Married at First Sight US is marching into season 19 with a whole new aisle order — and fans are already bracing for a bouquet toss of chaos. The hit reality matchmaking circus aired on Peacock in the US last year – but we’ll show you how to watch MAFS USA season 19 for free.

Longtime love gurus Dr. Pepper Schwartz, Pastor Cal Roberson and Dr. Pia Holec are all exiting in a shock expert shake-up. To compete with the MAFS Australia, producers are promising fresh blood, hotter matches and fewer dull influencers. About time.

Engineers at Boston Dynamics shared details today on a new training system for their Atlas humanoid robot. The approach focuses on building the kind of physical coordination needed for demanding factory or warehouse work. One video demonstration captures the result perfectly. Atlas rotates its upper body a full 180 degrees, squats down, grips a mini-fridge loaded with about 50 pounds, and walks it straight over to an engineer waiting nearby. The motion stays smooth even when the weight inside shifts.

The developers based the entire process on the concept of extensive practice, which was carried out entirely in a computer simulation. They begin by giving the robot a very rudimentary understanding of what it has to accomplish, which it learned from a person who had done it correctly, or even a brief animation of how to move. Then they establish specific targets for what needs to happen before they can call it a success. Points are granted for things like maintaining a tight grip on the object, remaining upright, and recovering from sudden tugs or slippery floors. The simulation then runs the robot through millions of different attempts, each with a tiny variation, such as whether the fridge is heavier or lighter, or you are traveling at a different angle. Each of these little adjustments forces the robot to work things out on its own.

Unitree G1 Humanoid Robot（No Secondary Development）

• Sleek & Durable Design: Standing at 132cm tall and weighing only approx. 35kg, the G1 is constructed with aerospace-grade aluminum alloy and carbon…
• High Flexibility & Safe Movement: Boasting 23 joint degrees of freedom (6 per leg, 5 per arm), it offers an extensive range of motion. For safety, it…
• Smart Interaction & Connectivity: Powered by an 8-core high-performance CPU and equipped with a depth camera and 3D LiDAR. It supports Wi-Fi 6 and…

When these virtual practice sessions are over, the team simply transfers what the robot learned to the real robot and gives it a spin. They see what went wrong, make some changes, and then re-run the simulation. This cycle occurs quickly, owing to the robot’s simplicity: its actuators are just two types, its limbs are symmetrical, and there are no trailing cables to obstruct the process. That makes it much easier to make the simulation match what happens in the lab, and as a result, behaviors that appear solid in simulation tend to work on the first few attempts in the real world.

One thing that sticks out is Atlas’ ability to carry objects by being aware of its surroundings. Rather than depending on constant camera images of the fridge, the robot mostly uses its internal knowledge of where its joints are and how hard items are pulling on them. That feeling of its entire body allows it to adapt to the exact shape of the object, its center of mass, or any unexpected wobbling without having to pause and look again. According to the engineers, switching from relying solely on your hands to a more full-body technique makes all the difference when lifting loads that weigh more than 100 pounds, far above the 50-to-70 pounds they were working on.

The same foundation allows Atlas to perform additional remarkable feats that showcase its balance and strength. In other films, you can see the robot performing handstands and backflips, which involve fine control over all limbs and swift recovery if you lose your footing. These gymnastics activities also serve as practice for how the robot would handle a hot industrial floor, where it must be able to continue moving even when it becomes heated. Each new skill builds on the previous one since the robot is learning to use its knees, shoulders, and forearms collectively rather than treating each arm separately.

The all-stock takeover, the largest power acquisition ever, gives NextEra the utility that runs Northern Virginia’s data-centre belt and consolidates the bidding power on the demand side of the AI-electricity trade.

NextEra Energy has agreed to acquire Dominion Energy for about $67bn in an all-stock deal, Bloomberg reported on Monday, in what would be the largest power-sector acquisition on record.

NextEra shareholders will own 74.5% of the combined company, Dominion shareholders 25.5%, with each Dominion share exchanged for roughly eight-tenths of a NextEra share.

The combined entity will trade under the NextEra name on the New York Stock Exchange and serve around 10 million utility customers across Florida, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

The strategic logic is the one every utility-sector trade has been running on for 18 months. Dominion is the utility that powers Northern Virginia, which is the world’s largest data-centre market by a long margin and the regional grid most exposed to the AI-training and inference build-out.

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NextEra brings the largest US renewable-generation fleet, an existing nuclear position, and Florida Power & Light’s regulated customer base.

