Semiconductor giant Intel Corporation has already received $2.2 billion in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Commerce through the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act, the company shared during its Thursday earnings call. Dave Zinsner, Intel’s co-interim CEO, executive vice president, and CFO, said the Silicon Valley-based company received the first tranche of $1.1 billion […]
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The Pentagon is rushing to block DeepSeek on its network after some employees used the service, which stores data in China.
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Apple’s iPhone sales may be down, but the company’s Services division, which includes the App Store, iCloud, Music, TV+, and other subscriptions, is still soaring. The Cupertino-based tech giant reported Thursday its Services business had an all-time revenue high of $26.3 billion for the quarter ended December 28, up 14% year-over-year. Services generated nearly $100 […]
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Apple CEO Tim Cook said DeepSeek’s AI models represent “innovation that drives efficiency” during an earnings call Thursday while fielding questions from analysts about the iPhone maker’s AI ambitions. “In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing. And, you know, that’s what you see in that model,” said Cook, responding to […]
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Update: Some users on social media report that the changelog has been updated to remove mention of Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental. The references have disappeared for this reporter as well. A Google spokesperson told TechCrunch that an “out-of-date release note” was “published in error.” The original story follows: Google took the low-key route for the […]
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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.
Three questions about the future of US climate tech under Trump
Donald Trump has officially been in office for just over a week, and the new administration has already issued a blizzard of executive orders and memos.
Some of the moves could have major effects for climate change and climate technologies—for example, one of the first orders Trump signed signaled his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the major international climate treaty.
The road map for withdrawing from the Paris agreement is clear, but not all the effects of these orders are quite so obvious. There’s a whole lot of speculation about how far these actions reach, which ones might get overturned, and generally what comes next. Here are some of the crucial threads that I’m going to be following. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
This quantum computer built on server racks paves the way to bigger machines
The news: A Canadian startup called Xanadu has built a new quantum computer it says can be easily scaled up to achieve the computational power needed to tackle scientific challenges ranging from drug discovery to more energy-efficient machine learning.
Why it matters: Xanadu envisions a quantum computer as a specialized data center, consisting of rows upon rows of these servers. This contrasts with the industry’s earlier conception of a specialized chip within a supercomputer, much like a GPU. But this work is just a first step toward that vision. Read the full story.
—Sophia Chen
Vote for the 11th breakthrough
Earlier this month, we unveiled our annual list of the 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2025, encompassing everything from promising stem-cell therapies to robots that learn quickly. Now, we’re asking you to help us choose the 11th honorary technology we should keep an eye on over the next 12 months.
Cast your vote for one of the four extra exciting breakthroughs before 1 April. Readers of The Download will be among the first to know once we announce your pick.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Trump advisers were blindsided by Elon Musk’s team’s offer to federal workers
Officials weren’t consulted about plans to induce civil service workers to resign. (WP $)
+ The radical sweeping measures are just the beginning. (Vox)
+ The email workers received cribs from Musk’s controversial Twitter memo. (Ars Technica)
+ If Musk gets his way, the US government could end up like X. (NY Mag $)
2 Meta has agreed to pay Trump $25 million
To settle the censorship lawsuit Trump brought against it back in 2021. (CNN)
+ Mark Zuckerberg predicts 2025 will be a big year for Meta’s government relations. (Insider $)+ Facebook is still focused on winning over creators to make it cool again. (The Information $)
3 How tech workers are quietly fighting the rise of MAGA
While their employers are shifting rightwards, workers are resisting. (NYT $)
4 Microsoft and Meta have defended their AI spending
DeepSeek’s success has raised serious questions about Big Tech’s AI budgets. (Reuters)
+ Zuckerberg claims not to be worried by the Chinese startup’s rapid rise. (The Verge)
+ How a top Chinese AI model overcame US sanctions. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Mr Beast is getting serious about buying TikTok
The YouTuber is a part of an investor group that’s secured more than $20 billion. (Bloomberg $)
6 How the US plans to use space lasers to destroy hypersonic missiles
It bears more than a passing resemblance to Ronald Reagan’s 1983 program. (FT $)
+ How to fight a war in space (and get away with it) (MIT Technology Review)
7 Waymo’s autonomous taxi service is expanding to new US cities
San Diego, Las Vegas, and Miami are on the list. (WSJ $)
+ Self-driving Tesla taxis will hit Austin’s road in June, apparently. (TechCrunch)
+ EV batteries boast an incredibly long lifespan. (IEEE Spectrum)
8 The perfect cryptographic machine is possible
It’s just a bit of a pain to build. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Cryptography may offer a solution to the massive AI-labeling problem. (MIT Technology Review)
9 This mobile game is helping scientists identify new deep-sea species
Verifying ocean creatures can take decades, but AI and gaming speeds up the process. (Bloomberg $)
+ There’s an incredible amount of life down in the depths. (Quanta Magazine)
10 How the internet fell in love with capybaras
The world’s largest rodent is a social media sensation. (New Yorker $)
Quote of the day
“Hold the line! Don’t resign!”
