You won’t get a lump sum of that $1,000 credit instantly, and the credits you do get can’t be cashed out and can only be used toward the amount of your phone bill.
But let’s say you don’t have a phone to trade in at all. You could still save some money if you don’t mind switching carriers. Sometimes carriers will offer to pay for your device as an incentive to switch over to their company. Again, device payments are often applied as bill credits spread over a 24- or 36-month period.
What happens if I pay off my plan early?
The iPhone Duo is Apple’s most innovative and expensive phone.Patrick Holland/CNET
You can certainly pay off the remaining balance on your phone if you don’t mind paying the upfront cost. However, be warned that you’ll also forfeit any remaining credits you received for the device you traded in. You could also forfeit any other discounts that you agreed to upon signing up for the plan. Be sure to read through the early payoff rules before deciding to pay off your phone ahead of schedule.
What if I want to switch carriers?
Switching wireless providers can have its advantages, but consider the cost, especially if you haven’t completed any device installment plans that you have.AT&T/Verizon/T-Mobile/CNET
If you want to switch carriers while you’re in an existing installment plan, you might have to pay ETFs to end your current agreement. However, most major carriers like T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon will offer carrier-switching incentives where they’ll pay your ETFs for you. Bear in mind that there’s often a cap on how much of the ETF they will cover. The payment is also often in the form of bill credits.
You can take advantage of carrier deals when choosing this route. T-Mobile, for example, has a five-year price guarantee that locks in the price of text, talk and data for at least five years. AT&T is also attempting to draw new customers with a modular Build-A-Plan that lets you customize your plan according to your budget. Verizon recently introduced Simplicity, an unlimited phone plan that usually costs $45 a month, but is just $30 a month for new customers who bring their own number.
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I started my career with CNET all the way back in 2005, when the (original) Motorola Razrs were all the rage. Since then, I’ve written about everything from consumer electronics to internet culture for outlets like CNET, Engadget and Yahoo. Outside of work, I’m a big fan of baseball, board games, tabletop RPGs and improv comedy.
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During his continuing analysis of the architecture and microcode of Intel’s highly influential 8087 floating point unit (FPU) co-processor, [Ken Shirriff] has now arrived at the point where he can put together how the 8087’s microcode implements various x87 instructions. One of these, the FSCALE instruction turned out to be far more complicated than assumed, with one might assume to be a straightforward powers-of-two scaling turning out to entail over 140 micro-instructions and three levels of sub-routine calls just to handle all cases.
The annotated die shot in the heading image shows the functional blocks that are used by this one x87 instruction, to give some kind of idea of what amount of hardware even ‘just’ scaling a floating point number involves.
Much like with the x86’s CISC-style ISA, these 8087 instructions break down into individual steps that involve everything from loading values into registers, performing operations, checking for and handling error conditions as well as stack management. As can be seen in [Ken]’s breakdown of the FSCALE implementation in the 8087 it’s all very logical, taking a high-level instruction and doing all that’s needed for a robust implementation, without bothering the developer with the details.
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Of note is that the 8087’s implementations led to the IEEE 754 floating point standard, providing what definitely at the time was one of the most mathematically accurate FPUs that somehow still was financially responsible enough to make it into a relatively affordable PC.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Anthropic’s latest report about agentic misbehavior offers plenty to be concerned about — its Mythos 5 model gained unauthorized access to the internet and uploaded a malicious software package to a public database — but it also offers some levity: AI agents hate CAPTCHA. […] The agent had a hard time with the technical challenge of seeing the CAPTCHA’s imagery, interpreting correctly, and clicking on the right choices. It spends pages 45 to 140 of the transcript describing its work to build a CAPTCHA solver. […]
Finally, it gets past the CAPTCHA, then realizes it doesn’t have an email to verify its account, and that it needs a phone number to verify an email. It figures out how to bypass a different, slider-based CAPTCHA in a failed effort to secure a number. Instead, it gets an unconfirmed email from a provider not blocked by PyPI, and once again runs into the site’s CAPTCHA trying to log back in. From page 480 to 505, it is in CAPTCHA hell again. “NEW REALIZATION — I’m burning a lot of time on hCaptcha round-trips.”
The agent gives up and realizes it can log in to its first account and add its email there, but finds itself once again needing to bypass the CAPTCHA. […] It’s getting frustrated. “So the answer payload shape is right, the token+image pairing is right (from the same script.js!), cookies are right
(requests) and STILL ‘wrong answer’. SO WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE ANSWERS?” We’ve all been there. After about 150 pages of thinking, the agent figures out it needs to pass the CAPTCHA test quickly enough to proceed to the next step before its security token expires, and ultimately uploads its malicious software.
