Latest AI News
OpenAI claims it solved an 80-year-old math problem — for real this time
OpenAIclaimsits new reasoning model has produced an original mathematical proof disproving a famous unsolved conjecture in geometry, which was first posed by Paul Erdős in 1946. If this sounds familiar to you, it’s because this isn’t the first time OpenAI has made such a bold claim.Seven months ago, the AI giant’sformer VP Kevin Weilposted on X: “GPT-5 found solutions to 10 (!) previously unsolved Erdős problems and made progress on 11 others.” It turns out, GPT-5 didn’t actually solve those problems; it just found solutions that already existed in the literature. Taunts from rivals like Yann LeCun and Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis followed, and Weil promptly took down his premature post. Today, at least, it seems OpenAI didn’t make the same mistake twice. Alongside the announcement, the company publishedcompanion remarksin support of the disproof from mathematicians like Noga Alon, Melanie Wood, and Thomas Bloom, who maintainsthe Erdos Problems website, and previously called Weil’s post“a dramatic misrepresentation.” “For nearly 80 years, mathematicians believed the best possible solutions looked roughly like square grids,”OpenAI posted on X. “An OpenAI model has now disproved that belief, discovering an entirely new family of constructions that performs better.” The company said this marks “the first time AI has autonomously solved a prominent open problem central to a field of mathematics.” The proof, per OpenAI, came from a new general-purpose reasoning model, not a system specifically designed to solve math problems or even this problem in particular. OpenAI says this is significant because it means AI systems are now more capable of holding together long, difficult chains of reasoning and connecting ideas across fields in ways researchers may not have previously explored. That has implications for biology, physics, engineering, and medicine. “AI is helping us to more fully explore the cathedral of mathematics we have built over the centuries,” Bloom said in a statement. “What other unseen wonders are waiting in the wings?”
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NanoClaw creator turns down $20M buyout offer, raises $12M seed instead
NanoCo, the company behind security-focused OpenClaw alternative NanoClaw, has raised an oversubscribed $12 million seed round following a viral launch, its founders tell TechCrunch. The funding was led by Valley Capital Partners, and saw participation from Docker, Vercel, Monday.com, Slow Ventures and angels like Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face. In a matter of weeks, NanoClaw creator Gavriel Cohen (pictured above, left) said he went from coding the project on his couch to receiving viral endorsements from Andrej Karpathy and Singapore’s foreign minister, fielding inbound interest from dozens of investors, and even a roughly $20 million acquisition offer that he and his brother and co-founder, Lazer Cohen (pictured above, right), declined. “It was under six weeks from committing the first lines of code to a term sheet,” Gavriel told TechCrunch. “There was a lot of inbound and interest,” he added. “People reaching out in DMs on X and sending emails.” He estimated that about 50 or more founders and tech executives sent DMs asking to invest. One of them was Delangue, who dropped a note: “I like what you’re doing with NanoClaw.” Gavriel then responded in kind, telling the Hugging Face CEO that he liked the company’stiny robot, Reachy Mini, and hoped to run NanoClaw on it one day. The two programmers then started talking shop, and Cohen eventually asked Delangue if he was interested in angel investing and secured a yes. As it turns out, an active member of NanoClaw’s open source community is already working on running it on Reachy Mini, Gavriel says. Aswe previously reported, interest in NanoClaw skyrocketed after AI researcher Andrej Karpathy tweeted his praise for it. But the project really began to snowball after the Foreign Minister of Singapore called NanoClaw his “second brain” in aFacebook postthat went viral. NanoClaw was created as a secure alternative to OpenClaw to assist the Cohen brothers with their previous startup, an AI marketing firm that used agents to do much of the work. But instead of running directly on a computer, with access to all services and credentials, NanoClaw runs sandboxed in a container — a practice that isbecoming a common solution to running more secure, OpenClaw-like setups. But a couple of months ago, the idea was novel and took on a life of its own. Seeing the interest, the Cohen brothers began talking to investors and other founders asking for advice. Should they turn this free project into a company? How? One VC offered to buy the project right then for one of his portfolio companies, offering a “six-digit” dollar amount, Cohen said. While contemplating that, they met a founder friend who gave them a key insight: Open-source projects grow exponentially more valuable as their community grows. Not only do these users help contribute code to mature the project quickly, but they discover and demonstrate various uses as well. He told the Cohen brothers that if they believed NanoClaw could be that kind of project, they would have to quit their other venture and commit to it. “He was right,” Gavriel said. Shortly after they shuttered the other business and focused, the viral posts came, and their new outfit secured partnerships with Docker and Vercel. About two weeks after that first offer, they got another, this one for around $20 million, including jobs to stay and run their company. The brothers declined that one, too. “Since then, it’s only escalated. We have many thousands of people using NanoClaw,” he said. NanoCo has now started booking enterprise customers, an idea that came from its community. The product’s early adopters have been people with technical skills, many of whom are executives at big tech companies. After these users set up their own NanoClaw instances, they kept getting hit up by coworkers asking for help to do the same. These folks don’t want to become NanoClaw IT people, Cohen explained, but NanoCo does. So it is offering implementation services, these days known as “forward-deployed engineers,” to help businesses roll out NanoClaw AI agents to employees and provide ongoing support. While NanoCo declined to specify who their early enterprise customers are, the brothers say that executives at companies like Amazon, Gap, Google, Meta, SentinelOne and Accenture are using NanoClaw itself.
