2026-02-02 22:20:29
Many organizations rushed into generative AI, only to see pilots fail to deliver value. Now, companies want measurable outcomes—but how do you design for success?
At Mistral AI, we partner with global industry leaders to co-design tailored AI solutions that solve their most difficult problems. Whether it’s increasing CX productivity with Cisco, building a more intelligent car with Stellantis, or accelerating product innovation with ASML, we start with open frontier models and customize AI systems to deliver impact for each company’s unique challenges and goals.
Our methodology starts by identifying an iconic use case, the foundation for AI transformation that sets the blueprint for future AI solutions. Choosing the right use case can mean the difference between true transformation and endless tinkering and testing.
Mistral AI has four criteria that we look for in a use case: strategic, urgent, impactful, and feasible.
First, the use case must be strategically valuable, addressing a core business process or a transformative new capability. It needs to be more than an optimization; it needs to be a gamechanger. The use case needs to be strategic enough to excite an organization’s C-suite and board of directors.
For example, use cases like an internal-facing HR chatbot are nice to have, but they are easy to solve and are not enabling any new innovation or opportunities. On the other end of the spectrum, imagine an externally facing banking assistant that can not only answer questions, but also help take actions like blocking a card, placing trades, and suggesting upsell/cross-sell opportunities. This is how a customer-support chatbot is turned into a strategic revenue-generating asset.
Second, the best use case to move forward with should be highly urgent and solve a business-critical problem that people care about right now. This project will take time out of people’s days—it needs to be important enough to justify that time investment. And it needs to help business users solve immediate pain points.
Third, the use case should be pragmatic and impactful. From day one, our shared goal with our customers is to deploy into a real-world production environment to enable testing the solution with real users and gather feedback. Many AI prototypes end up in the graveyard of fancy demos that are not good enough to put in front of customers, and without any scaffolding to evaluate and improve. We work with customers to ensure prototypes are stable enough to release, and that they have the necessary support and governance frameworks.
Finally, the best use case is feasible. There may be several urgent projects, but choosing one that can deliver a quick return on investment helps to maintain the momentum needed to continue and scale.
This means looking for a project that can be in production within three months—and a prototype can be live within a few weeks. It’s important to get a prototype in front of end users as fast as possible to get feedback to make sure the project is on track, and pivot as needed.
Enterprises are complex, and the path forward is not usually obvious. To weed through all the possibilities and uncover the right first use case, Mistral AI will run workshops with our customers, hand-in-hand with subject-matter experts and end users.
Representatives from different functions will demo their processes and discuss business cases that could be candidates for a first use case—and together we agree on a winner. Here are some examples of types of projects that don’t qualify.
Moonshots: Ambitious bets that excite leadership but lack a path to quick ROI. While these projects can be strategic and urgent, they rarely meet the feasibility and impact requirements.
Future investments: Long-term plays that can wait. While these projects can be strategic and feasible, they rarely meet the urgency and impact requirements.
Tactical fixes: Firefighting projects that solve immediate pain but don’t move the needle. While these cases can be urgent and feasible, they rarely meet the strategy and impact requirements.
Quick wins: Useful for building momentum, but not transformative. While they can be impactful and feasible, they rarely meet the strategy and urgency requirements.
Blue sky ideas: These projects are gamechangers, but they need maturity to be viable. While they can be strategic and impactful, they rarely meet the urgency and feasibility requirements.
Hero projects: These are high-pressure initiatives that lack executive sponsorship or realistic timelines. While they can be urgent and impactful, they rarely meet the strategy and feasibility requirements.
Once a clearly defined and strategic use case ready for development is identified, it’s time to move into the validation phase. This means doing an initial data exploration and data mapping, identifying a pilot infrastructure, and choosing a target deployment environment.
This step also involves agreeing on a draft pilot scope, identifying who will participate in the proof of concept, and setting up a governance process.
Once this is complete, it’s time to move into the building phase. Companies that partner with Mistral work with our in-house applied AI scientists who build our frontier models. We work together to design, build, and deploy the first solution.
During this phase, we focus on co-creation, so we can transfer knowledge and skills to the organizations we’re partnering with. That way, they can be self-sufficient far into the future. The output of this phase is a deployed AI solution with empowered teams capable of independent operation and innovation.
