AlphaFold's John Jumper joins Anthropic; Hyundai buys Boston Dynamics

John Jumper — who shared the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for AlphaFold, the system that cracked protein-structure prediction — is leaving Google DeepMind after nearly nine years to join Anthropic. Neither side has named his role, but the move fits Anthropic's growing push into life sciences and computational biology. It also extends a striking talent drain at DeepMind, which has lost several senior researchers to Anthropic and OpenAI in recent weeks.

Hyundai is buying SoftBank's remaining 9.65 percent stake in Boston Dynamics for $325 million, making the Massachusetts robotics maker a wholly owned subsidiary. SoftBank — which bought Boston Dynamics from Google in 2017 — is exiting to free up capital for its much larger bet on OpenAI. Hyundai, meanwhile, is doubling down: a production version of the electric Atlas humanoid is slated to start work at its Georgia EV plant by 2028.

Norway will bar generative AI for students in grades one through seven — ages six to 13 — and restrict it for older pupils, with teens 14 to 16 allowed to use it only under teacher supervision. Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store said the rules, which take effect when the school year begins in late August, aim to stop young children from skipping essential steps in learning. The move follows a 2024 Norwegian smartphone ban and a broad decline in national test scores.

Reliance chairman Mukesh Ambani laid out a sweeping plan to weave AI through daily life for Jio's 500-million-plus subscribers — including a "Jio Call Agent" that joins phone calls to take notes and book cabs, an AI-driven MyJio app, and a TeleFrame home display. Reliance is backing the push with a planned $110 billion AI-infrastructure investment and vertical tools for health, education, and farming in 22 Indian languages. Ambani framed it as India's bid to become an AI creator, not just a consumer.

Elastic has agreed to acquire Deductive AI, a startup whose AI agents automatically detect and fix software failures in real time, for up to $85 million. The deal folds "AI site reliability engineering" directly into Elastic's observability platform, which engineers use to monitor systems and flag security threats. Founded in 2023 on a $7.5 million seed round, Deductive AI had reached only about $1 million in annual recurring revenue — a reminder that strategic fit, not scale, is driving much of the current wave of AI acquisitions.