Nour Gajial (left), CEO of MathGPT, and Avi Agola, co-founder of Talunt, recently left the Seattle region for San Francisco. (Photos courtesy of Gajial and Agola)
Seattle’s startup ecosystem has its strengths, and the city is a global AI hub. But for some tech entrepreneurs, the gravity of San Francisco is hard to resist — especially in the middle of an AI boom.
This time, founders say the pull is about being inside the “world’s AI capital” as a way to supercharge their startups.
“I knew that moving to SF — where the largest concentration of startups are — would be the best move for maximizing our success,” said Avi Agola, co-founder of recruiting platform Talunt.
Before he arrived at the University of Washington this past fall, Agola immersed himself in Seattle’s startup scene as a teenager. He worked out of Seattle founder hub Foundations, launched his own company, and sold it last year to a fellow Seattle startup.
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Agola credits Seattle’s startup community with helping him develop credibility and understand what it takes to run a company.
But as he got Talunt off the ground, Agola packed his bags for San Francisco. Part of the decision was practical: Investors encouraged the move, and many of Talunt’s early customers are in the Bay Area.
Aviel Ginzburg, a Seattle venture capitalist who runs Foundations, said he understands the strategy.
“I think that anyone in their 20s who wants to build in startups should be living down there right now, simply for building a network to get lucky,” he said.
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That was part of the reason Nour Gajial, CEO of MathGPT, also moved from Seattle to San Francisco.
After dropping out of Cornell to pursue her AI education startup full time, Gajial returned home to the Seattle area. She found a supportive, tight-knit tech community and a comfortable place to build.
But as MathGPT gained traction, Gajial and her co-founder started making trips to San Francisco. They noticed more startup events, younger founders, and more frequent in-person interactions with people building and funding AI companies.
“There’s always some new AI research that’s going on, or some event that will open your eyes about something,” Gajial said. “I don’t see that energy as much in Seattle.”
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Gajial said she’s grateful to have met “some really cool founders” in Seattle. MathGPT co-founder Yanni Kouloumbis lauded the region’s talent pool. But they felt that being in Silicon Valley gives them better odds at making it big.
“We just want to put ourselves in the best possible situation for these spontaneously good things to happen to us,” Kouloumbis said.
Nistha Mitra. (Photo courtesy of Mitra)
Nistha Mitraspent three years in Seattle, where she worked at Oracle. She later launched Neuramill, an early stage company developing software for manufacturing, and noticed a clear divide between Seattle’s corporate tech culture and startup life.
“I don’t think my community in the Big Tech world had any awareness of startups and how startups work,” Mitra said.
Mitra moved to San Francisco six months ago. “In SF, everyone knows what’s going on, no matter who they are,” she said.
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She described a hard-charging atmosphere where it’s normal behavior to work 15-hour days on your startup. Being in that environment “really changes how you perform,” Mitra said.
When she worked long days in Seattle, friends worried about her. “I feel like in SF, it’s kind of normalized, that kind of lifestyle,” she said.
The same calculus is playing outfor more experienced techies.
Vik Korrapati, a Seattle-based founder who spent nearly a decade at AWS, recently announced that his AI startup Moondream is moving from Seattle to San Francisco. He framed the decision around the scale and urgency of the current AI moment.
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Artificial intelligence, Korrapati wrote in an online post, is “the biggest platform shift we’re going to see in our working lives,” and relocating was about being “in the right place, with the right people” as his company builds high-performance vision models.
Korrapati said the move wasn’t driven by a lack of talent in Seattle, but by differences in risk tolerance and default behavior. “The issue isn’t ability. It’s default settings,” he wrote, describing a culture where many engineers optimize for stability and incremental progress rather than the uncertainty of early-stage startup work.
Ethan Byrd. (LinkedIn Photo)
In San Francisco, he said, he found more people who had already left Big Tech roles and were willing to make the startup leap. “Seattle has been good to me,” Korrapati said. “I learned how large systems work here. I got the space to spin up Moondream here. I’m not leaving angry.”
