Tech
Synex founder, once detained at the border with a 80-pound magnet, is building portable MRIs to test glucose
Back in 2019, Synex Medical founder Ben Nashman spent the night detained by US customs. Nashman tried to explain he was simply transporting materials from Buffalo to Toronto for his homemade MRI. Customs, however, took issue with the label on the package: “nuclear magnetic resonance.”
Nashman spent hours in a bright waiting room before he finally convinced them that he was really just a run-of-the-mill 18-year-old scientist with an obsession with MRI technology. They let him take his roughly 80-pound magnet and he zoomed back to Toronto. “I got back at like 3 or 4 am and got a few hours of sleep before classes,” he said.
Nashman, now 24, might have landed himself on a list of suspicious individuals, but he insists it was worth it: that one very long night was part of his years-long journey to build a portable MRI capable of testing glucose and other important molecules without the need to extract blood. Today, the company is one step closer to that goal, announcing a $21.8 million Series A fundraise, with investors like Accomplice, Radical Ventures, Fundomo and Khosla Ventures. It brings the company’s total haul up to over $36 million, with includes seed funding from Sam Altman.
Right now, Synex’s prototype is the size of a toaster, although Nashman hopes to one day have it fit in your palm. It works by first using MRI to create a 3D image of the finger to find the best spot to test. It then uses something called magnetic resonance spectroscopy to send radio pulses that “excite the different molecules,” Nashman said. The machine then takes the signals from all the molecules and filters for a specific one. Synex will start with glucose testing, but will eventually track things like amino acids, lactate and ketones.
The company introduced me to Diane Morency, a woman based in Massachusetts who has suffered from Type 2 diabetes for years. “I’ve got holes in my fingers,” she told me, adding she can no longer play her ukulele because of the pain. “It would be a godsend to not have to prick my [fingers] anymore.”
But there’s a reason non-invasive glucose testing hasn’t been commercialized: it’s difficult to track glucose accurately without drawing blood, and it’s even harder to make the device portable or affordable. “We believed that was going to be an absolute moonshot,” said Jun Jeon, an investor at Khosla Ventures focusing on healthcare.
Jeon has yet to try Nashman’s prototype but said that, if Nashman can deliver on his promises, then “this was a bet worth taking.”
An obsession with longevity
Nashman was always curious about living forever.
When he was about 16, he walked into his vet’s office armed with printed-out scientific studies. He had determined that his dog should be put on the immunosuppressive drug rapamycin, a drug controversially heralded by longevity enthusiasts. The vet had no idea what Nashman was talking about. “He was just like, ‘this is just way too experimental for me,’” Nashman recalled.
The vet’s refusal didn’t deter him. “Later, I got my parents on it and I got on it,” he laughed. “Honestly, I think everything should be on it.”
It was the first of several longevity self-experiments. Nashman briefly took diabetes drug arcarbos, forked over thousands for a Prenuvo full body scan, and, like so many in Silicon Valley before him, got his hands on a continuous glucose monitor. His health obsession coincided with a fascination with physics — particularly the “elegant” science behind MRIs, and how much they could reveal about the human body.
By 17, he had ordered materials online to make a makeshift MRI in his bedroom (it was “really crap,” he said). By 18, he had held an internship working on brain imaging at the Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto and enrolled at the University of Toronto for engineering science. “I think I have the record for most MRIs ever, probably,” he said. “I’ve probably scanned my finger honestly 1000s of times at this point.”
He realized that MRI technology could be the ultimate longevity hack, giving him more information about his body than an Oura Ring or Whoop ever could. He first sold his dreams to Altman, whom he met in 2019, and then Peter Thiel, landing the Thiel Fellowship in 2021.
Nashman may have Silicon Valley’s overlords on his side, but he’s still entering a very crowded space with well-capitalized competition. Startups like Know Labs and Berlin-based DiaMonTech are both making their own non-invasive products. Apple has reportedly been quietly working on a non-invasive glucose monitor, and Google too once tried to make its own glucose monitoring contact lens before pausing the project in 2018.
