The journey from a laboratory hypothesis to a pharmacy shelf is one of the most grueling marathons in modern industry, typically spanning 10 to 15 years and billions of dollars in investment.
Progress is often stymied not just by the inherent mysteries of biology, but by the “fragmented and difficult to scale” workflows that force researchers to manually pivot between the actual experimental design equipment, software, and databases.
But OpenAI is releasing a new specialized model GPT-Rosalind specifically to speed up this process and make it more efficient, easier, and ideally, more productive. Named after the pioneering chemist Rosalind Franklin, whose work was vital to the discovery of DNA’s structure (and was often overlooked for her male colleagues James Watson and Francis Crick), this new frontier reasoning model is purpose-built to act as a specialized intelligence layer for life sciences research.
By shifting AI’s role from a general-purpose assistant to a domain-specific “reasoning” partner, OpenAI is signaling a long-term commitment to biological and chemical discovery.
Advertisement
What GPT-Rosalind offers
GPT-Rosalind isn’t just about faster text generation; it is designed to synthesize evidence, generate biological hypotheses, and plan experiments—tasks that have traditionally required years of expert human synthesis.
At its core, GPT-Rosalind is the first in a new series of models optimized for scientific workflows. While previous iterations of GPT excelled at general language tasks, this model is fine-tuned for deeper understanding across genomics, protein engineering, and chemistry.
To validate its capabilities, OpenAI tested the model against several industry benchmarks. On BixBench, a metric for real-world bioinformatics and data analysis, GPT-Rosalind achieved leading performance among models with published scores.
In more granular testing via LABBench2, the model outperformed GPT-5.4 on six out of eleven tasks, with the most significant gains appearing in CloningQA—a task requiring the end-to-end design of reagents for molecular cloning protocols.
Advertisement
The model’s most striking performance signal came from a partnership with Dyno Therapeutics. In an evaluation using unpublished, “uncontaminated” RNA sequences, GPT-Rosalind was tasked with sequence-to-function prediction and generation.
When evaluated directly in the Codex environment, the model’s submissions ranked above the 95th percentile of human experts on prediction tasks and reached the 84th percentile for sequence generation.
This level of expertise suggests the model can serve as a high-level collaborator capable of identifying “expert-relevant patterns” that generalist models often overlook.
The new lab workflow
OpenAI is not just releasing a model; it is launching an ecosystem designed to integrate with the tools scientists already use. Central to this is a new Life Sciences research plugin for Codex, available on GitHub.
Advertisement
Scientific research is famously siloed. A single project might require a researcher to consult a protein structure database, search through 20 years of clinical literature, and then use a separate tool for sequence manipulation. The new plugin acts as an “orchestration layer,” providing a unified starting point for these multi-step questions.
Skill Set: The package includes modular skills for biochemistry, human genetics, functional genomics, and clinical evidence.
Connectivity: It connects models to over 50 public multi-omics databases and literature sources.
Efficiency: This approach targets “long-horizon, tool-heavy scientific workflows,” allowing researchers to automate repeatable tasks like protein structure lookups and sequence searches.
Limited and gated access
Given the potential power of a model capable of redesigning biological structures, OpenAI is eschewing a broad “open-source” or general public release in favor of a Trusted Access program.
The model is launching as a research preview specifically for qualified Enterprise customers in the United States. This restricted deployment is built on three core principles: beneficial use, strong governance, and controlled access.
Organizations requesting access must undergo a qualification and safety review to ensure they are conducting legitimate research with a clear public benefit.
Advertisement
Unlike general-use models, GPT-Rosalind was developed with heightened enterprise-grade security controls. For the end-user, this means:
Restricted Access: Usage is limited to approved users within secure, well-managed environments.
Governance: Participating organizations must maintain strict misuse-prevention controls and agree to specific life sciences research preview terms.
Cost: During the preview phase, the model will not consume existing credits or tokens, allowing researchers to experiment without immediate budgetary constraints (subject to abuse guardrails).
Warm reception from initial industry partners
The announcement garnered significant buy-in from OpenAI parnters across the pharmaceutical and technology sectors.
Sean Bruich, SVP of AI and Data at Amgen, noted that the collaboration allows the company to apply advanced tools in ways that could “accelerate how we deliver medicines to patients”.The impact is also being felt in the specialized tech infrastructure that supports labs:
NVIDIA: Kimberly Powell, VP of Healthcare and Life Sciences, described the convergence of domain reasoning and accelerated computing as a way to “compress years of traditional R&D into immediate, actionable scientific insights”.
