Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

A Singapore-based deep tech startup called SixSense has developed an AI-powered platform that helps semiconductor manufacturers predict and detect potential chip defects on production lines in real time. It has raised $8.5 million in Series A bringing its total funding to around $12 million. The round was led by Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia India…

Paying with a handwave once sounded like science fiction, but contactless palm recognition service Amazon One has already been used more than 8 million times, according to the company. That’s Amazon, though, which explains why it has been deployed in Amazon stores and more than 500 Whole Foods Market stores in the U.S., but only…

Google lost its appeal of a judge’s court order requiring the tech giant to revamp its app store in an antitrust case filed by Fortnite maker Epic Games, Reuters reported on Thursday. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Google’s argument that the trial judge made legal errors in the antitrust case that unfairly favored…

Figma began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday after a long delay. It soared so quickly that trading was halted for a short time due to market volatility. The price is currently bouncing between $101 and $112 with a mid-day market cap of $45 billion, Yahoo Finance reports. The company and existing…

Ambiq Micro, a 15-year-old manufacturer of energy-efficient chips for wearable and medical devices, closed its first day of trading on Wednesday at $38.53 a share, a 61% increase from the $24 IPO price the company set the previous day. The success of the IPO signals strong investor demand in the public market for new small-cap…

GitHub Copilot, an AI coding tool offered by Microsoft-owned GitHub, has now reached more than 20 million users, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on the company’s earnings call Wednesday. A GitHub spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that this number represents “all-time users.” That means five million people have tried out GitHub Copilot for the first time…

Cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks announced on Wednesday its intent to acquire identity management and security company CyberArk for $25 billion. The deal, a mix of cash and stock, marks Palo Alto’s entrance into the identity security space, according to a company press release. Palo Alto has been on a shopping spree since Nikesh Arora…

A new startup called Germ is bringing end-to-end encrypted messaging to the Bluesky social network, allowing its users to have a more secure option for chats than Bluesky’s existing DMs. After over two years of development, the service is launching its encrypted DMs for Bluesky into beta this week, with plans to gradually onboard new…

AI chip startup Groq is in talks to raise a fresh $600 million at a near $6 billion valuation, sources tell Bloomberg, although the deal isn’t yet final and terms could change.  Groq raised $640 million at a $2.8 billion valuation in August 2024, making this double the valuation in about a year. Groq previously…

American warfighters need jam-proof communications, and the Space Force is planning to spend hundreds of millions to ensure they have them. As part of that effort, the service established the Protected Tactical Satcom program to build out secure battlefield communications via satellites. The Space Force has already awarded contracts to defense primes Boeing and Northrop…