Synex Medical faces an uphill battle from here. The company will have to undergo rigorous clinical trials to prove to the FDA that its machine can accurately isolate glucose molecules. There’s also the lingering question of whether Nashman can really get technology to a portable size. If not, “It wouldn’t be too useful,” Morency said. “It would do us no good outside of the house.”
But let’s say Nashman nails all of that. Let’s say Synex soars through its FDA-approved trials and successfully shrinks its current metal toaster down to something that fits in your palm. It will still debut in a healthcare industry that has long struggled to make new technology affordable, according to Khosla investor Jeon. “There’s not a lot of good infrastructure and reimbursement that will allow for all patients to have access to the technology,” Jeon said.
For Nashman, the chance for a longer life is worth dedicating his own life to. “I want to know exactly what my body needs. I want to know what my parents need,” he said. “A technology like this is just needed to usher in that age of predictive medicine.”
Tech
Exclusive: Google deepens Thinking Machines Lab ties with new multi-billion-dollar deal
Former OpenAI executive Mira Murati’s startup, Thinking Machines Lab, has signed a new multi-billion-dollar agreement to expand its use of Google Cloud’s AI infrastructure, including systems powered by Nvidia’s latest GPUs, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.
The deal is valued in the single-digit billions, according to a source familiar with the matter, and includes access to Google’s latest AI systems built atop Nvidia’s new GB300 chips, alongside infrastructure services to support model training and deployment.
Google has been actively striking a number of cloud deals with AI developers as it aims to wrap together its AI computing offerings with other cloud services like storage, a Kubernetes engine, and Spanner, its database product. Earlier this month, Anthropic signed an agreement with Google and Broadcom for multiple gigawatts of tensor processing unit (TPUs) capacity (these are Google’s custom-designed AI chips for machine learning workloads).
But the competition is fierce. Just this week, Anthropic also signed a new agreement with Amazon to secure up to 5 gigawatts of capacity for training and deploying Claude.
Earlier this year, Thinking Machines partnered with Nvidia in a deal that included an investment from the chipmaker. But this is the first time the lab has struck a deal with a cloud services provider. The deal is not exclusive, so Thinking Machines may use multiple cloud providers over time, but it’s still a sign that Google is looking to lock in fast-growing frontier labs early.
Murati left her job as OpenAI’s chief technologist and founded Thinking Machines in February 2025. The company, which soon afterwards raised a $2 billion seed round at a $12 billion valuation, has remained highly secretive, but launched its first product in October. Dubbed Tinker, it’s a tool that automates the creation of custom frontier AI models.
Wednesday’s deal provided some insight into what Thinking Machines is developing. In a press release, Google noted that it can support the startup’s reinforcement learning workloads, which Tinker’s architecture relies on. Reinforcement learning is a training approach that has underpinned recent breakthroughs at labs, including DeepMind and OpenAI, and the scale of the Google Cloud deal reflects how computationally expensive that work can get.
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Thinking Machines is among the first Google Cloud customers to access its GB300-powered systems, which offer a 2X improvement in training and serving speed compared to prior-generation GPUs, per Google.
“Google Cloud got us running at record speed with the reliability we demand,” Myle Ott, a founding researcher at Thinking Machines, said in a statement.
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Tech
The most interesting startups showcased at Google Cloud Next 2026
Google Cloud Next is taking place this week in Las Vegas, and one clear message has emerged: Google wants AI startups on its cloud. To that end, it made several startup-related announcements.
The most significant is that the tech giant has earmarked a new $750 million budget to help its Cloud partners sell more AI agents to enterprises. This funding is available to partners ranging from startups to the big consulting firms. It can be used for costs like Gemini proof-of-concept projects, Google forward-deployed engineers, cloud credits, and deployment rebates.
Google also highlighted a long list of startups that are using Google Cloud, either newly signed or expanding their footprint. Among them are a few standout names:
Lovable is expanding its use of Google Cloud by launching a new coding agent through Google’s enterprise app marketplace. Lovable is the fast-growing vibe coding startup and was on a $400 million ARR track as of February, it said.