—US federal workers rally together on Reddit to protest the Trump administration’s offer for them to take ‘deferred resignation’.
The big story
The race to fix space-weather forecasting before next big solar storm hits
As the number of satellites in space grows, and as we rely on them for increasing numbers of vital tasks on Earth, the need to better predict stormy space weather is becoming more and more urgent.
Scientists have long known that solar activity can change the density of the upper atmosphere. But it’s incredibly difficult to precisely predict the sorts of density changes that a given amount of solar activity would produce.
Now, experts are working on a model of the upper atmosphere to help scientists to improve their models of how solar activity affects the environment in low Earth orbit. If they succeed, they’ll be able to keep satellites safe even amid turbulent space weather, reducing the risk of potentially catastrophic orbital collisions. Read the full story.
—Tereza Pultarova
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ Happy birthday to the one and only Phil Collins—74 years young today.
+ Great news for Britain’s loneliest bat: he may have found a mate at long last. 
+ After years in the cocktail wilderness, the Black Russian is coming in from the cold.
+ Death to members clubs!
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
Donald Trump has officially been in office for just over a week, and the new administration has hit the ground running with a blizzard of executive orders and memos.
Some of the moves could have major effects for climate change and climate technologies—for example, one of the first orders Trump signed signaled his intention to withdraw from the Paris Agreement, the major international climate treaty.
The road map for withdrawing from the Paris agreement is clear, but not all the effects of these orders are quite so obvious. There’s a whole lot of speculation about how far these actions reach, which ones might get overturned, and generally what comes next. Here are some of the crucial threads that I’m going to be following.
It’s clear that Donald Trump isn’t a fan of electric vehicles. One of the executive orders issued on his first day in office promised to eliminate the “electric vehicle (EV) mandate.”
The federal government under Biden didn’t actually have an EV mandate in place—rather, Trump is targeting national support programs, including subsidies that lower the cost of EVs for drivers and support building public chargers. But that’s just the beginning, because the executive order will go after states that have set their own rules on EVs.
While the US Environmental Protection Agency does set some rules around EVs through what are called tailpipe standards, last year California was granted a waiver that allows the state to set its own, stricter rules. The state now requires that all vehicles sold there must be zero-emissions by 2035. More than a dozen states quickly followed suit, setting a target to transition to zero-emissions vehicles within the next decade. That commitment was a major signal to automakers that there will be demand for EVs, and a lot of it, soon.
Trump appears to be coming after that waiver, and with it California’s right to set its own targets on EVs. We’ll likely see court battles over this, and experts aren’t sure how it’s going to shake out.
Wind energy was one of the most explicit targets for Trump on the campaign trail and during his first few days in office. In one memo, the new administration paused all federal permits, leases, and loans for all offshore and onshore wind projects.
This doesn’t just affect projects on federal lands or waters—nearly all wind projects typically require federal permits, so this could have a wide effect.
