Google Says Its New Gemini Tops the AI Charts, Wall Street's Plumbing Goes on a Blockchain, and a Moon Rocket Stands Up

Nvidia gives away an AI that writes down 100 hours of talk in minutes

Nvidia released Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe, an open-weightAn AI model whose trained settings, called weights, are published so anyone can download it and run it on their own computers. It is like publishing the recipe, not just selling the dish. In the Glossary speech model, meaning anyone can download it and run it on their own computer. It turns speech into text in 40 languages, can translate, handles recordings up to 100 hours long and labels up to 8 different speakers. Nvidia says it runs on a single graphics chip and turns 100 hours of audio into text in under 3 minutes on its newest Blackwell hardware. It was trained on about 843,579 hours of recorded speech. Those speed figures are Nvidia's own and have not been tested independently.

NASA stands up the rocket for the next crewed Moon mission

Inside the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, teams have placed the 212-foot core stage of the ArtemisNASA's program to send astronauts back to the Moon, using the Orion capsule and landers built by SpaceX and Blue Origin. In the Glossary III Space Launch System rocket between its twin solid rocket boostersThe first and largest stage of a rocket, which gives the push for liftoff. SpaceX and others now land their boosters and fly them again. In the Glossary, NASA said Wednesday. The core stageThe big central body of a rocket like NASA's SLS, holding the main fuel tanks and engines. In the Glossary is the giant central tank that holds the super-cold liquid hydrogen and oxygen for its 4 main engines. Next, the rocket rolls out to Launch Pad 39B for a tanking testA rehearsal where a rocket on the pad is filled with super-cold propellant and taken through countdown steps without launching. In the Glossary, a fueling rehearsal without a launch. NASA did not give a launch date. Artemis III will carry NASA astronauts Bresnik, Rubio and Douglas and ESA's Luca Parmitano, and will practice meeting up and docking with commercial spacecraft from Blue Origin and SpaceX.

No orbital rockets launched anywhere in the world in the last 24 hours, by the Launch Library 2 count. The next is India's GSLV on Friday.

Virgin Galactic's new spaceship rides a jet to its new home

Virgin Galactic flew its first Delta-class spaceship, named Apeiron, Greek for "boundless," beneath its carrier aircraft VMS Eve from its factory in Mesa, Arizona, to Spaceport America in New Mexico on Wednesday. The name was picked by a public vote with entries from 83 countries, Space.com reports. Before anyone rides it, Apeiron goes through software checks, flights attached under the jet, unpowered glides and then rocket-powered flights. Delta seats 6 passengers, up from 4 on the old ship, and the company's goal is up to 8 flights a month per ship. Virgin Galactic has not flown people since June 2024.

A head and neck cancer drug halves the risk of death in a big trial

Genmab said its Phase 3The last and largest stage of testing a new treatment in people before a company asks regulators to approve it. It usually involves hundreds or thousands of patients. In the Glossary LiGeR-HN1 trial met its main goals at an early planned check. Adults with head and neck cancer that had spread or come back, whose tumors carry a protein called PD-L1A protein some tumors use to switch off the immune system's attack. Drugs such as Keytruda block this signal. In the Glossary, got either petosemtamab plus the immune drug Keytruda or Keytruda alone as their first treatment. The combination cut the risk of death by 50% (hazard ratioA way trials compare how often a bad event, such as death, happens in two groups. A hazard ratio of 0.50 means half the risk. In the Glossary 0.50) and made tumors far more likely to shrink. Genmab reported no new safety concerns. Petosemtamab is a bispecific antibodyA lab-made antibody built to grab two different targets at once, for example two proteins on a cancer cell. In the Glossary, a lab-made protein that grabs two targets on cancer cells at once. Genmab did not give patient numbers or a date to apply for FDA approval, and says it will share full results at a medical meeting.

The Pentagon bets on microbes to brew military chemicals

The Pentagon gave startup Biosphere $21 million for a 20,000-liter facility where engineered microbes will make chemicals the military uses, including a bio-cement for helicopter landing pads and binders that hold explosives together in munitions such as the Hellfire missile. The plant would make about 100 tons a year and start up in late 2027, Breaking Defense reports. The stated goal is to cut reliance on chemicals from China.

New York sets rules for AI chatbots that talk with kids

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed a law that bars companies from giving users under 18 chatbot features the state calls unsafe. Bots may not pretend to be a real person, claim a romantic or personal relationship with a child, push kids to keep secrets from trusted adults, encourage self-harm or drug use, or produce sexual content. The rules apply to every user unless the company first checks that the user is an adult, and companies must offer more than one way to check age, including one that does not need a government ID, then delete that age information. The attorney general can seek fines of up to $25,000 for each violation, and can even order a company to destroy AI modelsA computer program trained on large amounts of data to recognize patterns and produce answers, text, images or actions. Chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude run on AI models. In the Glossary trained on data it collected illegally, Fortune reports. A second law requires new internet-connected baby monitors sold in New York to have security that blocks strangers from watching or listening, starting 90 days after signing. The state did not give a start date for the chatbot rules.

The company behind nearly every U.S. trade turns stocks and bonds into tokens

The Depository Trust and Clearing CorporationThe company that settles and keeps the official records for most U.S. stock and bond trades. Its subsidiary DTC holds the securities. In the Glossary, or DTCC, launched its Tokenization Service. Its subsidiary DTC, which holds more than $114 trillion in securities for the market, can now turn some of them into tokens that move into firms' digital wallets and back again. Twenty firms have signed on, including Bank of America, Citi, Fidelity, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and State Street. At launch, 34 securities qualify, worth about $30 trillion, including some large company stocks, index funds and Treasury billsA short-term loan to the U.S. government, repaid in a year or less; together with longer Treasury notes and bonds, they are called Treasuries. They are seen as one of the safest places to keep money. In the Glossary, notes and bonds, CoinDesk reports. It runs on the Canton NetworkA blockchain network built for banks and financial firms that lets them share some data while keeping other data private. In the Glossary and DTCC's own private network. Tokenized real-world assetsIn blockchain finance, a traditional asset that exists outside the blockchain, such as a Treasury bill, a loan or a building, represented by a token on one. Often shortened to RWA. In the Glossary now total $39.33 billion, per RWA.xyz.

Google and Microsoft show AI turning into real money, and real spending

After the market closed, Alphabet reported that Google Cloud revenue more than doubled to $30.7 billion for the quarter, the Gemini app passed 1 billion users and spending on data centersA building full of computers that store data and run online services. Data centers for AI use large amounts of electricity. In the Glossary and equipment reached $51.4 billion, more than twice a year ago. The stock fell as much as 8% after hours, Fortune reports, as heavy spending left free cash flowThe cash left after a company pays its running costs and its spending on buildings and equipment. Negative means it spent more than it brought in. In the Glossary negative. Microsoft reported that its Azure cloud grew 48% to $33.2 billion and total revenue rose 19% to $92.3 billion.