Technology

➚ MOVE FAST: Talk up. Chinese state broadcast outlet CCTV featured Manus’ new AI agent, called Monica, as Beijing looks to capitalize on the hype around another domestic startup, DeepSeek. Manus also officially registered its AI apps in another boost by the government.

➘ BREAK THINGS: Talk down. After casting doubt on quantum computing in January that sent stocks tumbling, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he was wrong. During Nvidia’s annual “quantum day” in San Jose Thursday, he spoke more as a cheerleader than a skeptic, but that didn’t help quantum stocks much as he pondered why any of them would be public in the first place.

Robots have hit the ground running. Chinese AI companies are preparing for a half-marathon next month that will, for the first time, include both human runners and human-like robots. Taking place in Beijing, more than 12,000 runners will accompany dozens of robots from over 20 companies, including Casbot and MagicLab, Chinese media reported.

The robots must physically resemble humans, using two legs to walk or run. It will be a potent test for the companies developing general-purpose humanoids for homes and businesses, which haven’t necessarily prioritized speed and agility. Investors and customers will surely be on the lookout for which companies rise to the challenge.

The race is also an opportunity for China to show off its manufacturing technology as competition with the US for tech supremacy heats up. If Chinese robots are able to withstand the physical demands of a 13.1-mile journey — and if they can run while doing so — they would accomplish something no American company has done publicly.

How AI translations are helping a New York theater attract new audiences

An off-Broadway theater in New York has a new way to attract audiences: live, AI-powered translations that make performances more accessible to non-English speakers.

Attendees for Perfect Crime, performed at The Theater Center and the longest-running play in New York, can scan a QR code to search an online translation platform. They then select one of 60 languages and listen to the live translation through headphones during the show.

The murder mystery about a psychiatrist accused of killing her husband can be heard in Arabic, Afrikaans, Polish, and other languages, reflecting one of the many ways AI is becoming a part of daily life. The translation’s text also appears on the user’s phone for individuals who are hard of hearing or wish to follow along that way.

With a majority of Perfect Crime’s attendees being tourists visiting New York, roughly 25 to 30 people use the service across eight shows each week, allowing for the theater to sell tickets to those who may not have bought them without the offering, according to Catherine Russell, general manager of the theater who stars in Perfect Crime. Theatergoers have selected a wide range of language options, with no specific language dominating, she said.

Perfect Crime actors wear microphones that capture their voices, which are fed directly into the translation system to ensure no side conversations or audience noises are picked up. It’s free for theatergoers.

Broadway shows have largely recovered from the pandemic slump, in which theaters were closed for 18 months in New York. Off-Broadway productions and regional theaters, however, continue to struggle filling seats and turning a profit. Russell hopes offering the technology will draw in a new audience that hasn’t typically attended English theater.

“A lot of people don’t go to the theater because it’s not accessible to them,” she told Semafor. “If they don’t understand English well, they don’t see it as an option.”

Russell also hopes the translation service will give her show a leg up over the nearby musicals, which tend to be more popular than plays. The technology will eventually reach musicals and Broadway, she said, but it will take a while. “Off-Broadway can be more nimble. We can do things that Broadway can’t,” she added.

The high end of the valuation CoreWeave is targeting in its upcoming initial public offering, in which it is looking to raise $2.7 billion, Reuters reported. CoreWeave’s IPO could be indicative of investor appetite for new AI stocks, as we reported last week. Semafor’s Rohan Goswami and Liz Hoffman also scooped Thursday that Microsoft didn’t walk away from a commitment with CoreWeave but instead chose not to exercise a $12 billion option to purchase more data-center capacity, which ultimately went to OpenAI.

YouTube is undeniably the dominant media platform of the moment — and not just for video. Last month, the company announced that podcasts now rack up 1 billion viewers a month. This week, Ben and Max bring on YouTube CEO Neal Mohan to talk about how YouTube has become the epicenter of culture, how it’s thinking about podcasts and TV, and who Neal thinks the platform’s biggest competitor is. They also discuss why YouTube’s content policing guidelines have changed since 2020 and how he plans to manage its recent run-in with the FCC.

Listen to the latest episode of Mixed Signals now.

There are about 1 million business processes at Dell and it has used advances in AI to overhaul about 30 of them so far. “It’s 30 of the biggest,” John Roese, the company’s chief technology officer, told Semafor. “But there are so many more to get through. It just shows how much potential there is, not only at Dell, but at every company.”

While generative AI has been the talk of the town for a few years now, most businesses have only just begun figuring out how to apply technology. Roese noted that firms are moving past the experimental phase, but deploying real use cases at scale is still limited and taking place at only the biggest companies.

“Customers need a lot of help with this,” Michael Dell said at a recent company event in Washington. “They believe AI is important but don’t know what to do first. The objective should be: How do we meaningfully move the needle?”

The technology has also produced concerns about job losses. But as AI becomes more sophisticated and moves into the agentic phase where the technology can take actions on behalf of people, the conversations about work will shift, Roese said.

“Then it will be about: What are your skills and how do you project them?” he said.

The US Justice Department is putting the hammer down on individuals vandalizing Tesla cars and charging stations.

“The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a release. “Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.”

In recent weeks, individuals across the US (and some abroad) have protested Elon Musk’s heightened role in government by organizing at Tesla stores. A handful of people have targeted Tesla property, including using Molotov cocktails to destroy the cars. The Justice Department brought charges against three of the accused on Thursday. If convicted, they could spend between five and 20 years in prison.

Musk’s companies have increasingly become a political target as he works to shrink the government and cut the federal workforce. Tesla’s stock has been sliced in half from its recent December peak, now trading around its price just prior to the election. First quarter sales are “tracking weak,” according to Evercore ISI analyst Chris McNally, who estimates a 4% decline in deliveries. If such declines become a long-term trend, they could stifle Tesla’s ambitions in self-driving and humanoid technologies.

Abu Dhabi is continuing its global artificial intelligence investment spree, with a deal signed during UAE National Security Advisor Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed’s visit to Washington, Semafor’s Mohammed Sergie reports.

The latest move — a $25 billion partnership between sovereign wealth fund ADQ, which Sheikh Tahnoon chairs, and US firm Energy Capital Partners — will build 25 gigawatts of power generation and infrastructure in the US.

Global electricity demand is expected to rise by 70% over the next decade, and AI is a big driver. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told thousands of fans at the company’s annual conference Tuesday that the appetite for the technology is only growing, and the limiting factor is the raw power needed to run gargantuan data centers.

The UAE has announced major commitments this year. Last month, it agreed to build a data center in Italy and pledged $50 billion in France’s AI sector. Through its state-owned investment firm MGX, Abu Dhabi is also participating with OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank in the $500 billion Stargate project announced by President Donald Trump in January.

It was Pi Day — March 14 — when Max Levchin was celebrating Affirm Holdings’ 13th anniversary. He chose that date in 2012 to incorporate his buy-now-pay-later fintech because he’s “a little bit obsessed with mathematical constants,” he explained to Semafor’s Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson.

Math runs through Levchin’s thinking about Affirm, his biggest venture since he built PayPal with Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, and the rest of what became known as the PayPal Mafia.

Levchin has been telling investors for 13 years that if Affirm can make a sufficient margin on each transaction to cover credit losses, fraud losses, and costs like offices and employees, it will be “a self-sustaining machine.”