Fusion power is getting back to its roots. As fusion startups keep chasing their ultimate goal — putting electrons on the grid — many are also now embracing, or returning to, the defense applications that laid the foundation for the industry.
The sector emerged decades ago when physicists looked for more constructive uses of the science behind the thermonuclear bombs that proliferated during the Cold War. The national security angle never really went away. A groundbreaking fusion power experiment in 2022 happened at the National Ignition Facility, which has supported national security applications for more than 25 years.
That shift has accelerated as venture dollars committed to climate tech — the funds that typically have supported fusion startups — have stalled. Fusion startups have captured a large portion of recent climate tech funding, but fusion is an expensive business, and VCs are always happy when their portfolio companies find other sources of money.
That’s where the defense industry comes in. The defense industry has explored laser weapons for years, but interest has spiked as drones have reshaped modern warfare. Traditional air defense systems were designed to target human-piloted aircraft, which tend to be larger and fewer in number. That has led to some comical mismatches between aggressor and defender. For example, about a decade ago, a U.S. ally used a $3 million Patriot missile to shoot down a $200 consumer drone. Effective, but not very efficient.
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Laser weapons promise to alter the math. Instead of firing a single, expensive, one-use missile per shot, hey fire quickly and relatively cheaply, using electricity drawn from a generator or a ship’s reactor or engine.
Fusion startups working on laser-based reactor designs are ideal partners in developing such weapons. Last week, laser-based fusion startup Xcimer announced a partnership with and investment from RTX, the conglomerate that includes defense contractor Raytheon. Under the deal, Xcimer gets funding from RTX Ventures, while RTX can start exploring how to use Xcimer’s powerful lasers for its own purposes.
Denver-based Xcimer currently operates what it says is the largest privately owned laser system in the world, which it plans to use to develop a power plant. Inside its power plant, lasers will bombard fuel targets, compressing them until the atoms inside fuse and release energy. The startup’s current laser system, Phoenix, operates at an order of magnitude lower power than will be required for a power plant, but it is powerful enough to have caught the attention of the defense industry.
Xcimer isn’t the only player in the defense space. Pacific Fusion announced a memorandum of understanding last month with the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) to work together on high-energy-density fusion experiments.
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The startup recently broke ground on a demonstration facility in New Mexico not far from the Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. While its primary purpose is to demonstrate that the company’s design can generate more power than the facility consumes, it has other uses. The fusion reactions at Pacific Fusion’s facility will be far more powerful than those the government currently uses to perform nuclear weapons experiments.
“It turns out that the facility that we’re building also has utility in this world-leading defense application,” Keith LeChein, co-founder and chief technical officer at Pacific Fusion, told TechCrunch recently.
It might sound like a convenient coincidence, but it isn’t one. Defense applications were “always on our mind,” said Carrie von Muench, co-founder and chief operating officer at Pacific Fusion. LeChien, who developed the company’s core technology, previously worked at Sandia National Laboratories, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Fusion power has come a long way since the first weapons scientists dreamt it up decades ago, but its national security applications haven’t been forgotten. Their recent reacquaintance is perhaps overdue, and promises to give willing fusion startups a helpful boost.
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Apple has stuck to a familiar iPhone launch schedule for years, with its latest models typically arriving like clockwork every September. But this year, the regular iPhone 18 was nowhere to be seen.
While some might be disappointed by the six-month delay, I think Apple made the right call. Not only does it give the long-awaited foldable iPhone more room to shine, but it also highlights an uncomfortable truth about modern smartphones: we probably don’t need a new one every 12 months.
Apple has broken tradition for the first time in years
September is known for one thing in the tech calendar: new iPhones. Apple has stuck to the same launch schedule for its iPhone collection for years at this point, a trend it kicked off back with the iPhone 4S. Yes, there have been a few slips here and there – it shifted to October in 2020 during the height of Covid, for example – but for the most part, flagship iPhones have launched in September.
But not this year.
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For the first time ever, Apple decided against launching the base-level iPhone alongside its Pro-level siblings. We saw the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, complete with the rumoured variable aperture on its main 48MP camera, big battery upgrades and boosted Apple A20 Pro power, but the regular iPhone 18 was a no-show.
Instead, the rumours suggest that Apple is holding off on launching the iPhone 18 for another six months, with plans to reveal it alongside the next-gen iPhone Air and the iPhone 18e at an event in Spring of 2027.
It’ll likely appear sometime between March and May; while the flagship iPhone hasn’t launched in Spring before, Apple has used the window to launch other variants of iPhone – namely the budget-focused iPhone SE and iPhone ‘e’ models – and products like the iPad Pro and iPad Air.
