★ TOP STORY[ NL( ]Open Source·10d ago

State of AI: May 2026

State of AI: May 2026 The cyber threshold, China’s coding sprint, and agents meeting real markets Dear readers, Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI, an editorialized newsletter that covers the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups during the month of April 2026. First up, a few news items: Register for RAAIS 2026 is back in London on June 12. This year’s speakers include Raia Hadsell (VP Research, Google DeepMind), Roberta Raileanu (Senior Staff Research Scientist, Google DeepMind), Jeff Hawke (Co-Founder & CTO, Odyssey), and Philip Johnston (Co-Founder & CEO, Starcloud - yes, data centers in space). Come along and support the RAAIS Foundation’s mission in AI education and research. Profluent (frontier AI for bio) announced their $2.25B partnership with Lilly for large-gene insertion therapeutics and Sereact (embodied AI) closed a $110M Series B!…

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25d ago

Announcing RAAIS 2026 headline speakers

Announcing RAAIS 2026 headline speakers Frontier AI, open-ended agents, AI for medicine, world models, and the first data centers in orbit, all at the 10th Research and Applied AI Summit on June 12th, 2026. The Research and Applied AI Summit (RAAIS) is a community for entrepreneurs and researchers who accelerate the science and applications of AI technology. The 10th annual summit takes place on June 12th, 2026 in London. We’re delighted to announce the first wave of headline speakers, across five threads: frontier AI, open-ended agents, AI for medicine and science, world models, and the next substrate for compute itself. Frontier AI and the future of intelligence Raia Hadsell is VP of Research at Google DeepMind, where she co-leads the Frontier AI unit and has contributed to Gemini 2.5, Gemma 2, RecurrentGemma, and RoboCat. Her earlier seminal work includes Overcoming…

25dResearchby Nathan Benaich

32d ago

State of AI: April 2026 newsletter

State of AI: April 2026 newsletter US Government blacklists Anthropic as Iran bombs AWS data centers. Plus: $19B revenue in weeks, industrial-scale distillation wars, and an mRNA dog cancer vaccine designed by ChatGPT. Dear readers, Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI, an editorialized newsletter that covers the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups from February 1 to April 7, 2026. First up, a few news items: Air Street Capital Epoch 3 is live! $232M to continue backing AI-first companies across the US and Europe in software, dev/infra, techbio and defense. RAAIS 2026 is back in London on June 12. This year’s speakers include Raia Hadsell (VP Research, Google DeepMind), Roberta Raileanu (Senior Staff Research Scientist, Google DeepMind), Jeff Hawke (Co-Founder & CTO, Odyssey), and Philip Johnston (Co-Founder & CEO, Starcloud - yes, data…

32dResearch#gptby Nathan Benaich

52d ago

Air Street Capital announces $232M Fund III to back AI-first companies

Air Street Capital announces $232M Fund III to back AI-first companies Entering our third epoch. Today, I’m thrilled to share that Air Street Capital has raised a third fund of $232,323,232 to back AI-first companies from the earliest stages in North America and Europe. Air Street will lead early stage rounds with checks of $500k to $15M and make select growth investments up to $25M. When I started investing in 2013, deep learning was largely confined to research labs. Yet I was convinced back then that the most important technology companies of our generation will be built AI-first. This is because AI is a force multiplier for technological progress, and everything around us is ultimately a product of intelligence. So in 2019, I founded Air Street to build a venture firm dedicated to this conviction. Today, AI-first companies are emerging…

52dResearchby Nathan Benaich

94d ago

State of AI: February 2026 newsletter

State of AI: February 2026 newsletter Software stocks crater as agentic AI rewrites the playbook. Plus: Moltbook's AI theatre, OpenClaw's 157K-star security mess, and HBM runs out. Dear readers, Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI, an editorialized newsletter that covers the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month. First up, a few reminders: AI meetups: Join our upcoming AI meetups in Munich (17 Feb ‘26) for the Munich Security Conference and Zurich (19 Feb ‘26), as well as in Paris (11 Mar ‘26) and SF (28 Apr ‘16). RAAIS 2026: Join our 11th Research and Applied AI Summit in London on 12 June 2026, the premier global meeting for learning AI best practices and what’s coming next. Air Street Press featured the Air Street Capital Year in Review 2025, how…