The combined company will, on the deal’s own claims, be the world leader in renewables and battery storage, the US leader in natural-gas generation, and the second-largest US nuclear operator.

The merged entity will be selling, in effect, every form of generation that an AI hyperscaler is now contracting for.

The macro thesis under the trade is a part of the AI infrastructure cycle that has become unavoidable. US utilities have, on the running aggregated capex guidance, committed roughly $1.4 trillion of electricity-infrastructure investment by 2030, almost all of it driven by AI data-centre load growth.

Northern Virginia is the densest concentration of that demand, and it is also the grid where the supply constraint has been most acute, with new data-centre interconnection queues running multiple years.

The cooling-driven AWS US-EAST-1 outage earlier this year was the most visible operational example of what happens when the load curve grows faster than the substations can absorb.

NextEra and Dominion combined become, by some distance, the single largest counterparty that hyperscalers will be negotiating new long-term power purchase agreements within the affected geographies.

NextEra chief executive John Ketchum will run the combined company; Dominion’s Robert Blue will run the regulated-utilities business and take a board seat. The combined dividend and rate-base footprint was not disclosed.

What is visible is that NextEra’s unregulated-generation arm and Dominion’s regulated-Virginia franchise are being put under one roof, the structural piece the AI-power thesis has been arguing for.

The deal also collapses a competitive dynamic that has shaped the past year of utility-sector valuations. Hyperscalers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta most prominently) have been negotiating in parallel with multiple utilities across the same regional grids, playing demand-side bidders against each other for long-tenor contracts.

Consolidating two of the largest counterparts on the supply side narrows the negotiating field. Whether that translates into pricing power for the merged utility or into regulatory pushback from state commissions (Florida’s PSC, the Virginia State Corporation Commission, and the North Carolina Utilities Commission all have jurisdictional roles in the approval) is the question the next 18 months of regulatory-filing review will settle.

Antitrust exposure is the second question. Combining the largest US renewable-generation operator with the utility supplying the densest data-centre market is a profile FERC and the DOJ will both have to clear.

Pre-deal analyst commentary had flagged the regulatory path as the most material execution risk.

Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta have committed combined power-procurement and self-build capacity into 2030 that requires roughly the entirety of new US utility-scale generation coming online over the same window.

A combined NextEra-Dominion is the natural single counterparty to coordinate those commitments across the Southeast US grid.

Bloomberg’s full-text coverage describes the deal as creating ‘a utility colossus’ calibrated against precisely that demand curve.

Completion timing has not been disclosed beyond a target close, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals.

The merged dividend policy, the integration timeline for Dominion’s Virginia regulated franchise, and the disposition of overlapping renewable-development pipelines are the operational details that will determine whether the announced cost-synergy and growth assumptions hold.

The headline figure is the one that has been published. $67bn is the price tag on the largest power deal on record.

Between the Rivian R2, BMW iX3 and the Volvo EX60, there’s a bunch of appealing electric SUVs scheduled to hit the market soon. And now, Volvo is revealing official pricing for its upcoming family EV, which starts at $58,400.

While that price might seem a bit high considering it’s pretty much the same as a fully loaded R2 with Rivian’s top-spec Performance trim ($57,990), it’s not a far cry from the average cost of a new car in the US, which stands at right around $50,000. Furthermore, even a base EX60 P6 Plus packs solid specs such as an estimated range of 307 miles from a 83kWh power pack; a 10 to 80 percent charging time of 16 minutes at up to 320kW; and 374 horsepower from its single motor rear-wheel drive configuration. That’s enough oomph to provide a 0 to 100 km/h time of 5.9 seconds. Other standard components include Volvo’s Pilot Assist system, a 21-speaker sound system, 800-volt architecture, native NACS port and a 15-inch OLED main screen with Gemini and Google built-in. And if you have extra room in your budget, you can upgrade to a EX60 P6 Ultra for $65,000 that adds updated badging, ventilated leather seats, integrated heated seats for the second row and a dimmable electrochromic roof.

For those who want a more dynamic driving experience, you can move up to an EX60 P10 AWD Plus, which starts at $60,750 (or $67,350 for the P10 AWD Ultra), which bumps the EV’s battery size and range up to 95kWh and 322 miles respectively, while also increasing its max charging rate to 370kW. The P10’s overall performance also gets a sizable boost, with output rising to 510hp while its 0-to-100km/h time drops to 4.6 seconds.

