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Nvidia said at CES that it is rolling out a new server line sooner than planned, claiming it can train massive models in about a month using roughly one-quarter the chips of its prior generation and cut inference costs by tenfold. The Wall Street Journal has more here.

CES 2026 is shaping up as a show about AI moving into the physical world, with companies showing robots inching toward real deployment, car suppliers pushing deeper autonomy, and sensors and health gadgets pitched as ready for broader commercial use. TechCrunch has the latest updates here.

Three offshore wind developers sued the Trump administration after officials halted five nearly completed projects worth $25 billion, signaling that major energy investors are prepared to challenge federal intervention rather than write off billions in capital. TechCrunch has more here.

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By Dominic-Madori Davis

Kate Lowry, a former vice president at Insight Partners, is suing the firm, alleging disability discrimination, gender discrimination, and wrongful termination, according to a suit filed on December 30 in San Mateo County, California, and seen by TechCrunch.  
 
Insight Partners did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. 

Lowry told TechCrunch she filed the suit because she believes “too many powerful, wealthy people in venture act like it’s OK to break the law and systemically underpay and abuse their employees.”

“It’s an oppressive system that reflect[s] broader trends in society that use fear, intimidation, and power to silence and isolate truth. I’m trying to change that.”

Lowry began working at Insight Partners in 2022, after previously working for Meta, McKinsey & Company, and an early-stage startup. The suit alleges that, upon being hired, she was assigned to a different supervisor than the person mentioned during her interview.  

She alleges in the suit that she was told by her new supervisor, who was a woman, to be “online all the time, including PTO, holidays, and weekends,” and to respond between “6 a.m. and 11 p.m. daily.”  

Lowry says in the suit that this first supervisor “berated, hazed, and antagonized” her, spoke openly about a hazing that would be “longer and more intense” than what she put other male reports through.  

Some comments the supervisor allegedly made, according to the suit, include “you are incompetent, shut up and take notes” and “you need to obey me like a dog; do whatever I say whenever I say it, without speaking.”  Lowry also alleges that her supervisor assigned her “redundant tasks” and restricted her ability to participate in calls, while allowing less experienced male colleagues to do so. Lowry, instead, she alleges, was relegated to “administrative tasks such as note-taking and cataloging.”  

CHAMP Titles, an eight-year-old Cleveland startup that digitizes title, registration, lien, and driver credentials for state motor vehicle agencies, raised a $55 million round co-led by W. R. Berkley Corporation, Point72 Ventures, and ORIX Corporation USA. The company has raised a total of $100+ million. More here.

Kraken Technologies, an AI unit spun off from Octopus Energy that supplies energy billing and operations software to utility companies, raised $1 billion at an $8.65 billion post-money valuation. Investors included a major unnamed customer, D1 Capital Partners, and Origin Energy. CNBC has more here.

Lyte, a five-year-old startup based in Mountain View, CA, that develops sensing technology to help robots perceive their surroundings, emerged from stealth and announced that it has raised a total of $107 million, with investors including Fidelity, Atreides Management, Exor Ventures, Key1 Capital, and VentureTech Alliance. Bloomberg has more here.

Drafted, a nearly five month-old, San Francisco-based startup whose software generates residential floor plans and exterior designs in minutes with the aim of making custom home design affordable and scalable, has raised $1.65 million at a $35 million post-money valuation. Backers include Convective Capital, Stripe’s Patrick Collison, Jack Altman, Josh Buckley, and Warriors player Moses Moody. TechCrunch has more here.

Arm’s 20 predictions for the future of intelligent computing. 

As AI moves beyond centralized clouds, computing is entering a new era defined by distributed, power-efficient intelligence across cloud, edge, and physical systems. In a new predictions blog, Arm shares 20 technology predictions for 2026 and beyond, from modular chiplet design and secure-by-design silicon to smaller, purpose-built AI models and the rise of physical AI. Together, these predictions highlight why intelligence-per-watt will shape the next wave of innovation.  

Read Arm’s predictions for 2026 

Antler, a nine-year-old VC firm based in Singapore that backs founders from inception, closed a second U.S. fund and has raised a total of $510 million in capital commitments across its funds over the past year. It expects to allocate approximately 50% of its total capital to U.S. startups. Tech Funding News has more here.

Belief Capital, a one-year-old New York VC firm that backs young technical founders at the pre-seed and seed stage, raised a $20 million debut fund. Sifted has more here.

Flutterwave, a 10-year-old Lagos payments company, has acquired Mono, a six-year-old Lagos-based open banking startup that provides APIs for bank data access, payments initiation, and customer verification, in an all-stock deal reportedly valued between $25 million and $40 million. TechCrunch has more here.

MiniMax, a five-year-old Shanghai startup that builds generative AI tools, plans to price its Hong Kong IPO at the top of the range at $18 a share, which would give the company a valuation of approximately $6.5 billion. Bloomberg has more here.

The Financial Times scored an in-depth interview with Yann LeCun in which former Meta chief AI scientist characterized Alexandr Wang, his would-be Meta manager, as “young” and “inexperienced.” “There’s no experience with research or how you practice research, how you do it. Or what would be attractive or repulsive to a researcher,” he notes. More here.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote on his personal blog that calling AI “slop” misses the point and said it should be viewed as a technology that can help people do better work, but his message came across as tone deaf given how businesses are using it to replace workers. TechCrunch has more here.

We caught up with Jon Callaghan of True Ventures, and among other things, he said he doesn’t think we’ll be using smartphones the way we do now in five years — and maybe not at all in 10. More here.

Sauron, the high-end home security startup for “super premium” customers, recently plucked a new CEO out of Sonos. We talked with Maxime “Max” Bouvat-Merlin about his game plan.

A hacktivist wiped three white supremacist websites live onstage at a major hacker conference in Germany. TechCrunch has more here.

Chinese hospitals are using AI to scan more than 180,000 routine CT images, helping detect roughly two dozen pancreatic cancer cases and signaling China’s push to deploy data-heavy tools in clinical care despite false-positive risks. The New York Times has more here.

U.S. immigration lawyers say influencers and OnlyFans creators now dominate O-1 extraordinary ability visas, with approvals up more than 50% since 2014 as follower counts and earnings increasingly take precedence over traditional artistic credentials. The Financial Times has more here.

A JAMA study tracking phone activity found U.S. teens spend more than an hour on their phones during the school day, mostly on social and entertainment apps. Mashable has more here.

A gigantic 535-lb. bluefin tuna fetched a record $3.2 million at Tokyo’s year-opening Toyosu auction.

New York’s best omakase.

Lego announced that in March it will ship Smart Brick, a computer-and-sensor filled brick initially embedded in Star Wars sets that can trigger lights, sound, and interactive actions.

A turntable cheese board.

Circular drawers.

Harmonic 

“We found 4 out of our last 9 investments on Harmonic” 

- GP at a Tier-1 venture fund 

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