After the first win, it’s imperative to use the momentum and learnings from the iconic use case to identify more high-value AI solutions to roll out. Success is when we have a scalable AI transformation blueprint with multiple high-value solutions across the organization.
But none of this could happen without successfully identifying that first iconic use case. This first step is not just about selecting a project—it’s about setting the foundation for your entire AI transformation.
It’s the difference between scattered experiments and a strategic, scalable journey toward impact. At Mistral AI, we’ve seen how this approach unlocks measurable value, aligns stakeholders, and builds momentum for what comes next.
The path to AI success starts with a single, well-chosen use case: one that is bold enough to inspire, urgent enough to demand action, and pragmatic enough to deliver.
This content was produced by Mistral AI. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.
2026-02-02 21:10:00
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
Inside the marketplace powering bespoke AI deepfakes of real women
Civitai—an online marketplace for buying and selling AI-generated content, backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz—is letting users buy custom instruction files for generating celebrity deepfakes. Some of these files were specifically designed to make pornographic images banned by the site, a new analysis has found.
The study, from researchers at Stanford and Indiana University, looked at people’s requests for content on the site, called “bounties.” The researchers found that between mid-2023 and the end of 2024, most bounties asked for animated content—but a significant portion were for deepfakes of real people, and 90% of these deepfake requests targeted women. Read the full story.
—James O’Donnell
What’s next for EV batteries in 2026
Demand for electric vehicles and the batteries that power them has never been hotter.
In 2025, EVs made up over a quarter of new vehicle sales globally, up from less than 5% in 2020. Some regions are seeing even higher uptake: In China, more than 50% of new vehicle sales last year were battery electric or plug-in hybrids. In Europe, more purely electric vehicles hit the roads in December than gas-powered ones. (The US is the notable exception here, dragging down the global average with a small sales decline from 2024.)
As EVs become increasingly common on the roads, the battery world is growing too. Here’s what’s coming next for EV batteries in 2026 and beyond.
—Casey Crownhart
This story is part of MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series, which examines industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.
TR10: Base-edited baby
Kyle “KJ” Muldoon Jr. was born with a rare, potentially fatal genetic disorder that left his body unable to remove toxic ammonia from his blood. The University of Pennsylvania offered his parents an alternative to a liver transplant: gene-editing therapies.
The team set to work developing a tailored treatment using base editing—a form of CRISPR that can correct genetic “misspellings” by changing single bases, the basic units of DNA. KJ received an initial low dose when he was seven months old, and later received two higher doses. Today, KJ is doing well. At an event in October last year, his happy parents described how he was meeting all his developmental milestones.
Others have received gene-editing therapies intended to treat conditions including sickle cell disease and a predisposition to high cholesterol. But KJ was the first to receive a personalized treatment—one that was designed just for him and will probably never be used again. Read why we made it one of our 10 Breakthrough Technologies this year, and check out the rest of the list.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 A social network for AI agents is vulnerable to abuse
A misconfiguration meant anyone could take control of any agent. (404 Media)
+ Moltbook is loosely modeled on Reddit, but humans are unable to post. (FT $)
2 Google breached its own ethics rules to help an Israeli contractor
It helped a military worker to analyze drone footage, a whistleblower has claimed. (WP $)
3 Capgemini is selling its unit linked to ICE
After the French government asked it to clarify its work for the agency. (Bloomberg $)
+ The company has signed $12.2mn in contracts under the Trump administration. (FT $)
+ Here’s how to film ICE activities as safely as possible. (Wired $)
4 China has a plan to prime its next generation of AI experts
Thanks to its elite genius class system. (FT $)
+ The country is going all-in on AI healthcare. (Rest of World)
+ The State of AI: Is China about to win the race? (MIT Technology Review)
5 Indonesia has reversed its ban on xAI’s Grok
After it announced plans to improve its compliance with the country’s laws. (Reuters)
+ Indonesia maintains a strict stance against pornographic content. (NYT $)
+ Malaysia and the Philippines have also lifted bans on the chatbot. (TechCrunch)
6 Don’t expect to hitch a ride on a Blue Origin rocket anytime soon
Jeff Bezos’ venture won’t be taking tourists into space for at least two years. (NYT $)
+ Artemis II astronauts are due to set off for the moon soon. (IEEE Spectrum)
+ Commercial space stations are on our list of 10 Breakthrough Technologies for 2026. (MIT Technology Review)
7 America’s push for high-speed internet is under threat
There aren’t enough skilled workers to meet record demand. (WSJ $)
