Filtering byMIT Technology Review

20h ago

TechTech PolicyArtificial Intelligence

Key takeaways

The Download: OpenAI’s turning point for math and a battery record
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. What OpenAI’s latest controversy tells us about the future of math OpenAI says its agents have solved one of the most important open problems in mathematics. Under normal circumstances, that would…
1. 1. US battery storage capacity added 20.2 gigawatt-hours in the second quarter of 2026.
1. 2. OpenAI stated that its AI agents solved a major open mathematical problem.
1. 3. Ukraine is sharing battlefield drone flight datasets with defense contractors and commercial firms.

MTMIT Technology Review

23h ago

BusinessMarket TrendsRenewable Energy

Key takeaways

Batteries just broke another record in the US
Battery installations hit a new record in the US in the second quarter of 2026. In total, 20.2 gigawatt-hours of new capacity came online, according to a new report. That’s enough to supply the daily electricity needs of about 700,000 homes. The surge is putting the country on a trajectory to see 71 gigawatt-hours of…
1. 1. US battery installations reached a record quarterly capacity in the second quarter of 2026.
1. 2. Data centers accounted for approximately 75% of new commercial behind-the-meter battery installations.
1. 3. US residential battery installations are projected to decline by 16% in 2026 compared to the previous year.

MTMIT Technology Review

1d ago

PromotionalThermal ManagementBattery Technology

Key takeaways

Understanding the thermal ceiling in portable power
Plug a phone into a modern charger and the first 10 minutes are impressive. The next 20 are not. This is not a defect. It’s the connected device protecting itself. As temperature rises during charging, a smartphone’s battery management system reduces the current it will accept, because heat accelerates the chemical degradation that permanently reduces…
1. 1. Portable power bank specifications market peak wattage rather than sustained charging output.
1. 2. Passive thermal dissipation materials slow heat accumulation but cannot prevent thermal saturation in sealed enclosures.
1. 3. The primary performance constraint in portable charging has shifted from power delivery capacity to thermal dissipation.

MTMIT Technology Review

1d ago

ScienceArtificial IntelligenceMathematics

Key takeaways

What OpenAI’s latest controversy tells us about the future of math
OpenAI’s latest mathematical milestone has quickly become mired in controversy. Today, the company announced that its agents have solved one of the Millennium Prize Problems, some of the most important open problems in mathematics. Under normal circumstances, that solution would be a huge feather in OpenAI’s cap. But the announcement has been overshadowed by accusations…
1. 1. OpenAI announced that its AI agents solved one of the Millennium Prize Problems.
1. 2. Tristan Buckmaster published a proof showing that a simplified version of the Navier-Stokes equations can break down.
1. 3. The Navier-Stokes existence and smoothness problem concerns equations describing fluid flow.

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1d ago

TechTech InnovationArtificial Intelligence

Key takeaways

The Download: our 35 Innovators Under 35 this year
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Introducing our 35 Innovators Under 35 list for 2026 What will the next generation of science and technology look like? Our latest Innovators Under 35 list offers a glimpse. Every year,…
1. 1. Every year, we recognize 35 people from around the world who are doing groundbreaking scientific work and building clever technical fixes for sticky problems.
1. 2. Mistral has raised a European record of $3.5 billion
1. 3. Our analysis reveals what AI’s carbon footprint looks like now and where it’s headed as adoption skyrockets.

MTMIT Technology Review

1d ago

TechEnergy EfficiencyReversible Computing

Key takeaways

This founder is teaching chips how to recycle (their energy)
Throughout the history of the computer chip, engineers have treated waste heat as an inevitable cost of a calculation. Hannah Earley, however, thinks it’s a design choice. Earley, 31, is cofounder and chief technology officer of Vaire Computing, a startup building chips that recycle energy usually thrown away as heat—a strategy known as reversible computing.…
1. 1. Vaire Computing develops reversible computing chips that recycle energy normally lost as heat during calculation.
1. 2. Vaire Computing announced a chip with a resonator that recovered more energy than it consumed.

MTMIT Technology Review

1d ago

TechHumanoid RoboticsReinforcement Learning

Key takeaways

This AI entrepreneur is developing agents that can plan ahead for the unexpected
Danijar Hafner’s office in San Francisco’s SoMa district sits mostly empty. His brand-new startup is still in stealth mode and doesn’t even have its name on the door. On the day I visit, there’s only one other person there, and little in the way of furniture. But what it lacks in decor, it makes up…
1. 1. Danijar Hafner develops world models to train autonomous agents using model-based reinforcement learning.
1. 2. The Dreamer 2 and Dreamer 3 AI agents achieved benchmark breakthroughs in Atari 2600 and Minecraft.
1. 3. Danijar Hafner departed Google DeepMind in late 2025 to launch a stealth robotics startup in San Francisco.

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1d ago

TechClean TechnologySteel Industry

Key takeaways

This founder is making cheaper, cleaner steel
The steel industry isn’t exactly known for innovation. Very little has changed about purifying iron ore since the process was invented and commercialized in the 1850s. The majority of steelmakers melt solid iron ore at dizzyingly high temperatures inside blast furnaces, where the material reacts with gases to trigger chemical reactions that remove oxygen. It…
1. 1. Laureen Meroueh invented a single-step furnace process at Hertha Metals to simplify steel chemistry.
1. 2. Hertha Metals replaces coal with natural gas to turn iron ore into liquid steel in a single step.
1. 3. The facility is slated to produce 10,000 metric tons of high-purity steel per year and should reach full capacity by the end of 2027.