Finally, at the top of the range, there’s the EX60 P12 AWD, which doesn’t have official pricing yet. That said, if you want a comfortable and safety-conscious five-seater with as much power as Volvo can put in an SUV, the P12 offers 680hp (10 more than a top-spec EX90) that’s good for a 0 to 100 km/h time of just 3.9 seconds. On top of that, a maxed out EX60 sports an even larger 117 kWh battery with up to 400 miles of estimated range, which Volvo notes is enough to drive from NYC to Montreal without stopping.

The one quirk to the EX60’s launch is that unlike, Rivian, which is kicking off sales with the most premium versions of the R2, Volvo is initially rolling out the P6 and P10 trims (which are ready to order now) before more the pricier P12 models become available sometime later. Regardless, for families looking for a premium and well-equipped EV SUV, the Volvo EX60 is already looking like a top contender. We’ll have more in-depth coverage soon.

Sources within the supply chain back up previous reports that the forthcoming Apple Watch Ultra 4 will be a significant update that includes doubling its number of sensors.

Following reports that the regular Apple Watch Series 12 will not be a major update, there are now reports that the Apple Watch Ultra 4 will be. According to Digitimes, the new model will have a visible redesign that includes the addition of further unspecified sensors.

This fits with what the same publication said in August 2025, where it specifically said that the Apple Watch would double its number of sensors.

Neither report describes what those sensors are, but they will presumably be health-related. What this new report does say is that the update is a big deal for the Taiwan-Asia Semiconductor Corporation (TASC) firm, which makes the sensors.

It’s estimated that the new sensors and a redesign will lead the Apple Watch Ultra 4 to getting up to 30% more orders than its predecessor.

Apple has long worked with TASC, including on attempts to add glucose monitoring to the Apple Watch. Apple has been working to add this to all models of the Apple Watch, but the new report appears to be specifically and only about the Apple Watch Ultra.

If the claims are correct, this will mark the first major redesign of the Apple Watch Ultra since its original launch in 2022. A second generation did follow in 2023, which added a brighter screen.

For 2024, Apple made no changes to the Apple Watch Ultra, except for releasing it in black as well as silver. The 2025 Apple Watch Ultra 3 was also a minor update, except that it added 5G support.

Apple is most likely to announce the Apple Watch Ultra 4 at its iPhone event in September 2026. The new report says that TASC is expecting major orders from July, which approximately fits the schedule for final Watches to be ready in September.

The old icons had very little to visually differentiate them.

Sports fans across the globe are getting ready for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, and Tubi has launched a centralized destination for all of its tournament content, the streamer announced on Monday. Viewers can find the 2026 FIFA World Cup Fox Hub on their screens, which will house highlights, Fox content, originals and two live games that will broadcast this year. 

The Fox-owned free streaming service has a dedicated section on its home screen to help fans navigate its World Cup content lineup. You’ll find it whether you’re watching Tubi on its mobile app, TV app or website, and the hub displays multiple rows of programming. 

What will World Cup fans see in the hub? It’ll be easy to access the live matches streaming free on the platform: Mexico vs. South Africa on June 11, and on June 12, US Men’s National Team vs. Paraguay. Additionally, there are original series from Tubi that will follow the games from start to finish. The Other Football, hosted by Rob Gronkowski and Jameis Winston, is a weekly show that blends comedy and pop culture to get into the sport. Destination World Cup 2026 takes fans inside the lives of players Harry Wilson, Weston McKennie and Marc Cucurella in the lead-up to the competition. 

Programming won’t be limited to live game simulcasts and Tubi originals. Viewers will also find a 24/7 feed of highlights and content from Fox Sports, replays and more. Deestroying the Pitch and Jesser’s Ultimate Kick Off from YouTubers Deestroying and Jesse “Jesser” Riedel are among the creator-led shows that are part of Tubi’s FIFA offerings. 

The 2026 World Cup runs from June 11 through July 19, and features 48 teams. This marks the first time Tubi has created a one-stop destination hub on its platform for the tournament. 

Grants, funding rounds and expansion plans – Ireland’s medtech sector is breaking records and setting the ‘gold standard’.

By all means, Ireland’s medtech industry is booming – with support from the Government and other groups, alongside a strong university-to-industry pipeline that keeps new talent flowing. The country exports around €15bn worth of medtech products annually to more than 100 international destinations.

Even the medtech start-up scene here is the envy of the world when it comes to early-stage funding, according to serial medtech founder and educator Rush Bartlett – despite the glaring funding gap scale-up firms in the country face.