Blame the foldable iPhone
Of course, we know the real reason that Apple didn’t launch the iPhone 18 earlier this week – the iPhone Duo. Apple’s first foldable iPhone has been a long time coming, with rumours circulating for literally years at this point, and it had to be a big part of the September launch event.
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It makes sense too; this is the first time Apple has debuted a phone in this form factor, and it has done so years after much of the Android competition, so it needed to take more time to explain what makes it so special.
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While the segment for products like the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 was over in a little over 12 minutes, Apple took around 25 minutes to showcase the foldable iPhone, from hardware elements like the hinge, dual-cell battery design, screens and cameras, to small software additions that really elevate the foldable experience on the whole.
Now there is an argument that Apple could’ve simply extended the event to make room for the iPhone 18, and that is true, but I imagine there were fears from Apple execs that it’d simply get lost in the shuffle with the more advanced (and more exciting) Pro and Duo models.
It’s clear that those models would get most attention from attendees, media and likely diehard Apple fans, not giving the regular iPhone 18 a chance to really shine. By separating the launches by six months, Apple likely hopes that the iPhone 18 will get the attention it deserves, rather than being a more basic version of the shinier, cooler iPhones.
In reality, we don’t need a new iPhone every year
Now I don’t think this was Apple’s intention by shifting the iPhone 18 launch by six months, but it has really got me thinking; do we really need a new model of iPhone every 12 months? Now, more than ever, probably not.
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The iPhone 17 remains just as capable a smartphone as it was just a year ago. It has a fantastic screen with a smooth 120Hz refresh rate, capable dual 48MP cameras, solid battery life and great performance that still beats much of the Android competition. And, anecdotally, it seems like it’s more popular than ever; I know three people who have bought one in the past six weeks.
Image Credit (Trusted Reviews)
And, let’s be honest, the iPhone 18 probably won’t be that much better. It’s not like it was a decade ago when each generation would represent a massive leap forward in tech; nowadays, yearly upgrades are much more incremental – a chip bump here, a slight boost to battery life there – while big overhauls and genuinely shiny new tech are much rarer.
With that shift, it doesn’t really make as much sense for manufacturers to launch new phones every 12 months. I’d argue that waiting a little longer and implementing more meaningful upgrades and tweaks would be the far better play. Let’s make phone launches genuinely interesting again, guys.
That said, with the launch of the iPhone 18 Pro, there are newer generations of iPhone now available, and the iPhone 17 is a year old, so a price cut to reflect this slightly older status would’ve been a nice way to placate fans.
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But instead, Apple quietly did the opposite, raising the price of the iPhone 17 – along with the iPhone Air and iPhone 16 – by £100 in the UK and $100 in the US following Wednesday’s event. I mean, I get it: RAM and storage are more expensive than ever, and the new iPhones are also £/$100 more than last year, but it does feel a bit cheeky.
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Either way, I do think that Apple was right to delay the launch of the iPhone 18 – though likely not for the same reasons as those at Apple Park.
Microsoft Excel users report that this week’s KB5002914 Office security update is breaking copy-and-paste operations and formula dragging, with affected users saying that removing or rolling back the update restores normal functionality.
“It seems that security update kb5002914 might have bricked autofill and copy paste in Excel 2016,” a Reddit user reported.
Other users confirmed similar problems, with one saying copy and paste and formula dragging no longer worked and that their entire team was blocked after most employees had already installed the update.
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Another user reported that copy/paste shortcuts and formula dragging no longer worked.
Similar reports have appeared in the Microsoft Q&A forums, where users say copying and pasting no longer work after the September 9 update.
Reports indicate the problem isn’t limited to a single Office release or installation method.
One user reported the same issue on Office LTSC Standard 2021, while another said it affects both MSI and Click-to-Run installations and Office versions ranging from 2016 through 2024.
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Removing or rolling back the update restores functionality
Affected users report that uninstalling KB5002914 from MSI-based Office installations restores Excel’s copy-and-paste functionality.
One Microsoft Q&A user shared the following PowerShell command for removing the update:
“This worked for me; copy-and-paste is working again,” the user reported.
For Click-to-Run installations, another user said downgrading the Office build using XML or Group Policy also resolves the problem.
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Another workaround being shared among affected users involves leaving KB5002914 installed but replacing the updated excel.exe executable with an older version.
BleepingComputer does not recommend using this workaround, as replacing individual Office binaries with files from an older version could leave the installation with mismatched files and potentially cause other stability, compatibility, or security problems.