8 Can AI help us grieve better?
A growing cluster of companies are trying to find out. (The Atlantic $)
+ Technology that lets us “speak” to our dead relatives has arrived. Are we ready? (MIT Technology Review)
9 How to fight future insect infestations 
A certain species of fungus could play a key role. (Ars Technica)
+ How do fungi communicate? (MIT Technology Review)
10 What a robot-made latte tastes like, according to a former barista
Damn fine, apparently. (The Verge)
Quote of the day
“It feels like a wild bison rampaging around in my computer.”
—A user who signed up to AI agent Moltbot remarks on the bot’s unpredictable behavior, Rest of World reports.
One more thing
How Wi-Fi sensing became usable tech
Wi-Fi sensing is a tantalizing concept: that the same routers bringing you the internet could also detect your movements. But, as a way to monitor health, it’s mostly been eclipsed by other technologies, like ultra-wideband radar.
Despite that, Wi-Fi sensing hasn’t gone away. Instead, it has quietly become available in millions of homes, supported by leading internet service providers, smart-home companies, and chip manufacturers.
Soon it could be invisibly monitoring our day-to-day movements for all sorts of surprising—and sometimes alarming—purposes. Read the full story.
—Meg Duff
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ These intrepid Scottish bakers created the largest ever Empire biscuit (a classic shortbread cookie covered in icing) 
+ My, what big tentacles you have!
+ If you’ve been feeling like you’re stuck in a rut lately, this advice could be exactly what you need to overcome it.
+ These works of psychedelic horror are guaranteed to send a shiver down your spine.
2026-02-02 18:00:00
MIT Technology Review’s What’s Next series looks across industries, trends, and technologies to give you a first look at the future. You can read the rest of them here.
Demand for electric vehicles and the batteries that power them has never been hotter.
In 2025, EVs made up over a quarter of new vehicle sales globally, up from less than 5% in 2020. Some regions are seeing even higher uptake: In China, more than 50% of new vehicle sales last year were battery electric or plug-in hybrids. In Europe, more purely electric vehicles hit the roads in December than gas-powered ones. (The US is the notable exception here, dragging down the global average with a small sales decline from 2024.)
As EVs become increasingly common on the roads, the battery world is growing too. Looking ahead, we could soon see wider adoption of new chemistries, including some that deliver lower costs or higher performance. Meanwhile, the geopolitics of batteries are shifting, and so is the policy landscape. Here’s what’s coming next for EV batteries in 2026 and beyond.
Lithium-ion batteries are the default chemistry used in EVs, personal devices, and even stationary storage systems on the grid today. But in a tough environment in some markets like the US, there’s a growing interest in cheaper alternatives. Automakers right now largely care just about batteries’ cost, regardless of performance improvements, says Kara Rodby, a technical principal at Volta Energy Technologies, a venture capital firm that focuses on energy storage technology.
Sodium-ion cells have long been held up as a potentially less expensive alternative to lithium. The batteries are limited in their energy density, so they deliver a shorter range than lithium-ion. But sodium is also more abundant, so they could be cheaper.
Sodium’s growth has been cursed, however, by the very success of lithium-based batteries, says Shirley Meng, a professor of molecular engineering at the University of Chicago. A lithium-ion battery cell cost $568 per kilowatt-hour in 2013, but that cost had fallen to just $74 per kilowatt-hour by 2025—quite the moving target for cheaper alternatives to chase.
Sodium-ion batteries currently cost about $59 per kilowatt-hour on average. That’s less expensive than the average lithium-ion battery. But if you consider only lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells, a lower-end type of lithium-ion battery that averages $52 per kilowatt-hour, sodium is still more expensive today.
We could soon see an opening for sodium-batteries, though. Lithium prices have been ticking up in recent months, a shift that could soon slow or reverse the steady downward march of prices for lithium-based batteries.
Sodium-ion batteries are already being used commercially, largely for stationary storage on the grid. But we’re starting to see sodium-ion cells incorporated into vehicles, too. The Chinese companies Yadea, JMEV, and HiNa Battery have all started producing sodium-ion batteries in limited numbers for EVs, including small, short-range cars and electric scooters that don’t require a battery with high energy density. CATL, a Chinese battery company that’s the world’s largest, says it recently began producing sodium-ion cells. The company plans to launch its first EV using the chemistry by the middle of this year.
