Samsung has finally joined the silicon-carbon battery race with its latest batch of premium foldables packing the new battery tech. But details for this change were rather hard to spot on the spec sheets. The company has confirmed during media briefings that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, Galaxy Z Fold 8, and Galaxy Z Flip 8 all use silicon-carbon batteries.

Even then, the resulting capacities are hardly record-breaking. The Fold 8 Ultra carries a 5,000mAh battery, the regular Fold 8 gets 4,800mAh, and the Flip 8 has 4,300mAh. Rivals from Honor and Motorola have already crossed the 6,000mAh mark. But the figures only tell part of the story.

What is a silicon-carbon battery?

Silicon-carbon batteries remain a form of lithium-ion battery. The key change happens inside the anode, one of the electrodes responsible for storing and releasing lithium ions during charging and discharging. Conventional lithium-ion batteries predominantly use graphite in the anode. Silicon can hold considerably more lithium than graphite by weight, giving battery makers a route toward higher energy density.

Higher density creates two useful options for phone manufacturers. They can fit more battery capacity into the same physical space, or retain a familiar capacity while making the battery thinner and lighter. Foldables stand to benefit considerably from either approach. Every millimeter recovered from the battery can be used to improve thickness, weight, or even endurance.

However, pure silicon creates its own engineering problems. It expands dramatically as it absorbs lithium during charging, then contracts as the battery discharges. Repeated expansion can crack the material, damage internal connections, and accelerate battery degradation. This is why silicon-carbon designs combine silicon with carbon-based material to better control that expansion.

How it helped the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra

The best example of how this tech helped Samsung is with the Z Fold 8 Ultra. Its 5,000mAh battery is 600mAh larger than the 4,400mAh cell in the Galaxy Z Fold 7. That works out to an increase of almost 14%. Samsung made that jump while trimming the unfolded thickness from 4.2mm to 4.1mm. Both generations weigh 215 grams. The company also claims up to 27 hours of video playback, compared with 24 hours on the Fold 7.

An extra 600mAh may sound modest beside the giant cells now appearing in Chinese foldables. The global Honor Magic V6 has a 6,660mAh silicon-carbon battery inside a body measuring 4mm when unfolded. Meanwhile, Motorola’s Razr Fold uses a 6,000mAh silicon-carbon battery while measuring 4.6mm unfolded. It also supports 80W wired and 50W wireless fast charging, giving it a considerable advantage over Samsung on paper.

So when you pit it against the other foldables out there, the Z Fold 8 Ultra looks rather conservative. It would be easy to dismiss Samsung over this, but the official briefings gave us a better insight into the company’s priorities. Samsung emphasized performance, longevity, and safety. The company also said users should expect battery health consistent with previous Galaxy products. Samsung appears to be limiting silicon content or using a more conservative cell design until it has greater confidence in long-term behavior.

Similar to Apple, Galaxy devices are looking to refine the experience and improve user experience with new models rather than introducing big spec numbers. There’s an argument to be made for both sides of this, but considering the past incidents, Samsung’s cautious approach isn’t surprising.

This is only Samsung’s first step

Samsung has arrived late to silicon-carbon batteries. Other brands have already used to technology to push phone batteries beyond capacities that once looked unrealistic. The first Galaxy attempt may not be hitting headline-grabbing figures, but the direction is clear.

Future Galaxy phones could adopt higher silicon percentages and larger capacities. The technology could eventually reach conventional Galaxy S devices too, where it might enable thicker battery reserves or slimmer designs. For now, silicon-carbon has helped Samsung make its newest foldables thinner without leaving battery capacity behind. We are now getting the best-built foldables ever, and after years of 4,400mAh Galaxy Folds, I’ll take the small but deliberate step.

• Adata chief predicts memory shortages could persist throughout the next decade
• Chen says AI demand still exceeds most industry expectations worldwide
• DDR5 prices climbed another 7% during July despite earlier market optimism

Chen Li-bai, chairman of memory chip manufacturer ADATA, has dismissed growing market speculation about an imminent collapse in AI-related investment.

