EP 662 : UCLA PhoneBot, Anthropic’s $9B Junk‑Bond Chip Deal & Rivian AI Cars – AI & Robotics News
Ever imagined turning your Android phone into a walking robot? UCLA researchers just did that with PhoneBot, a 19‑inch biped that uses a discarded Android as its brain, camera, and balance sensor—all for roughly $400 in parts. This quirky hack shows how affordable hardware can spark big ideas in robotics. On the finance side, Anthropic is shaking up the AI funding playbook by borrowing $9 billion at junk‑bond yields to lock in five years of chip lease payments. Backed by Blackstone, the deal promises investors double‑digit returns while giving the startup the compute power it needs to stay…
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