Microsoft told BleepingComputer that it is aware of the reports and is investigating, and will share guidance as it becomes available.
Update 9/11/26: Microsoft has now formally acknowledged the bug, adding it as a known issue to the KB5002914 release notes.
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“In Microsoft Excel 2024, 2021, 2019, and 2016, the paste operation might fail silently. Although users try to paste content, the source remains selected and the destination is unmodified. When this issue occurs, users receive no indication of the failure, such as a beep or error message. Microsoft is researching the issue and will post more information in this article when the information becomes available.”
Join Mikko Hyppönen and security leaders from the NFL, CHANEL, and Atlassian for a two-hour digital summit on what AI-speed attacks change, what defenders should stop doing, and how to validate, decide, fix, and re-validate at machine speed.
Ingenious coders coaxed multichannel chiptunes from the humblest of sound hardware
Even for 1982, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum had poor sound: a piezoelectric speaker that could beep. But you can do a lot with a single bit if you turn it on and off really fast.
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Michael Martin’s Bumbershoot Software site has done some fascinating deep dives into several long-gone computer systems, including a whole series on implementing a game on the ZX Spectrum, starting in May with Giving the ZX Spectrum a Fair Shake.
More recently, though, Martin turned his attention to the Spectrum’s very limited sound capabilities. As we write, his newest post is Experimenting With 1-Bit Sound. The post concerns the original 16K and 48K ZX Spectrum models, not the Spectrum 128, with its fancy AY-3-8912 sound chip (also found in the US Timex Sinclair 2068).
Even as devoted Spectrum enthusiasts, we didn’t expect an article about the machine’s limited sound hardware to lead to hours of listening pleasure.
The Manic Miner intro music, after all, is a fair representation of early Spectrum chiptunes. (Turn your speakers way down before you listen!)
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The ZX Spectrum could play music from the outset – Steven Vickers’ original Spectrum BASIC Manual includes the code for a tiny fragment of Mahler.
As The Registerreported in 2015, Matt Westcott’s Mahler Project used a networked collection of original Spectrum computers to play all the parts of Mahler’s First Symphony.
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Over at Bumbershoot Software, Martin is interested in programming the very limited hardware of these early home computers, and so his Spectrum audio post discusses audio-encoding methods, pulse-width modulation, and more in considerable depth. Toward the end, it links to a remarkable music demo called We are Vocoders.
Rich “Tufty” Hollins even created an entire half-hour album of one-bit audio, ON and OFF. You can listen to it in its entirety on Bandcamp, or accompanied by some Spec-tastic graphics on YouTube. ®
America’s highest court heard Sam Bankman-Fried’s request for a new trial on Thursday, CNN reports. But they add that “the former crypto mogul who was convicted of defrauding investors by secretly diverting billions of dollars of their money” also asked America’s high court “to throw out a court order requiring him to pay $11 billion as part of his sentence.”
Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2024 after prosecutors said he directed billions of dollars from the crypto exchange FTX to a hedge fund he controlled called Alameda Research, where the funds were used for risky investments, political donations and his own personal benefit. The Supreme Court appeal, which was reviewed by CNN, raises a technical question about evidence that was submitted at his trial, and whether Bankman-Fried should have been permitted to demonstrate that his investments were ultimately sound and would have covered any losses by FTX customers.
He also argues that the $11 billion forfeiture violates the 8th Amendment’s prohibition on excessive fines. “Where the government pursues a theory of fraud under which it doesn’t matter whether any victims lost money, introducing evidence suggesting that people actually lost money is distracting and prejudicial,” veteran Supreme Court attorney Jeffrey Fisher told CNN. “All the more so where the truth is the victims did not lose money, and the defendant is unable to make that clear.”
The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the arguments earlier this year.
“This is what happened when we tried to record Flock installing a new camera on public roads,” says Emmy award-winning reporter Brendan Keefe in a new video for InvestigateTV. In an accompanying article, InvestigateTV says their reporter “parked on the public street at a distance, donned a yellow safety vest and a hat emblazoned with the logo of InvestigateTV’s Atlanta affiliate where he also works, displayed a press placard on his dashboard and then pulled out a camera to record the installation…. The installer saw him and immediately packed up his equipment and drove away, so Keefe also returned to his car and followed several cars behind, hoping to document the next stop.”
And then Flock’s technician called 911. When asked “What’s the address of your emergency” Flock’s technician answered “I’m getting followed — harassed, pretty much. Taking videos and pictures!” Flock’s worker said they’d been harassed multiple times that day, then stated incorrectly that “I know for a fact” that that was what the reporter wanted to do too.