Speaking after TSMC’s stock price plummeted following its recent earnings call, Chen argued that discussions about an AI bubble remain premature at this stage.

“We don’t want people to be surreptitiously taking videos of other people.”

Entegro is extending its expertise in fibre telecommunications and network infrastructure by moving into the renewable energy sector.

Entegro, a Kilkenny-based engineering group, has announced the acquisition of renewable energy specialist Acel Energy, a solar energy company headquartered in Monaghan. 

In acquiring Acel Energy, Entegro aims to further its expertise in the designing, building and operation of critical fibre telecommunications and network infrastructure. The move will involve the formation of a new entity – Entegro Energy – and there are also plans to grow its workforce from 200 employees to roughly 300. 

Entegro said its acquisition also builds on an established partnership with high- and medium-voltage engineering specialist Nahanagan Electrical.

According to Entegro, the new deal will align complementary capabilities under a single roof, furthering expertise in the delivery of renewables generation, battery storage and high-voltage infrastructure solutions domestically and internationally. 

Established in Kilkenny in 2019, Entegro, which is part of the Kyntus Group, has a presence in Ireland, the UK and the US, and delivers services from design and engineering through construction, commissioning and operation, with business units spanning fibre and telecommunications, transformation services and energy.

Commenting on the announcement, John Rooney, the group CEO for Entegro, said, “The board and I welcome the Acel team to the Entegro group. This is another milestone for Entegro as we continue to build a multi-utility business across telecoms, power and infrastructure to meet the demands of Ireland and beyond. 

“Entegro has always sat at the heart of critical infrastructure, so moving into energy is a natural next step rather than a departure. 

“Bringing Acel and Nahanagan together gives us the ability to design, commission and run energy systems end to end, from an Irish base and with a trusted team that keeps growing. That is the future we want to help build and to build well.”

Barry Sherry, the managing director at Acel Energy, added, “Declan McDonald and I built Acel on engineering-led renewable generation and storage, and joining Entegro lets us do that at a scale we could not reach alone.”

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Runway no longer wants to be just another AI model company. It wants to become the infrastructure layer for generative media.

On Thursday, the startup launched Runway Media Router through Runway Dev, its developer platform, released earlier this month, that provides API access to a growing roster of third-party image, video and audio models alongside Runway’s own. 

The Media Router is a tool that automatically selects the best image, video, or audio generation model for a request based on whether a developer prioritizes quality, speed or cost. While model routers have become increasingly common in the world of large language models, Runway says this is the first built specifically for generative media. 

“The routing really fits into that overall promise of being the easiest one-stop shop for developers to integrate with any type of generative media model,” Anthony Maggio, Runway’s chief product officer, told TechCrunch.

The launch, shared exclusively with TechCrunch, marks another step in Runway’s evolution from an AI video startup into infrastructure for companies building with generative media. Through Runway Dev, customers including Adobe, Cloudflare, ElevenLabs, Expedia, Shutterstock, and Quora can build media generation directly into their own products using Runway’s API rather than sending their users to Runway’s own app or site.

The launch of the router comes as the number of generative media models has exploded, making it increasingly difficult and time-consuming for developers to evaluate new releases. Through the Runway Dev platform, developers can access the latest media models when they’re released. 

“Most developers are not spending the time to really understand the capabilities of each of these models and where they excel or differ based on various types of outputs across video, image, and audio,” Maggio said. “The unique proposition we’re bringing to the table is all of that intelligence around what the best model is for each different use case, and meshing that with preference you apply around the context of your business.”

Maggio noted that Chinese generative media models are becoming increasingly popular. However, many businesses building their own products might not be comfortable working with models that come out of China, so they could, he said, potentially set a preference for American model providers — a preference that may become more common as the Trump administration explores bans and sanctions against Chinese open AI models. 

That’s just one example of preferences that developers can set, though. Maggio says customers are mainly interested in routing the model to account for token pricing and quality. Token pricing has become a hot topic in 2026 as enterprises that went all-in on agentic AI felt the sting of high token bills. In the world of LLMs, model routing for token pricing has become common, so it only makes sense that routing for generative media would follow. The Media Router launch also comes weeks after Runway replaced its unlimited subscription plans with token-based pricing, a move that drew criticism from some users. 

