The Beat

US Tech

The national tech stories shaping what happens next in Austin.

National3 min read

Texas hands Texas Instruments $33.6M to grow its wafer output

A state semiconductor grant will support a roughly $700 million capacity expansion at the chipmaker's Richardson fab, the latest award from a fund Austin-area firms dominate.

Jordan VanceJul 9

NationalJul 6

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

Jordan Vance

NationalJun 25

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

Jordan Vance

More National

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.