Ethan Byrd, a former engineer at AWS, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, helped launch Seattle software startup Actual AI in 2024. Now he’s working on a new startup called MyMX — and is strongly considering a move.
Seattle isn’t a bad place to build a startup, Byrd said, and he loves the city. But San Francisco is just on a different level when it comes to entrepreneurship.
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“Everything is easier: hiring, talking to customers, raising money, hosting events,” he said. At the end of the day, as he tries to grow his new startup, Byrd said moving to Silicon Valley “just seems unavoidable.”
But not all Seattle founders are headed south.
“There’s a really good pool of talent right now, especially with the layoffs unfortunately happening,” said Ankit Dhawan, CEO of Seattle-based marketing startup BluePill. “We don’t feel any need to move out of here.”
Silicon Valley is great for fundraising and making connections. “But there comes a moment when it’s too much noise,” said Alejandro Castellano, CEO of Seattle AI startup Caddi. “You just need a place to actually focus on work.”
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And when a trip to the Bay Area is needed — some of Caddi’s investors are based there — it’s a short flight away. “You can come back the same day,” Castellano said.
Sunil Nagaraj (left), founder of Silicon Valley venture capital firm Ubiquity Ventures, interviews Auth0 co-founder Eugenio Pace at an event at AI House last week. Nagaraj traveled to Seattle to host the event and visit with Seattle-area startups in Ubiquity’s portfolio. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)
Many Silicon Valley investors also make trips up to Seattle. Earlier this week, Sunil Nagaraj, managing partner of Palo Alto-based Ubiquity Ventures, hosted a startup event at Seattle’s AI House. During his fireside chat with Auth0 co-founder Eugenio Pace, he called out the various Seattle-based founders in the crowd that he’s backed. “Ubiquity Ventures ❤️ Seattle!!” Nagaraj wrote on LinkedIn.
Yifan Zhang, founder of AI House and managing director at the AI2 Incubator, said she wants to get more out-of-town investors connected to the Seattle region.
Zhang built her first startup in San Francisco. For certain types of founders, she said, Silicon Valley is a better place to create serendipitous relationships that can lead to a funding round or a large customer.
Yifan Zhang. (LinkedIn Photo)
“But it’s also easy to get lost in the mix, or get distracted by the hype,” Zhang noted. “It really depends on who you are, but no matter where you’re based, founders still need to do the hard work of selling and building an incredible product and scaling it.”
Seattle is still drawing in many founders from out of town. Real estate startup RentSpree moved here from Los Angeles last year, attracted to the tech talent base and concentration of other real estate and proptech companies.
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“Seattle is really great for talent that balances both an aggressive growth perspective, but also building sustainable companies over time,” RentSpree CEO and co-founder Michael Lucarelli told GeekWire in December.
Vijaye Raji, founder and CEO of Seattle-area startup Statsig (acquired by OpenAI last year for $1.1 billion), has called it a “quiet talent” that may be under-appreciated.
Drone startup Brinc is another transplant that landed from Las Vegas. The company, now ranked No. 7 on the GeekWire 200, raised $75 million last year and employs more than 100 people. CEO Blake Resnick has cited the engineering and tech talent pool in Seattle for his decision to relocate.
The city’s technology anchors — including Microsoft, Amazon, the University of Washington, and Silicon Valley engineering centers — also help import workers who go on to launch companies. Overland AI CEO Byron Boots came to the UW’s computer science school in 2019 as an associate professor, and later helped launch the Seattle-based autonomous driving startup that just raised $100 million.
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Caleb John, an investor and engineer at Seattle startup studio Pioneer Square Labs, previously worked in San Francisco. He noted that founders in Seattle “are not as deep in the rat race” relative to entrepreneurs elsewhere.
“Your thinking is not as clouded by the hype train,” he said in an interview with Foundations. He also cited a “really strong community of younger people who work in startups” across the Seattle region. “People just don’t know there are startup people here,” John said, noting that the startup scene has grown since he arrived in 2021.
Ginzburg said even as some founders move to San Francisco, it’s important to keep building community in Seattle. He noted that Agola, for example, still remains tethered to Seattle through the Foundations network.