On the quality front, deciding what models provide the best quality for any given task isn’t as easy for generative media as it is with language models, Maggio says. That’s where the router’s intelligence layer kicks in. It’s based on the expertise Runway’s in-house creative team has developed in evaluating output across every media type — things like how video models handle motion, how image models handle composition, or how voice models handle lip syncing. 

Runway had already done a lot of the work building that intelligence layer for its agent product, a conversational AI creative partner that Runway launched in May to help turn text prompts into fully edited multi-shot videos and marketing campaigns. 

The Runway Media Router, Maggio says, takes the same routing technology Runway built for its own products and packages it for outside developers to use.

Runway’s strategy today reflects how fragmented and competitive the current generative media landscape is, and how much the startup needs to expand and pivot to stay competitive. Runway’s last AI video model release — Gen 4.5 — was in December. At the time, the model topped leaderboards, outperforming similar models from incumbents like Google. In the same month, Runway released its first world model. 

Aside from an upgrade to its video editing model, Aleph 2.0, in May, Runway hasn’t dropped a new dedicated frontier video model in months. (TechCrunch has asked when the startup plans to release Gen-5.) Today, while Aleph 2.0 ranks among the leading video editing models according to Artificial Analysis, the company’s text-to-video and image-to-video models no longer lead the rankings. In the top 20 spots are models from heavy hitters like Google and China’s ByteDance and Alibaba. 

Rather than asking developers to bet on a single model staying ahead, Media Router assumes that the best model will continue to change — and it keeps Runway in the game so that it can continue to build on the frontier. If not as the best new AI model, then as the best orchestration layer. 

Anastasis Germanidis, Runway’s co-founder and co-CEO, acknowledged that the startup has been known for a long time primarily for “that end user piece,” but it had to build a full stack to get there, one that includes a developer platform, a creative tool suite, and an inference layer underneath it all. He says the company has seen increasing interest from companies for Runway to live across every part of that stack. 

“You need great models underneath, but the orchestration increasingly matters a lot because people are building entire campaigns with those models, or they’re building entire finished multi-scene generations out of those models,” Germanidis told TechCrunch. “It’s something that we increasingly had to build — that intelligence layer that comes on top of the pure pixel models. The router is one way in which the benefits of that come to users.”

Or as Maggio put it more broadly: “If you zoom out at the one thing Runway has been doing since 2018, it’s that we’re deeply focused on research, while building for where we think the space is going at the same time.”

Got a sensitive tip or confidential documents? Rebecca Bellan is reporting on the inner workings of the AI industry, from the companies shaping its future to the people impacted by their decisions. Contact her securely, and off the record, on Signal at rebeccabellan.491 or via email at rebecca.bellan@techcrunch.com from a non-work device.

Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon helped bolster fledging Apple TV with “The Morning Show” in 2019. The final season of the award-winning drama has been announced, bringing an era to a close.

Eddy Cue wanted “The Morning Show.” Long before the service was announced in March 2019, or debuted in November that year, Cue was looking for shows that would bring the streamer attention, and “The Morning Show” was being shopped around.

Created by Jay Carson and developed by Kerry Ehrin, the drama was being executive produced by its stars, Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. “I thought the show was amazing,” Cue later told Variety, “but… I came down to the realization that we weren’t going to get it, because somebody would always offer more.”

“But I thought we were special, and so I asked for a meeting with [Aniston and Witherspoon],” he continued. He says he asked “whether they thought they were going to make one of the best shows ever in television,” and they said yes.

“So do I,” he told them. “That means you need to do it with us, and the reason you have to do it with us is because we don’t have any other shows. So we believe 100% in what you’re doing, and we’re going to launch our service on that.”

Launching Apple TV+

The first star on stage at the launch of Apple TV+, as it was originally known, was Steve Spielberg. Then the lights went down, there was a long pause, and the spotlight came up on Reese Witherspoon and Jennifer Aniston.