Notion, Silicon Valley’s favorite AI-infused document productivity app, most recently valued at about $11 billion, is using Gemini models to power its text and image generation features.
Gamma, an AI-powered PowerPoint killer recently valued at a $2.1 billion valuation, is using Google’s state-of-the-art image model Nano Banana 2 and other Google Cloud features.
Inferact, the commercial inference startup from the creators of the popular open-source project vLLM, is accessing Nvidia’s GPUs through Google Cloud, in addition to using the tech giant’s AI stack.
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ComfyUI, the popular open-source tool for creating AI-generated images and multimedia, also offers access to Nano Banana 2 and is using other Cloud features.
Other startups that received the Google Cloud shout-out this year include:
ChorusView, which makes AI-powered smart tags that track the condition and movement of goods in real time.
Emergent AI, a vibe coding platform.
ExaCare AI, which makes AI software for post-acute medical care facilities.
Insilica, which creates AI-generated regulatory-compliant chemical safety reports.
Optii, which makes AI-enhanced hotel operations software.
Parallel AI, which builds web search and research APIs built for AI agents.
Proximal Health, which makes AI-powered software that automates the insurance claims adjudication process.
Reducto, which does AI-powered document parsing.
Stord, which handles e-commerce fulfillment and parcel operations.
Stylitics, which makes AI image generation software for retailers for tasks like outfit styling and product bundles.
Temporal, a developer cloud environment built to prevent failures.
Vapi, which makes dev tools for building conversational voice agents.
Vurvey Labs, which conducts synthetic market research via AI agents.
Wand, an in-game assistant for single-player PC games.
Watershed, which makes software that helps enterprises report on and manage sustainability programs.
ZenBusiness, an all-in-one back-office tool for small businesses that includes an AI chat assistant.
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Tech
Duolingo is now giving free users access to advanced learning content
Duolingo announced on Wednesday that its advanced language learning content is now available for free across nine languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. Users can access this content through the web, iOS, and Android devices.
This advanced content is at the B2 level on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), which is the international standard for language skills that schools and employers recognize. B2 level content refers to learning materials without translations, complex scenarios, and specialized vocabulary.
The new offering will include features like “Advanced Stories,” which helps with reading comprehension, and DuoRadio, a podcast-like audio experience for listening comprehension.
Now that Duolingo users can tap into this advanced learning content for free, they can level up their skills, whether that’s practicing for job interviews, prepping for studying abroad, or tackling complex news articles, films, and books without relying on translations.
The company says this positions it as the only free app to offer advanced-level learning across these nine languages at no cost. While competitors like Babbel and Busuu offer advanced courses, they typically require paid subscriptions. For instance, Busuu has some CEFR-aligned courses up to the B2 level, but the free version is pretty limited and doesn’t offer lessons like grammar explanations, so users need to pay for full access.
Previously, Duolingo only provided free courses that capped at A2 or B1 levels, mainly focusing on basic communication skills.
The company is positioning this free advanced learning offering as an enticing opportunity for job seekers, framing language learning as a practical pathway to improving employability in an increasingly global workforce.
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This comes at a time when the job market remains highly competitive and overall growth has slowed. Research from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages shows that learning a second language can raise someone’s employability by as much as 50%.
“Reaching job-ready proficiency in a new language used to be out of reach for most people,” Bozena Pajak, head of learning science at Duolingo, said in a statement. “It took years of expensive classes or immersive experiences that not everyone could access.”
Duolingo’s decision to offer advanced learning for free is also a strategy to increase its free user base. In its Q4 earnings report, the company stated that it has 52.7 million daily active users, demonstrating 30% growth compared to the previous year. This number is higher than its paid subscriber base, which stands at 12.2 million. However, Duolingo’s shares fell after the company projected that the year-over-year bookings growth rate for Q2 2026 is expected to experience a slight decline.
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