1. Amazon Is Upgrading To Alexa+ With Generative AI
Last week, Amazon announced1 Alexa+, an AI-powered smart assistant integrated with Anthropic’s Claude AI2 and its own proprietary AI models. The upgrade enhances Alexa’s ability to converse in more intuitive and personalized ways.
By integrating agentic AI capabilities, Alexa+ can complete3 tasks—such as scheduling home repairs or booking reservations—autonomously, with little human intervention. Alexa+ also improves smart home controls and shopping assistance, both free for Amazon Prime members or available otherwise for $19.99 per month. In the US, the service will debut on newer Echo Show devices.
With more than 600 million Echo devices sold and an estimated 70% share of US smart speaker sales,4 the Alexa+ upgrade reinforces Amazon’s dominance and signals a push toward more AI-driven personal assistance in everyday life.
2. Roche’s Nanopore Sequencing With SBX Could Be A Game-Changer For Genomics
Last week, Roche introduced5 Sequencing by Expansion (SBX), a novel single-molecule sequencing technology that re-engineers nanopore sequencing to overcome fundamental limitations in signal resolution. Traditional nanopore sequencing struggles with closely spaced nucleotides that produce overlapping signals and limit accuracy. SBX solves the problem by converting DNA into an Xpandomer, a massively elongated synthetic polymer, before sequencing.
In the synthesis phase, Roche uses a highly engineered Xp synthase to incorporate sequentially the expandable nucleoside triphosphates (XNTPs), encoding base identity while adding structural enhancers. That process transforms the compact DNA into an Xpandomer which is 50x longer and then linearized for sequencing. In the sequencing phase, the Xpandomer translocates through a nanopore in controlled steps: translocation control elements anchor the molecule to measure currents precisely and identify bases.
The impact of SBX could be profound. Unlike Illumina’s short-read sequencing, SBX is single-molecule and high-throughput. Importantly, SBX does not require expensive optics, drastically lowering sequencing costs. Roche’s model also challenges Illumina’s razor-and-blade strategy, which could shift the market toward high-volume adoption. Roche seems highly confident about a future in which sequencing is not just faster and cheaper, but also more scalable, which should accelerate applications in clinical genomics, diagnostics, and beyond.
3. The Largest Crypto Hack In History Is A Wakeup Call To The Digital Asset Industry
Around 10:30am on February 21, Bybit Co-Founder Ben Zhou announced on X that, during a routine internal transfer among internal addresses, ~$1.5 billion in ETH tokens6 were hacked from one of the exchange’s cold wallets. On-chain forensic analysis quickly determined that Lazarus group, the North Korean, state-sponsored hacking and criminal organization, perpetrated the attack.
Ben Zhou assured users immediately that Bybit’s balance sheet could and would cover all losses. Even so, based on a foreboding sense of déjà vu, many users withdrew their funds from the platform: Bybit processed more than 300,000 user withdrawal orders7 in the first 48 hours. With the support of bridge loans from Mirana Ventures and other industry exchanges, Bybit honored every withdrawal request, reinforcing confidence in its solvency.
The crypto industry has rallied around Bybit, as stablecoin issuers, on/off-ramps, exchanges, brokers, bridges, and applications have blacklisted, frozen, or blocked funds linked to the hack. Many decentralized protocols have rushed to their DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organizations), proposing and passing new governance to enable the new security measures.
A week after the hack, the stolen funds now are scattered across hundreds of wallets, with more than $600 million bridged to the Bitcoin network,8 as shown below.
Source: Zhou 2025.9 For informational purposes only and should not be considered investment advice or a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold any particular security or cryptocurrency.
Bybit has announced the largest bounty in history, a 10% reward10 for the return of stolen funds, though a significant portion of the funds probably will be dormant for months or years. No one knows what percent of the stolen assets will be recovered, but everyone knows that the digital asset industry is a prime target for the Lazarus Group and North Korea’s nuclear program. We hope the incident provides both centralized and decentralized exchanges with valuable insights that will help them enhance security and operational resilience and defend against such highly sophisticated attacks.