Today, both production and demand for sodium-ion batteries are heavily centered in China. That’s likely to continue, especially after a cutback in tax credits and other financial support for the battery and EV industries in the US. One of the biggest sodium-battery companies in the US, Natron, ceased operations last year after running into funding issues.
We could also see progress in sodium-ion research: Companies and researchers are developing new materials for components including the electrolyte and electrodes, so the cells could get more comparable to lower-end lithium-ion cells in terms of energy density, Meng says.
As we enter the second half of this decade, many eyes in the battery world are on big promises and claims about solid-state batteries.
These batteries could pack more energy into a smaller package by removing the liquid electrolyte, the material that ions move through when a battery is charging and discharging. With a higher energy density, they could unlock longer-range EVs.
Companies have been promising solid-state batteries for years. Toyota, for example, once planned to have them in vehicles by 2020. That timeline has been delayed several times, though the company says it’s now on track to launch the new cells in cars in 2027 or 2028.
Historically, battery makers have struggled to produce solid-state batteries at the scale needed to deliver a commercially relevant supply for EVs. There’s been progress in manufacturing techniques, though, and companies could soon actually make good on their promises, Meng says.
Factorial Energy, a US-based company making solid-state batteries, provided cells for a Mercedes test vehicle that drove over 745 miles on a single charge in a real-world test in September. The company says it plans to bring its tech to market as soon as 2027. Quantumscape, another major solid-state player in the US, is testing its cells with automotive partners and plans to have its batteries in commercial production later this decade.
Before we see true solid-state batteries, we could see hybrid technologies, often referred to as semi-solid-state batteries. These commonly use materials like gel electrolytes, reducing the liquid inside cells without removing it entirely. Many Chinese companies are looking to build semi-solid-state batteries before transitioning to entirely solid-state ones, says Evelina Stoikou, head of battery technologies and supply chains at BloombergNEF, an energy consultancy.
The picture for the near future of the EV industry looks drastically different depending on where you’re standing.
Last year, China overtook Japan as the country with the most global auto sales. And more than one in three EVs made in 2025 had a CATL battery in it. Simply put, China is dominating the global battery industry, and that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon.
China’s influence outside its domestic market is growing especially quickly. CATL is expected to begin production this year at its second European site; the factory, located in Hungary, is an $8.2 billion project that will supply automakers including BMW and the Mercedes-Benz group. Canada recently signed a deal that will lower the import tax on Chinese EVs from 100% to roughly 6%, effectively opening the Canadian market for Chinese EVs.
Some countries that haven’t historically been major EV markets could become bigger players in the second half of the decade. Annual EV sales in Thailand and Vietnam, where the market was virtually nonexistent just a few years ago, broke 100,000 in 2025. Brazil, in particular, could see its new EV sales more than double in 2026 as major automakers including Volkswagen and BYD set up or ramp up production in the country.
On the flip side, EVs are facing a real test in 2026 in the US, as this will be the first calendar year after the sunset of federal tax credits that were designed to push more drivers to purchase the vehicles. With those credits gone, growth in sales is expected to continue lagging.
One bright spot for batteries in the US is outside the EV market altogether. Battery manufacturers are starting to produce low-cost LFP batteries in the US, largely for energy storage applications. LG opened a massive factory to make LFP batteries in mid-2025 in Michigan, and the Korean battery company SK On plans to start making LFP batteries at its facility in Georgia later this year. Those plants could help battery companies cash in on investments as the US EV market faces major headwinds.
Even as the US lags behind, the world is electrifying transportation. By 2030, 40% of new vehicles sold around the world are projected to be electric. As we approach that milestone, expect to see more global players, a wider selection of EVs, and an even wider menu of batteries to power them.
2026-01-31 00:32:31
Civitai—an online marketplace for buying and selling AI-generated content, backed by the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz—is letting users buy custom instruction files for generating celebrity deepfakes. Some of these files were specifically designed to make pornographic images banned by the site, a new analysis has found.