Agola said he’d consider returning to Seattle at some point as his new startup grows.
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“I don’t think the Bay is the best for long-term startup growth when it comes to post-series B,” he said. “Moving to Seattle would be the best play to keep the best talent flow while minimizing overhead costs.”
Cerebras raised $1.1bn in a previous round last September at an $8.1bn post-money valuation.
Cerebras Systems, the AI chipmaker aiming to rival Nvidia, has raised $1bn in a Series H round led by Tiger Global with participation from AMD. The raise values the company at around $23bn, nearly triple the valuation made a little over four months ago.
Other backers in this round include Benchmark; Fidelity Management & Research Company; Atreides Management; Alpha Wave Global; Altimeter; Coatue; and 1789 Capital, among others.
The new round comes after Cerebras raised $1.1bn last September at an $8.1bn post-money valuation backed by several of the same investors.
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Just days later, the company withdrew from a planned initial public offering (IPO) without providing an official reason. At the time of the IPO filing in 2024, there was criticism around its heavy reliance on a single United Arab Emirates-based customer, the Microsoft-backed G42.
Cerebras still intends to go IPO as soon as possible, it said.
The recent raise better positions the company to compete with global AI chip leader Nvidia. Cerebras claims that it builds the “fastest AI infrastructure in the world” and company CEO Andrew Feldman has also gone on record to say that his hardware runs AI models multiple times faster than that of Nvidia’s.
Cerebras is behind WSE-3, touted to be the “largest” AI chip ever built, with 19-times more transistors and 28-times more compute that the Nvidia B200, according to the company.
OpenAI – a voracious user of Nvidia’s AI technology – has been in search of alternatives, although that’s not to say that OpenAI is backing down from using Nvidia technology in the future.
Last year, OpenAI drew up a 6GW agreement with AMD to power its AI infrastructure. The first 1GW deployment of AMD Instinct MI450 GPUs is set to begin in the second half of 2026.
At the time of the announcement, Altman said that the deal was “incremental” to OpenAI’s work with Nvidia. “We plan to increase our Nvidia purchasing over time”, he added.
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The facility is part of a five-year, €5m signature innovation partnership between Medtronic and the university.
US and Irish medical device company Medtronic and the University of Galway have launched their Medical Device Prototype Hub, a specialist facility designed to support the medtech ecosystem, STEM engagement and research.
Development of the hub, which belongs to the university’s new Technology Services Directorate, is part of a five-year, €5m signature innovation partnership between Medtronic and the university.
Professor David Burn, the president of the university, said: “The launch of the Medical Device Prototype Hub at University of Galway marks a hugely significant milestone in our signature partnership with Medtronic, but it also sends a strong message to all those in the sector and all those who are driving innovation.
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“University of Galway is creating the ecosystem in which our partners in research and innovation can thrive. We look forward to celebrating the breakthroughs and successes that this initiative enables.”
The Medical Device Prototype Hub forms part of the Institute for Health Discovery and Innovation, which was established at the university in 2024.
It will be further supported via collaborations with government agencies and industry leaders, aiming to create a collaborative environment that promotes innovation and regional growth in life sciences and medical technologies.
The university said that the hub has a range of expert staff to facilitate concept creation, development and manufacturing of innovative medical device prototypes.
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It offers a suite of services to support early-stage medical device innovation – for example, virtual and physical prototyping – that enables rapid design iteration through computer aided design, modelling and simulation.
“The Technology Services Directorate brings together key research facilities that support fundamental research at University of Galway,” said Aoife Duffy, the head of the directorate.
“It aims to advance our research excellence by bringing together state-of-the-art core facilities and making strategic decisions on infrastructure and investment. The new prototype hub significantly enhances the innovation pathway available for the university research community and wider, and we look forward to working with Medtronic on this partnership.”
Ronan Rogers, senior R&D director at Medtronic, added: “Today’s launch of the Medical Device Prototype Hub represents an exciting next step in our long‑standing partnership with University of Galway. Medtronic has deep roots in the west of Ireland, and this facility strengthens a shared commitment to advancing research, accelerating innovation and developing the next generation of medical technologies.
