Author: Carter

Meta has acquired an AI startup called Manus — known for its custom research and website-building agents — in a deal valued at more than $2 billion, according toThe Wall Street Journal. It’s reportedly one of the largest acquisitions yet involving a startup nurtured in China’s AI ecosystem.Manus arrived in March 2025, shortly after another Chinese AI startup, DeepSeek appeared on the scene. The company (called Butterfly Effect at the time) originally described it as “the first general AI agent” to perform complex tasks autonomously, rather than just generating ideas. It draws from several third-party models, particularly Anthropic’s Claude 3.5…

2025-12-30T10:00:02.394Z Share Copy link Email Facebook WhatsApp X LinkedIn Bluesky Threads lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Impact Link Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. Nvidia and SoftBank closed major tech deals over the holidays. The year saw unconventional tech deals, including Disney’s bet on OpenAI and the Stargate Project. Nvidia recently signed a licensing agreement with Groq, acquiring talent rather than the company. While most of the industry was out of office over…

Embracing resilience in 2026 If 2025 was the wake-up call, 2026 will be the year to act with discipline. That starts with an honest dependency inventory: not just which clouds you use directly, but which clouds and regions sit beneath your SaaS, security, networking, and operations tools. From there, you can classify systems by business criticality and map appropriate resilience patterns to each class, reserving the most expensive mechanisms, such as cross-region active-active, for systems where downtime is truly existential. Equally important is organizational change. Resilience is not only an architectural problem; it is an operations, finance, and governance problem.…

An engineer debugs robots at the factory of AgiBot, a leading robotics company specializing in embodied intelligence, on December 8, 2025 in Shanghai, China. (Photo by Tang Yanjun/China News Service/VCG via Getty Images)Tang Yanjun | China News Service | China News Service | Getty ImagesBillionaire Elon Musk has put humanoid robots in the spotlight this year, positioning them as central to Tesla’s valuation, which he thinks could hit tens of trillions of dollars. But Tesla is yet to sell its flagship humanoid robot Optimus.Instead, it’s likely a slew of Chinese companies that will beat Tesla to the punch and begin…

Pieverse teams up with United Stables to bring x402b protocol and gasless payments to BNB Chain, making AI transactions easier for Web3 users.

Dec 30, 2026Ravie LakshmananMalware / Cyber Espionage The Chinese hacking group known as Mustang Panda has leveraged a previously undocumented kernel-mode rootkit driver to deliver a new variant of backdoor dubbed TONESHELL in a cyber attack detected in mid-2025 targeting an unspecified entity in Asia. The findings come from Kaspersky, which observed the new backdoor variant in cyber espionage campaigns mounted by the hacking group targeting government organizations in Southeast and East Asia, primarily Myanmar and Thailand. “The driver file is signed with an old, stolen, or leaked digital certificate and registers as a minifilter driver on infected machines,” the…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the world as we know it, with implications reaching far beyond mere automation of tasks. The emergence of AI technologies is enabling groundbreaking advances in various fields such as energy, transportation, biodiversity, and water management. As the challenges of climate change and resource depletion loom larger, the integration of AI into our systems is positioning us all toward a greener and smarter planet. In their recent study, Bibi and Yang delve into these revolutionary changes, suggesting that AI is pivotal in creating sustainable solutions for a myriad of critical global issues. The first area where…

Scientists have discovered two new subtypes of multiple sclerosis with the aid of artificial intelligence, paving the way for personalised treatments and better outcomes for patients.Millions of people have the disease globally – but treatments are mostly selected on the basis of symptoms, and may not be effective because they don’t target the underlying biology of the patient.Now, scientists have detected two new biological strands of MS using AI, a simple blood test and MRI scans. Experts said the “exciting” breakthrough could revolutionise treatment of the disease worldwide.In research involving 600 patients, led by University College London (UCL) and Queen…

After outperforming in 2025, can Alphabet’s stock do it again in 2026?

Europe 5G IoT Market Summary The Europe 5G IoT market is experiencing exponential growth, fueled by industrial automation initiatives, expanding private 5G deployments, and strong policy alignment with the EU’s Digital Decade, Green Deal, and secure connectivity strategies. As of 2025, the market is valued at USD 3.56 billion and is projected to reach USD 89.97 billion by 2033, growing at an exceptionally high CAGR of 49.72%. Market Snapshot (2025–2033) Current Market Value (2025): USD 3.56 billion Projected Market Value (2033): USD 89.97 billion Growth Velocity (CAGR): 49.72% Base Year Value (2024): USD 2.38 billion Primary Technology Segment: 5G New…