94dAgents#agentsby Nathan Benaich

165d ago

State of AI: December 2025 newsletter

State of AI: December 2025 newsletter What you've got to know in AI from the last 4 weeks. Dear readers, Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI, an editorialized newsletter that covers the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month. First up, a few reminders: AI meetups + RAAIS 2026: Join our upcoming AI meetups in London (2nd Dec ‘25), Munich (17 Feb ‘26) and Zurich (19 Feb ‘26) as well as our 11th Research and Applied AI Summit in London on 12 June 2026. Watch my 25 min State of AI Report 2025 talk: and impress your friends as though you’d read 300 slides. That said, you really should read the slides, because we’re already 2/10 correct on the 2026 predictions (this and this) and it’ll help temper your friend’s…

165dHardware#gpuby Nathan Benaich

186d ago

State of AI: November 2025 newsletter

State of AI: November 2025 newsletter Dear readers, Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI, an editorialized newsletter formerly known as Guide to AI that covers the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month. First up, a few reminders: State of AI Report 2025: At over 300 slides, you can watch my 25 min summary of the report to digest our key findings. Podcasts! I discussed the report further on the MAD podcast (YouTube/Apple/Spotify), on TechBio Talks (YouTube/Apple/Spotify) and on Hidden Forces (YouTube/Apple/Spotify). AI meetups + RAAIS 2026: Join our upcoming AI meetups in London (2nd Dec ‘25), Munich (17 Feb ‘26) and Zurich (19 Feb ‘26) as well as our 11th Research and Applied AI Summit on 12 June 2026. Air Street Press featured Poolside’s path into AI’s power infrastructure,…

186dTutorialby Nathan Benaich

217d ago

🪩 The State of AI Report 2025 🪩

🪩 The State of AI Report 2025 🪩 Hi everyone! The day is finally here: I’m thrilled to share the State of AI Report 2025 with you! In short, it’s been a monumental 12 months for AI. Our eighth annual report is the most comprehensive it’s ever been, covering what you need to know about research, industry, politics, and safety - along with our first State of AI Usage Survey of 1,200 practitioners. The State of AI Report has become the most widely read and trusted report on AI progress and is our open-access contribution to the AI ecosystem. Below, I share my director’s cut - a snapshot of key themes and ideas that stood out to me. I’d appreciate your help in spreading the report far and wide - thanks in advance! Any comments, critiques, or suggestions, please hit…

217dResearchby Nathan Benaich

237d ago

Air Street Capital partners with NVIDIA on a £2B investment to accelerate the UK AI ecosystem

Air Street Capital partners with NVIDIA on a £2B investment to accelerate the UK AI ecosystem It is time to swing big AI is the ultimate force multiplier on technological progress in our digital, data-driven world. Our mission at Air Street Capital has always been to back the most ambitious teams building breakthrough AI products that would have seemed like magic when I started investing over a decade ago. Key to these inflection points is the infrastructure that enables them: NVIDIA computing systems. I have long argued that NVIDIA is the defining company of the AI era, powering breakthroughs in science, industry, and national strategy. This is why I’m excited to share that we are deepening that story together: Air Street Capital is partnering with NVIDIA as part of its new £2B commitment to the UK AI ecosystem. NVIDIA announced…

237dInfra#gpuby Nathan Benaich

249d ago

Join 600+ readers shaping the State of AI Report

Join 600+ readers shaping the State of AI Report Have your voice heard! Hi readers, Only 10 days left to take part in the first-ever State of AI survey and I need your input. This will feed directly into the 2025 State of AI Report, read by hundreds of thousands across startups, big tech, academia, and policy, which we’ll publish on 9 October. 👉 Take 10 minutes today - the survey closes Friday 12th. Already, over 600 people from startups, large companies, policy and academia all over the world have taken part. Your answers will shape how the world understands AI usage patterns, tools, and workflows, and the results will be open access so you can use them too. Please also share it with friends and colleagues working with AI. The more voices we hear, the stronger the insights. You…