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“We are proud to invest in an ecosystem that not only drives technological progress but also supports talent development. This hub will unlock new avenues for discovery and accelerate the path from promising ideas to real‑world medical solutions for patients.”
Just last week (27 January), two University of Galway projects won proof-of-concept grants from the European Research Council. One of the winning Galway projects is called Concept-AM and is being led by Prof Ted Vaughan, who is also involved with the new hub.
Concept-AM aims to advance software that enables engineers to design lighter, stronger and more efficient components optimised for 3D printing across biomedical, automotive and aerospace applications, creating complex and lightweight parts with less material waste.
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We’re starting to hit our stride in 2026. Now that February is here, our reviews team is flush with new devices to test, which means you’ve got a lot to catch up on if you haven’t been following along. Read on for a roundup of the most compelling new gear we’ve tested recently from gaming, PCs, cameras and more.
Nex Playground
Nex
The Nex Playground brings motion-tracked games to the entire family. Consider it the best of the Xbox Kinect in a tiny box.
Pros
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Fun core titles
Solid motion-tracking
Well-designed hardware and UI
Large library of games
Works offline
Cons
Requires an ongoing subscription to access most games
Needs large open space for play
If you still have a fondness for the Xbox Kinect, the Nex Playground might be right up your alley. Senior reporter Devindra Hardawar recently put the tiny box through its paces and found an active gaming experience that’s fun for the whole family. “While I have some concerns about the company’s subscription model, Nex has accomplished a rare feat: It developed a simple box that makes it easy for your entire family to jump into genuinely innovative games and experiences,” he wrote.
MSI’s Prestige 14 Flip AI+
MSI
MSI’s Prestige 14 Flip AI+ is a remarkably powerful ultraportable, thanks to Intel’s Panther Lake chips. But it’s held back by a clunky trackpad and weak keyboard.
Pros
Excellent CPU performance
Solid gaming support
Bold OLED screen
Tons of ports
Relatively affordable
Cons
Awful mechanical trackpad
Dull-feeling keyboard
Display is limited to 60Hz
Devindra also tested MSI’s latest laptop, the powerful Prestige 14 Flip AI+. While the machine got high marks for its performance, display and connectivity, he noted that the overall experience is hindered by subpar keyboard and truly awful trackpad. “As one of the earliest Panther Lake laptops on the market, the $1,299 Prestige 14 Flip AI+ is a solid machine, if you’re willing to overlook its touchpad flaws,” he explained. “More than anything though, the Prestige 14 makes me excited to see what other PC makers offer with Intel’s new chips.”
Shokz OpenFit Pro
Shokz/Engadget
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Finally, a set of open earbuds that actually sound good and provide noticeable ambient noise reduction.
Pros
Effective noise reduction
Comfy fit
Great sound for open earbuds
Dolby Atmos support
Cons
Sound quality varies with ear shape
Over ear hook isn’t for everyone
Noise reduction isn’t as effective as ANC
Fresh off of its Best of CES selection, I conducted a full review of the OpenFit Pro earbuds from Shokz. I continue to be impressed by the earbuds’ ability to reduce ambient noise while keeping your ears open. And the overall sound quality is excellent for a product that sits outside of your ears.
Sony A7 V
Sony/Engadget
With a new partially-stacked 33MP sensor, Sony’s A7 V offers speed, autofocus accuracy and the best image quality in its class.
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Pros
Fast shooting speeds
Quick and accurate autofocus
Outstanding photo quality
Good video stabilization
Cons
Video lags behind rivals
Uncomfortable to hold for long periods
Contributing reporter Steve Dent has been busy testing cameras to start the year. This week he added the Sony A7 V to the list, noting the excellent photo quality and accurate autofocus. “The A7 V is an incredible camera for photography, with speeds, autofocus accuracy and image quality ahead of rivals, including the Canon R6 III, Panasonic S1 II and Nikon Z6 III,” he said. “However, Sony isn’t keeping up with those models for video.”
Apple AirTag (2026)
Apple/Engadget
Apple has improved its Bluetooth tracker in practically every way, making it louder and extending its detection range.