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Startup Battlefield 200 applications close in one week: Window to nominate and apply for the most promising startups ends May 27
Your shot at VC access, global visibility, TechCrunch coverage, and $100,000 in equity-free funding is gone in a week. Startup Battlefield 200 applicationsclose May 27. If you’re building a breakout startup — or know a founder who is — this is the moment to act. Apply todayfor the opportunity to take the stage atTechCrunch Disrupt 2026, October 13-15, alongside 200 of the world’s most promising early-stage startups. Pre-Series A founders, consider this your final countdown reminder: the strongest startups are already entering the arena, and theapplication window is closing fast. If your startup has already been nominated,don’t wait to complete your application. This final week moves quickly, and last-minute submissions risk getting buried as applications surge ahead of the deadline. Know a startup that deserves the spotlight?Nominate them nowso they still have time to apply before May 27. Some of the most consequential companies in tech history didn’t launch with splashy fundraising announcements. They started with a pitch. Dropbox demoed to a room full of skeptics. Cloudflare took the stage before most people understood what edge networking meant. Discord was still a scrappy gaming startup called Hammer & Chisel. They all passed through the same crucible: Startup Battlefield 200. That’s not a coincidence — it’s a pattern. And it starts with an application. Startup Battlefield 200has never been a competition for the most polished companies. It’s a competition for the most promising ones. Pre-launch is fine. No revenue is fine. What matters is whether what you’re building genuinely changes something — not incrementally, but meaningfully. If you or a founder you know is building something impactful, then the application itself becomes the first pitch.Apply before May 27. Startup Battlefield 200is where breakout companies get discovered. Selected startups will showcase live on the Disrupt Stage in front of 10,000+ attendees, leading VCs, global media, and the broader TechCrunch audience. This is your opportunity to gain investor exposure, receive direct VC feedback, and prove your company belongs among the next generation of category-defining startups. Every one of the 200 selected companies receives: And every selected company pitches, whether on the Disrupt Stage or the Pitch Showcase Stage. Both put founders in front of the investors, media, and partners who attend Disrupt specifically to find what’s next. You don’t need to make the top 20 for this experience to change your trajectory.Get started by nominating and applying here. More than 1,700 companies have competed in Startup Battlefield 200. Together, they’ve raised over $32 billion and generated more than 250 exits, including acquisitions by Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Uber, and Amazon. The network runs so deep that alumni have even acquired each other: Dropbox acquired fellow Battlefield 200 alum DocSend in 2021. This is also the same launchpad that helped accelerate companies like Fitbit, Trello, and Mint. Behind every one of those outcomes was a founder willing to make a bet on themselves publicly, in front of people who were paying attention.Apply and learn more here. We’re looking for ambitious early-stage startups building innovative, potentially category-defining products. Applications are open globally across all industries. Most selected companies are pre-Series A, though select Series A startups may qualify on a case-by-case basis. To apply, startups should have: Thousands apply every year. Only 200 are selected. Just 20 finalists pitch live on the Disrupt Stage. One startup takes the crown and wins $100,000 in equity-free funding. The founders who wait until they feel ready often wait too long. You do not need to be polished. You need to be promising. If you’ve been sitting on this, here’s the reality: the worst outcome is you don’t get selected this cycle — and you come back next year with a stronger application because you went through the process. The stage matters. The community lasts. The milestone is real. But the deadline is now one week away. If you’re building something category-defining — or know a startup that deserves the spotlight —submit your nomination and complete your application before May 27.
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Stability AI releases a new audio model that can create 6-minute songs
Stability AI, the company behind Stable Diffusion, is releasing a new family of audio models, called Stability Audio 3.0. The top model can generate professional-grade music of more than six minutes long, the company claimed. The company is releasing four new models under the Stable Audio 3.0 name: small SFX (459M parameters), small (459M parameters), medium (1.4B parameters), and large (2.7B parameters). The duo of small models is suitable for on-device sound and music generation of up to two minutes. Both medium and large models can create full compositions of 6 minutes, 20 seconds long that can maintain musical structure and melodic tone. This is more than double the length of what Stable Audio 2.0, released in 2024, was capable of generating. Stability AI is making small SFX, small, and medium models available with open weights for anyone to use and modify. In 2024, the company releasedStable Audio Open, which allowed for music generation of up to 47 seconds. The new family of models is a big step up from the previous open versions. The large model is available only through the API and self-hosting paid services. Plus, companies with more than $1 million in revenue would need to get an enterprise license. Many companies, includingGoogleandElevenLabs, are releasing models and tooling around music generation. However, asSuno’sandUdio’songoing court battles have proved, licensing of data and partnerships with music labels could become a key part of the long-term survival of these services. Last year, Stability AI inked deals withWarner Music GroupandUniversal Music Groupto develop models and music-creation tools. The company said that its latest set of audio models is built on fully licensed data. The AI startup is developing a new suite of products for professional musicians but didn’t give more details on its features. Ethan Kaplan, former chief digital officer at Universal Audio and Fender, is joining the company to lead Stability’s professional music offering. A number of AI companies are trying to bolster their credentials by hiring music execs. Earlier this year, Suno hired formerMerlin CEOJeremy Sirotaas chief commercial officer. ElevenLabs has also hired Derek Cournoyer from indie music publisher Kobalt asa strategy lead for its music business.