249dResearchby Nathan Benaich

284d ago

State of AI: August 2025 newsletter

State of AI: August 2025 newsletter Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI newsletter, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month. First up, a few reminders: Join 489 participants to the State of AI Survey: do us a favor and share the survey with a few of your friends and colleagues, all the data will be open sourced for everyone: www.stateof.ai/survey Congrats to Delian Alliance Industries for their $14M Series A to accelerate European defense capabilities for autonomous warfare. The news was covered in the Financial Times. Congrats to Profluent on their Nature paper for OpenCRISPR! This is a huge deal for precision medicine at scale. Air Street Press featured a number of pieces this past month including why AI rollups are a mirage and write…

284dResearchby Nathan Benaich

305d ago

State of AI: July 2025 newsletter

State of AI: July 2025 newsletter Hi everyone! Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI newsletter, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month. First up, a few reminders: Research and Applied AI Summit 2025: we’re sharing the talk videos on our YouTube and our writeups on Air Street Press. State of AI Report: we’ve begun crafting this year’s edition and invite you to submit research or industry data points/case studies that would provide for thought provoking analysis. Feel free to reply to this email if so! We’ve published an update of the Compute Index featuring new GPU cluster numbers and insights into which AI accelerators are used in various AI research areas. Participate in the State of AI Survey, it’ll take 10 mins and focuses on…

305dResearchby Nathan Benaich

340d ago

State of AI: June 2025 newsletter

State of AI: June 2025 newsletter Hi everyone! Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI newsletter, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month. Our 9th annual Research and Applied AI Summit is next Friday in London! We’ll dive into best practices for building AI-first products and translating applied research with leaders from ElevenLabs, Black Forest Labs, Isomorphic Labs, DeepMind and poolside, as well as AI geopolitics with Meta, Tony Blair Institute, Delian Alliance Industries, Bloomberg and the New York Times. After the event, we’ll share write ups on Air Street Press and recorded talks on our YouTube. State of AI Report 2025: I’m hiring a Research Assistant to help us build the industry’s most loved report :-) This is a perfect role if you love distilling…

340dResearchby Nathan Benaich

368d ago

State of AI: May 2025 newsletter

State of AI: May 2025 newsletter Hi everyone! Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI newsletter, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month Join us and 150 attendees across research, engineering, product and design at leading AI startups and big tech companies for our 9th annual Research and Applied AI Summit in London on 13 June. We’ll dive into best practices for building AI-first products and translating applied research with leaders from ElevenLabs, Black Forest Labs, Isomorphic Labs, DeepMind and Poolside. It was great to see our community members join the Air Street NYC AI meetup and happy hour last month, ft. talks from portfolio companies Fern Labs (long-running computer agents), V7 Labs (workflow automation), Patina (design systems) and VantAI (biology). More to come from our…

368dResearchby Nathan Benaich

395d ago

Full speaker lineup for RAAIS 2025

Full speaker lineup for RAAIS 2025 National AI policy, image/video/audio/code generation, translating frontier models into products, drug discovery, and more! The Research and Applied AI Summit (RAAIS) is a community for entrepreneurs and researchers advancing the science and real-world applications of AI. Ahead of our 9th annual event on June 13th, 2025 in London, we’re excited to share the full speaker lineup and what to expect on the day. At RAAIS, we focus on translating cutting-edge research into products that solve meaningful problems. This year’s program tackles some of the most important themes in AI today — from national policy to multimodal generation, biotech, and beyond. National AI policy A fireside with Benedict Macon-Cooney (Tony Blair Institute) and Chris Yiu (Meta) will explore why national AI strategies matter — and what good policy actually looks like. Who’s ahead? Who’s falling…