“Reese and I are so proud to be a part of this exciting launch with Apple, officially announcing our new project, ‘The Morning Show,’” said Aniston.

“So in ‘The Morning Show,’ said Witherspoon, “we pull back the curtain on the power dynamics between men and women in the high-stakes world of morning news shows.”

“It’s a real insider’s view into the lives of the people who help America wake up every day,” she continued before handing back to Aniston.

“And through the prism of those under-slept, over-adrenalized people behind and in front of the camera, we take an honest look at the complex relationships between women and men in the workplace, and we engage in the conversation people are a little too afraid to have unless they are behind closed doors.”

That’s “The Morning Show,” and that’s exactly where the show went over what we now know will be its eight-year run.

As with many Apple TV series, “The Morning Show” was given a two-season order right at the start. But it has not aired as consistently as later hits such as “Slow Horses,” which runs annually.

Instead, “The Morning Show” has aired only four seasons so far, with its fifth and final one now in production to air in 2027. It’s worked out as a new season every second September, and perhaps because of that, each run has been a critically-acclaimed event event.

The show didn’t ignore how comparatively slowly it was being released, either as the story moved on two years between seasons three and four. It’s not known yet when the final season’s storylines will pick up, but it is known that it will feature new characters played by Jeff Daniels, Jesse Williams, and more.

Those new faces will join the regulars including Aniston, Witherspoon, and Billy Crudup. Crudup is just one of the actors to have won awards for the series, but he holds the distinction of having won the very first Emmy that Apple TV ever received.

If the new season keeps to the existing format, it will bring the total number of episodes up to 50. It’s a small number compared to network TV shows of the past. Over the same time frame, for example, Aniston’s “Friends” cranked out 194 half-hour episodes.

But maybe this what has made “The Morning Show” so consistently strong. Seasons are released when they’re ready, more or less, instead of having to hit specific air dates.

The seasons are long enough, at 10 episodes each, to tell a meaty story. But they’re not so long as to need those tales being stretched out unnaturally.

Back when hour dramas ran for upwards of 22 episodes per season, there used to be a reluctant belief on the part of producers. One third of your season’s episodes could be great, they would say, one third might be okay, but try as you might, one third would be terrible.

So far “The Morning Show” has avoided that trap. Here’s looking forward to seeing if it can get to the finishing line as strongly as it has run so far.

Apple has not announced any details of the last season yet, but if it follows form, the season will run in September 2027. And we’ll have to wait until August 2027 to even see the first trailer.

A great many drones out there, whether homebuilt or store-bought, follow the same basic format. Four motors, some kind of controller, and a lithium-polymer battery supplying the juice to keep everything in the air. It’s a format that produces a remarkably capable air vehicle, suitable for everything from high-speed camera work to urban search and rescue.

With that said, the format does have its limitations. [Suryansh Sharma] has been working on alternative designs for fancy and interesting drones that are half quadcopter and half blimp, and he came to Hackaday Europe 2026 to tell us all about it.

[Suryansh]’s talk took in a number of drone projects which he has been involved with. The first was the creatively-named BEAVIS, or Balloon Enabled Aerial Vehicle for IoT and Sensing. This was a project that aimed to tackle one of the greatest limitations of the common multirotor drone. Namely, as [Suryansh] so elegantly puts it, they “suck when it comes to staying in the air.” This is for a very simple reason—much like the helicopter, a multirotor drone must expend energy continuously to generate lift by spinning its propellers. Conventional multirotors don’t have wings that generate lift from forward motion, and any sort of gliding or similar behavior is basically impossible. Continual energy expenditure is the only thing keeping a multirotor aloft.