MTMIT Technology Review

1d ago

ScienceLongevity ResearchCellular Reprogramming

Key takeaways

This geneticist’s age-reversal tech could help restore sight
Yuancheng (Ryan) Lu is obsessed with aging. And with eyes. As he steps outside the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his aviator glasses darken automatically in the sun. Age-related blindness runs in his family. A great-aunt in China, the story goes, was killed crossing a road because she couldn’t see oncoming traffic. And Lu’s own…
1. 1. Yuancheng Lu repaired damaged mouse optic nerves using cellular reprogramming at Harvard Medical School in 2018.
1. 2. Life Biosciences initiated a human clinical trial testing the ER-100 rejuvenation therapy in a glaucoma patient.
1. 3. Cellular reprogramming using OSK factors exhibits toxicity across multiple cell types and lacks universal efficacy.

MTMIT Technology Review

2d ago

TechArtificial IntelligenceEmerging Technology

Key takeaways

The Download: the hunt for underground hydrogen and more rogue OpenAI agents
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. How much hydrogen awaits us underground? A flurry of exploration efforts is searching for underground stores of hydrogen gas, which could provide a valuable source of zero-carbon fuel. The hunt has…
1. 1. No one has yet reported finding a commercially viable reservoir of the gas, and public data on what has been found remains in short supply.
1. 2. The agents turned DseWiki into their own bulletin board.
1. 3. The US military has disabled ad trackers due to Middle East targeting fears

MTMIT Technology Review

5d ago

TechAI InfrastructureData Center Architecture

Key takeaways

Architecting memory and storage in the AI era
The era of AI inference has arrived. Imagine a healthcare system analyzing millions of data points in real time to accelerate life-saving medical research, or an intelligent assistant instantly resolving thousands of complex customer needs at once. These real-world breakthroughs rely on advanced infrastructure acting as the engine of continuous intelligence, powering real-time services while…
1. 1. AI inference workloads require coordinated infrastructure optimized for continuous execution and response time.
1. 2. Real-time data movement is the primary constraint in advanced AI inference deployments.
1. 3. Organizational success in AI depends on aligning infrastructure elements to specific workloads rather than cluster size.

MTMIT Technology Review

5d ago

TechArtificial IntelligenceDefense Tech

Key takeaways

The Download: selling battlefield drone data and AI reshaping language
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Data from drones in Ukraine is fueling a new Wild West marketplace —Cory Alpert, a researcher at the University of Melbourne studying AI’s impact on democracy, who previously served in the…
1. 1. Ukraine is licensing millions of battlefield drone flight data points to commercial companies and military contractors for AI training.
1. 2. Tesla has deployed 45 Cybercab robotaxis in Austin as part of a steering-wheel-free commercial launch.
1. 3. A human recipient maintained kidney function using a transplanted pig organ for 271 days.

MTMIT Technology Review

5d ago

TechArtificial IntelligenceMilitary Technology

Data from drones in Ukraine is fueling a new Wild West marketplace

Battlefields in Ukraine are littered with the remnants of drones, which are now firmly established as a critical weapon of modern warfare. But behind all that wreckage, there’s a new gold mine for the defense sector. The data drones generate will far outlast the wars in which they are used to fight, increasingly becoming part…

MTMIT Technology Review

6d ago

TechTech PolicyArtificial Intelligence

Key takeaways

The Download: rethinking child safety and fossil-fueled farming
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Child-monitoring apps might need a reboot Digital harms have become the defining fear of American parents. In response, they’re increasingly turning to content-monitoring apps that scan their children’s texts, photos, emails,…
1. 1. Fertilizer prices have been on a roller coaster this year, driven in part by trade disruptions and high natural-gas prices.
1. 2. Google has avoided a breakup of its ad tech business
1. 3. New York City has banned AI in elementary and middle schools

MTMIT Technology Review

6d ago

BusinessAgricultureFossil Fuels

Key takeaways

Agriculture relies on fossil fuels. It’s costing us.
If you’ve had to fill up your vehicle’s gas tank or buy a plane ticket lately, you’ve probably felt the effects of rising fossil-fuel prices. But farmers buying fertilizer for their crops are especially aware of just how far the ripple effects of the conflict in Iran have spread. Fertilizer prices have been on a…
1. 1. Global fertilizer prices fluctuated sharply due to natural gas price spikes and shipping trade disruptions.
1. 2. One-third of global seaborne fertilizer trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
1. 3. Pivot Bio micro-engineered fertilizers currently substitute up to 25% of synthetic nitrogen requirements.

MTMIT Technology Review

6d ago

TechEnterprise AIAgentic Workflows

Key takeaways

Scaling agentic AI pilots across the enterprise
As agentic AI moves from experimentation toward enterprise deployment, the challenge is figuring out how agents can work together, connect to the systems and data they need, and operate safely across the workflows that run a business. Although agentic AI has been adopted by some 80% of Fortune 500 companies, progress toward meaningful scale remains…
1. 1. Agentic AI has been adopted by roughly 80% of Fortune 500 companies, yet meaningful scaling remains uneven across isolated pilots.
1. 2. Enterprises must redesign underlying workflows rather than layering agentic AI onto outdated business processes.
1. 3. Enterprises should govern AI agents under the same performance and operational standards applied to human personnel.

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