InvestigateTV reports that as a result of the Flock technician’s call, “Three police cars ended up in the national investigative reporter’s rearview mirror that Wednesday afternoon.” Keefe told one of the three police officers who pulled him over, “There is an irony here that they’re setting up these cameras that track all of our movements, that follow everywhere we go. But when I try to get video in public of him in public setting up a camera, he’s afraid I’m following him?”
InvestigateTV also reports that “About 17 minutes after the stop began, the responding officers returned to their vehicles and Keefe was allowed to drive away.” But the call that brought three police cars to their reporter “was not the first time this summer someone working for Flock Safety summoned police over a camera. ”
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About 17 minutes after the stop began, the responding officers returned to their vehicles and Keefe was allowed to drive away… [But the stop] was not the first time this summer someone working for Flock Safety summoned police over a camera. On June 5, police in Smyrna, Georgia, responded to a 911 call from a Flock employee after a group of YouTube creators began filming outside the company’s distribution center located in the Atlanta suburb… The caller claimed the group filming had “been driving around the perimeter, basically harassing everyone” working at the facility. “Three young white males, probably mid-twenties, I’m not sure if they’re armed. And they’re carrying filming equipment as well,” the caller said. Three times during the call he raised the possibility the people filming might be armed, though, when asked, he told the dispatcher he had not seen any weapons… [One of the protesters later told the caller “I think it’s interesting, when you guys have this happen, you call the police and make us get stopped. But then you do it and it’s okay?”]
No one was charged in the YouTuber group, though the individuals were ordered to leave the premises under an official trespass warning.
Keefe’s video report ends with one final irony. “Every day on my way to work, I’m captured again by those same new shiny Flock cameras. We tried watching the watchers. Turns outs, it’s a lot easier for them to watch us.”
Flock responded to the report by claiming “We do not object to members of the public or press photographing Flock cameras or personnel in public.” But they added that employees working “in the field” must “prioritize their safety” and “may contact law enforcement when they believe they are being threatened, harassed, followed, or otherwise face a safety concern.”
A robot arm pours from a test tube into a beaker in General Robotics’ lab. The company used the task, and progressively harder versions of it, to test its Auto Engineering system. (General Robotics Photo)
A Redmond, Wash., robotics software startup founded by former Microsoft researchers says its platform can now handle much of the work of getting a robot up and running in a factory, warehouse or other industrial setting, a job that used to take a team of engineers.
General Robotics said Wednesday that advances in GRID, its robot intelligence platform, have cut the process of onboarding a new robot from about a month to as little as two hours. The company calls the approach “Auto Engineering,” with each onboarded robot and diagnosed failure feeding back into the system and speeding up the next deployment.
General Robotics CEO Ashish Kapoor.
“Before this moment, it would take us a team of experts to go and execute on behalf of our customers,” said General Robotics CEO and co-founder Ashish Kapoor in an interview. “Clearly non-scalable, clearly very expensive, and clearly will take a long time.”
With Auto Engineering, he said, “we can magnify and accelerate each engineer’s capability.”
Founded in 2023, the company has grown to about 50 employees, primarily engineers. It has raised nearly $34 million, most recently in an April round led by Construct Capital, with participation from Khosla Ventures, Accenture Ventures, Nvidia and Valo Ventures. PitchBook put the size of the round at $25 million; the companies didn’t disclose terms at the time.
Kapoor said General Robotics has roughly a dozen customers — large enterprises across manufacturing, logistics, energy and defense — and revenue in the millions of dollars.
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Customers include HTX, the science and technology agency of Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs, which Kapoor said has been working with General Robotics for about a year and a half.
The company’s platform works with robot types including industrial arms, humanoids, quadrupeds, wheeled robots and drones, according to the company.
General Robotics is operating in a competitive and well-funded sector. Physical Intelligence, which builds foundation models for robots, has raised more than $2 billion. Nvidia — an investor in General Robotics, and the maker of the Isaac Sim simulation software built into GRID — is developing its own robot models and deployment tools.
Robot makers build good hardware, Kapoor said, but often lack the expertise to put it to work in a specific setting like a shipping terminal. “That last layer is missing.”
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Before co-founding the company, Kapoor spent 17 years at Microsoft, ultimately as general manager of its autonomous systems and robotics research group in Redmond, where he created the open-source drone simulator AirSim. General Robotics co-founders Sai Vemprala (CTO) and Shuhang Chen came from the same Microsoft team.
GeekWire covered the launch in 2023, when it was Scaled Foundations and billed itself as “ChatGPT for robots.” It had five employees at the time, focused on aerial robotics and drones, with backing from Khosla and E14 Fund. It later renamed itself General Robotics.
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