395dResearch#multimodal#codingby Nathan Benaich

403d ago

State of AI: April 2025 newsletter

State of AI: April 2025 newsletter Hi everyone! Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI newsletter, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month. Congratulations to our friends at Polar Mist, who launched from stealth to build European maritime supremacy with a financing round from us at Air Street and 201 Ventures. We announced new RAAIS speakers including the co-founder of Black Forest Labs, the head of policy at Meta, and devrel at Google DeepMind. Register your interest for our 13 June conference in London. On Air Street Press, I wrote an essay on why startups should push an ambitious public-facing agenda from day one as well as a piece on the sea change we’re experiencing for European defense. See you over in the US this month…

403dResearchby Nathan Benaich

417d ago

Staking your ground

Staking your ground Why startups should push an ambitious public-facing agenda from day one. Hi everyone, As the AI world navigates through a choppy public market backdrop, I wanted to share an essay I wrote over on Air Street Press about why companies should push an ambitious public-facing agenda from day one. We’ve previously covered a range of vibe shifts at big companies in the last year, including those of Microsoft and Google and Intel. In this piece, I focus more on startups. Hope you enjoy. The next Guide to AI will be published in a fortnight. Nathan A few months ago on Air Street Press, we wrote that strong storytelling is essential for company building. Whether a startup is creating a new category, battling incumbents, or facing regulatory uncertainty, hoping that its technology will speak for itself just isn’t…

417dTutorialby Nathan Benaich

438d ago

State of AI: March 2025 newsletter

State of AI: March 2025 newsletter Hi everyone! Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI newsletter, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, and start-ups over the last month. First up, a few updates: Congratulations to our friends at Fern Labs, who announced their $3M Pre-Seed round from us at Air Street. Sign up to their waitlist to build that software tool you always wanted :-) Our events series is in full swing. I’ll be in Zurich this week after events in Berlin and Munich over the last two. Subscribe to our events page to ensure you don’t miss out. Our annual RAAIS conference is back on 13 June 2025, check it out and register your interest. Announced speakers include Max Jaderberg of Isomorphic Labs, Eiso Kant of Poolside, and Mati Staniszewski of…

438dResearchby Nathan Benaich

466d ago

State of AI: January 2025 newsletter

State of AI: January 2025 newsletter Dear readers, Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI newsletter, an editorialized newsletter covering the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month. First up, a few updates: To close out 2024, Nathan joined Daniel Bashir on The Gradient podcast to discuss highlights from the State of AI Report, while sharing some early takes on o3 and DeepSeek. Congratulations to our friends at Sereact, who raised a €25M Series A led by Creandum, with backing from Air Street and Point Nine. You can read more about why we backed the team here. Our events series is back for 2025. First up, we’ll be in Berlin and Munich in February, followed by Zurich in March. Subscribe to our events page to ensure you don’t miss out. Our…

466dResearchby Nathan Benaich

487d ago

Air Street: 2024 year in review

Air Street: 2024 year in review Hi all! I trust that the year’s off to a great start and that you had a restful break. In advance of restarting our monthly Guide to AI newsletter programming on the first Sunday of Feb, I wanted to share the 2024 year in review for Air Street. I’m a believer of building in the open and holding ourselves accountable to our progress such that we can build what our community values most. The review covers our content, community, and investing work. As always, I’m open to critique and suggestions! The only way is up, Nathan Introduction We began last year’s review with a look back of the preceding 12 months. We wrote: 2023 was a year of both immense technological acceleration and constant flux. AI truly exploded into the mainstream: industries witnessed the…

487dOpen Sourceby Nathan Benaich

501d ago

2024's greatest hits on Air Street Press

2024's greatest hits on Air Street Press The 8 most popular essays from the last year for you to enjoy over the holidays! Hi everyone, I hope you’re enjoying some time off for the holidays with your loved ones! If you’re like me, you get a good chunk of reading done while things slow down just a little bit. So as we reach the end of 2024, I’m sharing a few of our favorite essays published over on Air Street Press, the home of our regular writing on AI research, technology progress, policy, and best practice. If you’d like to support our work, head over to Air Street Merch, where you’ll find 3 exclusive products we designed for the holidays. We’ve already spotted a bunch in the wild :-) All proceeds support The RAAIS Foundation, our charitable non-profit mission to…

501dResearchby Nathan Benaich