Late on May 25, 2026, monitoring cameras caught an event that combined two dramatic forces in one frame. Mount Mayon volcano in Albay province on Luzon had already been sending streams of glowing lava down its slopes for months. Staff at the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology kept watch through equipment positioned on Lignon Hill in Legazpi City, including a color camera that records activity around the clock.

Around 10:33 p.m. local time, a bright green ball plummeted into the high sky from the color feed. It expanded out into a brilliant streak before zooming down as if it were heading straight for the volcano, as the entire thing appeared to be careening in that direction. Then, in a flash, it blazed brightly before disappearing completely. That whole burn lasted only around one second: the first thought for many people who saw the clip was, did this thing actually reach the slopes?

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Teams examined every piece of data available, including seismic instruments, infrasound detectors, and footage from other cameras, all of which pointed to the same conclusion: that object never touched the earth and did not even make it to the volcano. It simply split apart high in the atmosphere. A little later, the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology issued a statement claiming that they had witnessed no impact and that what they were seeing was so visually spectacular because the volcano was right there in the foreground.

These fireballs are caused by small asteroids or comets being blasted into the atmosphere at great speeds, as friction with the air generates a lot of heat and converts the surrounding air into a bright, flaming plasma. The green color comes from the combination of speed, composition, and atmospheric conditions in that brief time. In this case, the green stood out against the constant stream of red and orange lava flows below.

Bill Cooke, the head of NASA’s Meteoroid Environments Office, described it as simply a beautiful video of an unusual coincidence; a volcanologist who saw it described the juxtaposition of this sudden streak from above and all that lava moving steadily along below as a clear clash of two very powerful natural forces. Another of the scientists remarked that this small shard, roughly the size of a coffee cup, briefly managed to divert everyone’s attention away from the much larger volcanic spectacle going on.
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ContourGlobal, the independent power producer backed by KKR, has inaugurated a nearly $500 million solar-and-storage facility in Chile’s Atacama desert that stores daytime solar energy and delivers it after sundown. The Victor Jara hybrid plant combines 231 megawatt-peak of photovoltaic capacity with 1.3 gigawatt-hours of battery storage, capable of delivering 200 megawatts of power for up to 6.5 hours at night. ContourGlobal calls it Latin America’s longest-duration utility-scale battery system.

The project sits in the Tarapacá region and is backed by a 15-year nighttime power purchase agreement with Copec EMOAC, the energy marketing and renewable power supply arm of Empresas Copec, one of Chile’s largest industrial conglomerates. It is ContourGlobal’s second solar-and-storage investment in Chile, following the launch of a similar system in Quillagua in the neighbouring Antofagasta region last year. Together, the two projects deliver 452 megawatt-peak of solar and 2.5 gigawatt-hours of battery storage.

Why the Atacama

The Atacama desert receives some of the highest solar irradiance on Earth, making it one of the most productive locations in the world for photovoltaic generation. The problem is that the sun produces more electricity during the day than Chile’s grid can absorb, resulting in routine curtailment, wasted energy from solar plants that are forced to shut down because there is nowhere for the power to go. Transmission bottlenecks between the solar-rich north and the demand centres further south make the problem worse.

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Battery storage solves this by absorbing excess solar generation during the day and discharging it at night, effectively turning an intermittent energy source into a dispatchable one. Solar-plus-storage projects are increasingly being designed to serve round-the-clock power needs, including the growing demand from data centres that require constant, predictable supply.

James Lee Stancampiano, ContourGlobal’s South America general manager, said Chile is the place to be in Latin America, citing the country’s regulatory framework, growing electricity demand, and pipeline of renewable energy and storage investments. The company is evaluating additional projects in Chile, including developments closer to the capital Santiago and wind projects in the central and southern regions.

A storage boom in numbers

Chile currently has 3,072 megawatts of battery energy storage capacity either operating or undergoing testing, with most projects concentrated in the Atacama desert, according to the Coordinador Eléctrico Nacional (CEN), the national grid operator. CEN projects the start-up of an additional 5,400 megawatts of storage capacity by December 2026. Battery energy storage systems now make up nearly 42% of Chile’s energy project pipeline by capacity, the largest single category.

