Samwise Tech/AI/Robotics Newsletter
Thursday, May 28, 2026
China Restricts Top AI Researchers and Founders from Traveling Abroad
China is tightening its grip on top AI talent, requiring researchers, startup founders, and executives at private companies to seek government approval before traveling abroad. The restrictions intensified after Beijing blocked Manus' two co-founders from leaving the country during an investigation into Meta's $2 billion acquisition of the AI startup. The moves follow a Wall Street Journal report from March 2025 that Chinese authorities were already advising top AI founders to avoid the U.S. According to Stanford's latest AI Index, the performance gap between leading U.S. and Chinese models has narrowed to just 2.7% as of March 2026, down from roughly 31% in 2023.
Sources: TechCrunch
Cognition Raises $1B at $25B Valuation as Devin Usage Surges 50% Monthly
Cognition, maker of autonomous AI software engineer Devin, has raised more than $1 billion at a $25 billion pre-money valuation, more than double its $10.2 billion post-money valuation from eight months ago. The round was led by Lux Capital and General Catalyst, with participation from Founders Fund, 8VC, Ribbit Capital, Atreides, and Layer Global. Cognition reports $492 million in annualized revenue run-rate, with enterprise usage of Devin growing 50% month over month for the past six months. Enterprise customers include Mercedes-Benz, NASA, Goldman Sachs, and Santander. The company also acquired the remaining assets of Windsurf last year.
Sources: TechCrunch
Figure AI Scales Humanoid Robot Production from One Per Day to One Per Hour
Figure AI says its BotQ manufacturing facility has increased production of its Figure 03 humanoid robot from one unit per day to one unit per hour — a 24-fold increase achieved in less than 120 days. The company reports it has produced more than 350 third-generation humanoid robots and manufactured over 9,000 actuators across more than 10 different SKUs. Its battery production line has achieved 99.3% first-pass yield, and overall robot first-pass yield rates exceed 80%. Figure has also built fleet management systems, over-the-air software update infrastructure, and failure diagnostics. Its Helix AI system is trained via sim-to-real reinforcement learning, enabling autonomous stair climbing.
Sources: Robotics & Automation News
Snowflake Signs $6B Five-Year AWS Deal to Power AI and Agentic Applications
Snowflake has signed a $6 billion, five-year agreement with Amazon Web Services, committing to use Amazon's custom Graviton processors and other chips to power AI and agentic applications. The deal represents a dramatic escalation: Snowflake's five-year AWS spending commitment has grown from $1.2 billion at its IPO in 2020 to $2.5 billion in 2023 and now $6 billion. Since its founding in 2012, Snowflake has sold $7 billion in services through AWS Marketplace total, meaning this single contract approaches that entire cumulative figure. The deal is seen as a signal that cloud-giant custom CPUs are emerging as serious competition to Nvidia's AI chips.
Sources: TechCrunch
Robinhood Launches AI Agentic Trading with Dedicated Wallet and Virtual Card
Robinhood has launched AI agentic trading, letting users create a dedicated account and wallet for their AI agents. Agents can analyze portfolios and execute trades but are limited to the pre-loaded balance in the dedicated wallet. Users receive notifications of all trades their agents make and can monitor activity within the app; for some trades, agents will show a preview requiring user approval. Robinhood built fraud detection with a team to review suspicious trades. The feature launches in beta for stock trading only, with options, crypto, futures, and prediction markets planned. The company is also launching a virtual agentic credit card, initially available to Gold Card holders.
Sources: TechCrunch
YouTube Will Automatically Label AI-Generated Videos, No Longer Relying on Creators
YouTube will now automatically label videos it determines contain 'significant photorealistic AI,' reducing reliance on creator self-disclosure. Starting in May, the platform uses new internal signals to detect AI-generated content and apply labels even when creators do not disclose. Labels will now appear more prominently — directly below the video player on long-form content and overlaid on YouTube Shorts, replacing the previous approach of burying them in expanded descriptions. Creators can update disclosure status if misidentified, but cannot remove labels on content made with YouTube's own tools, including Veo and Dream Screen. YouTube confirmed AI labels will not affect recommendations or monetization.
Sources: TechCrunch
ElevenLabs Music v2 Can Switch Genres Mid-Track and Regenerate Song Sections
ElevenLabs launched Music v2, a new version of its music generation model that can switch genres mid-track — going from opera to heavy metal and back, delivering fast rap without losing coherence, and adding non-musical sound effects. Artists can isolate a section of a song and regenerate it using prompts without affecting the rest of the track. The model also lets creators build songs section by section — intro, verse, chorus — and stitch them together. ElevenLabs says the model performs more reliably across languages, lyrics, and arrangements. The model is built on licensed data cleared for commercial use and is available on ElevenCreative and ElevenMusic.
Sources: TechCrunch
Tech Pulse
Top Frontier Models (SWE-bench): Claude Mythos Preview (93.9%) | Claude Opus 4.7 Adaptive (87.6%) | GPT-5.3 Codex (85.0%)
Top Open Source Models (SWE-bench): DeepSeek V4 Pro Max (80.6%) | Kimi K2.6 (80.2%) | GLM-5 (77.8%)
Top Small Models 15–50B (SWE-bench): Qwen3.6-27B (77.2%) | Qwen3.5-27B (72.4%) | Qwen3.5-35B-A3B (69.2%)
Top Edge Models 0–15B (GSM8K): Gemma 3 4B (89.2%) | Phi-4-Mini (88.6%) | Qwen 2.5 3B (79.1%)
AI Leaders: NVIDIA $5.2T | Alphabet $4.63T | Microsoft $3.11T
Robotics Leaders: Intuitive Surgical $155B | Figure AI $39B (private est.) | Boston Dynamics $20B (private est.)
Curated by JD · samwise.agency
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