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Kyt Dotson / SiliconANGLE : August Robotics, which makes autonomous robots for construction and industrial applications, raised $30M led by Big Pi Ventures   —  August Robotics Ltd., a robotics automation company for construction and industrial applications, today announced it raised $30 million in new funding led by Big Pi Ventures.

President Donald Trump split with immigration hawks by defending Chinese students in the U.S. while also softening on Chinese-owned farmland — creating friction inside MAGA and unexpected overlap with moderate Democrats. Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked Trump in a recent interview from Beijing about concerns surrounding Chinese nationals attending school in the U.S. and China-linked entities purchasing farmland, including in sensitive areas like near a North Dakota military base that raised eyebrows earlier this decade. Republicans have long warned that Chinese student visa programs could expose U.S. research and state secrets to the Chinese Communist Party, while GOP officials like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Nebraska Sen. Deb Fischer have pushed for tougher restrictions on Chinese ownership of American farmland. "It’s not that I love it. You want to see farm prices drop; you want to see farmers lose a lot of money just take that out of the market. But they've had a lot of l...

President Donald Trump was the biggest winner of Tuesday’s wide slate of primary elections as the president celebrated a large swath of his preferred candidates winning GOP primaries or advancing to runoff elections.  In the most expensive primary in U.S. House history, a longtime thorn in Trump’s side, Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., lost to former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in Kentucky’s 4th District. Gallrein defeated Massie soundly with nearly 55% of the vote to Massie’s 45.1%, according to The Associated Press. The defeat will mark the end to Massie’s congressional stint, a tenure which, toward its end, saw Massie increasingly opposing Trump and criticizing the president’s actions on trade deals, the Jeffrey Epstein files and the Iran war. In his concession speech, Massie highlighted the influx of support his opponent received from pro-Israel groups like the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). "I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent to concede and ...

The Guardian : Granta and the Commonwealth Foundation say they can't determine yet if AI was used to write a prize-winning short story after critics pointed to signs of AI use   —  Granta publisher says ‘perhaps we never will know’ true authorship of work that won Commonwealth prize

Lance Whitney / ZDNET : Google restructures its AI plans, introducing a $100/month AI Ultra plan for developers and cutting the top-tier Ultra subscription from $250 to $200/month   —  ZDNET's key takeaways  — Google has introduced a cheaper AI Ultra plan at $100 a month.  — The full Ultra Plan is now $50 cheaper at $200 a month.

Cristian Dina / The Next Web : Sigma, which sells a cloud-native analytics platform that sits on top of data warehouses, raised an $80M Series E led by Princeville Capital at a $3B valuation   —  The round was led by Princeville Capital, with new strategic investors Databricks Ventures, ServiceNow Ventures, and Workday Ventures also participating.