BRICS Urban Future Forum in Moscow Centers on AI and Robotics
The third BRICS Urban Future Forum, held in Moscow on September 17-18, is focusing on the role of robotic technologies and artificial intelligence in urban transformation. The event brings together government officials, business leaders, and technology experts from over 35 countries to discuss strategies for the development of megacities through 2040. A key theme is the increasing importance of robotics, automation, and AI as primary drivers for changes in production and social systems within large urban environments. The forum serves as a platform for international collaboration on building the cities of the future.
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Figure AI Announces ‘Project Go-Big’ for Humanoid Robot Pretraining
Figure AI has announced a new initiative, ‘Project Go-Big,’ focused on internet-scale humanoid pretraining and direct human-to-robot transfer. This project aims to significantly advance the capabilities of humanoid robots by leveraging large datasets for training. The announcement is part of a series of recent developments from the company, which also recently announced a strategic partnership with Brookfield and a Series C funding round that exceeded $1 billion.
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Lyft and Waymo to Launch Autonomous Ride-Hailing in Nashville
Lyft and Waymo are partnering to introduce autonomous ride-hailing services in Nashville, with a planned launch in 2026. Waymo will begin autonomous driving in the city in the coming months before making the service publicly available next year. Riders will be able to book the self-driving vehicles through the Waymo app and eventually through the Lyft app as well. The partnership will utilize Flexdrive for fleet management, while Waymo will provide its autonomous driving technology to offer an efficient and accessible mobility solution for the city. This expansion is the latest in a series for Waymo, which currently operates fully autonomous rides in several major U.S. cities.
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EvoluteIQ Raises $53 Million to Scale Agentic AI Automation Platform
EvoluteIQ, a native AI platform for automating complex business processes, has secured $53 million in a minority growth capital funding round led by Baird Capital. The company’s EIQ platform integrates process orchestration, data integration, and generative AI into a single low-code/no-code/pro-code environment. Built on an ‘Agentic Mesh Architecture’, the platform is designed for regulated industries such as banking, insurance, and healthcare to deploy and scale AI-enabled processes securely and efficiently. The new funding is intended to accelerate EvoluteIQ’s global expansion and enhance its position in the enterprise-grade agentic AI automation market. Baird Capital’s Daina Spedding and Mark Donnelly will join the EvoluteIQ Board of Directors as part of the investment.
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Incredibuild Launches AI-Powered Platform to Speed Up Software Development
Incredibuild has announced the launch of a new AI-powered platform designed to accelerate the entire software development lifecycle. The platform aims to reduce build and test times by using AI to optimize development pipelines. Key features include live SDLC telemetry for pipeline visibility, code change intelligence to assess the impact of changes, and powerful caching and distributed computing to speed up workloads. This new platform is built to address the bottlenecks in CI/CD systems that have been exacerbated by the increased volume of AI-generated code.
Kubernetes v1.34 Introduces Alpha Feature for App Environment Variables
The recent release of Kubernetes v1.34 includes a new alpha feature that allows for the definition of application environment variables using an init container and a file in an emptyDir volume. This method provides an alternative to using ConfigMaps or Secrets for this purpose. Additionally, the v1.34 release has moved volume group snapshots to a second beta version, v1beta2. This feature, which relies on a set of extension APIs, enables users to create crash-consistent snapshots of multiple persistent volumes at once.
Quantum Computing Stocks See Gains as Sector Attracts Investor Interest
Publicly traded quantum computing companies, including D-Wave, IonQ, Quantum Computing Inc., and Rigetti, have experienced significant gains in their stock prices. D-Wave Quantum saw the largest surge, with its stock rising nearly 19% in a single session, while IonQ, Rigetti, and Quantum Computing Inc. also saw healthy increases. One contributing factor to the renewed investor interest is the expansion of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Quantum-in-Space Collaboration, which recently added IonQ as a new signatory. This collaboration between the U.S. government and private companies aims to deploy quantum-based technologies in space for applications like advanced communications and cybersecurity.
Tails 7.0 Released with Debian 13 Base and Faster Startup
The privacy-focused Linux distribution Tails has released version 7.0, a major update that moves the operating system to a Debian 13 “Trixie” base and incorporates the GNOME 48 desktop environment. A key improvement in this release is a faster startup time, with the system booting 10-15 seconds quicker on most machines due to a switch in image compression from xz to zstd. This version also includes updated applications such as Tor Browser 14.5.7, Thunderbird 128.14.0esr, and Linux kernel 6.12, which expands hardware support for newer graphics cards and Wi-Fi adapters. The minimum RAM requirement has been increased to 3 GB. Several utilities have been removed, though alternatives are available or can be manually installed.
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Intel’s x86-simd-sort Project Finds New Home at NumPy
Intel’s high-performance AVX-512 sorting library, x86-simd-sort, will continue as a community open-source project under the NumPy umbrella after the developers were let go from Intel. The library is utilized by prominent projects such as NumPy, PyTorch, and a modified version is used in OpenJDK for its significant performance in number sorting. Intel has agreed to transfer the existing x86-simd-sort repository to NumPy’s GitHub organization. The move ensures the continued development and maintenance of the library, which is known for showcasing the performance benefits of AVX-512 and AVX2 instruction sets.
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