Moderna: CEO Stéphane Bancel highlighted the model’s ability to “reason across complex biological evidence” to help teams translate insights into experimental workflows.
The Allen Institute: CTO Andy Hickl emphasized that GPT-Rosalind stands out for making manual steps—like finding and aligning data—more “consistent and repeatable in an agentic workflow”.
This builds on tangible results OpenAI has already seen in the field, such as its collaboration with Ginkgo Bioworks, where AI models helped achieve a 40% reduction in protein production costs.
Advertisement
What’s next for Rosalind and OpenAI in life sciences?
OpenAI’s mission with GPT-Rosalind is to narrow the gap between a “promising scientific idea” and the actual “evidence, experiments, and decisions” required for medical progress.
By partnering with institutions like Los Alamos National Laboratory to explore AI-guided catalyst design and biological structure modification, the company is positioning GPT-Rosalind as more than a tool—it is meant to be a “capable partner in discovery”.
As the life sciences field becomes increasingly data-dense, the move toward specialized “reasoning” models like Rosalind may become the standard for navigating the “vast search spaces” of biology and chemistry.
AI is already changing how the world works, but it’s also quietly making one of our biggest environmental problems even worse. And no, this isn’t about energy consumption this time. It’s about the hardware. Because every smarter AI model comes with a physical cost.
AI is about to supercharge the e-waste problem
According to a study published in Nature Computational Science (via Rest of World), the rapid rise of AI could add between 1.2 to 5 million metric tons of e-waste by 2030. The reason is pretty simple. AI relies on high-performance hardware like GPUs and specialized servers, and these don’t last very long. Most of this equipment gets replaced every 2 to 5 years, which means older hardware is quickly discarded as newer, faster systems take over.
Rest of World / Global E-Waste Monitor 2024
And this is happening at scale. As companies race to build bigger data centers and train more powerful models, the demand for hardware keeps rising, along with the pile of obsolete machines left behind.
This isn’t just a tech problem but a global one
E-waste is already one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world, with tens of millions of tonnes generated every year. And the worst part? A large chunk of it isn’t properly recycled. Improper handling can release toxic materials like lead and mercury into the environment, posing serious risks to both ecosystems and human health. And here’s the uncomfortable truth: most of this waste ends up in lower-income countries, where recycling often happens under unsafe conditions. That means that while the benefits of AI are global, the environmental cost is not equally shared.
Mark Stosberg / Unsplash
At the end of the day, AI might feel like a purely digital revolution. But behind the scenes, it’s building a very real, very physical footprint. And if things don’t change, that footprint is only going to keep growing.
For smaller releases, including LPs from midsize indie labels (Drag City, Kranky, Superior Viaduct), check out Midheaven Mailorder. This site is run by the San Francisco distributor Revolver USA, which sells to record stores around the US but also sells direct to consumers. Here you’ll find a ton of independent music, including choice reissues from bigger names like Devo, Sonic Youth, and The Fall.
Another great independent record store is Amoeba Music, made famous for its amazing selection at numerous California stores, and its What’s in Your Bag YouTube series. If you want to support a good brick-and-mortar record store and know what you want, we always recommend buying from Amoeba instead of Amazon.
Start by checking out the liner notes on the back of all your albums to see who made them, then chase down those labels on the web. You’ll likely find some cool new tunes on vinyl along the way.
Advertisement
Directly From the Artists
We’ve saved the best for last. Pay the artists for their work by putting cash—or a Venmo transaction—directly in their hands. Buying a record at the merch table when an artist plays in your town is not only convenient for you (there’s no shipping, and you typically won’t be charged tax), but it’s one of the biggest income streams for bands that tour. You can often find special editions, special colored vinyl variants, and even records that haven’t yet been released just by stopping at the merch table. And if you’re lucky enough to meet the artist at the venue, they will usually sign the record jacket for you.
If you don’t get out much (we know, concerts are expensive), just find their website, social media page, or record label and place an order. I have at least a few records with personal thank-yous and signatures from small artists, which feels really special every time I listen to them!
What is World ID and how does Tinder’s human verification work?
World
World is a company built around the idea that proving your humanity online will become increasingly important as AI bots multiply and outnumber real people on the internet. Its solution is a proprietary scanning device called the Orb, which scans your irises at its physical outlets to verify that you are a real person.
