Boston Dynamics unveils production Atlas designed for warehouses and factory floors
Boston Dynamics is turning its humanoid robot Atlas into a commercial product. The first fleet ships to Hyundai in 2026, where the 1.9-meter-tall robot will handle heavy lifting in warehouses and factories.
Tworek says he wants "to try and explore types of research that are hard to do at OpenAI." That sounds like a not-so-subtle dig at CEO Sam Altman's relentless focus on products and revenue, which has reportedly been causing tension among researchers. No word yet on where Tworek is headed next.
The Technology Innovation Institute (TII) from Abu Dhabi has released Falcon H1R 7B, a compact reasoning language model with 7 billion parameters. TII says the model matches the performance of competitors two to seven times larger across various benchmarks, though as always, benchmark scores only loosely correlate with real-world performance, especially for smaller models. Falcon H1R 7B uses a hybrid Transformer-Mamba architecture, which lets it process data faster than comparable models.
Falcon H1R 7B scores 49.5 percent across four benchmarks, outperforming larger models like Qwen3 32B (46.2 percent) and Nemotron H 47B Reasoning (43.5 percent). | Image: Technology Innovation Institute (TII)
More than five percent of all messages sent through ChatGPT worldwide deal with health topics. According to a report OpenAI shared exclusively with Axios, 40 million Americans use the chatbot daily for medical questions. Users ask it to explain medical bills, compare insurance plans, or check symptoms, often because they can't get in to see a doctor right away. OpenAI spotted this trend early and marketed GPT-5 as particularly capable for these kinds of use cases.
The report shows OpenAI now handles nearly two million insurance-related questions per week. The surge came after the Trump administration let long-standing health insurance subsidies expire at the start of the new year.
Almost 90 percent of ChatGPT's roughly 900 million weekly users live outside the USA and Canada, according to The Information, citing data from tracking platform Sensor Tower. This creates a challenge for OpenAI's planned advertising business, since international users generate far less revenue. At Pinterest, for example, the average revenue per user in the USA is $7.64, compared to just 21 cents elsewhere.
India and Brazil rank among the largest ChatGPT markets alongside the USA, Japan, and France. Only about five percent of users pay for subscriptions. For emerging markets like India, OpenAI offers the cheaper "ChatGPT Go" plan at around $5 per month.
Amazon has released the web version of its AI assistant Alexa Plus in early access for users in the US and Canada. Users can sign up at Alexa.com and use the new chatbot directly in their browser. Alexa Plus was already available on new Echo devices and recently rolled out to older Echos as well. A beta test is currently running in Germany.
The web interface lets users upload documents, emails, and images. Alexa Plus can extract information from these files - turning recipes into shopping lists or automatically adding appointments to your calendar. Amazon is also promoting features like automatic meal planning and filling Amazon Fresh carts based on dietary restrictions. Smart home devices can be controlled through the website too. Amazon is also launching a new sidebar for quick access and a redesigned mobile Alexa app.
