NVIDIA GR00T Researcher Launches Startup, Raises $90 Million to Debut Cross-Model Robot AI
Beating AI News Flash: Dream Labs, founded by four former NVIDIA GR00T researchers, announced it has closed a $90 million seed round and opened the API for its Dream-1 robot model. Developers only need to input the robot’s camera feed, current status, and task instructions, and the model will generate robotic arm movements. The standard version costs $3 per hour, while the lightweight version is $2 per hour.
In the past, switching to a new robot often required re-collecting data and adapting the model. In February this year, the team’s earlier model DreamZero (launched by NVIDIA) needed 30 minutes of data from the target robot for additional training; Dream-1 eliminates this step. It uses a world action model to learn the relationship between video and actions, predicts where the gripper should move, and then executes the movement via the robot’s own control program.
The team tested 27 robots in a simulation environment that were not included in the training data, including the 2008-launched PR2. Test partners from 8 countries also demonstrated real-world tasks such as stacking cups, folding cartons, and pulling paper towels. However, Dream-1 currently primarily supports dual-arm robots equipped with parallel grippers.
In real-world tests by third-party firm Robocurve, Dream-1 achieved an average task progress score of 59.3%, outperforming Google Gemini 4 Argon’s 48.2%. The estimated model cost per single attempt is just $0.15, roughly 1/16 of Gemini 4 Argon’s cost.
That said, 400 additional tests released by Dream Labs show the full success rate for pick-and-place tasks is only 40%, and for tool use it is as low as 6%. The model remains in the research and testing phase and has not been validated for safety-critical scenarios.
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Ondo Perps Launches OpenAI Private Market Notes (OPAIPon), Supporting 7×24-hour On-Chain Trading
According to official announcements, Ondo Perps has launched the OpenAI Private Market Note (ticker: OPAIPon), a tokenized financial exposure instrument tied to OpenAI. The note is now available for 24/7 trading on Ondo Perps’ permissionless spot order book, with the trading pair OPAIPon/USDC. OPAIPon falls under Ondo Private Markets, a product line designed to provide accredited investors with economic exposure to leading private companies via tokenized notes. Users can participate in transactions without waiting for the companies to go public, and may self-custody the tokens in personal wallets.
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Michael Saylor: Digital credit is MicroStrategy’s core product, while MSTR equity is just a byproduct.
Strategy founder Michael Saylor stated in an interview: "What we are building is a highly valuable product—digital credit. If this credit product proves effective, we can sell billions of dollars worth of credit. When we sell $1 billion in digital credit, we only require Bitcoin to outperform our hurdle rate, which stands at roughly 10.5%. So when we sell $1 billion in credit, and Bitcoin appreciates by 10% annually, the company effectively nets $1 billion in profit, and we never have to repay that sum. Imagine if we sell $10 billion in credit each year, with Bitcoin appreciating by 10.5% annually—this is equivalent to a company generating $10 billion in net profit. Now picture this figure growing by 20% or 30% year over year. What would this company be worth? Likely 10 or 20 times that net profit figure? That’s the premium to net asset value (NAV). MSTR’s future thus hinges on converting capital and Bitcoin into credit—digital credit—to generate digital equity. If the credit product is strong, equity performance will outpace Bitcoin’s. Therefore, credit is the core product, while equity is merely a byproduct. For us, repurchasing credit is a superior use of capital, because if the credit product works, the company’s stock should trade at a premium above net asset value (NAV). If we allow the credit initiative to fade, we will be nothing more than a holding company, and our stock price will only fluctuate around NAV. That is why we must defend this credit product."
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Mercury 3 challenges GPT-6 Luna: 40 times larger than its predecessor, official speed tests show it processes over 1,000 tokens per second.
Beating AI News – U.S. AI firm Inception has launched its diffusion language model, Mercury 3. Unlike standard large language models (LLMs) that generate tokens one by one, Mercury 3 produces batches of text in parallel and iteratively refines them. Inception notes the new model has over 40 times more parameters than the original Mercury, yet still delivers 1,068 tokens per second on NVIDIA GPUs, nearly matching the 1,107 tokens per second of its predecessor, Mercury 2.5. Its context window has been expanded from 260,000 to 1 million tokens.
In published self-tests, Mercury 3’s overall performance at medium inference settings is slightly higher than GPT-6 Luna and Claude Haiku 5.5, with generation speeds 4 to 8 times faster than both. On the DeepSWE coding benchmark, Mercury 3 scores 46.3%, lagging behind Haiku 5.5’s 51.6%; however, it leads with 51.1% on SWE-Bench Atlas, versus the rival’s 32.3%.
Inception’s co-founder acknowledged on Hacker News that the new model cannot yet replace Opus or Fable as a primary agent, but can already handle subtasks like code writing. Mercury 3 is now accessible via Inception API, OpenRouter, Baseten, and Vercel. During the launch period, it is priced at 50% off: $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.35 per million output tokens, compared to regular rates of $0.20 and $0.70 respectively. The company is offering 100 million free tokens for trial use.
However, the token speed advertised by Inception may not be attainable for regular users. OpenRouter data shows Mercury 3’s median output speed is approximately 180 tokens per second, just one-sixth of the official benchmark speed.
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Crypto exchange Bitget plans to acquire a licensed Thai trading platform to accelerate its localized expansion in Southeast Asia.
According to official announcements from Bitget, the platform has announced the acquisition of GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics (Thailand) Co., Ltd., a digital asset exchange and broker headquartered in Bangkok. The deal covers all shares of the target company held by shareholders including GMO Internet and its related subsidiaries. GMO-Z.com Cryptonomics (Thailand) holds licenses for digital asset exchange and brokerage services in Thailand. Leveraging its existing compliance foundation and local market expertise, the acquisition will strengthen Bitget’s localized operations in Thailand and further refine its strategic layout in the Southeast Asian market. Bitget CEO Gracy Chen stated that Thailand is a key digital asset market in Southeast Asia, noting that this acquisition will help Bitget establish a localized operational system, gradually expanding the application of its global trading services in the Thai market while complying with local regulatory requirements.
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Bitunix’s Care Fund has reached $50 million, with its on-chain addresses publicly verifiable.
According to official announcements, Bitunix has announced it will raise the size of its Care Fund from $30 million to $50 million, while simultaneously publishing its on-chain address. Users can check the fund’s real-time holdings at any time via a blockchain explorer, ensuring full transparency and verifiability of the fund reserves. The Care Fund, a core component of the platform’s risk protection mechanism, is designed to safeguard user assets during extreme market conditions. This expansion further strengthens the platform’s ability to respond to unexpected risks. The move is a concrete demonstration of Bitunix’s Ultra Trust commitment; the platform will continue to build user trust through transparent, verifiable practices, offering a safer, more reliable trading environment for global traders.
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