Pros
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Precise Finding is far more useful
Louder and easier to hear
Same price as the original AirTag
Cons
Still lacks a keyring hole
Apple’s AirTag accessories are too expensive
Our first Editors’ Choice device of 2026 is Apple’s updated AirTag. All of the upgrades lead to a better overall item tracker, according to UK bureau chief Mat Smith. “There’s no doubt the second-gen AirTags are improved, and thankfully, upgrading to the new capabilities doesn’t come at too steep a cost,” he concluded.
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OpenAI launched Frontier, a platform for building and governing enterprise AI agents, as companies increasingly question whether to commit to single-vendor systems or maintain multi-model flexibility.
The platform offers integrated tools for agent execution, evaluation, and governance in one place. But Frontier also reflects OpenAI’s push into enterprise AI at a moment when organizations are actively moving toward multi-vendor architectures — creating tension between OpenAI’s centralized approach and what enterprises say they want.
Tatyana Mamut, CEO of the agent observability company Wayfound, told VentureBeat that enterprises don’t want to be locked into a single vendor or platform because AI strategies are ever-evolving.
“They’re not ready to fully commit. Everybody I talk to knows that eventually they’ll move to a one-size-fits-all solution, but right now, things are moving too fast for us to commit,” Mamut said. “This is the reason why most AI contracts are not traditional SaaS contracts; nobody is signing multi-year contracts anymore because if something great comes out next month, I need to be able to pivot, and I can’t be locked in.”
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How Frontier compares to AWS Bedrock
OpenAI is not the first to offer an end-to-end platform for building, prototyping, testing, deploying, and monitoring agents. AWS launched Bedrock AgentCore with the idea that there will be enterprise customers who don’t want to assemble an extensive collection of tools and platforms for their agentic AI projects.
However, AWS offers a significant advantage: access to multiple LLMs for building agents. Enterprises can choose a hybrid system in which an agent selects the best LLM for each task. OpenAI has not made it clear if it will open Frontier to models and tools from other vendors.
OpenAI did not say whether Frontier users can bring any third-party tools they already use to the platform, and it didn’t comment on why it chose to release Frontier now when enterprises are considering more hybrid systems.
But the company is working with companies including Clay, Abridge, Harvey, Decagon, Ambience, and Sierra to design solutions within Frontier.
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What is Frontier
Frontier is a single platform that offers access to different enterprise-grade tools from OpenAI. The company told VentureBeat that Frontier will not replace offerings such as the Agents SDK, AgentKit, or its suite of APIs.
OpenAI said Frontier helps bring context, agent execution, and evaluation into a single platform rather than multiple systems and tools.
“Frontier gives agents the same skills people need to succeed at work: shared context, onboarding, hands-on learning with feedback, and clear permissions and boundaries. That’s how teams move beyond isolated use cases to AI co-workers that work across the business,” OpenAI said in a blog post.
Users can connect their data sources, CRM tools, and other internal applications directly to Frontier, effectively creating a semantic layer that normalizes permissions and retrieval logic for agents built on the platform to pull information from. Frontier has an agent executive environment, which can run on local environments, cloud infrastructures, or “OpenAI-hosted runtimes without forcing teams to reinvent how work gets done.”
Built-in evaluation structures, security, and governance dashboards allow teams to monitor agent behavior and performance. These give organizations visibility into their agents’ success rates, accuracy, and latency. OpenAI said Frontier incorporates its enterprise-grade data security layer, including the option for companies to choose where to store their data at rest.
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Frontier launched with a small group of initial customers, including HP, Intuit, Oracle, State Farm, Thermo Fisher, and Uber.
Security and governance concerns
Frontier is available only to a select group of customers with wider availability coming soon. Enterprise providers are already weighing what the platform needs to address.
Ellen Boehm, senior vice president for IoT and AI Identity Innovation at Keyfactor, told VentureBeat that companies will still need to focus their agents on security and identity.
“Agent platforms like OpenAI’s Frontier model are critical for democratizing AI adoption beyond the enterprise,” she said. “This levels the playing field — startups get enterprise-grade capabilities without enterprise-scale infrastructure, which means more innovation and healthier competition across the market. But accessible doesn’t mean you skip the fundamentals.”