The investment is not coming from a single player. AES Andes, Engie Energía Chile, and Enel Green Power Chile all have storage projects in the country. Atlas Renewable Energy, backed by BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners, secured $510 million in financing last year for its hybrid Estepa project, one of Chile’s largest solar-plus-storage developments. Grenergy, the Spanish developer, is building the Oasis de Atacama complex, which it describes as the world’s largest solar-plus-storage project.

Mining, data centres, and the demand driver

What makes Chile different from other solar-rich markets is its industrial demand profile. The country’s mining sector, which produces roughly a quarter of the world’s copper and a significant share of its lithium, is one of the most energy-intensive industries on the planet. Mines operate around the clock and need reliable, predictable power. They are also under increasing pressure from customers, regulators, and investors to decarbonise their operations.

Antonio Cammisecra, ContourGlobal’s CEO, said the presence of a highly energy-intensive industrial base, particularly mining, has driven demand for reliable, long-term renewable power. He framed storage as the technology that shifts renewables from intermittent sources into programmable energy solutions, a transformation he called essential for reducing system costs, accelerating decarbonisation, and replacing conventional generation at scale.

Data centres are the emerging demand driver. The global push to electrify everything, from industrial processes to AI compute, is creating new markets for round-the-clock renewable power. ContourGlobal expects growing demand from data centres that need large amounts of always-on electricity, and Chile’s combination of cheap solar, storage infrastructure, and political stability makes it a credible location for facilities that would otherwise be built in the US or northern Europe.

The model that could scale globally

Chile’s approach, building massive solar capacity in the desert, pairing it with battery storage, and selling nighttime power under long-term contracts, is a model that other solar-rich regions are watching closely. The economics are compelling. Solar generation costs continue to fall, battery prices have declined by roughly 90% over the past decade, and the combination of the two is now competitive with or cheaper than new gas-fired generation in most markets.

The 15-year nighttime PPA structure used by ContourGlobal is particularly noteworthy. It de-risks the battery investment by guaranteeing revenue for the discharge cycle, making the storage component financeable on project finance terms rather than merchant risk. This is the kind of contractual innovation that unlocks institutional capital for storage at scale.

Hybrid renewable energy projects are becoming the standard rather than the exception. Chile’s Atacama desert is the most advanced laboratory for this transition. By the end of 2026, the country will have more than 8,400 megawatts of battery storage capacity online, enough to make it one of the largest storage markets in the world, built in a desert that until recently was known primarily for astronomy and copper.

Rivian has finally revealed that the first customers of the company’s new R2 SUV will get their vehicles on June 9.

The automaker has spent the last few months ramping up its efforts to release the R2, which is more affordable and aimed at a larger market than its current R1 lineup. The new SUV will initially be available in a trim that starts just under $60,000, though Rivian has announced plans to release a “standard” version that starts at $48,490 in 2027.

The company has teased an even more affordable version “starting around $45,000” late next year — a price tag Rivian has promoted since the R2 reveal in 2024.

Rivian has high expectations for the R2. Founder and CEO RJ Scaringe has said it is “maybe the most important thing we’ve launched to date.” The company is betting on an extremely fast ramp-up, with as many as 25,000 vehicles delivered by the end of this year. Ultimately, Rivian hopes the R2 and its hatchback sibling, the R3, will help the company turn a profit for the first time since its founding in 2009.

A new report on the French tech ecosystem by Alexandre Dewez, a partner at venture firm 20VC, paints a picture of a startup scene that is growing more dependent on a handful of AI companies while the rest of the market stalls. French startups raised €6.7 billion across 411 funding rounds in 2025, a 5% decline in capital and a 21% drop in deal volume compared with the previous year. The numbers stand in sharp contrast to the US, where startup funding grew 38% year on year, and Europe as a whole, which saw a 12% increase.

