Harvard's HBS Foundry Program Introduces AI Instructor Avatars

TechCrunch reports that Harvard Business School's HBS Foundry startup bootcamp — priced at $699 — now features AI avatars modeled after its instructors. According to the report, participants interact with these avatars during practice pitch sessions and simulated board meetings, with the avatars providing real-time feedback. The program represents an applied use case for AI-driven educational tools, combining structured entrepreneurship training with conversational AI to replicate mentorship interactions at scale.

Inherent Launches Faraday, an AI Agent for Scientific Research Replication

British AI lab Inherent, founded by alumni of Google DeepMind, has released an AI agent called Faraday, designed to replicate scientific research papers. TechCrunch reports that in internal evaluations, Faraday outperformed models from Anthropic and OpenAI on research replication benchmarks. According to Inherent, the ability to accurately reproduce the methodology and results of published scientific work could serve as a foundation for accelerating downstream innovation. The lab positioned Faraday as an AI "teammate" intended to assist researchers rather than operate independently. No pricing or availability details were disclosed at the time of the announcement.

Study Finds AI Labs Lack Publicly Documented Rogue Model Containment Plans

A newly published study cited by TechCrunch found that leading frontier AI laboratories have few, if any, publicly documented procedures for containing AI models that behave in unexpected or unintended ways. The report notes that as AI systems have grown more capable, documented operational protocols for handling model misbehavior have not kept pace. The study raises questions about organizational preparedness within the industry, particularly as AI deployments become more widespread across enterprise and research contexts. The labs referenced in the study were not individually named in the summary coverage.

These developments reflect continued momentum across AI in education, research tooling, and operational infrastructure. More details on each story are available via the linked TechCrunch coverage.