In partnership with
Coupon Extensions Hate Us (And You’ll Love Why)
Coupon Protection partners with DTC brands like Quince, Blueland, Vessi and more to stop coupon extensions from auto-applying unwanted codes in your checkout.
Overpaid commissions to affiliates and influencers add up fast – Take back your margin.
After months of using KeepCart, Mando says “It has paid for itself multiple times over.”
Now it’s your turn to see how much more profit you can keep.
Good morning ☀️, leader of the next generation.
Technology is reshaping how the world works.
The real question is not what it can do — but how we choose to use it.
We focus on using technology to support human evolution.
Progress works when responsibility stays human.
⚡ WHAT'S AT STAKE TODAY ⚡
- 🤖👔 Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter steps down after 30 years at the company
- ⛸️🎵 An ice dance duo skated to AI music at the Olympics
- 🤖💰 AI video startup Runway raises $315M at $5.3B valuation, eyes more capable world models
- 👨💻💸 Former GitHub CEO raises record $60M dev tool seed round at $300M valuation
- 🇮🇳⚖️ India orders social media platforms to take down deepfakes faster
- 🗑️🤖 Hauler Hero collects $16M for its AI waste management software
- 📘✨ Facebook adds new AI features, animated profile photos, and backgrounds for text posts
- 🧠🚀 This Sequoia-backed lab thinks the brain is 'the floor, not the ceiling' for AI
- 🛡️💰 Vega raises $120M Series B to rethink how enterprises detect cyber threats
Three-decade Boston Dynamics veteran Robert Playter announces departure as CEO
Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter steps down after 30 years at the company
A significant leadership transition is underway at Boston Dynamics, the renowned Massachusetts-based robotics company famous for its groundbreaking four-legged robots and humanoid machines. After three decades with the organization, CEO Robert Playter has announced his departure from the company he helped build into a global robotics leader.
Playter revealed his decision to step down in an internal memo distributed to staff on Tuesday, marking the end of an era for the innovative robotics firm. The announcement comes as Boston Dynamics continues to push the boundaries of mobile robotics technology and expand its commercial operations worldwide.
During the transition period, Chief Financial Officer Amanda McMaster will assume interim leadership responsibilities while the company conducts a comprehensive search for Playter's permanent replacement. This temporary arrangement ensures continuity of operations as Boston Dynamics navigates this critical leadership change.
In an official statement to TechCrunch, Boston Dynamics praised Playter's extraordinary contributions to both the company and the broader robotics industry. The company described him as "an icon of the global robotics industry," acknowledging his pivotal role in transforming the organization from its humble beginnings as a small research and development laboratory into a thriving commercial enterprise that now proudly identifies itself as the world's leading mobile robotics company.
Playter's journey with Boston Dynamics began long before his appointment as CEO in 2020, when he succeeded company founder Marc Raibert. Over his remarkable 30-year tenure, he held various crucial positions within the organization, including vice president of engineering and chief operating officer, gaining invaluable experience that would later prove instrumental in his leadership role.
The company's origins trace back to 1992 when Marc Raibert established Boston Dynamics as a spinoff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he served as a professor. Since its founding, the company has experienced several ownership changes that reflect its growing value and strategic importance in the robotics sector.
Google's parent company Alphabet recognized the company's potential early on, acquiring Boston Dynamics in 2013. However, the relationship was relatively short-lived, as the company was subsequently sold to Japanese investment conglomerate SoftBank in 2017. The most recent ownership transition occurred in 2021 when automotive giant Hyundai acquired Boston Dynamics, providing the resources and strategic vision necessary for continued growth and innovation.
Under Playter's leadership as CEO, Boston Dynamics achieved several significant milestones that solidified its position in the commercial robotics market. Most notably, the company successfully commercialized Spot, its flagship quadruped robot, in 2020, shortly after Playter assumed the top executive position. This achievement represented a crucial transition from research and development to practical, real-world applications across various industries.
Boston Dynamics has continued to innovate under Playter's guidance, recently unveiling Atlas, an advanced humanoid robot that demonstrates the company's ongoing commitment to pushing the boundaries of what's possible in robotics technology. These developments have helped establish the company as a pioneer in both quadruped and humanoid robotics applications.
As Boston Dynamics begins its search for new leadership, the company faces the challenge of maintaining its innovative momentum while continuing to expand its commercial presence in an increasingly competitive robotics market. Playter's departure marks the end of a significant chapter in the company's history, but his three decades of contributions have built a strong foundation for future growth and technological advancement.
🔍 Which AI Dilemma Should We Tackle First?
- ⚠️ 1. Speed vs. Understanding The rapid pace of AI development is outpacing our ability to comprehend or regulate it.
- 🧠 2. Lack of Alignment AI systems don’t necessarily optimize for what’s good for humans—even when they seem to.
- 🏢 3. Power Concentration AI is consolidating power into the hands of a few tech giants and governments.
- 🤖 4. Automation Without Purpose AI is replacing jobs faster than society is creating meaningful alternatives.