Healthcare is a strong category with innovative start-ups emerging from across counties. In honour of Future Health month, SiliconRepublic.com has put together a list of strong players developing new medtech solutions.

Aerska

The young biotech emerged from stealth with a $21m round last October, bagging another $39m in a Series A raise in February led by EQT Dementia Fund and Age1. Aerska also got a mention on Tracxn’s ‘Soonicorn’ list of start-ups likely to reach the coveted ‘unicorn’ status.

The Dublin-headquartered company – co-founded by Jack O’Meara alongside David Hardwicke and Stu Milstein – is using brain shuttle technology to develop RNA medicines for central nervous system diseases.

It aims to leverage data science to integrate genetic, biomarker and patient data with the aim of bringing precision medicine to neurology – first starting with programmes in genetic forms of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Amply

This Belfast-based company is using its own AI-driven drug discovery engine to fight aggressive cancers, such as triple-negative breast cancer, and drug-resistant pathogens.

Amply is a spin-out of Queen’s University Belfast and was founded by Dr Ben Thomas, Dermot Tierney and Prof Chris Creevey. Last May, it raised $1.75m led by Twin Path Ventures – a specialist AI investor – for its drug discovery platform, which followed a £1.4m raise from 2024.

The company said that its drug discovery platform analyses biological molecules, identifies potential treatment targets and bio-prints real molecules that can be quickly tested and improved in the lab.

Coroflo

This Dublin start-up made history at CES this year by bagging four awards for its breastfeeding monitor – the highest number of wins for one product at a CES show.

Founded by Rosanne Longmore, Jamie Travers and Helen Barry in 2017, Coroflo is an Enterprise Ireland high-potential start-up backed by the likes of Brian Caulfield of Scale Ireland and Shemas Eivers of the Boole Syndicate.

Coroflo’s flagship product – Coro – is a standard silicone nipple shield containing a patented microflow metre that allows mothers to keep track of exactly how much breastmilk their baby is consuming. Information is collected by Coro while the baby is breastfeeding, and this real-time data is sent to a smartphone app created by Coroflo.

CrannMed

Galway medical device manufacturer CrannMed recently won a €12.5m accelerator grant from the European Innovation Council to develop a chronic inflammatory pain therapy.

Its product, the ‘SakuraBead’ is a “resorbable embolic microsphere”, which works by stopping blood flow to the administrated inflamed site for a short period to reset the inflammatory process. The device is under evaluation for commercial approval in the US and EU. Commercial sales are expected to begin by the end of the year.

The company also received €6.6m under the Disruptive Technologies Innovation Fund (DTIF) programme for a joint health-tech project that it’s co-leading with the University of Galway, the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland and Salaso Health Solutions.

Fortis Medical

Also from Galway, this Spiddal-based medtech secured €2.1m from the DTIF last October to develop a wearable device to help people suffering from gait problems after a stroke.

University of Galway spin-out Fortis Medical is now leading a consortium that includes RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences and Smart Electronics to further develop its ‘CueStim-Stroke’ device.

The medtech has designed the new product to provide home-based rehabilitation support for patients while also providing clinicians with real-time data on patient progress.

Fortis was founded in 2024, with Gearóid Ó Laighin retiring as professor of electronic engineering to take up the role of chief scientific officer in the new company.

Lia Eyecare

Last year, Lia Eyecare bagged a win at the Medical Device Development Centre competition hosted by the University of Massachusetts, winning $25,000 for its dry eye remedy ‘Nightleaf’, a headband that restores natural hydration to the eyes while sleeping.

The drop-free and drug-free device uses thermal modulation to regulate tear film production, which also supports the body’s own natural hydration mechanisms.

“We’re addressing a long-ignored but critical gap in the treatment of overnight dry eye disease, a condition that disrupts the sleep and quality of life of millions worldwide,” co-founder and CEO Breda O’Regan told SiliconRepublic.com in an interview. Lia was founded in 2021 by O’Regan and Sinéad Buckley.

Marama Labs

Marama Labs made a splash last November after being crowned the ‘most impressive deep-tech pioneer in Europe’ at the Deep Tech Demo Day.

The start-up had just launched its CloudSpec instrument for nanomedicine development a few months prior, which CEO Dr Brendan Darby said could set the “new gold standard” for spectroscopy devices.

CloudSpec develops on existing UV-vis spectrophotometers, which, put simply, analyse the chemical composition of liquids based on how they absorb light.