The report, based on roughly 100 slides of data covering funding, exits, unicorns, and sector trends, argues that France minted its first decacorn but is struggling to build the breadth of winners that would signal a maturing ecosystem. Mistral’s Series C at an €11.7 billion valuation was the headline achievement of 2025, but the AI lab accounted for 25% of all capital raised by French startups that year. Strip out Mistral and the picture looks considerably weaker.

AI dominates, but France lacks category leaders

AI was the main growth engine of the French ecosystem in 2025, accounting for 23% of funding rounds, up from 13% in 2024, and 43% of all capital raised, up from 27% the year before. France also produced several mega seed rounds for foundation model companies, including H at €212 million, Genesis at €97 million, Gradium at €64 million, and Bioptimus at €32 million.

But the report makes a pointed observation: unlike other European countries, France lacks clear category leaders in AI’s most commercially valuable segments. The UK has ElevenLabs in voice. Sweden has Lovable in vibe-coding. Germany has Parloa in customer success and n8n in AI automations. Even Mistral, France’s flagship AI company, is not dominating its category against OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta.

Mistral’s European nationality, which enables companies seeking a sovereign AI option, has become its main differentiation point rather than technical superiority. The company has lost its early open-source edge and is competing in a multi-modal AI market where the largest US and Chinese players have significantly more capital and compute.

Pennylane was the standout performer

The report names fintech Pennylane as the French startup of the year for 2025. The accounting software company crossed €100 million in annual recurring revenue, growing 130% year on year, and raised two rounds in a single year at valuations of €2 billion and €3.9 billion respectively.

Pennylane has expanded from pure accounting software into an ERP and neobank for French small and medium-sized businesses, and opened operations in Germany. It is a rare example of a French startup executing at growth scale with the kind of metrics that attract top-tier international investors.

Defence is the second hottest sector after AI

European defence tech startups raised $1.6 billion in venture funding in 2025, a 148% increase year on year, making defence the second-largest growth category after AI. Within France, 18 defence startups raised €228 million, a 25% increase on the previous year.

The biggest signal came in January 2026, when Harmattan became France’s first defence unicorn after raising a $200 million Series B led by Dassault Aviation, the maker of the Rafale fighter jet. Harmattan builds autonomy and mission-system software for defence aircraft, and French president Emmanuel Macron publicly praised the deal as a win for the country’s strategic autonomy.

The broader European defence tech boom is being driven by geopolitical pressure, with governments across the continent increasing spending in response to the war in Ukraine and shifting transatlantic security dynamics. Germany has captured the largest share of European defence tech capital, but France is carving out a position in AI-enabled military systems.

US funds are taking over French venture capital

One of the report’s most striking findings is the degree to which US capital now dominates French startup funding. American funds were involved in rounds accounting for 55% of the total amount raised in 2025, and their capital has been concentrated in AI companies, particularly foundation model builders like Mistral, Genesis, and Gradium.

At the Series A level, only 30% of the 20 best rounds in 2025 were led by French funds. Pan-European funds led 60% and US funds led 10%. The report notes that where Index Ventures, Accel, and Balderton were historically the only pan-European firms consistently leading one or two French Series A rounds per year, at least 15 pan-European funds now do the same.

French VC funds are caught in what the report calls the “messy middle,” losing top Series A deals to international funds and top pre-seed and seed deals to a growing crop of French micro-funds with €5 million to €35 million under management. Several French funds are struggling to raise their next vintage, and when they do, they are raising smaller funds than before. Top talent is leaving.

San Francisco is pulling French founders westward

The AI boom has reasserted San Francisco’s dominance as the centre of the global tech industry, and French founders are responding. Multiple early-stage founders are actively building between the Bay Area and Paris, including the teams behind Poolside, Genesis, Zero Entropy, and Anyshift. French venture firms Founders Future, Frst, and Hexa have opened offices in San Francisco.

Entrepreneur First, the British accelerator, closed its Paris office in October 2025 to focus on its US programme. Since launching in Paris in 2018, roughly 700 entrepreneurs had passed through the programme and helped build more than 100 startups. Its departure is a signal that even institutions designed to nurture European founders see the gravitational pull of the US as too strong to resist.