Once verified, you receive a World ID linked to that scan. World already ran a pilot of this verification process with Tinder in Japan earlier this year, and that trial was apparently successful enough to warrant a worldwide rollout.
World
On Tinder, users who go through the World ID verification process will receive a badge on their profile indicating they are a verified human. To sweeten the deal, Tinder is also offering five free Boosts to anyone who completes the verification. The company hopes that this incentive is meaningful enough for people to hand over their biometric data.
Is this just about dating apps, or is the World orb coming for everything?
On top of that, World has launched Concert Kit, a tool that lets artists reserve concert tickets for verified humans only, taking direct aim at scalper bots. Concert Kit will soon be tested at a Bruno Mars World Tour show in San Francisco.
Even though World is pushing hard for mainstream adoption, governments in Brazil and several other countries have banned it over privacy concerns. Whether handing your biometric data to a third party becomes the new normal is a question that is only going to get louder from here.
The storage pricing situation is so bad right now that in some cases using an older expansion card designed for a gaming console can be a better option than purchasing a new SSD. A Reddit user recently shared an experiment with Xbox expansion cards, adapting the seemingly proprietary format for… Read Entire Article Source link
The US Department of Justice is siding with X, as the social media platform owned by Elon Musk navigates a criminal investigation unfolding in France. As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department characterized the French probe as “an effort to entangle the United States in a politically charged criminal proceeding aimed at wrongfully regulating through prosecution the business activities of a social media platform.”
France launched its investigation into X in July, accusing the platform of manipulating its algorithm and “fraudulent data extraction.” Months later, French authorities raided X’s office in Paris and issued summonses to Musk and Linda Yaccarino, the former CEO of X, to appear for interviews on April 20 as part of the probe. According to WSJ, French officials are also investigating X for other charges, including disseminating CSAM and Holocaust denial. However, France’s latest move to ask the Department of Justice for assistance has been stonewalled.
“This investigation seeks to use the criminal legal system in France to regulate a public square for the free expression of ideas and opinions in a manner contrary to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution,” the DOJ wrote in letter, as seen by WSJ.
An xAI official told WSJ that it’s “grateful to the Justice Department for rejecting this effort by a prosecutor in Paris to compel our CEO and several employees to sit for interviews.” The company spokesperson also said there was “no wrongdoing” and that it was a “baseless investigation.”
Brand recognition is vital in the appliance market, communicating trust and quality to the buyer. You’re much more likely to purchase an appliance from a company you recognize and have had a good experience with before. According to market research company YouGov, the most popular appliance brands in the U.S. are KitchenAid, Whirlpool, and GE Appliances.
We’ve all heard of mainstream appliance companies like Whirlpool and GE. Many of us might even have one of their dishwashers or tumble dryers in our homes. Most consumers consider factors like durability before they purchase a new appliance as well as other factors like user ratings, cost, how the appliance performs and meets our unique needs, and, of course, brand.
But what if we told you there’s a whole world of luxury appliance brands out there that you’ve never heard of? If you’re looking for top-notch performance, great reliability, and premium materials, brands like KitchenAid and GE may not cut it. Here are five luxury appliance brands that you might not have even realized are out there — something to consider if you’re looking to kit out a bespoke kitchen or high-end utility room.
Advertisement
Miele
You may not have heard of German appliance company Miele, but it’s been in business for more than 125 years. Created in 1899 by engineer Carl Miele and his business partner Reinhard Zinkann, Miele originally manufactured cream separators. Today, it’s still guided by its original slogan, “Immer Besser,” which means “Forever Better.”
Advertisement
Miele’s U.S. headquarters is located in Princeton, New Jersey, and there are several “experience centers” scattered across the U.S. These showrooms allow interested buyers to view Miele products and consult with experts about your needs. If you’re invested in purchasing only products made in the U.S., Miele also has a production plant in Alabama, marking its first manufacturing venture in America. It makes kitchen appliances there that are exclusively for the North American market.
If you don’t live near any of the experience centers, Miele appliances are sold online, through independent dealers, and at big box stores like Best Buy and Lowe’s. Wirecutter has recommended its canister vacuums for years, and reviewers consistently insist that the brand is worth the price. SlashGear has even highlighted how Miele figures high in customer satisfaction in the past. The company’s vacuum cleaners sold at Lowe’s range in price from $399 to $999, while the brand’s dishwashers and refrigerators at Best Buy are several thousand dollars or more.