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Salesforce AI executive vice president and GM Madhav Thattai, who is overseeing an agent builder and library platform at his company, noted that no matter the platform, enterprises need to focus agents on value.
“What we’re finding is that to build an agent that actually does something at scale that creates real ROI is pretty challenging,” Thattai said. “The true business value for enterprises doesn’t reside in the AI model alone — it’s in the ‘last mile.’”
“That is the software layer that translates raw technology into trusted, autonomous execution. To traverse this last mile, agents must be able to reason through complexity and operate on trusted business data, which is exactly where we are focusing.”
London, TechEx Global 2026, one of Europe’s biggest enterprise technology conferences, brought thousands of technology professionals together at Olympia London on 4 and 5 February. The event went beyond buzzwords, focusing on how emerging technologies, especially AI, are being applied in real business contexts. TechEx Global combines several co-located expos, including AI & Big Data, Cyber Security & Cloud, IoT Tech, Intelligent Automation, and Digital Transformation. Over 200 expert speakers and 150 exhibitors offered insights into how organisations are using digital tools to solve real problems and make decisions, not just generate answers. From talk to execution One recurring theme… This story continues at The Next Web
Boardroom priorities are shifting from financial metrics toward technical oversight. Although market share and operational efficiency remain business bedrocks, executives also must now manage the complexities of machine learning, the integrity of their data systems, and the risks of algorithmic bias.
The change represents more than just a tech update; it marks a fundamental redefinition of the skills required for business leadership.
Research from the McKinsey Global Institute on the economic impact of artificial intelligence shows that companies integrating it effectively have boosted profit margins by up to 15 percent. Yet the same study revealed a sobering reality: 87 percent of organizations acknowledge significant AI skill gaps in their leadership ranks.
That disconnect between AI’s business potential and executive readiness has created a need for a new type of professional education.
Traditional business education, with its focus on finance, marketing, and operations, wasn’t designed for an AI-driven economy. Today’s leaders need to understand not just what AI can do but also how to evaluate investments in the technology, manage algorithmic risks, and lead teams through digital transformations.
Rather than treating AI as a separate technical subject, the program incorporates it into each aspect of business strategy. Students learn to evaluate AI opportunities through financial modeling, assess algorithmic risks through governance frameworks, and use change-management principles to implement new technologies.
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A curriculum built for real-world impact
The program’s modular structure lets professionals focus on areas relevant to their immediate needs while building toward comprehensive AI business literacy. Each of the 10 modules includes practical exercises and case study analyses that participants can immediately apply in their organization.
The Introduction to AI module provides a comprehensive overview of the technology’s capabilities, benefits, and challenges. Other technologies are covered as well, including how they can be applied across diverse business contexts, laying the groundwork for informed decision‑making and strategic adoption.
Rather than treating AI as a separate technical subject, the online mini-MBA program incorporates the technology throughout each aspect of business strategy.
Building on that foundation, the Data Analytics module highlights how AI projects differ from traditional programming, how to assess data readiness, and how to optimize data to improve accuracy and outcomes. The module can equip leaders to evaluate whether their organization is prepared to launch successful AI initiatives.
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The Process Optimization module focuses on reimagining core organizational workflows using AI. Students learn how machine learning and automation are already transforming industries such as manufacturing, distribution, transportation, and health care. They also learn how to identify critical processes, create AI road maps, establish pilot programs, and prepare their organization for change.
Industry-specific applications
The core modules are designed for all participants, and the program highlights how AI is applied across industries. By analyzing case studies in fraud detection, medical diagnostics, and predictive maintenance, participants see underlying principles in action.
Participants gain a broader perspective on how AI can be adapted to different contexts so they can draw connections to the opportunities and challenges in their organization. The approach ensures everyone comes away with a strong foundation and the ability to apply learned lessons to their environment.
Flexible learning for busy professionals
With the understanding that senior professionals have demanding schedules, the mini-MBA program offers flexibility. The online format lets participants engage with content in their own time frame, while live virtual office hours with faculty provide opportunities for real-time interaction.