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AI search startups are blowing up
Yesterday’s big news was Google’s plan toblow up its traditional Searchin favor of an AI-powered experience — but Google isn’t the only company planning for the next generation of discoverability. This morning,Bloomberg has newsof the Andreessen Horowitz-backed Exa Labs, which has raised $250 million against a $2.5 billion valuation to go after the same market. And it’s part of a wave of startups all chasing AI search, which has quietly become one of the most attractive targets in consumer AI. From Bloomberg: Exa is part of a wave of startups that are vying to transform the search industry, including Tavily, TinyFish and Parallel Web Systems. Led by former Twitter Chief Executive Officer Parag Agrawal, Parallel recently raised $100 million at a $2 billion valuation in a round led by venture firm Sequoia Capital, according to the Wall Street Journal. At the same time, we’re also seeing conventional tech platforms likeAmazon,LinkedIn, andRedditlooking to AI to revamp their search and discoverability features — so there will be plenty of potential acquirers if any of the startups start looking to sell. The biggest competitor is ChatGPT, which still owns the interface layer and, prior to the Google launch, was handling the vast majority of the AI-powered searches taking place on a given day. But OpenAI can’t make Search a priority and Google has an ad business to protect, which could leave room for a smaller lab like Exa or Parallel to carve out a niche for itself.
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The ‘Hottest Job’ in AI Right Now is in Short Supply
As AI moves from research labs into the enterprise, demand for a new breed of specialists has exploded by 800% in a single year.
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ANSCER Robotics Raises $5.4 Mn to Expand Industrial Automation
The robotics startup will use fresh capital to scale products, US operations, and partner network.
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Google I/O 2026: Project Genie Will Now Let You Explore Street View Locations With a ‘Creative Twist’
At Google I/O 2026, the Mountain View-based tech giant announced a new capability for Project Genie. The new experience connects the cutting-edge large language model (LLM) with Google's Street View to let users explore different locations on the map with a “creative twist.” The feature will be available to those on the highest subscription tier of Gemini as the company also starts rolling out Project Genie to more users. Apart from a fun, interactive experience, the tech giant also pitches the Street View grounding as a tool to help train artificial intelligence (AI) agents and embedded robots.
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Figma adds an AI assistant to its collaborative canvas
Over the last few months, Figma has struck partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic to bake in support for AI CLI tools likeClaude CodeandCodexto allow users to use these coding environments alongside its design software. The company is now baking in its own take on AI smarts via a new AI agent that operates within its collaborative canvas. Figma says users can employ natural language text prompts to direct its new AI agent to generate new designs, edit existing ones, or automate tasks such as generating iterations of existing designs. Users can even fire up multiple agents that can do various tasks simultaneously. The company claims the AI assistant understands design contexts and elements since it runs on AI models that are fine-tuned for design use. “As building software gets easier, what matters most is setting direction: deciding what to work on, how it should function, what the experience should feel like. Teams can now collaborate with agents on the multiplayer canvas to test out ideas, visualize edge cases, and refine concepts together without over-indexing on the more tedious parts,” Figma’s chief design officer, Loredana Crisan, said in a statement. The agent is first launching in Figma Design, and the company plans to eventually make it available in its other products. Figma said that, over time, it wants to bring design and code even closer together within its apps. Facing intense competition from the likes of Canva, Adobe, Flora, Krea and Dessn, last year Figma acquired node-based design tool Weavy, and has addednew image editing featuresto its products. The company has done well despite fears of AI eating into the work of designers and the demand for software they use: In the first quarter of 2026, Figma reported revenue of $333.4 million, 46% more than a year earlier.
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AI, Data Analytics Can Help Detect Corruption in Govt Tenders: CAG’s K Sanjay Murthy
The use of AI-led monitoring systems and data-based analysis can enable regulators and audit bodies to identify suspicious procurement patterns at an early stage.
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14 Wildest AI Announcements From Google I/O 2026
Google I/O 2026 just wrapped up, and it was genuinely a lot to take in. We broke down the important developments for you.
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Techno Digital Opens Mumbai Edge Data Centre in Partnership with RailTel
The centre has been built to support sovereign and compliance-driven workloads, an increasingly important consideration for enterprises navigating India’s evolving data governance landscape.
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