Advertisement
Signature Kitchen Suite (SKS)
Signature Kitchen Suite (SKS) is a subsidiary of LG Electronics and is known for its pioneering, state-of-the-art technology. As its name implies, the company is focused only on kitchen appliances, from standard ranges and cooktops to wine refrigerators and ventilation hoods. SKS should be on your list if you’re looking for sleek, ultra-modern appliances with understated styling that are designed to blend in rather than stand out.
Appliances from SKS offer much more than your standard Lowe’s or Home Depot options. Buyers can expect touchscreen controls, wi-fi enabled smart appliances, and whisper-quiet performance. Some SKS ranges actually have a built-in sous vide module for anyone looking to get into some unorthodox cooking techniques that are usually reserved for fancy Michelin-star restaurants in major metropolitan areas. These luxury appliances have luxury price tags — the SKS 48-inch Dual-Fuel Pro Range with sous vide costs more than $17,000!
Many products connect via LG’s ThinQ app, which allows users to turn on appliances, check cycles, and even monitor the health of the appliance. You can even set a custom melody for your refrigerator’s door alarm or your dishwasher’s cycle alert. You’re unlikely to find one of these appliances for sale at a big box store like Best Buy or Lowe’s; instead, check the SKS website to find a dealer near you.
Advertisement
Viking
If $17,000 for a range is a bit out of budget but you still want to explore luxury options, try Viking. While it does offer plenty of appliances in the five-figure range, buyers can also get a rangetop for under $6,000 or a refrigerator for just over $4,200. Viking is also a great choice if you’re looking for commercial-grade appliances for your home — just be prepared to shell out the big bucks.
Advertisement
Arguably an appliance manufacturer that’s a bit more well-known compared to others on this list, Viking introduced its first commercial-style range intended for home use in 1987. The company slowly expanded its product line to include refrigerators, cooktops, and even dishwashers. Their rangetops, however, continue to be the talk of the town and are renowned for their high output burners, with some hitting 23,000 BTUs for high-heat searing and boiling. The low-heat simmering burners are also celebrated for their precise heat control. Viking sells both gas and electric ranges in various sizes.
If you want to add a bit of color to your kitchen, some Viking appliances are available in a variety of colors, from traditional stainless steel and classic black to vibrant turquoise or pink. Its panel-ready dishwashers can match any style and color cabinet. Viking appliances are also made in America, manufactured in one of the company’s three Mississippi plants.
Advertisement
Wolf, Cove, and Sub-Zero
Owned by Sub-Zero Corp, which also markets other appliances, Wolf focuses on cooktops and ovens. Cove, meanwhile, is the name of the company’s dishwashers, while the eponymous Sub-Zero line, as you may have guessed, specializes in refrigeration.
Wolf ranges are known not just for their iconic red knobs (which are also available in standard, albeit more boring, colors) but also for their professional-grade performance. They are built to last not just for years, but decades according to Wolf, as each one is built by hand and individually tested. The company’s dual-fuel range uses natural gas or liquid propane for the cooktop along with electric power for the oven. The 30″ model with four burners starts at $9,180.
Cove offers only dishwashers, but its 24-inch panel-ready model is modestly priced (for the luxury sector) at $2,935. Buyers can customize the dishwasher to match their kitchen cabinetry for a modern, seamless look. This model is also available as an ADA-compliant option, with a lower height for easier loading and unloading. Sub-Zero offers three series of refrigerators, along with a line of wine fridges. The Classic Series is known for its iconic top-mounted grille, while the Designer series features integrated panels for a seamless look. The Pro Series is a line of stainless steel, commercial-style refrigerators. Buyers should expect to pay well over $10,000 for a Sub-Zero refrigerator.
Advertisement
JennAir
JennAir was the first company to debut downdraft ventilation in 1965, removing the need for overhead ventilation hoods for those that can afford it. Today, the company offers a wide range of kitchen appliances manufactured by Whirlpool Corporation, including modular, customizable column refrigeration. These types of fridges offer high levels of freedom in choosing your layout, and JennAir’s options combine high performance (and high prices) with a sleek, modern look.
Advertisement
JennAir offers refrigerator and freezer column options in various sizes, from 18 inches to 36 inches, and in various panel styles. Buyers can opt for one column, two separated or joined columns, three separated or joined columns, and more. Prices start at about $8,000 for one column. Whirlpool refrigerators, including JennAir, typically rank well compared to competitors.