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The program, which offers discounts to IEEE members and flexible payment options, qualifies for many tuition reimbursement programs.
Graduates report that implementing AI strategies developed during the program has helped drive tangible business results. This success often translates into career advancement, including promotions and expanded leadership roles. Furthermore, the curriculum empowers graduates to confidently vet AI vendor proposals, lead AI project teams, and navigate high-stakes investment decisions.
Beyond curriculum content, the mini MBA can create valuable professional networks among AI-forward business leaders. Participants collaborate on projects, share implementation experiences, and build relationships that extend beyond the program’s 12 weeks.
The programs grant professional development credits including PDHs and CEUs, ensuring participants receive formal recognition for their educational investments. Digital badges provide shareable credentials that professionals can showcase across professional networks, demonstrating their AI competencies to current and prospective employers.
GPT-5.3 Codex merges the advanced coding capabilities of GPT-5.2 Codex with the reasoning and professional knowledge of GPT-5.2 into a single, unified model that is 25 percent faster than its predecessors. According to OpenAI, the model even contributed to its own development, as early versions were used to debug training processes,… Read Entire Article Source link
Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.
Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is especially tricky, as a variety of words could fit the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.
If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Zzzz… not very exciting.
Clue words to unlock in-game hints
Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:
HIND, DATE, DRUM, MOST, CHIN, PAIN, RAIN, NOSE, TOME, TOMES
Answers for today’s Strands puzzle
These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:
DULL, DREARY, HUMDRUM, MUNDANE, TIRESOME
Today’s Strands spangram
The completed NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 7, 2026.
NYT/Screenshot by CNET
Today’s Strands spangram is WATCHINGPAINTDRY. To find it, start with the W that’s three letters up from the bottom on the far-left row, and wind up, across and down.
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Toughest Strands puzzles
Here are some of the Strands topics I’ve found to be the toughest.
#1: Dated slang. Maybe you didn’t even use this lingo when it was cool. Toughest word: PHAT.
#2: Thar she blows! I guess marine biologists might ace this one. Toughest word: BALEEN or RIGHT.
#3: Off the hook. Again, it helps to know a lot about sea creatures. Sorry, Charlie. Toughest word: BIGEYE or SKIPJACK.
The final exposure control feature is one I use a lot, and it’s exposure compensation. This works with the auto exposure and can be used to combat the tendency to go too slow with the shutter speed be forcing the Ace Pro 2 to underexpose the image. The exposure comp here is the best among action cameras, running from –4 stops to + 4 stops in ⅓-stop increments. I set the Xplorer Grip to control EV, so when I am in auto mode, the dial is an exposure comp dial just like “real” camera. (The dial can also be set to control ISO, shutter speed, shooting mode, filter selection, and white balance.)
Even better, if you’re in manual mode and you want to go back to auto, the first click of the dial will open the side panel, the second will switch from manual to auto, the third will start adjusting your exposure value. This is a really fast way to get from a carefully composed exposure back to full auto without needing to get into the touchscreen menus.
The final thing worth mentioning is the included Leica color profiles. If you haven’t updated your firmware recently, you should. Insta360 has added a few more of these. Because I shoot RAW, I don’t use these much, but as color profiles go these are great, especially the new Leica high-contrast black and white, which is what I’ve been using most of the time. This way I get a black-and-white JPG and a full-color RAW file.
To be honest, I did not have high hopes for the Xplorer Grip Pro Kit. For me, action cameras have primarily been for shooting around water, and while that still works with the bare camera, it doesn’t with the grip. However, I was pleasantly surprised using the Ace Pro 2 with the Xplorer grip as an everyday camera.
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I would say it’s best thought of as a compliment to your existing “real” camera. It’s not going to replace your interchangeable lens camera. It could replace your point-and-shoot, but I haven’t done that, because sometimes I want a pocket camera with a 28mm lens. Instead, the Ace Pro 2 with the grip has become an extra camera that I bring along when I want a wide angle or fisheye look and don’t feel like lugging a big, heavy, fast, full-frame, ultrawide lens.