Even if the order is temporary or doesn’t hold up in court, it could be enough to chill investment in a sector that’s already been on shaky ground. As I reported last year, rising costs and slow timelines were already throwing offshore wind projects off track in the US. Investment has slowed since I published that story, and now, with growing political opposition, things could get even rockier.
One major question is how much this will slow down existing projects, like the Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho, which got the green light from the Biden administration before he left office. As one source told the Washington Post, the new administration may try to go after leases and permits that have already been issued, but “there may be insufficient authority to do so.”
In an executive order last week, the Trump administration called for a pause on handing out the funds that are legally set aside under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. That includes hundreds of billions of dollars for climate research and infrastructure.
This week, a memo from the White House called for a wider pause on federal grants and loans. This goes way beyond climate spending and could affect programs like Medicaid. There’s been chaos since that was first reported; nobody seems to agree on what exactly will be affected or how long the pause was supposed to last, and as of Tuesday evening, a federal judge had blocked that order.
In any case, all these efforts to pause, slow, or stop federal spending will be a major source of fighting going forward. As for effects on climate technology, I think the biggest question is how far the new administration can and will go to block spending that’s already been designated by Congress. There could be political consequences—most funds from the Inflation Reduction Act have gone to conservative-leaning states.
As I wrote just after the election in November, Donald Trump’s return to office means a sharp turn for the US on climate policy, and we’re seeing that start to play out very quickly. I’ll be following it all, but I’d love to hear from you. What do you most want to know more about? What questions do you have? If you work in the climate sector, how are you seeing your job affected? You can email me at casey.crownhart@technologyreview.com, message me on Bluesky, or reach me on Signal: @casey.131.
EVs are mostly set for solid growth this year, but what happens in the US is still yet to be seen, as my colleague James Temple covered in a recent story.
The Inflation Reduction Act set aside hundreds of billions of dollars for climate spending. Here’s how the law made a difference, two years in.
For more on Trump’s first week in office, check out this news segment from Science Friday (featuring yours truly).
DeepSeek has stormed onto the AI scene. The company released a new reasoning model, called DeepSeek R1, which it claims can surpass the performance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT o1. The model appears to be incredibly efficient, which upends the idea that huge amounts of computing power, and energy, are needed to drive the AI revolution.
For more, check out this story on the company and its model from my colleague Caiwei Chen, and this look at what it means for the AI industry and its energy claims from James O’Donnell.
A huge surge in clean energy caused China’s carbon emissions to level off in 2024. Whether the country’s emissions peak and begin to fall for good depends on what wins in a race between clean-energy additions and growth in energy demand. (Carbon Brief)
In a bit of good news, heat pumps just keep getting hotter. The appliances outsold gas furnaces in the US last year by a bigger margin than ever. (Canary Media)
→ Here’s everything you need to know about heat pumps and how they work. (MIT Technology Review)
People are seeking refuge from floods in Kentucky’s old mountaintop mines. Decades ago, the mines were a cheap source of resources but devastated local ecosystems. Now people are moving in. (New York Times)
An Australian company just raised $20 million to use AI to search for key minerals. Earth AI has already discovered significant deposits of palladium, gold, and molybdenum. (Heatmap News)
Some research suggests a key ocean current system is slowing down, but a new study adds to the case that there’s no cause to panic … yet. The new work suggests that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, hasn’t shown long-term weakening over the past 60 years. (Washington Post)
→ Efforts to observe and understand the currents have shown they’re weirder and more unpredictable than expected. (MIT Technology Review)
Floating solar panels could be a major resource in US energy. A new report finds that federal reservoirs could hold enough floating solar to produce nearly 1,500 terawatt-hours of electricity, enough to power 100 million homes each year. (Canary Media)
What sparked the LA wildfires is still a mystery, but AI is hunting for clues. Better understanding of what causes fires could be key in efforts to stop future blazes. (Grist)
A Canadian startup called Xanadu has built a new quantum computer it says can be easily scaled up to achieve the computational power needed to tackle scientific challenges ranging from drug discovery to more energy-efficient machine learning.