Shoppers will also appreciate JennAir’s professional ranges, custom cooktops, ventilation options, and dishwashers and compactors. Its dishwashers are offered in two distinct styles: Rise and Noir. Rise offers a minimalist, stainless steel design, while Noir has a more dramatic, modern design with a laser-etched lace texture pattern inscribed behind the handle. Good Housekeeping tested a JennAir dishwasher and noted its high-end feel and quiet performance, naming it one of the best dishwashers on the market. Rise dishwashers are available for $1,699, while Noir models start at $1,499.
University of Washington physicist David Hertzog checks out the 50-foot-wide superconducting magnetic ring for the Muon g-2 experiment at the time of its startup at Fermilab in 2018. (Photo Courtesy of David Hertzog)
University of Washington physicist David Hertzog can’t wait to find out how hundreds of researchers who worked on a geeky project known as the Muon g-2 Collaboration will react when they hear they’ve each won thousands of dollars for that work.
The money is coming from this year’s $3 million Breakthrough Prize for fundamental physics, which was awarded tonight during a gala ceremony in Los Angeles. Hertzog and his colleagues decided that the prize should be divided equally among everyone who was an author on research papers relating to the decades-long series of muon experiments.
“There are students who were in and out of this thing — two years or less,” Hertzog said. “They’re going to be shocked out of their lives about something they did a long time ago that they don’t remember doing. They’re going to get a phone call or email from the Breakthrough people, and they’re going to go, ‘What!?’ That’s kind of fun.”
Hertzog said the money will be shared by about 400 researchers who were involved in the Muon g-2 experiments at Fermilab in Illinois and at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York. The prize also honors the role played by Europe’s CERN research center, going as far back as 1959. “There was one very, very old man who was still alive from the 1970s experiment, but I think he has died,” Hertzog said.
Although the precise math hasn’t yet been worked out, dividing $3 million among 400 people would give each recipient $7,500. “That’s nothing to throw around if you’re a student or a young postdoc,” Hertzog said.
Advertisement
A big moment for the muon
Russian-born tech investor Yuri Milner and his wife, Julia Milner, established the Breakthrough Prize in 2012 to recognize achievements in fundamental physics, mathematics and the life sciences. They also wanted to add some Hollywood-style pizazz to the public perception of scientists, going so far as to spread out a red carpet for celebrities at the “Oscars of Science.” The host for this year’s ceremony was James Corden, and the guest list included Robert Downey Jr., Eileen Gu, Anne Hathaway, Paris Hilton, Salma Hayek Pinault and Michelle Yeoh.
The $3 million Breakthrough Prize is the world’s richest scientific award, outdoing the roughly $1.2 million prize given to Nobel laureates. More than $344 million has been handed out since the creation of the prize program. Past winners from the University of Washington include physicists Eric Adelberger, Lukasz Fidkowski, Jens Gundlach and Blayne Heckel, plus biochemist David Baker.
This year’s prize in fundamental physics touches on a long-running effort to reconcile experimental findings with one of history’s most successful scientific theories: the Standard Model of particle physics. The theory lays out a framework for classifying and understanding a menagerie of subatomic particles — including the muon, which is similar to the electron but 207 times heavier.
The Standard Model predicts the various properties of the muon. One such property is the strength and orientation of the muon’s magnetic field, known as its magnetic moment. The theory’s simplest formulation calls for the value of the muon’s magnetic moment, represented in equations by the letter g, to be equal to 2.
Advertisement
Few things in particle physics are that simple, however. Experimental tests measured the g-factor to be slightly more than 2, and that discrepancy became the focus of the Muon g-2 (pronounced “mew-on gee-minus-two”) experiments.
If there was a confirmed mismatch between the Standard Model and experimental results, that could open the door to new physics. For example, perhaps whole new sets of subatomic particles not predicted by theory had somehow eluded direct observation. So, physicists across the globe marshaled their forces to determine the value of g, either to fill in the gap between experiment and theory or to zero in on a new frontier in physics.
Over the years, physicists have been conducting increasingly fine-tuned experimental runs using powerful magnets at CERN, Brookhaven and Fermilab. Hertzog has been in on the quest since Brookhaven joined in, about 30 years ago, and he was part of the team in 2013 when the experiment’s massive main magnet was moved from Brookhaven to Fermilab.
