Ray Blanco:

German Humanoid Robotics Startup Raises $1.4 Billion From Amazon, Nvidia, and Tether

Neura Robotics announced a Series C financing of up to $1.4 billion on Wednesday, drawing backing from Amazon, Nvidia, Tether, Qualcomm Technologies, Bosch, Schaeffler, the European Investment Bank, and others to accelerate what the company calls a Physical AI platform.

The Metzingen, Germany-based company said the round is the largest ever for a full-stack robotics company and that its existing orders and strategic deployment pipeline exceed $1 billion. The funding will be used to scale manufacturing toward production of several million robots by 2030, expand its Neuraverse software platform, and build out a global network of training environments for cognitive robots.

People familiar with the deal put the company's valuation at approximately $7 billion, though Neura has not addressed the figure.

Tether, the stablecoin issuer, is the lead investor in the round. Beyond the capital, Tether said it will integrate two of its technologies into Neura's platform: a Wallet Development Kit that would embed payment functionality directly into robotic systems, and an edge AI runtime called QVAC that allows AI models to run locally on devices rather than relying on cloud infrastructure.

"Autonomous machines need the ability to process information locally, make decisions, and transact without relying on centralized intermediaries," Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said.

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James Altucher:

College Students Are Rapidly Losing the Ability to Read

In a new essay for The Chronicle Higher Education, university-level literature and writing instructor Tyler Jagt recalls how not a single one of his students could get through an assigned 20-page article, something that he had read "without complaint" as an undergraduate a decade ago.

One student confessed that the reason they didn't finish was that they kept losing track of what the paper was about. And there's no doubt that they're not alone.

Jagt cites the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress reading assessment results released last year. It showed that 12th grade reading scores were at the lowest level since the assessment began in 1992. Nearly a third of those 12th graders scored below the assessment's "basic" level in reading, meaning they likely "cannot draw general conclusions based on concepts presented explicitly in a text."

Younger children aren't better off: a recent report from the Annie E. Casey Foundation found that 70% of fourth graders, or around two million kids, can't read at a proficient level.

"What I am seeing in my classroom is no longer a hunch," Jagt writes. "There is a measurable, generational collapse in sustained reading and writing, and the academy is responding to it with improvisation and exhaustion rather than the structural overhaul it requires."

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Davis Wilson:

#1 Reason to Buy SpaceX Tomorrow

Believe it or not, trillions of dollars are invested every day without the slightest thought given to the price paid. The shoppers are index funds like QQQ, SPY, VOO, etc. The shopping list is a list of stocks that are chosen by folks working at Nasdaq, MSCI, and Standard & Poor’s.

And thanks to recent rule changes at Nasdaq and MSCI allowing certain mega-cap IPOs to enter the Nasdaq-100 after just 15 trading days, SpaceX could find itself on some very important shopping lists shortly after its IPO. This “forced demand” is my #1 reason to buy the SpaceX IPO.

SpaceX may raise $75 billion in the IPO. Then, just days later, tens of billions of dollars of additional demand could arrive from investors who are required to buy the stock at any price.

So while the investors spend endless hours debating whether SpaceX is worth $1 trillion, $1.5 trillion, or $2 trillion… that debate may not matter much in the first few weeks after the IPO.

Because when the shopping list says "SpaceX," index funds don't have a choice. They have to buy.

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