Aurora is a “photonic” quantum computer, which means it crunches numbers using photonic qubits—information encoded in light. In practice, this means combining and recombining laser beams on multiple chips using lenses, fibers, and other optics according to an algorithm. Xanadu’s computer is designed in such a way that the answer to an algorithm it executes corresponds to the final number of photons in each laser beam. This approach differs from one used by Google and IBM, which involves encoding information in properties of superconducting circuits.
Aurora has a modular design that consists of four similar units, each installed in a standard server rack that is slightly taller and wider than the average human. To make a useful quantum computer, “you copy and paste a thousand of these things and network them together,” says Christian Weedbrook, the CEO and founder of the company.
Ultimately, Xanadu envisions a quantum computer as a specialized data center, consisting of rows upon rows of these servers. This contrasts with the industry’s earlier conception of a specialized chip within a supercomputer, much like a GPU.
But this work, which the company published last week in Nature, is just a first step toward that vision. Aurora used 35 chips to construct a total of 12 quantum bits, or qubits. Any useful applications of quantum computing proposed to date will require at least thousands of qubits, or possibly a million. By comparison, Google’s quantum computer Willow, which debuted last year, has 105 qubits (all built on a single chip), and IBM’s Condor has 1,121.
Devesh Tiwari, a quantum computing researcher at Northeastern University, describes Xanadu’s progress in an analogy with building a hotel. “They have built a room, and I’m sure they can build multiple rooms,” he says. “But I don’t know if they can build it floor by floor.”
Still, he says, the work is “very promising.”
Xanadu’s 12 qubits may seem like a paltry number next to IBM’s 1,121, but Tiwari says this doesn’t mean that quantum computers based on photonics are running behind. In his opinion, the number of qubits reflects the amount of investment more than it does the technology’s promise.
Photonic quantum computers offer several design advantages. The qubits are less sensitive to environmental noise, says Tiwari, which makes it easier to get them to retain information for longer. It is also relatively straightforward to connect photonic quantum computers via conventional fiber optics, because they already use light to encode information. Networking quantum computers together is key to the industry’s vision of a “quantum internet” where different quantum devices talk to each other. Aurora’s servers also don’t need to be kept as cool as superconducting quantum computers, says Weedbrook, so they don’t require as much cryogenic technology. The server racks operate at room temperature, although photon-counting detectors still need to be cryogenically cooled in another room.
Xanadu is not the only company pursuing photonic quantum computers; others include PsiQuantum in the US and Quandela in France. Other groups are using materials like neutral atoms and ions to construct their quantum systems.
From a technical standpoint, Tiwari suspects, no single qubit type will ever be the “winner,” but it’s likely that certain qubits will be better for specific applications. Photonic quantum computers, for example, are particularly well suited to Gaussian boson sampling, an algorithm that could be useful for quickly solving graph problems. “I really want more people to be looking at photonic quantum computers,” he says. He has studied quantum computers with multiple qubit types, including photons and superconducting qubits, and is not affiliated with a company.
Isaac Kim, a physicist at the University of California, Davis, points out that Xanadu has not demonstrated the error correction ability many experts think a quantum computer will need in order to do any useful task, given that information stored in a quantum computer is notoriously fragile.
Weedbrook, however, says Xanadu’s next goal is to improve the quality of the photons in the computer, which will ease the error correction requirements. “When you send lasers through a medium, whether it’s free space, chips, or fiber optics, not all the information makes it from the start to the finish,” he says. “So you’re actually losing light and therefore losing information.” The company is working to reduce this loss, which means fewer errors in the first place.
Xanadu aims to build a quantum data center, with thousands of servers containing a million qubits, in 2029.
Another way to encourage engagement in the app.
Key insights for marketers planning social media strategies at a time of upheaval.