“We set the goal at 140 parts per billion, and we got 127 parts per billion,” Hertzog said. “When we wrote the proposal, we were ambitious as we could get in our minds, because we wanted to get people to take us on. Then we just blew away all the systematic errors, better than we expected. And then new ones came along, which caused us to have a little bit of a struggle.”
Researchers install the storage ring and magnets for the first Muon g-2 experiment at CERN in 1960. (CERN PhotoLab)
At the same time, other physicists were wrestling with theoretical models. They factored in the ever-so-subtle effects of particles popping in and out of the quantum foam that’s thought to make up the fabric of spacetime at its smallest scale. Last year, one of the models came up with a range of theoretical values for g that overlapped with the Muon g-2 Collaboration’s range of experimental values.
That led some to claim that there was no discrepancy after all. “A famous particle physics experiment has ended not with a bang, but a whimper,” Science magazine reported. But once again, few things in particle physics are that simple. Hertzog insisted that reports of the muon mystery’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
“I just throw up my hands, because after 30-some years of working on this, it’s a little disappointing that it’s not clear,” he said. “Not only has the number that they recommended shifted, but the certainty of their number got way wider. The uncertainty on the theory recommendation is actually pretty big. It’s shifted, but it’s also pretty large.”
Hertzog said the Breakthrough Prize recognizes a scientific quest that’s still in progress. “This story is not finished,” he said. “The story is really about the extraordinary achievement of the precision of this delicate measurement which probes nature to such a deep, deep level.”
Advertisement
Will there ever be a definitive answer to the muon mystery?
“We don’t know it yet, but it’s knowable, as opposed to walking out into a vast cloud of ambiguity,” Hertzog said. “So, I think we will find out in a couple of years where that finally lands. … Who knows whether that’ll lead us to another chapter in this business. But I’m confident that we’ll know it.”
A big night for breakthroughs
The Muon g-2 Collaboration’s Breakthrough Prize was awarded to hundreds of researchers from 31 institutions in seven countries, but just four team members were selected to take the stage for tonight’s award ceremony. Hertzog was joined by Chris Polly from Fermilab, William Morse from Brookhaven, and Lee Roberts from Brookhaven and Boston University.
A special lifetime prize for fundamental physics went to David Gross, a theorist at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Gross won a share of the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for filling gaps in the Standard Model relating to the strong nuclear force. More recently, he helped write a landmark 40-year national plan for particle physics.
Another prize went to Stuart Orkin, a physician at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital; and to Swee Lay Thein at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute for elucidating the mechanism driving the switch from fetal to adult hemoglobin and validating it as a therapeutic target for sickle-cell disease and beta-thalassemia.
Frank Merle of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Paris was awarded this year’s prize in mathematics for achieving breakthroughs in nonlinear evolution equations. His work could have implications from aeronautical engineering and safety to astrophysics.
For his part, Hertzog doesn’t intend to rest on his laurels. Even as the Muon g-2 Collaboration is winding down, he has joined the team for another particle physics experiment called PIONEER. That experiment will probe inconsistencies between the Standard Model and observations of pion decay. As was the case with the Muon g-2 experiments, there’s a chance that PIONEER could point the way to physics beyond the Standard Model.
“This is a stock market golden opportunity,” Hertzog said. “That’s how I look at it.”
The Breakthrough Prize website has the full list of this year’s honorees, including the winners of New Horizons Prizes for early-career physicists and mathematicians, Maryam Mirzakhani New Frontiers Prizes for women mathematicians and the inaugural Vera Rubin New Frontiers Prize for women physicists. The recorded awards show is due to air at noon PT on April 26 via YouTube.
The new funding will be used to expand the Copenhagen-based company’s AI platform for banks and fintech companies, and accelerate adoption across financial institutions globally.
Danish financial compliance AI start-up Spektr has raised $20m in a Series A funding round led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) with participation from existing investors including Northzone, Seedcamp and PSV Tech.
The new funding will be used to expand the Copenhagen-based company’s AI platform for banks and fintech companies, and accelerate adoption across financial institutions globally, according to the company.
According to Spektr, its specialised AI agents are designed to perform the work financial analysts typically do during compliance reviews – such as researching companies, interpreting information, verifying business activity and generating structured risk assessments – and instead of analysts spending hours gathering and interpreting data, the agents complete the work in minutes so compliance teams can review and approve the results.
Advertisement
“Compliance technology has mostly focused on workflow and data collection,” said Mikkel Skarnager, CEO and co-founder of Spektr.