Exits hit a five-year low

The exit picture is bleak. French startup exits totalled €5.3 billion in 2025, a 65% decline year on year and the lowest figure in five years. The IPO market remains largely closed to European tech companies, and trade sales have not filled the gap.

Secondaries have become the dominant source of liquidity, with both VC-led transactions, such as Descartes with Battery Ventures, and PE-led deals, such as Brevo with General Atlantic, providing the main exit routes. This is not a sign of a healthy ecosystem. Secondary sales provide partial liquidity for early investors but do not generate the kind of large-scale returns that attract new capital into the venture system.

France has produced 47 unicorns to date, defined as startups that have been worth at least $1 billion at some point. The report estimates that 36, roughly 77%, are still likely worth $1 billion or more based on recent fundraising, revenue, or headcount growth. The remaining 11 have likely fallen below the threshold, a reminder that unicorn status is not permanent and that the French ecosystem still has a maturity problem when it comes to building durable, large-scale companies.

While each file system is sandboxed, meaning it’s isolated from other websites and from the device system itself, the JavaScript can measure the I/O interactions. Then, by running those interactions through a pretrained convolutional neural network—a system that uses deep learning to analyze text, audio, and images—the attacker can deduce various apps and websites open on the device.

“The attacker continuously measures SSD contention by performing random reads from a large OPFS file,” the researchers explained. “SSD contention caused by user activity causes measurable latency differences for these read operations. By training a convolutional neural network (CNN) on these traces, the attacker can fingerprint user activity on the host system by classifying new traces using the trained model.”

The technique has its limitations. First, the OPFS file must be extremely large—likely a gigabyte or more. That requirement means that attacks at scale would inevitably be detected by many users. Additionally, the OPFS file must be stored on the same SSD the visitor is using. This isn’t usually a problem for tracking open websites, since the OPFS file is stored in the browser’s default location. In the event apps are using a separate SSD drive for apps, those apps couldn’t be detected by FROST.

One of the best ways to prevent FROST attacks is to close tabs as soon as they’re no longer needed. More savvy users can monitor the creation and size of OPFS files allocated by unknown websites. The researchers proposed ways for browser makers to shut down the side channel. One such method is to limit the maximum size such files that are allowed. There are no indications FROST attacks have been performed in the wild.

The researchers performed the full Frost attack on an M2 Mac. On Linux, they showed that the underlying primitive (measuring SSD access latency traces from JavaScript) works, but didn’t run the full attack.

“However, since the performance of the primitive is similar between macOS and Linux, we expect similar performance for the full classification,” Hannes Weissteiner, one of the co-authors, wrote in an email. “In principle, it would be possible to train a model on any system activity that reliably generates SSD accesses.”

The researchers did not test Windows.

The paper linked above provides many more technical details. The research is scheduled to be presented at the DIMVA conference in July.

There are still tons of mysteries in the universe, and the Bootids meteor shower is one of them. The upcoming meteor shower occurs during the last week of June and the first few days of July, and it has the potential to be one of the weakest or strongest meteor showers of the year. How’s that for noncommital?

The Bootids meteor shower officially runs from June 22 to July 2, with a peak on the evening of June 26 and the morning of June 27. Its 10-day run is among the shortest of any named meteor showers.

Bootids is also the single most unpredictable meteor shower of the year in terms of how many visible meteors it can produce. It’s not terribly active during most years and produces approximately one or two meteors per hour during its peak. However, Bootids is known for having random outbursts, during which it produces as many meteors as the bigger meteor showers. 

The most recent such occurrence was in 2004, and other big years include 1998, 1927, 1921 and 1916. The 1998 Bootids meteor shower is legendary, with reports of 100 meteors per hour. That’s as many as Perseids, which is arguably the most famous meteor shower of the year, and right up there with other active showers like Geminids and Quadrantids. 

Since science hasn’t yet figured out how to reliably predict these outbursts, any year could be the next big one. 

