Phia, a new fashion shopping app founded by Phoebe Gates and Sophia Kianni, has raised an $8 million seed round led by Kleiner Perkins. The app aims to simplify online shopping by allowing users to compare prices across over 300 million fashion items.

Phia utilizes AI to personalize the e-commerce experience, offering a seamless platform where customers can track previous purchases and discover new items of interest. The company emphasizes a Gen Z-focused marketing strategy, leveraging social media and founder-led content to engage users.

The funding will be used to expand the team, which currently consists of 12 people, with hiring primarily conducted through social media. Gates and Kianni envision Phia as the future of personalized shopping, with plans to develop a personalized agent that syncs with calendars to provide tailored shopping recommendations.

Lincoln Center's Collider Fellowship is fostering innovation by inviting multi-disciplinary artists to explore how emerging technologies can revolutionize live performance. The second class of Collider Fellows, comprising six artists specializing in areas like VR, AI, and 4DSound, will receive studio space, a financial stipend, and support from Lincoln Center and Onassis ONX for nine months.

The fellowship encourages artists to experiment without requiring a final project, promoting both prototyping and in-depth research. Projects from the first class are still developing, with potential for future display at Lincoln Center. The program aims to broaden the conversation around technology, particularly among underrepresented groups, and explore new ways to engage global audiences through location-based experiences and extended reality.

The 2025 Collider Fellows include Cinthia Chen, Sam Rolfes, James Allister Sprang, Stephanie Dinkins, Kevin Peter He, and Dr. Rashaad Newsome, each bringing unique expertise in performance, technology, and immersive experiences.

The Apple Watch can be a valuable tool for boosting productivity, especially for those easily distracted by their phones. Several third-party apps offer additional functionality beyond the built-in apps.

• Todoist: Manage tasks, organize projects, set reminders, and track progress directly from your wrist. Free with a $4/month subscription for additional features.
• Drafts: A digital notepad for capturing notes via voice command, Scribble, or keyboard. Free with a $1.99/month subscription for extra features.
• Focus: A productivity timer that breaks down work time into smaller chunks, minimizing distractions. Available for $7.99 per month.
• AutoSleep: Track sleep quality, heart rate, and consistency with detailed insights. One-time fee of $5.99.
• Streaks: Form good habits and track progress by extending streaks for completed tasks. One-time fee of $5.99.
• Fantastical: A calendar app with multiple views for managing events and reminders. Costs $4.99 per month.
• Things 3: A productivity manager for creating to-do lists, managing projects, and tracking progress. One-time payment of $9.99.

These apps can help you stay organized, focused, and productive throughout the day using your Apple Watch.

Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth explained the reasons behind the failed smart glasses demos at Meta Connect. The initial issue with the chef's glasses was due to the Live AI feature triggering on all Ray-Ban Meta glasses in the building, causing a resource overload. This was compounded by routing Live AI traffic to the development server, effectively creating a DDoS attack on their own system. The WhatsApp call failure was attributed to a new "race condition" bug where the display sleeping prevented the answer notification from appearing. Bosworth clarified these were demo failures, not product failures, expressing confidence in the product's functionality.

Apple's Foundation Models framework, introduced at WWDC 2025, allows developers to integrate local AI models into their apps without inference costs. With the rollout of iOS 26, several apps have been updated to include features powered by these AI models.

Apps Utilizing Apple's AI Framework:

• Lil Artist: AI story creator that generates stories based on character and theme selections.
• Daylish: Suggests emojis for timeline events in the daily planner app.
• MoneyCoach: Provides spending insights and suggests categories for spending items.
• LookUp: Creates examples corresponding to a word and generates a map view of a word’s origin.
• Tasks: Suggests tags for entries, detects recurring tasks, and breaks down spoken input into tasks.
• Day One: Generates highlights, suggests titles, and creates prompts for deeper writing in the journaling app.
• Crouton: Suggests tags for recipes and assigns names to timers in the recipe app.
• Signeasy: Extracts key insights from contracts and provides a summary of the document.

These local-only features enhance user experience without requiring major workflow changes.

Meta Connect 2025 showcased Meta's advancements in AI wearables, highlighted by the unveiling of three new smart glasses: the second-generation Ray-Ban Meta, the Meta Ray-Ban Display with a wristband controller, and the Oakley Meta Vanguard designed for athletes.

The Ray-Ban Meta Gen 2 boasts improved battery life and enhanced video recording capabilities. The Meta Ray-Ban Display introduces a built-in display and the Meta Neural Band, enabling gesture-based text input. The Oakley Meta Vanguard caters to athletes with features like open-air speakers and integration with fitness apps.

Despite a demo hiccup with the Ray-Ban Meta's AI capabilities, Meta is positioning itself as a leader in the AI wearables space. While the focus was on smart glasses, updates to VR technology, like Hyperscape, were also announced. Meta is reportedly developing a new VR headset for release in 2026.