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We've heard (and written, here at VentureBeat) lots about the generative AI race between the U.S. and China, as those have been the countries with the groups most active in fielding new models (with a shoutout to Cohere in Canada and Mistral in France). But now a Korean startup is making waves: last week, the firm known as Motif Technologies released Motif-2-12.7B-Reasoning, another small parameter open-weight model that boasts impressive benchmark scores, quickly becoming the most performant model from tha
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Religious communities around the US are getting hit with AI depictions of their leaders sharing incendiary sermons and asking for donations. Read more âș
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The historical series Shogun was an international hit that won a record 18 Emmy Awards. With production on season 2 starting, the writer and executive producer talk about their new challenges. Read more âș
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Ensuring your cat is drinking enough water is one of the best ways to keep your pet healthy. We tested nearly two dozen models to find the best water fountains for most cats. Read more âș
641 fresh
The RingConn Gen 3 finally gives you a reason to upgrade, adding direct vibration alerts and blood pressure insights. Read more âș
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Promises of better sleepâand better poopsâare driving the magnesium supplements craze. Read more âș
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Over the weekend, the United States invaded Venezuela, captured its leader, and then declared itself to be in charge of South Americaâs fifth-largest country. And no one â not even the US government â seems entirely sure why. The Trump administration has offered multiple high-minded explanations for its toppling of Venezuelan President NicolĂĄs Maduro, none [âŠ] Read more âș
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Today, the controversial congressional career of Marjorie Taylor Greene comes to end â at least for the foreseeable future. But before her exit, she got a few more jabs in at President Donald Trump. First, in a wide-ranging New York Times Magazine profile last week, the retiring Georgia representative reignited her feud with the president, [âŠ] Read more âș
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After my son asked about our family history, I set out to uncover my father's lineage, piecing together a family tree once lost to silence. Read more âș
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This must be about the oil, right? Itâs a presumption that got lots of airtime this weekend, following the dramatic seizure of Venezuelan President NicolĂĄs Maduro and his wife by US forces. The pair now face drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges in New York, while observers in both countries are scrambling to interpret the sudden action by President [âŠ] Read more âș
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Trump is having the government buy stakes directly in companies â and it's going to change the way we all do business and reshape the economy. Read more âș
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Vibe coding has upended software engineering, strapping developers with a suite of new AI tools. We want to hear from those navigating the moment. Read more âș
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Motorola is gearing up to launch its new Signature series smartphone tomorrow and ahead of the big unveiling Evan Blass shared the device's full specs. The Signature is set to be a Snapdragon 8 Gen 5-equipped flagship paired with up to 16GB LPDDR5X RAM and 1TB UFS 4.1 storage. Itâs expected to feature a 6.8-inch LTPO AMOLED with 2,780 x 1,264px resolution alongside a 165Hz refresh rate. The panel will... Read more âș
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We've also spotted more clues of Perplexity being preinstalled on Samsung devices in the future. Read more âș
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Integrated chatbots and built-in machine intelligence are no longer standout features in consumer tech. If companies want to win in the AI era, theyâve got to hone the user experience. Read more âș
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As of Jan. 5, Magic: The Gathering Commander Masters Set Booster Box is over $50 below market value at Amazon. Read more âș
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Mette Frederiksen, Denmark's prime minister, said the US "has no right to annex" Greenland. Read more âș
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Now run by Ravi Singh, the $1.5 billion manager is looking to grow. Read more âș
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Jimmy Kimmel paid tribute to Donald Trump in his best talk show acceptance speech at the Critics Choice Awards. Read more âș
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The New York Times' latest game, Pips, brings domino fun to your desktop. How to play Pips as well as hints in case you get stuck. Read more âș
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For decades the data landscape was relatively static. Relational databases (hello, Oracle!) were the default and dominated, organizing information into familiar columns and rows.That stability eroded as successive waves introduced NoSQL document stores, graph databases, and most recently vector-based systems. In the era of agentic AI, data infrastructure is once again in flux â and evolving faster than at any point in recent memory.As 2026 dawns, one lesson has become... Read more âș
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For decades, we have adapted to software. We learned shell commands, memorized HTTP method names and wired together SDKs. Each interface assumed we would speak its language. In the 1980s, we typed 'grep', 'ssh' and 'ls' into a shell; by the mid-2000s, we were invoking REST endpoints like GET /users; by the 2010s, we imported SDKs (client.orders.list()) so we didnât have to think about HTTP. But underlying each of those... Read more âș
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Facebook and Instagram parent company Metaâs agreement to acquire Manus for more than $2 billion â announced last night by both companies and reported in The Wall Street Journal â marks one of the clearest signals yet that large tech platforms are no longer just competing on model quality, but on who controls the execution layer of AI-powered work.Manus, a Singapore-based startup founded by Chinese entrepreneurs that debuted earlier this... Read more âș
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At 77-year-old promotional products company Gold Bond Inc., CIO Matt Price knew generative AI adoption wouldnât come from rolling out a chatbot. Employees needed AI embedded into the work they already hated doing: messy ERP intake, document processing, and call follow-ups.Instead of pitching benchmarks, Price built a small group of âsuper-usersâ to surface Gold Bondâspecific examples and train the rest of the org. They then wired Gemini and other models... Read more âș
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The AI narrative has mostly been dominated by model performance on key industry benchmarks. But as the field matures and enterprises look to draw real value from advances in AI, weâre seeing parallel research in techniques that help productionize AI applications. At VentureBeat, we are tracking AI research that can help understand where the practical implementation of technology is heading. We are looking forward to breakthroughs that are not just... Read more âș
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Four in 10 enterprise applications will feature task-specific AI agents this year. Yet, research from Stanford Universityâs 2025 Index Report shows that a mere 6% of organizations have an advanced AI security strategy in place.Palo Alto Networks predicts 2026 will bring the first major lawsuits holding executives personally liable for rogue AI actions. Many organizations are grappling with how to contain the accelerating and unpredictable nature of AI threats. Governance... Read more âș
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When Google released its newest AI image model Nano Banana Pro (aka Gemini 3 Pro Image) in November, it reset expectations for the entire field. For the first time, uses of an image model could use natural language to generate dense, text-heavy infographics, slides, and other enterprise-grade visuals without spelling errors. But that leap forward came with a familiar tradeoff. Gemini 3 Pro Image is deeply proprietary, tightly bound to... Read more âș
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Hot on the heels of its new $140 million Series D fundraising round, the multi-modal enterprise AI media creation platform fal.ai, known simply as "fal" or "Fal" is back with a year-end surprise: a faster, more efficient, and cheaper version of the Flux.2 [dev] open source image model from Black Forest Labs.Fal's new model FLUX.2 [dev] Turbo is a distilled, ultra-fast image generation model thatâs already outperforming many of its... Read more âș
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Active Directory, LDAP, and early PAM were built for humans. AI agents and machines were the exception. Today, they outnumber people 82 to 1, and that human-first identity model is breaking down at machine speed.AI agents are the fastest-growing and least-governed class of these machine identities â and they donât just authenticate, they act. ServiceNow spent roughly $11.6 billion on security acquisitions in 2025 alone â a signal that identity,... Read more âș
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xAI has launched Grok Business and Grok Enterprise, positioning its flagship AI assistant as a secure, team-ready platform for organizational use. These new tiers offer scalable access to Grokâs most advanced models â Grok 3, Grok 4, and Grok 4 Heavy, already among the most performant and most cost-effective models available in the world â backed by strong administrative controls, privacy guarantees, and a newly introduced premium isolation layer called... Read more âș
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05.01.2026 08:20
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