- 🛑 5. Loss of Human Agency We risk becoming passive consumers of AI decisions, losing creativity and independent thinking.
Learn AI in 5 minutes a day
What’s the secret to staying ahead of the curve in the world of AI? Information. Luckily, you can join 2,000,000+ early adopters reading The Rundown AI — the free newsletter that makes you smarter on AI with just a 5-minute read per day.
Czech siblings use AI-generated music in Olympic ice dance debut
An ice dance duo skated to AI music at the Olympics
Czech ice dancers Kateřina and Daniel Mrázek made their Olympic debut using AI-generated music for their rhythm dance routine. Their program featured "One Two by AI (of 90s style Bon Jovi)" followed by AC/DC's "Thunderstruck."
The duo previously faced backlash for using AI music with lyrics suspiciously similar to New Radicals' "You Get What You Give." Their current AI track mimics Bon Jovi lyrics and vocals, raising questions about creativity in Olympic competition despite not violating any official rules.
🎙️ The Supercharged Podcast Is Growing
Conversations with the People Building the AI Future
The Supercharged Podcast is becoming a place where real conversations about AI happen — beyond hype, tools, or surface-level takes.
We sit down with industry leaders, founders, builders, and operators who are actively using AI — or building AI-first businesses — to understand how it’s actually changing the way work gets done.
From strategy and systems to experimentation and execution, these are practical, honest conversations with people shaping what comes next.
⚡ Trends for the Future
Vega raises $120M Series B to rethink how enterprises detect cyber threats
Startup challenges legacy security tools with AI-native cloud approach.
Modern enterprises face a growing challenge with cybersecurity data management. Legacy tools like Splunk require companies to centralize massive amounts of security data before threat detection can begin, creating a slow and expensive process that struggles in today's cloud environments where data volumes are exploding and information is distributed across multiple platforms.
AI cybersecurity startup Vega Security is revolutionizing this approach by running security operations directly where data already exists, implementing solutions within cloud services, data lakes, and existing storage systems. The two-year-old company just secured a $120 million Series B funding round led by Accel, with participation from Cyberstarts, Redpoint, and CRV.
This latest funding nearly doubles Vega's valuation to $700 million and brings total funding to $185 million. The company plans to use these resources to further develop its AI-native security operations suite, strengthen its go-to-market team, and expand globally.
CEO and co-founder Shay Sandler, who previously helped build Granulate before Intel acquired it for $650 million in 2022, argues that traditional SIEM (security information and event management) technology is not only prohibitively expensive but increasingly ineffective in complex cloud environments. "Vega has defined a new operating model that enables organizations to leverage the full potential of their enterprise data to achieve incident response readiness, without all the complexity, the cost, the drama," Sandler explained.
The startup's approach appears to be gaining traction. Despite being only two years old, Vega has already secured multimillion-dollar contracts with major banks, healthcare companies, and Fortune 500 firms, including cloud-heavy companies like Instacart. This success stems from Vega's "plug and play" philosophy that allows enterprises to implement the solution within minutes without requiring lengthy data migrations or operational changes.
Andrei Brasoveanu, partner at Accel, noted that legacy SIEM companies have been criticized for their difficulty to scale and inability to process the massive data volumes driven by AI adoption, making Vega's decentralized approach particularly attractive to enterprise customers.
⚡ Let’s Make AI Actually Useful:
What Would Move the Needle in *Your* Industry?
AI has potential — but generic advice rarely helps.
What would be genuinely valuable for AI to do in your industry right now?
• Automate a painful workflow?
• Improve decision-making?
• Replace a manual process that wastes time?
• Help your team upskill faster?
Tell us what you’d want AI to handle — or where you feel stuck.
We’re using these insights to curate **industry-specific trainings, live webinars, and practical guidance** you can actually apply.
AI will be humanity's most powerful instrument for progress, helping us unlock solutions to our greatest challenges and create a world where technology serves our highest values.
Wojciech Zaremba is a co-founder and Robotics Lead at OpenAI, where he has been instrumental in developing advanced AI systems and leading research in robot learning and reinforcement learning. His work on training AI agents to solve complex problems and his contributions to making AI systems more capable and general-purpose have pushed the boundaries of what's possible, and he continues to advocate for building beneficial artificial intelligence that can help humanity tackle its most difficult challenges.
🌡️ Use the Satisfaction Thermometer to show us how much you enjoyed The Supercharged today ;)
The Supercharged is aiming to be the world's #1 AI business magazine and is on a mission to empower 1,000,000 entrepreneurs worldwide by 2025, guiding them through the transition into the AI-driven creative age. We're dedicated to breaking down complex technologies, sharing actionable insights, and fostering a community that thrives on innovation, to become the ultimate resource for businesses navigating the AI revolution.
The Supercharged is the #1 AI Newsletter for Entrepreneurs, with 25,000 + readers working at the world’s leading startups and enterprises. The Supercharged is free for the readers. Main ads are typically sold out 2 weeks in advance. You can book future ad spots here.
I'm sending this email because you registered for one of our workshops or our affiliates brought you. You can unsubscribe at the bottom of each email at any time.
