The Beat

US Tech

The national tech stories shaping what happens next in Austin.

National3 min read

Airbnb picks Austin for the first bet from its $250M housing fund

The company's new Housing Accelerator will put $6.4 million into a long-stalled affordable project in North Austin's St. John neighborhood.

Jordan VanceSep 18

NationalSep 3

Texas lawmakers can't say how many data centers the state has. That's the problem.

Jordan Vance

NationalSep 2

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NationalJordan Vance · Jun 29

Cathie Wood Rides Tesla's Austin Robotaxi — and Draws a Line to Crypto

The ARK Invest chief took a spin in Tesla's nascent robotaxi service in Austin, then connected the autonomous-vehicle moment to her broader thesis on decentralized assets.

NationalJordan Vance · Jun 29

Two Decades of Austin Tech Jobs: Booms, Busts, and What the Numbers Actually Show

A new look at Austin's employment record over the past 20 years reveals a labor market shaped by waves of corporate relocations, pandemic-era hiring frenzies, and the inevitable corrections that followed.

NationalJordan Vance · Jun 25

General Intuition's $320M bet that video games can train real-world AI

Khosla Ventures led the Series A for a startup using billions of hours of gameplay to teach machines spatial reasoning - the same physical-AI problem Austin's robotics scene is chasing.

NationalJordan Vance · Jun 24

AI parts startup Partly moves its global HQ to Austin, plans a U.S. hiring push

The automotive-repair AI company relocated from New Zealand and raised $50 million at a $500 million valuation as it enters the U.S. market.

NationalJordan Vance · Jun 13

SpaceX goes public in record $75B IPO, ringing the bell from Starbase

Elon Musk's rocket company staged the largest IPO in history, and it tied the listing directly to Texas.

NationalJordan Vance · Jun 4

Tesla extends its Austin robotaxi service across the full metro

The service now covers the entire Austin metro, though the fleet running it remains small.

NationalJordan Vance · Jun 3

Trump signs AI executive order pushing federal control over state rules

A June order adds voluntary pre-release model assessments and advances a strategy to preempt a patchwork of state AI laws.

NationalJordan Vance · May 29

Anthropic raises $65B, leapfrogs OpenAI as the most valuable AI startup

The Series H values Anthropic at $965 billion post-money and arrives days before a confidential IPO filing.

NationalJordan Vance · May 21

Nvidia posts $81.6B quarter as Huang says AI demand has 'gone parabolic'

The chipmaker's profit tripled year over year, and it pointed to $1 trillion in confirmed AI chip demand through 2027.

NationalJordan Vance · May 20

Google reimagines Search and ships Gemini 3.5 Flash at I/O 2026

The company called it the biggest change to its Search box in over 25 years and introduced an agentic Gemini model.

NationalJordan Vance · Apr 25

Samsung kicks off equipment move-in at its $37B Taylor, Texas fab

The Central Texas plant is gearing up to make Tesla's next-generation AI chips under a $16.5 billion deal.

NationalJordan Vance · Apr 10

Q1 venture funding hits a record $300B as AI swallows the market

Four of the five largest venture rounds ever recorded closed in a single quarter, and AI took the vast majority of the dollars.

NationalJordan Vance · Mar 2

Stargate expands with five new sites, anchoring more capacity in Texas

OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank pushed the data-center venture toward 7 gigawatts and more than $400 billion in planned investment.

NationalJordan Vance · Jan 9

xAI raises $20B and pushes Colossus toward 2 gigawatts in Memphis

Musk's AI company closed its Series E above target and bought a third Memphis building to expand the world's largest single-site training cluster.