The study, from researchers at Stanford and Indiana University, looked at people’s requests for content on the site, called “bounties.” The researchers found that between mid-2023 and the end of 2024, most bounties asked for animated content—but a significant portion were for deepfakes of real people, and 90% of these deepfake requests targeted women. (Their findings have not yet been peer reviewed.)
The debate around deepfakes, as illustrated by the recent backlash to explicit images on the X-owned chatbot Grok, has revolved around what platforms should do to block such content. Civitai’s situation is a little more complicated. Its marketplace includes actual images, videos, and models, but it also lets individuals buy and sell instruction files called LoRAs that can coach mainstream AI models like Stable Diffusion into generating content they were not trained to produce. Users can then combine these files with other tools to make deepfakes that are graphic or sexual. The researchers found that 86% of deepfake requests on Civitai were for LoRAs.
In these bounties, users requested “high quality” models to generate images of public figures like the influencer Charli D’Amelio or the singer Gracie Abrams, often linking to their social media profiles so their images could be grabbed from the web. Some requests specified a desire for models that generated the individual’s entire body, accurately captured their tattoos, or allowed hair color to be changed. Some requests targeted several women in specific niches, like artists who record ASMR videos. One request was for a deepfake of a woman said to be the user’s wife. Anyone on the site could offer up AI models they worked on for the task, and the best submissions received payment—anywhere from $0.50 to $5. And nearly 92% of the deepfake bounties were awarded.
Neither Civitai nor Andreessen Horowitz responded to requests for comment.
It’s possible that people buy these LoRAs to make deepfakes that aren’t sexually explicit (though they’d still violate Civitai’s terms of use, and they’d still be ethically fraught). But Civitai also offers educational resources on how to use external tools to further customize the outputs of image generators—for example, by changing someone’s pose. The site also hosts user-written articles with details on how to instruct models to generate pornography. The researchers found that the amount of porn on the platform has gone up, and that the majority of requests each week are now for NSFW content.
“Not only does Civitai provide the infrastructure that facilitates these issues; they also explicitly teach their users how to utilize them,” says Matthew DeVerna, a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center and one of the study’s leaders.
The company used to ban only sexually explicit deepfakes of real people, but in May 2025 it announced it would ban all deepfake content. Nonetheless, countless requests for deepfakes submitted before this ban now remain live on the site, and many of the winning submissions fulfilling those requests remain available for purchase, MIT Technology Review confirmed.
“I believe the approach that they’re trying to take is to sort of do as little as possible, such that they can foster as much—I guess they would call it—creativity on the platform,” DeVerna says.
Users buy LoRAs with the site’s online currency, called Buzz, which is purchased with real money. In May 2025, Civita’s credit card processor cut off the company because of its ongoing problem with nonconsensual content. To pay for explicit content, users must now use gift cards or cryptocurrency to buy Buzz; the company offers a different scrip for non-explicit content.
Civitai automatically tags bounties requesting deepfakes and lists a way for the person featured in the content to manually request its takedown. This system means that Civitai has a reasonably successful way of knowing which bounties are for deepfakes, but it’s still leaving moderation to the general public rather than carrying it out proactively.
A company’s legal liability for what its users do isn’t totally clear. Generally, tech companies have broad legal protections against such liability for their content under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, but those protections aren’t limitless. For example, “you cannot knowingly facilitate illegal transactions on your website,” says Ryan Calo, a professor specializing in technology and AI at the University of Washington’s law school. (Calo wasn’t involved in this new study.)
Civitai joined OpenAI, Anthropic, and other AI companies in 2024 in adopting design principles to guard against the creation and spread of AI-generated child sexual abuse material . This move followed a 2023 report from the Stanford Internet Observatory, which found that the vast majority of AI models named in child sexual abuse communities were Stable Diffusion–based models “predominantly obtained via Civitai.”
But adult deepfakes have not gotten the same level of attention from content platforms or the venture capital firms that fund them. “They are not afraid enough of it. They are overly tolerant of it,” Calo says. “Neither law enforcement nor civil courts adequately protect against it. It is night and day.”
Civitai received a $5 million investment from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in November 2023. In a video shared by a16z, Civitai cofounder and CEO Justin Maier described his goal of building the main place where people find and share AI models for their own individual purposes. “We’ve aimed to make this space that’s been very, I guess, niche and engineering-heavy more and more approachable to more and more people,” he said.
