Subvocal just raised $1.3M in pre-seed funding to build smart glasses that turn silent mouth movements into text. Using low-power radar-like radio frequency sensors and AI rather than cameras or microphones, the device tracks facial muscle shifts at over 200 words per minute. Pre-orders start at $499, targeting a 2027 rollout.
YC just open-sourced QM, a multiplayer agent harness designed for company collaboration. Instead of treating AI as an isolated personal assistant, QM gives every teammate a personal sandbox and scoped memory, while letting groups collaborate with the agent in Slack channels and projects across granular permission layers.
YC-backed startup Tornyol just revealed an autonomous drone that uses ultrasonic sonar to track mosquito wingbeats and suck them into tiny propellers. Built by an ex-missile engineer, each drone covers up to five acres per charge. While a demo showed it intercepting a moth, proving it against tiny, erratic mosquitoes in the wild remains a challenge.
Confluence Labs just exited stealth with a 97.9% score on the ARC-AGI-2 benchmark at $11.77 per task, open-sourcing its entire solver on GitHub. The lab uses LLM-guided program synthesis to tackle data-sparse reasoning, aiming to bring the approach to drug design and hardware engineering next.
YC-backed startup GRU Space just opened reservations for what it calls the first lunar hotel, asking wealthy believers for deposits between $250,000 and $1 million. The tiny two-person team plans to deploy an inflatable habitat by 2032 for SpaceX travelers. Why it matters: It sounds crazy years before infrastructure exists, but it marks an audacious early bet on commercial lunar tourism.
Geoff Ralston just launched the Safe Artificial Intelligence Fund (SAIF), writing $100,000 SAFE checks for early-stage AI safety startups. The fund focuses on model explainability, security compliance, and anti-weapon defenses while explicitly ruling out fully autonomous weapons. Ralston also plans to help portfolio founders tap into his YC network.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman just bet on 2025 as the year we reach artificial general intelligence. In a YC interview, he claimed the path to AGI is now basically clear and boils down to engineering rather than scientific breakthroughs, even as reports swirl about LLM scaling challenges.
Poly just launched a generative AI suite that lets designers create 3D textures using simple text prompts or reference images. The tool outputs physically-based rendering maps and has generated over two million textures. Backed by $3.9 million from Y Combinator and other investors, it aims to replace manual asset hunting for game makers.