How to see Bootids

All meteor showers take their name from the constellation where they appear to originate, a point known as the radiant. For Bootids, that’s the Boötes constellation. 

Boötes sits high in the southern sky and will be immediately visible after sunset on June 26. It’s visible all night, dipping into the western sky overnight before nestling against the western horizon before sunrise. If you’re having trouble finding it, a night sky map like Stellarium or Time and Date can help you find it. 

Follow standard tips for seeing any meteor shower. You want to get away from the city and suburbs to reduce noise pollution. (June’s moon will be about 90% full on June 26, which means you can’t escape all of the light pollution.)

Everything is easy from there. Settle into a comfortable spot, don’t use bright lights, and avoid magnification aids like binoculars and telescopes, as they obstruct your view and may cause you to miss a meteor. 

How many meteors will Bootids produce?

Your guess is as good as anyone’s. The Bootids meteor shower typically produces a scant one or two meteors per hour. 

However, these meteors are known for being slow, bright and long-lasting, so what few are likely to show up should be pretty easy to spot, even with June’s nearly full moon. 

But prior outbursts of up to 100 meteors an hour took astronomers completely by surprise. Anything could happen. 

Why is Bootids so difficult to predict?

Every meteor shower has a parent body, such as a comet or asteroid, that leaves behind a trail of dust and debris. Earth moves through those trails of dust and debris, which then enter the atmosphere and produce meteor showers. 

Most comets and asteroids leave a pretty consistent trail, which leads to fairly consistent meteor showers. You can count on Perseids to put on a decent show just about every year. 

The Bootids meteor shower is just like the rest. Its parent comet is called 7P/Pons-Winnecke, which orbits the sun every 6.3 years and is highly affected by Jupiter’s gravity. 

The difference is that 7P/Pons-Winnecke leaves an erratic, uneven trail of debris. When the Earth moves through this trail, it might pass through a weaker segment, producing only a handful of meteors, or through a stronger segment, producing dozens or more per hour. There’s no way to know for sure, you’ll just have to stay up and see for yourself.

Triomics, a startup building an AI-powered platform to help oncologists and administrative staff automate data-heavy tasks like clinical trial matching and appointment prep, has raised $22 million in Series B funding.

The round was led by Battery Ventures, with participation from returning backers Nexus Venture Partners, Lightspeed, Y Combinator, and others.

The good news is that oncology breakthroughs are keeping patients alive longer.  That welcome trend, however, is creating dense, multi-year medical records that take healthcare staff a long time to review and decipher.

A typical medical chart includes physician progress notes, imaging and pathology reports, and even scans of faxes. “We have seen medical records [with] thousands of pages of information,” Triomics co-founder Sarim Khan (pictured left) told TechCrunch.

Founded in 2021, the startup raised a $15 million in Series A in mid-2024. Initially focused on helping doctors identify the most suitable clinical trials for their patients, Triomics expanded its platform as LLM capabilities grew. Over the last couple of years, Triomics added verifiable patient summaries to its platform, surfacing key information directly inside the tools clinicians already use, without requiring them to switch applications.

By reducing appointment prep time, these summaries give oncologists more time with their patients. The efficiency gain matters beyond individual appointments: in oncology, where patient histories are unusually complex and staff burnout is a persistent problem, tools that reduce administrative load have an outsized impact.

Triomics is also used to automate the tedious task of submitting tumor reports to government registries, a legal mandate for cancer centers.

While generic AI agents excel at basic summaries, prominent institutions like Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) and Yale Cancer Center use Triomics because its models are trained specifically on oncology data, Khan explained.

Triomics most direct competition comes from AI medical scribes like Abridge and Microsoft’s Nuance — tools that use AI to listen to and document patient-doctor conversations — when it comes to summarizing patient charts.

Despite the fierce competition, Triomics is growing fast. According to Khan, the startup expanded its enterprise customer base fourfold over the past year, driving a 10-fold increase in annualized recurring revenue.

