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Thomvest Ventures is popping into 2024 with a new $250 million fund and the promotion of Umesh Padval and Nima Wedlake to the role of managing directors.

The Bay Area venture capital firm was started about 25 years ago by Peter Thomson, whose family is the majority owners of Thomson Reuters.

“Peter has always had a very strong interest in technology and what technology would do in terms of shaping society and the future,” Don Butler, Thomvest Ventures’ managing director, told TechCrunch. He met Thomson in 1999 and joined the firm in 2000.

Will AI automate human jobs, and — if so — which jobs and when?

That’s the trio of questions a new research study from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), out this morning, tries to answer.

There’s been many attempts to extrapolate out and project how the AI technologies of today, like large language models, might impact people’s’ livelihoods — and whole economies — in the future.

The Rabbit R1, which learns and repeats how users interact with apps, has sold out of five pre-order rounds since launching in Las Vegas this monthRabbit Inc was started by Jesse Lyu Cheng, a Xian native who sold his previous start-up to Chinese AI giant Baidu.


Rabbit Inc, started by Xian native Jesse Lyu Cheng, has sold out of five rounds of pre-orders for its R1 device since launching in Las Vegas this month.

The use of robots and AI is a “new form of colonialism” that will lead to a resurgence of Arts and Crafts, according to trend forecaster Li Edelkoort.

Edelkoort has been a trend forecaster since she was 21 and says the discipline has “informed every single step of my life”

During an on-stage interview with Dezeen deputy editor Cajsa Carlson at Downtown Design during Dubai Design Week, Edelkoort explained that she is currently thinking about the return of Arts and Crafts, the 19th-century movement mostly associated with British designer William Morris.

MIT researchers devise new lithium-ion battery material to provide a more sustainable alternative to cobalt-containing batteries for electric cars.


With electric vehicles on the rise in the time of climate change, scientists have been working towards developing more sustainable batteries to prevent excessive waste.

Recently, MIT researchers devised a new lithium-ion battery material that could provide a more sustainable alternative to cobalt-containing batteries for electric cars.

MIT reports that in a new study, the researchers demonstrated a newly developed material, produced at a significantly lower cost than batteries containing cobalt, exhibits comparable electrical conductivity to cobalt batteries.

For the past decade, researchers have been exploring hafnia’s ferroelectric properties, particularly in a crystal phase where it exhibits electric polarization.


To revolutionize high-performance computing, scientists and engineers are making strides in harnessing the potential of hafnium oxide, commonly known as hafnia. The latest study outlines processes for manipulating hafnia, aiming to pave the way for the next generation of computing memory.

For the past decade, researchers have explored hafnia’s ferroelectric properties, particularly in a crystal phase exhibiting electric polarization.

“Hafnia is a very exciting material because of its practical applications in computer technology, especially for data storage,” explained Singh, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Rochester, in a press release. Unlike current magnetic forms of memory that are slow, energy-intensive, and inefficient, ferroelectric memory offers non-volatility, retaining values even when powered off.

The Mini LineFly strives to improve utility workers’ safety and safeguards wildlife from accidental contact with power lines, reducing the probability of unintended bird collisions.


With the world already witnessing the launch of a myriad of robotic devices since last year, another drone-based robotic system takes to the skies.

This new unmanned robotic system called the Mini LineFly is seemingly the world’s most advanced automated robotic system devised to install bird diverts on overhead power lines, according to a statement by the founding companies.

Introducing Mini LineFly