Traditional spectrophotometers, however, cannot be used to inspect cloudy liquids. CloudSpec tackles this by placing samples in a highly reflective spherical chamber, then detecting and eliminating the scattered light’s effects. According to Marama Labs, their device cuts down chemical measurement time from two hours to a mere 15 seconds.

The medtech, dually based in New Zealand and Ireland, was founded by Darby, Prof Eric Le Ru and Dr Matthias Meyer in 2019.

Meta-Flux

This Dublin-based biotech raised €1.8m in October for its AI-powered platform designed to conduct disease simulations in drug development. The round received support from senior executives from Pfizer, Merck and Gilead Sciences, along with tech leaders from Google, Amazon and Indeed.

It takes approximately $2bn on average for a successful drug to hit the market, CEO and immunologist Lee Sherlock told SiliconRepublic.com. But only around one in 100,000 drugs actually get through the entire funnel and successfully reach patients.

“The goal isn’t that we get more drugs to market – it’s that we get more accuracy on the drugs that we do bring to market,” he said. Meta-Flux was founded in 2021 by Sherlock and Brendan Martin. In its early pilot runs, the company successfully identified novel biomarkers and flagged preclinical risks, it said.

SymPhysis Medical

Galway’s SymPhysis Medical bagged $1.25m grant from last November to support the regulatory clearance for its ‘Releaze Drainage System’ in the US, right as it planned for a strong market launch in the country later this year.

Founded in 2018 by Tim Jones and Dr Michelle Tierney, SymPhysis is develops palliative care solutions for patients in the end stages of illness.

The funding is expected to help grow SymPhysis’ product – an at-home solution for managing malignant pleural effusion in late-stage cancer patients. Additionally, it will also enable the company to establish its first US base in Rhode Island.

The company’s headquarters will remain in Galway, with Jones stating in a press release: “Rhode Island gives us a bridge into the US market, not a replacement for what we are doing here.”

Tympany Medical

This Galway-based medtech is behind a new surgical device called Solascope, a variable angle and self-cleaning endoscopic tool.

The tool consists of a lightweight reusable handle combined with detachable single-use, sterile probe tips. “Our solution offers better visibility, improved ergonomics for surgeons and more sustainable practice,” said CEO Michael Gilmore. The start-up was founded in 2018 by Rory O’Callaghan and Elizabeth McGloughlin.

Last year, it opened €600,000 crowdfunding round to scale Solascope. The round has raised nearly €100,000 directly via the site Crowdcube.

The start-up was founded in 2018 by Rory O’Callaghan and Elizabeth McGloughlin. McGloughlin won the third spot in the 2025 European Institute of Innovation and Technology Women Leadership category at last year’s European Prize for Women Innovators.

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Amazon announced the latest update to Alexa+ on Monday: the ability to generate podcast episodes on demand.

The new feature, called “Alexa Podcasts,” is rolling out to customers in the U.S. today. Amazon describes the capability as a way to “turn any topic you’re curious about into a podcast episode, ready in minutes.”

To use the feature, all users have to do is ask Alexa+ to create a podcast about a topic they’re interested in. Users don’t need to upload documents, write scripts, or plan anything ahead of time. Instead, Alexa+ researches the request, gathers information, and generates a quick overview of what the episode will cover. From there, users can tweak things like the length, tone, and focus of the episode.

Once finalized, Alexa+ uses AI-generated host voices to narrate the podcast. When the episode is ready, users get a notification through their Echo Show device and inside the Alexa app. Episodes are also saved in the app’s “Music” and “More” sections so they can be replayed later.

The feature is another example of how Amazon is trying to turn Alexa+ into more than just a voice assistant. Instead of only answering questions or controlling smart home devices, Alexa+ is starting to act more like a personalized AI content creator.

At the same time, the launch is likely to spark some debate. AI-generated voices and automated content continue to raise questions around ethics, accuracy, and the future of traditional creators. There are also concerns about how reliable AI-generated podcasts will be, especially when covering news or complex topics.

Amazon emphasized its partnerships with major news organizations to improve content accuracy and reliability. The company says Alexa+ can access real-time information through agreements with outlets including the Associated Press, Reuters, The Washington Post, Time, Forbes, Business Insider, Politico, USA Today, Condé Nast, Hearst, and Vox Media, alongside more than 200 local newspapers across the U.S.

Beyond podcasts, Amazon says it is exploring additional forms of personalized AI audio, including custom news briefings and content generated from users’ own documents and shared information.