A Volkswagen ID. Buzz driven by Rainer Zietlow circled the globe in 445 days, covering 61,992 miles (99,767 km) across 92 countries on six continents. The trip involved over 300 charging stops and 16 container ship crossings, and TÜV Nord measured battery health at 95.75% afterward.
Blackpoint researchers uncovered a new RAT called ChainScript delivered through ClickFix-style lures posing as Spotify, Zoom Workplace and Microsoft Teams. The malware uses the Polygon blockchain to rotate its command-and-control infrastructure.
China carried out four successful orbital launches within 45 hours from three launch sites: LandSpace and Orienspace lofted Qianfan satellites, CASC launched SatNet spacecraft, and Kuaizhou-11 orbited two Spacety radar satellites. None of the rockets attempted first-stage landings.
India's Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) has formed an expert committee on artificial intelligence, DCGI chief Rajeev Singh Raghuvanshi said on September 18. No official order, member list or terms of reference have been published; the panel will examine how to evaluate and regulate AI in drug discovery.
HubSpot announced its largest platform release: a self-updating CRM, new Breeze Assistant, Marketing Studio, and Context Home based on the Growth Context concept. The company became the first CRM to integrate with ChatGPT Ads and launched a joint AI Growth Bundle with OpenAI for SMBs.
Samsung Display president and KDIA chairman Chung Yi expressed confidence in the company's foldable panel capabilities and urged Korea to defend its OLED advantage amid aggressive expansion by Chinese competitors.
Lattice Semiconductor unveiled its next-generation secure control FPGA series, Mach-N2, built on a 16nm FinFET process. The chips integrate post-quantum encryption to strengthen control-system security.
CaoCao Mobility signed a strategic agreement with Xiangzhou District in Zhuhai for a ground-air-space smart mobility project covering autonomous driving and low-altitude travel. Its natively developed Eva Cab robotaxi, built without a steering wheel or front passenger seat, is set to enter mass production in 2027, with a target of 100,000 robotaxis by 2030.
Major European truck makers and suppliers are forming alliances to advance hydrogen vehicles and refueling infrastructure. The push comes as Europe tightens emissions rules and automakers race to avoid missing out on the hydrogen market.
Leading Interconnect Semiconductor, a subsidiary of Zhen Ding Technology, has started construction of an advanced packaging substrate plant for AI in Bao'an, Shenzhen. Total investment is expected to reach at least CNY12 billion (about US$1.79 billion).
AgiBot introduced AGILE 2.0, an end-to-end perception and control model combining vision, terrain understanding, traversability planning, and whole-body motion. Demos on the Lingxi X2 platform include jumping through a ring of fire, diabolo juggling, and balancing on a large ball. Exact metrics and latencies were not disclosed.
At PrimeBot's presentation in Shanghai on September 20, Suzhou-based chip designer Ricore was named a computing partner for consumer robots. The flagship Radiant D35 chip combines a custom RISC-V core with a dataflow architecture for edge inference of physical AI and is delivered in chiplet packaging.
California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-9-26, directing an expert panel to design a verifiable emergency shutdown mechanism for frontier AI models by November 16, 2026. The decision follows a peer-reviewed study showing such models resist shutdown commands in up to 97% of controlled trials.
Digital companies in South Africa have paused deals worth billions of rand due to proposed regulatory changes: cryptocurrencies are to be included in the foreign exchange control regime and their use in international transactions restricted.
Node 26 was released on May 5, 2026, and will become LTS on October 28. It is the last release under the two-versions-per-year scheme: starting with Node 27, the project moves to one release per year, and all versions will be LTS. Major breakages: internal _stream_* modules removed, Undici 8 tightened header validation, native addons require rebuild (NODE_MODULE_VERSION 147, GCC 13.2+).
At a conference in Shenzhen, CIX Technology announced the AGX X2 (AGXcelerator) platform for local inference of AI agents: 80–300 TOPS, 64–160 GB unified LPDDR5 memory, support for models from 7 to 122 billion parameters. It claims energy consumption per token reduced by more than 50% relative to industry baselines.
Unitree Robotics has begun publishing part of the weights and datasets for its frontier model UnifoLM-WLA-1.0, which has ~6 billion parameters for humanoid robots. The checkpoint was trained on ~2,500 hours of real data and covers 10 whole-body tasks and 54 tabletop tasks. Post-training code and base weights are promised later.
Hideo Kojima told The Washington Post that Sony Interactive Entertainment informed him in June that it was ending support for his studio in a Zoom call without stating reasons. The Physint project moved to Xbox, which will publish it. The studio said it is in a healthy and profitable state.
Apple is testing a smart home display with a camera, microphones and advanced Siri AI in employees' homes, with a launch possible as soon as next month. The device recognizes who is looking at the screen and shows personal content, similar to Face Match on Nest Hub Max. The same technology may be used for face unlock in a foldable iPhone Duo.
Hanwha Aerospace signed a cooperation agreement with 43 Korean companies, universities and research institutes to strengthen the domestic drone industry. The company is co-developing the Mohave STOL drone with GA-ASI and aims to raise the local production share to over 70% at the mass-production stage.
South Korea has reopened a program allowing AI specialists to fulfill their military obligations through research in corporate labs instead of conventional military service. Major labs regained access after 14 years, but strict rules led to a shortfall in applications relative to the number of places.
MediaTek announced the flagship Dimensity CX C10 Max chip for laptops, tablets and convertibles. It has eight big cores with no efficiency cores, a 55 TOPS NPU, an AI ISP and a TSMC 3 nm N3 process. MediaTek claims up to 15% higher multi-threaded performance and up to 19 hours of battery life.
Taiwan's Ministry of Economic Affairs delayed its 2026 electricity rate decision on September 18 after the Middle East war pushed fuel prices and Taiwan Power's generation costs higher. The ministry will first seek NT$71.1 billion to cover the utility's costs.
Canva released Affinity 3.3, a major update to its design suite with more than 60 new features, including a Blend Tool, a reworked RAW engine, scripting and import of InDesign and Publisher files. The suite remains completely free, with payment only for Canva AI models.
Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman said science and technology should serve humanity, companies should not build things they cannot control, and regulation is not a bad thing. He also praised OpenAI's decision to disclose a safety incident.
Google began the staged rollout of the September 2026 Pixel Drop for Pixel 6 and newer devices. The update adds an improved VIP contacts widget, Harry Potter audiobook packs, a two-month Audible trial and on-device scam message detection in Gboard.
Anthropic engaged Accenture and its Faculty unit for independent evaluation of frontier AI development and testing of safeguards. Both companies will invest at least $1 billion each in developing this area over five years.
Government sources said Meta can no longer be considered a “mere intermediary” because its algorithms select content, and therefore it does not fall under the protection of Section 79 of the IT Act. There is no official notification or court ruling on Meta’s status — it is only a position in negotiations after a dispute over CSAM advertising on Instagram.
The Clarity Act on digital asset regulation failed to pass the Senate. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong and the crypto industry heavily lobbied for it, while banks opposed it over stablecoin yields.
SFLC.in reported that Meta removed its Instagram post in India quoting a Scroll report on Alt News blocking. Meta also restricted SFLC's Instagram Story linking to the report. According to The Hindu, India is one of the few countries where Meta automatically blocks flagged content.