Civitai is not the only company with a deepfake problem in a16z’s investment portfolio; in February, MIT Technology Review first reported that another company, Botify AI, was hosting AI companions resembling real actors that stated their age as under 18, engaged in sexually charged conversations, offered “hot photos,” and in some instances described age-of-consent laws as “arbitrary” and “meant to be broken.”
2026-01-30 21:10:00
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
DHS is using Google and Adobe AI to make videos
The news: The US Department of Homeland Security is using AI video generators from Google and Adobe to make and edit content shared with the public, a new document reveals. The document, released on Wednesday, provides an inventory of which commercial AI tools DHS uses for tasks ranging from generating drafts of documents to managing cybersecurity.
Why it matters: It comes as immigration agencies have flooded social media with content to support President Trump’s mass deportation agenda—some of which appears to be made with AI—and as workers in tech have put pressure on their employers to denounce the agencies’ activities. Read the full story.
—James O’Donnell
How the sometimes-weird world of lifespan extension is gaining influence
—Jessica Hamzelou
For the last couple of years, I’ve been following the progress of a group of individuals who believe death is humanity’s “core problem.” Put simply, they say death is wrong—for everyone. They’ve even said it’s morally wrong.
They established what they consider a new philosophy, and they called it Vitalism.
Vitalism is more than a philosophy, though—it’s a movement for hardcore longevity enthusiasts who want to make real progress in finding treatments that slow or reverse aging. Not just through scientific advances, but by persuading influential people to support their movement, and by changing laws and policies to open up access to experimental drugs. And they’re starting to make progress.
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
The AI Hype Index: Grok makes porn, and Claude Code nails your job
Separating AI reality from hyped-up fiction isn’t always easy. That’s why we’ve created the AI Hype Index—a simple, at-a-glance summary of everything you need to know about the state of the industry. Take a look at this month’s edition of the index here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 Capgemini is no longer tracking immigrants for ICE
After the French company was queried by the country’s government over the contract. (WP $)
+ Here’s how the agency typically keeps tabs on its targets. (NYT $)
+ US senators are pushing for answers about its recent surveillance shopping spree. (404 Media)
+ ICE’s tactics would get real soldiers killed, apparently. (Wired $)
2 The Pentagon is at loggerheads with Anthropic
The AI firm is reportedly worried its tools could be used to spy on Americans. (Reuters)
+ Generative AI is learning to spy for the US military. (MIT Technology Review)
3 It’s relatively rare for AI chatbots to lead users down harmful paths
But when it does, it can have incredibly dangerous consequences. (Ars Technica)
+ The AI doomers feel undeterred. (MIT Technology Review)
4 GPT-4o’s days are numbered
OpenAI says just 0.1% of users are using the model every day. (CNBC)
+ It’s the second time that it’s tried to turn the sycophantic model off in under a year. (Insider $)
+ Why GPT-4o’s sudden shutdown left people grieving. (MIT Technology Review)
5 An AI toy company left its chats with kids exposed
Anyone with a Gmail account was able to simply access the conversations—no hacking required. (Wired $)
+ AI toys are all the rage in China—and now they’re appearing on shelves in the US too. (MIT Technology Review)
6 SpaceX could merge with xAI later this year
Ahead of a planned blockbuster IPO of Elon Musk’s companies. (Reuters)
+ The move would be welcome news for Musk fans. (The Information $)
+ A SpaceX-Tesla merger could also be on the cards. (Bloomberg $)
7 We’re still waiting for a reliable male contraceptive
Take a look at the most promising methods so far. (Bloomberg $)
8 AI is bringing traditional Chinese medicine to the masses
And it’s got the full backing of the country’s government. (Rest of World)
9 The race back to the Moon is heating up
Competition between the US and China is more intense than ever. (Economist $)
10 What did the past really smell like?
AI could help scientists to recreate history’s aromas—including mummies and battlefields. (Knowable Magazine)
Quote of the day
“I think the tidal wave is coming and we’re all standing on the beach.”
—Bill Zysblat, a music business manager, tells the Financial Times about the existential threat AI poses to the industry.
One more thing
Therapists are secretly using ChatGPT. Clients are triggered.
Declan would never have found out his therapist was using ChatGPT had it not been for a technical mishap. The connection was patchy during one of their online sessions, so Declan suggested they turn off their video feeds. Instead, his therapist began inadvertently sharing his screen.
