Daily Tech & GNSS News Digest - March 10, 2026

AI pioneer Yann LeCun made headlines today with Europe’s largest-ever seed round, while Apple celebrated a major manufacturing milestone in India. Meanwhile, the boundary between biology and computing blurred further as brain-cell-powered data centers went live. In the GNSS world, ESA prepares for a historic LEO-PNT launch as Turkey deploys real-time earthquake monitoring infrastructure.

Tech News

Yann LeCun’s AMI Labs Raises Record $1 Billion Seed Round

Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) Labs, the AI startup founded by legendary researcher Yann LeCun, announced a $1.03 billion seed round at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation—the largest seed funding ever raised by a European company. The round closed just four months after the company’s founding.

Investors include chip titan NVIDIA, Singapore sovereign wealth fund Temasek, Jeff Bezos’ Bezos Expeditions, and European firms Cathay Innovation, Daphni, HV Capital, and Hiro Capital. LeCun, who holds dual French-American citizenship and remains a professor at NYU, will serve as executive chairman while French entrepreneur Alexandre LeBrun handles day-to-day operations.

AMI is pursuing “world models”—AI systems that learn from reality rather than just language. LeCun has long argued that current large language model approaches have fundamental limits. His alternative is JEPA (Joint Embedding Predictive Architecture), a framework he first proposed in 2022. The company acknowledges this is a long-term research project, with its first year focused entirely on R&D rather than shipping products. AMI is headquartered in Paris with offices planned in New York, Montreal, and Singapore.

Apple Now Makes 25% of iPhones in India

Apple has achieved a significant manufacturing milestone, with India now producing 25% of all iPhones globally—up from a 53% year-over-year increase. The company assembled approximately 55 million iPhones in India in 2025, compared to 36 million the previous year, fulfilling a prediction JPMorgan made back in 2022.

India-made iPhones worth $23 billion were exported in 2025, making smartphones one of the country’s top export categories. The shift accelerated as US tariffs on China pushed Apple to diversify its manufacturing base. Apple now assembles all iPhone 17 variants in India, including the high-end Pro and Pro Max models.

The biggest domestic winner is Tata Group. Through Tata Electronics, the conglomerate has become the first Indian company to serve as a primary iPhone contract manufacturer. By acquiring Wistron’s operations and forming a joint venture with Pegatron, Tata is on track to manage 50% of India’s iPhone output by end of 2026. However, challenges remain—India still faces a 10-14% cost disadvantage compared to China due to less integrated component ecosystems, and the current PLI incentive scheme expires March 31, 2026.

Human Brain Cells Power New Data Centers

In a development that sounds like science fiction, biotech startup Cortical Labs unveiled the world’s first data centers powered by human brain cells. The Australian company launched a proof-of-concept facility in Melbourne hosting 120 biological compute units, with a larger facility planned in Singapore through partner DayOne Data Centers with up to 1,000 units.

Each CL1 biological compute unit runs on just 30 watts of power—compared to up to 6,000 watts for a typical GPU. The bio-computers use a chip called a “multi-electrode array” with 200,000 human brain neurons grown directly on silicon from human stem cells.

While years or decades away from challenging mainstream computing technology, the project highlights scientists’ search for novel solutions to address the AI-induced demand for ever-increasing computing capacity. Cortical Labs previously demonstrated that lab-grown neurons could learn simple tasks like playing Pong and even the more complex game Doom.

Oracle Faces Cash Crunch as AI Spending Soars

Oracle Corp. is planning to cut 20,000 to 30,000 jobs—potentially 12-18% of its global workforce—to free up $8-10 billion in cash flow for AI data center expansion. The layoffs could be implemented as early as this month.

The cuts come as Oracle manages a cash crunch from massive AI infrastructure spending. Wall Street projects the company’s cash flow will turn negative over the coming years before the spending pays off around 2030. Last month, Oracle announced plans to raise $50 billion this year through debt and equity sales.

Adding to the company’s challenges, Oracle and OpenAI have canceled a major planned AI data center expansion in Abilene, Texas. Meta is reportedly interested in the site. Oracle has also announced an effective hiring freeze in its cloud division as it reviews open positions.

Additional Headlines

US Weighs Global AI Chip Permits: The Commerce Department has drafted regulations that would restrict AI chip shipments anywhere in the world without American approval, affecting exports from NVIDIA and AMD.
EU Tech Fund Finalizes Shortlist: The €5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund has narrowed its external manager candidates to Sweden’s EQT and Northzone, France’s Eurazeo, and UK’s Atomico and Vitruvian Partners, with a decision expected in April.
Ericsson CEO: Europe Is a Tech “Museum”: Börje Ekholm warned that Europe risks falling behind in AI due to sluggish 5G adoption, noting China is better positioned to deploy AI at scale thanks to more sophisticated mobile infrastructure.

GNSS News

ESA’s Celeste LEO-PNT Mission Approaches Historic Launch

The European Space Agency’s Celeste LEO-PNT demonstration mission is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 24 from Rocket Lab’s Māhia Launch Complex in New Zealand. The mission, named after Galileo Galilei’s daughter Maria Celeste, will test the use of Low Earth Orbit satellites for complementing higher-orbit navigation systems like Galileo.

The first launch aboard Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket—dubbed “Daughter Of The Stars”—will carry two large CubeSats (12U and 16U) developed by consortia led by GMV of Spain and Thales Alenia Space of France. Both satellites have completed their journey from Europe to New Zealand, with IOD-1 arriving February 20 and IOD-2 on March 3.

The full Celeste constellation will eventually comprise 10 satellites, with eight larger Pathfinder B spacecraft to follow the initial pair. The system promises centimeter-level geolocation accuracy, improved robustness against jamming and spoofing, and low-latency signal acquisition by working alongside existing Galileo infrastructure.

Turkey Deploys Real-Time GNSS Earthquake Monitoring Network

Six Turkish universities have launched TR-TRAK-GNSS, a real-time geodetic monitoring network to track earthquake-related ground deformation. The network uses 28 GNSS stations distributed across Thrace and the Southern Marmara region—areas of significant seismic activity.

The system enables continuous monitoring of crustal movements with millimeter-level precision, providing early warning data that could prove critical for earthquake preparedness in one of the world’s most seismically active regions. This deployment demonstrates the expanding role of GNSS technology beyond navigation into Earth observation and natural hazard monitoring.

Additionally, GPS World reports that Qualinx will showcase its 1 mW QLX3Gx Series GNSS chip at Embedded World 2026 (March 10-12 in Nuremberg), featuring a dynamic reconfigurable architecture that promises significant power efficiency improvements for IoT and consumer devices.

Key Takeaways

AI investment hits new extremes: Yann LeCun’s record $1B seed round for “world models” research shows investors remain willing to fund long-term AI bets, even as Oracle’s massive layoffs reveal the brutal cash demands of AI infrastructure.
Global supply chains continue shifting: Apple’s 25% India milestone accelerates the move away from China-centric manufacturing, with Tata emerging as a major beneficiary of the realignment.
GNSS expands beyond navigation: From ESA’s LEO-PNT constellation promising centimeter accuracy to Turkey’s earthquake monitoring network, satellite positioning technology is evolving into critical infrastructure for safety and scientific applications.