xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin's River AI raised $1B led by General Catalyst to build home or small business computer servers capable of running AI locally (Cade Metz/New York Times)

<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/11/technology/his-start-ups-goal-ai-that-is-trainable-and-not-controlled-by-a-big-company.html"><img align="RIGHT" border="0" hspace="4" src="http://www.techmeme.com/260811/i11.jpg" vspace="4" /></a> <p><a href="https://www.techmeme.com/260811/p11#a260811p11" title="Techmeme permalink"><img height="12" src="http://www.techmeme.com/img/pml.png" style="border: none; padding: 0; margin: 0;" width="11" /></a> Cade Metz / <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/">New York Times</a>:<br /> <span style="font-size: 1.3em;"><b><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/11/technology/his-start-ups-goal-ai-that-is-trainable-and-not-controlled-by-a-big-company.html">xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin's River AI raised $1B led by General Catalyst to build home or small business computer servers capable of running AI locally</a></b></span>&nbsp; &mdash;&nbsp; Igor Babuschkin built a new start-up, River AI, and hopes to provide ways for people to &ldquo;retrain,&rdquo; or modify, artificial intelligence &hellip; </p>