“But the real bottleneck has always been the work itself – analysts researching companies, interpreting information and documenting decisions. Spektr automates those tasks with AI agents designed specifically for KYC and KYB compliance.”
Spektr was co-founded by Skarnager, CTO Ciprian Florescu, CRO Jan-Erik Wagner and CPO Jeremy Joly. Its live customers include Santander Leasing, Pleo, Mercuryo, Monta and Phantom.
“Financial institutions are under constant pressure to do more compliance work with fewer resources,” said Luke Pappas, partner at NEA.
Advertisement
“Spektr is tackling the most manual part of compliance operations in financial services. Their approach has the potential to redefine how compliance operations are run.”
Don’t miss out on the knowledge you need to succeed. Sign up for the Daily Brief, Silicon Republic’s digest of need-to-know sci-tech news.
Microsoft is warning that a recent Microsoft Edge browser update introduced a bug that breaks right-click paste in chats in the Microsoft Teams desktop client.
In an advisory published on April 14, Microsoft says users are reporting that they are unable to paste URLs, text, or images into Teams chats when using right-click context menus, with the “Paste” option greyed out.
To work around the bug, Microsoft says users can still copy and paste content using keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + C and Ctrl + V on Windows, or Cmd + C and Cmd + V on macOS.
“Impacted users report that they are unable to copy and paste URLs, text, and images in Microsoft Teams desktop client chats, as the paste option appears greyed out when using the right-click dropdown menu method,” explains Microsoft.
“To bypass impact, we recommended that users attempt to copy the intended URLs, text, and images using Ctrl + C and paste using Ctrl + V for Windows, and corresponding Cmd + C and Cmd + V for Mac.”
Advertisement
Microsoft says the bug is caused by a recent browser update that introduced a code regression in Microsoft Edge, which Microsoft Teams uses for certain functionality.
Admins on Reddit and the Microsoft forums report that the problem is affecting users in corporate environments as well as individual users.
“I have multiple users on version 26072.519.4556.7438 experiencing this issue, including myself. Cannot right-click Paste, but CTRL+V and paste as text are allowed,” an admin posted to the Microsoft Forums.
Paste option in Microsoft Teams is greyed out
Other users said that reinstalling Teams or clearing the cache did not fix the problem.
Microsoft says it identified the cause and is rolling out a fix in stages while monitoring telemetry to confirm that systems are recovering.
Advertisement
As of the latest update on April 16, Microsoft has not provided an exact timeline for when the fix will be fully rolled out.
AI chained four zero-days into one exploit that bypassed both renderer and OS sandboxes. A wave of new exploits is coming.
At the Autonomous Validation Summit (May 12 & 14), see how autonomous, context-rich validation finds what’s exploitable, proves controls hold, and closes the remediation loop.
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson addressed concerns about a potential wave of new data centers in the city and raised the possibility of a moratorium, citing economic and environmental issues.
Wilson’s public statement Saturday followed a Seattle Times report April 10 that four companies have approached Seattle City Light about building five large-scale data centers with a combined peak demand of 369 megawatts, equal to roughly a third of Seattle’s average daily power consumption.
“I share community concerns about environmental justice, economic resilience, and impacts of increased costs for Seattle rate payers,” Wilson wrote on Facebook. “That’s why my team is working closely with Seattle City Light, City Council and stakeholders to identify a range of long-term policy approaches, including exploring a moratorium on siting new centers.”
Seattle already has about 30 data centers, but they’re relatively small. The proposed facilities would be the first at this scale in the city and could consume nearly 10 times more power than the existing ones at full capacity, according to the Seattle Times report.
The world’s biggest tech companies, including hometown tech giants Microsoft and Amazon, have been spending hundreds of billions of dollars building data centers to scale up artificial intelligence.
Advertisement
Those facilities have historically gone up in rural areas, but power availability has grown scarce in many markets, driving developers to look at cities with their own utility resources.
It’s not clear who the proposed data centers would be built for. Seattle City Light hasn’t disclosed the companies involved or proposed locations due to nondisclosure agreements.
Seattle City Light is rewriting its contract terms for large-load customers and plans to require data center operators to secure their own power generation and pay for infrastructure upgrades rather than passing costs to ratepayers. The companies are expected to decide in the next two to three months whether to formally apply for service.
-SOURCE-Parker-Hall.jpg)
You must be logged in to post a comment Login