The Download: mysteries of the immunome, and how to choose a climate tech pioneer
Plus: OpenAI’s copyright drama is intensifying
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.
How healthy am I? My immunome knows the score.
Made up of 1.8 trillion cells and trillions more proteins, metabolites, mRNA, and other biomolecules, every person’s immunome is different, and it is constantly changing.
It’s shaped by everything we have ever been exposed to physically and emotionally, and powerfully influences everything from our vulnerability to viruses and cancer to how well we age to whether we tolerate certain foods better than others.
Yet as critical as the immunome is to each of us, it has remained largely beyond the reach of modern medicine. Now, thanks to a slew of new technologies, understanding this vital and mysterious system is within our grasp, paving the way for powerful new tools and tests to help us better assess, diagnose and treat diseases. Read the full story.
—David Ewing Duncan
The story is a collaboration between MIT Technology Review and Aventine, a non-profit research foundation that creates and supports content about how technology and science are changing the way we live.
3 takeaways about climate tech right now
On Monday, we published our 2025 edition of Climate Tech Companies to Watch. Curating this list gives our team a chance to take a step back and consider the broader picture. What industries are making progress or lagging behind? Which countries or regions are seeing quick changes? Who’s likely to succeed?
This year is an especially interesting moment in the climate tech world, something we grappled with while choosing companies. Here are three of the biggest takeaways from the process of building this list.
—Casey Crownhart
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here.
2025 climate tech companies to watch: Cemvision and its low-emissions cement
Cement is one of the most used materials on the planet, and the industry emits billions of tons of greenhouse gasses annually. Swedish startup Cemvision wants to use waste materials and alternative fuels to help reduce climate pollution from cement production. Read the full story.
—Casey Crownhart
Cemvision is one of our 10 climate tech companies to watch—our annual list of some of the most promising climate tech firms on the planet. Check out the rest of the list here.
The must-reads
I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology.
1 OpenAI wasn’t expecting its Sora copyright backlash
CEO Sam Altman says the company will reverse course and “let rightsholders decide how to proceed.” (The Verge)
+ It appears to be struggling to work out which requests to approve right now. (404 Media)
+ Sam Altman says video IP is a lot trickier than for images. (Insider $)+ What comes next for AI copyright lawsuits? (MIT Technology Review)
2 Apple has removed another ICE app from its store
This one archives video evidence of abuses, rather than tracking officers’ locations. (404 Media)
+ Another effort to track ICE raids was just taken offline. (MIT Technology Review)
3 How private firms are helping economists work out what’s going on
In the absence of economic data from the US government, experts are getting creative. (WP $)
+ How to fine-tune AI for prosperity. (MIT Technology Review)
4 China is cracking down on its rare earth exports
It’s keen to protect its leverage over the critical minerals. (FT $)
+ This rare earth metal shows us the future of our planet’s resources. (MIT Technology Review)
5 Microsoft wants to become a chatbot powerhouse in its own right
Which means lessening its dependence on OpenAI. (WSJ $)
6 High schoolers are starting romantic relationships with AI models
It’s a whole new issue for schools and parents to grapple with. (NPR)
+ It’s surprisingly easy to stumble into a relationship with an AI chatbot. (MIT Technology Review)
7 Those Prime Day savings are often too good to be true
Buyer beware. (WP $)
8 The future of the AI boom hinges on a small Dutch city
Chipmaker ASML is planning a massive expansion—but is the surrounding area ready to support it? (Bloomberg $)
+ Welcome to robot city. (MIT Technology Review)
9 Ferrari’s first electric car is on the horizon
It’s expected to go on sale next year. (Reuters)
+ It sports four motors and more than 1,000 horsepower. (Ars Technica)
10 Inside the enduring appeal of The Sims
Keeping a house full of angry little materialists alive is still lots of fun. (NYT $)
Quote of the day
“The ICE raid is just the cherry on top. How is anybody going to trust us going forward?”
—Betony Jones, a senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute think tank, tells IEEE Spectrum how an ICE raid on a Hyundai EV factory in Georgia has shaken the industry.
One more thing
The flawed logic of rushing out extreme climate solutions
Early in 2022, entrepreneur Luke Iseman says, he released a pair of sulfur dioxide–filled weather balloons from Mexico’s Baja California peninsula, in the hope that they’d burst miles above Earth.
It was a trivial act in itself, effectively a tiny, DIY act of solar geoengineering, the controversial proposal that the world could counteract climate change by releasing particles that reflect more sunlight back into space.
Entrepreneurs like Iseman invoke the stark dangers of climate change to explain why they do what they do—even if they don’t know how effective their interventions are. But experts say that urgency doesn’t create a social license to ignore the underlying dangers or leapfrog the scientific process. Read the full story.
—James Temple
We can still have nice things
A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.)
+ What language did residents of the ancient Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan speak? We’re finally starting to find out.
+ If you’re unsure whether an animal is safe to pet, this handy guide is a good starting point.
+ The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s new ancient Egypt exhibition sounds brilliant.
+ This story digging into the psychology experiment behind Star Wars‘ special effects is completely bonkers.