The point of BEAVIS was to fix this by combining drone tech with a simple lighter-than-air balloon. It’s an interesting combination, because a multirotor drone has excellent maneuverability and agility, but terrible endurance. A lighter-than-air balloon is quite the opposite, which has excellent endurance while suffering in all other respects. The BEAVIS concept outfits a small balloon with four motors in a split-cross configuration, which allows for planar translation as well as the ability to control yaw of the craft. With all four motors mounted horizontally in the same plane, it may seem like vertical control is not possible. However, by turning on two opposing props, it’s possible to create a low-pressure region beneath the craft which tends to push it downwards. Meanwhile, if you turn all four props on in the right directions, you create a high pressure region underneath the balloon which pushes the craft up. With the balloon, it has the benefit of being able to just hang in the air without continually burning through battery power. Endurance times of well over an hour were possible with this build, compared to maybe less than ten minutes for a comparable pure multirotor.

BEAVIS was eventually developed into Janus— described as a “morphing quadrotor blimp with balloon failure resilience.” The goal was to build a craft that was viable for deployment in the real world, and that could undertake mobile ecological sensing work. The main difference to the previous design was that it would no longer solely fly as a balloon with horizontally-mounted props. Instead, Janus would feature a mechanism to allow the rotors to be positioned in the vertical axis to allow for conventional multirotor flight. This was key to allowing the craft to fly both as a lighter-than-air craft, and to survive and keep flying in the event the balloon burst or was otherwise damaged. The build was eventually deployed in Kenya to aid in ecological data collection for conservation efforts.

[Suryansh] has been involved in other drone-related projects, too. Open Gimbal was a particularly interesting effort, involving the construction of a bench-testing rig for developing small multirotor drone craft. The 3-DoF platform offered unrestricted rotational freedom, allowing for a craft to be put through its paces in a controlled way without requiring a large open  space for free flight. [Suryansh] also discusses his work with a company called Avy, which specializes in VTOL drones with a focus on emergency response roles. The company has deployed drones that use multirotor technology to launch vertically, while relying on fixed wing aerodynamic elements to extend range and improve efficiency for longer flight times. The drones feature a neat charging setup, wherein pogo pins on the fins pick up power from the metal launchpad to ensure that batteries are fully charged and the drone is ready to go at all times.

Ultimately, multirotor drones have taken on their basic form for good reason. With that said, as [Suryansh]’s talk explains, modifications to the form can have great utility when made to suit a particularly specific mission or application. If you’re developing a drone for a certain purpose, and you’re running into hard limitations, you might try thinking outside the box to make something more fitting for your goals.

The U.S. government is warning that Iranian state-backed hackers are actively breaking in and disrupting industrial control systems at American water and energy providers. This new alert comes months after federal agencies warned of an escalation in hacking from Iranian actors amid the ongoing war.

In an advisory updated Wednesday, the FBI, the NSA, the Department of Energy, and CISA said Iranian hackers were targeting programmable logic controllers on internet-connected operational networks, allowing them to manipulate data on their displays, causing outages and disruption.

The Iranian hackers were initially discovered earlier this year to be targeting controllers made by Rockwell, but the advisory has now expanded the types of industrial control systems under attack to include products from Schneider Electric and Siemens.

The agencies warn that “potentially all internet exposed” industrial control systems may be affected, and urged critical infrastructure owners to take action. Per the advisory, the Iranian-backed hackers were “conducting this activity to cause disruptive effects within the United States,” likely in response to the ongoing war between Iran, and the U.S. and Israel.

According to the FBI, the hackers broke into one critical infrastructure provider and changed the controllers’ programming logic to disabled processes that handled critical shutdowns and alarms. The feds said this allowed “systems to enter unsafe conditions without notifying operators of the anomalies.”

This is the latest in a series of cyberattacks launched by Iranian government hackers and their proxies across the region since the start of the war in February. 

The hacks have ranged from the country’s typical espionage and hack-and-leak operations, such as leaking the contents of the FBI director Kash Patel’s personal email account, to more atypical destructive hacks that have caused large-scale damage or disruption. Among the more notable incidents was a hack on the U.S. medical tech giant Stryker, which allowed the Iranian hacking group “Handala” to remotely wipe tens of thousands of employee devices.

Handala also took credit for a data breach affecting California water provider Cal Water in June, and claimed it could have disrupted the water supply (without providing evidence). The water provider said that it saw no evidence of unauthorized access to its operational networks, which control the water supplies.