For the rest of the session, Declan was privy to a real-time stream of ChatGPT analysis rippling across his therapist’s screen, who was taking what Declan was saying, putting it into ChatGPT, and then parroting its answers.
But Declan is not alone. In fact, a growing number of people are reporting receiving AI-generated communiqués from their therapists. Clients’ trust and privacy are being abandoned in the process. Read the full story.
—Laurie Clarke
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ Sinkholes are seriously mysterious. Is there a way to stay one step ahead of them?
+ This beautiful pixel art is super impressive.
+ Amid the upheaval in their city, residents of Minneapolis recently demonstrated both their resistance and community spirit in the annual Art Sled Rally (thanks Paul!)
+ How on Earth is Tomb Raider 30 years old?!
2026-01-30 18:00:00
For the last couple of years, I’ve been following the progress of a group of individuals who believe death is humanity’s “core problem.” Put simply, they say death is wrong—for everyone. They’ve even said it’s morally wrong.
They established what they consider a new philosophy, and they called it Vitalism.
Vitalism is more than a philosophy, though—it’s a movement for hardcore longevity enthusiasts who want to make real progress in finding treatments that slow or reverse aging. Not just through scientific advances, but by persuading influential people to support their movement, and by changing laws and policies to open up access to experimental drugs.
And they’re starting to make progress.
Vitalism was founded by Adam Gries and Nathan Cheng—two men who united over their shared desire to find ways to extend human lifespan. I first saw Cheng speak back in 2023, at Zuzalu, a pop-up city in Montenegro for people who were interested in life extension and some other technologies. (It was an interesting experience—you can read more about it here.)
Zuzalu was where Gries and Cheng officially launched Vitalism. But I’ve been closely following the longevity scene since 2022. That journey took me to Switzerland, Honduras, and a compound in Berkeley, California, where like-minded longevity enthusiasts shared their dreams of life extension.
It also took me to Washington, DC, where, last year, supporters of lifespan extension presented politicians including Mehmet Oz, who currently leads the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, with their case for changes to laws and policies.
The journey has been fascinating, and at times weird and even surreal. I’ve heard biohacking stories that ended with smoking legs. I’ve been told about a multi-partner relationship that might be made possible through the cryopreservation—and subsequent reanimation—of a man and the multiple wives he’s had throughout his life. I’ve had people tell me to my face that they consider themselves eugenicists, and that they believe that parents should select IVF embryos for their propensity for a long life.
I’ve seen people draw blood during dinner in an upscale hotel restaurant to test their biological age. I’ve heard wild plans to preserve human consciousness and resurrect it in machines. Others have told me their plans to inject men’s penises with multiple doses of an experimental gene therapy in order to treat erectile dysfunction and ultimately achieve “radical longevity.”
I’ve been shouted at and threatened with legal action. I’ve received barefoot hugs. One interviewee told me I needed Botox. It’s been a ride.
My reporting has also made me realize that the current interest in longevity reaches beyond social media influencers and wellness centers. Longevity clinics are growing in number, and there’s been a glut of documentaries about living longer or even forever.
At the same time, powerful people who influence state laws, giant federal funding budgets, and even national health policy are prioritizing the search for treatments that slow or reverse aging. The longevity community was thrilled when longtime supporter Jim O’Neill was made deputy secretary of health and human services last year. Other members of Trump’s administration, including Oz, have spoken about longevity too. “It seems that now there is the most pro-longevity administration in American history,” Gries told me.
I recently spoke to Alicia Jackson, the new director of ARPA-H. The agency, established in 2022 under Joe Biden’s presidency, funds “breakthrough” biomedical research. And it appears to have a new focus on longevity. Jackson previously founded and led Evernow, a company focused on “health and longevity for every woman.”
“There’s a lot of interesting technologies, but they all kind of come back to the same thing: Could we extend life years?” she told me over a Zoom call a few weeks ago. She added that her agency had “incredible support” from “the very top of HHS.” I asked if she was referring to Jim O’Neill. “Yeah,” she said. She wouldn’t go into the specifics.
Gries is right: There is a lot of support for advances in longevity treatments, and some of it is coming from influential people in positions of power. Perhaps the field really is poised for a breakthrough.
And that’s what makes this field so fascinating to cover. Despite the occasional weirdness.
This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here.