Many gamers searching for one controller that handles multiple systems without compromise continue to land on the same option. The DualSense in Midnight Black, priced at $54 (was $75), delivers that balance through everyday use on PlayStation 5 consoles, Windows computers, Macs, and compatible phones. Triggers stand out through real changes in resistance.

In supported games, you push the left or right trigger to tighten or loosen it, and the action corresponds to what’s happening on screen. As you’re drawing a bowstring and the tension begins to develop, it takes a little more work to pull back. When you press down on a vehicle’s accelerator, you get a steady pushback as you drive, which feels quite similar to pushing on the gas. You end up with a basic press that appears to correspond to what the game is showing you.

Haptic feedback is comparable in that it produces vibrations with a high level of detail rather than a simple vibrating impression. When you walk on different surfaces, each one registers as a unique pattern. If there is bad weather in the game or you absorb an impact, the strength of the vibration adjusts to the scenario. Many PlayStation 5 games create moments that play off of these experiences. Thanks to platforms such as Steam, an increasing number of computer games are now doing the same thing.

Getting connected is simple; simply pair the controller with a PS5 or Windows / Mac computer via Bluetooth, and you’re done. If you prefer a direct connection, use a USB-C cable instead. The same controller will connect to a variety of Android or iOS phones as long as the game supports gamepads. If wireless isn’t your style, the companion software on your PC allows you to send out firmware updates for free, keeping everything up to date.

The voice tools are built right in, and the microphone can handle chat in supported titles without issue. A dedicated mute button is conveniently located near your thumb, allowing you to swiftly turn it off if necessary. The standard headphone connection allows you to just plug in a pair of headphones and be ready to go, eliminating the need for a separate headset in many circumstances.

Battery life is generally good, with a few hours of mixed use on a single charge, and recharging via USB-C is speedy, allowing you to easily top up between sessions. Results will vary depending on how frequently you use the controller and how long your sessions go, but most gamers should be able to complete their tasks without needing to recharge.

When Marathon’s second season kicks off on June 2, Bungie will give new players a chance to try the game for free for a full week. In blog post published today, the studio said the preview, which is slated to run through June 9, will be available on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, with any progress players make carrying over to the full game if they decide to purchase it afterward. 

As previously announced, existing players will see their item vault and armory reset at the end of the current season, making this a great time to try the game since everyone will be on equal footing when it comes to weapons and upgrades. In Wednesday’s blog post, Bungie also shared new information about season two’s biggest additions: the new Sentinel class, nighttime Dire Marsh map and Cradle customization system. The reimagined zone will see Marathon lean into more of its cosmic horror inspirations. 

“This new zone introduces new mechanics, new combatants, and locations to explore on Dire Marsh,” Bungie explains. “It’s built to be slower-paced than Day Marsh and plays more like a survival horror experience, with slightly fewer players and extra environmental challenges with navigating the darkness and threats within.”

As for the Sentinel shell, Bungie describes it as defensive specialist, with a kit built around controlling space. Its prime ability, Defender System, allows it to deploy a point-defense drone that can briefly protect you and your crew against grenades and missiles. If I had to guess, the new shell will be popular at high levels of play where grenades of all types fly thick and fast. In a call back to the Halo series, one of the Sentinel’s other abilities allows it to activate a short-range, motion-tracking system. “Use this to gather a bit of extra intel on who or what’s moving around you, and set up your defenses accordingly,” Bungie suggests.     

Lastly, there’s the Cradle, which will allow players to convert extra weapons and other equipment into experience they can put towards stat upgrades and perks. Bungie says this system is designed to give players a way to progress their character separate from the game’s faction system, which can get tedious when you need to find (and exfil) specific high-level salvage to buy a single upgrade. The studio also notes players can tweak their Cradle builds at any time to encourage experimentation. 

Earlier this month, Bungie outlined its plan for Marathon’s future, saying it would make the game’s onboarding experience better for new players, and that new PvE modes would arrive during season two. Less than a week later, the studio announced it was ending development on Destiny 2. Then a day later Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier published a report claiming Sony was planning “significant” layoffs at the developer. It’s probably fair to say a successful preview week would do a lot to boost morale at Bungie.