📌 TOPINDIATOURS Breaking ai: World’s first five-ton eVTOL flies full transition wi

AutoFlight has unveiled Matrix, a five-ton electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, and completed a public full-transition flight at its low-altitude test center.

The demonstration marked the first time an eVTOL in the five-ton class has flown from vertical takeoff to forward cruise and back to vertical landing in a single sequence.

The company says the flight validates its work on aerodynamics, high-power electric propulsion, and flight control software.

The aircraft transitioned cleanly between modes, a step developers see as critical for scaling eVTOLs beyond short hops.

Matrix targets heavier payloads and longer routes than most current designs.

Full-transition flight milestone

During the demonstration, Matrix lifted vertically, accelerated into wing-borne cruise, and then returned to a controlled vertical landing.

The company described the sequence as a full-mode transition flight. Engineers tracked stability and control across each phase.

Matrix measures 20 meters in wingspan, 17.1 meters in length, and 3.3 meters in height.

It flies with a maximum takeoff mass of 5,700 kg (12,566 lb). Developers designed the platform to support both passenger and cargo missions.

The passenger version supports flexible layouts. Operators can configure ten business-class seats or six VIP seats. The cargo variant targets heavier logistics.

It uses a hybrid power system and supports a maximum payload of 1,500 kg (3,307 lb).

A large forward-opening door fits two standard AKE air freight containers, a feature aimed at improving turnaround times for one-tonne-scale freight operations.

Design, safety, and range

Matrix uses a lift-and-cruise compound wing design with a triplane layout and a six-arm structure.

The configuration aims to maintain aerodynamic stability across hover, transition, and cruise.

The company says the architecture supports predictable handling during complex flight phases.

The pure electric version delivers a maximum range of 250 km (155 miles). A hybrid-electric variant extends range to 1,500 km (932 miles).

These figures position the platform for regional travel, heavy logistics, and emergency response missions that exceed typical urban air taxi distances.

Engineers built the platform to scale across mission profiles. The company emphasizes reliability, redundancy, and certification readiness as development priorities.

Matrix continues the company’s broader product roadmap. Earlier platforms include Great White Shark for industrial roles, CarryAll for autonomous logistics, and Prosperity for urban air mobility.

The Matrix program draws on experience in low-altitude operations, safety systems, and airworthiness certification.

AutoFlight CEO and founder Tian Yu framed the aircraft as a shift in market expectations.

“Matrix is not only a rising star in the aviation industry, but also an ambitious disruptor. It will eliminate the industry perception that eVTOL = short-haul, low payload, and reshape the rules of eVTOL routes.”

He added context on costs and scale, saying the aircraft reduces transportation costs per seat-kilometer and per ton-kilometer through economies of scale.

“It covers all scenarios, from urban travel to intercity connections, and fosters the expansion of the entire low-altitude ecosystem.”

The company plans to advance testing as it moves toward commercial readiness, targeting missions where payload and range matter as much as vertical access.

🔗 Sumber: interestingengineering.com

📌 TOPINDIATOURS Update ai: Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battle

Salesforce on Tuesday launched an entirely rebuilt version of Slackbot, the company's workplace assistant, transforming it from a simple notification tool into what executives describe as a fully powered AI agent capable of searching enterprise data, drafting documents, and taking action on behalf of employees.

The new Slackbot, now generally available to Business+ and Enterprise+ customers, is Salesforce's most aggressive move yet to position Slack at the center of the emerging "agentic AI" movement — where software agents work alongside humans to complete complex tasks. The launch comes as Salesforce attempts to convince investors that artificial intelligence will bolster its products rather than render them obsolete.

"Slackbot isn't just another copilot or AI assistant," said Parker Harris, Salesforce co-founder and Slack's chief technology officer, in an exclusive interview with Salesforce. "It's the front door to the agentic enterprise, powered by Salesforce."

From tricycle to Porsche: Salesforce rebuilt Slackbot from the ground up

Harris was blunt about what distinguishes the new Slackbot from its predecessor: "The old Slackbot was, you know, a little tricycle, and the new Slackbot is like, you know, a Porsche."

The original Slackbot, which has existed since Slack's early days, performed basic algorithmic tasks — reminding users to add colleagues to documents, suggesting channel archives, and delivering simple notifications. The new version runs on an entirely different architecture built around a large language model and sophisticated search capabilities that can access Salesforce records, Google Drive files, calendar data, and years of Slack conversations.

"It's two different things," Harris explained. "The old Slackbot was algorithmic and fairly simple. The new Slackbot is brand new — it's based around an LLM and a very robust search engine, and connections to third-party search engines, third-party enterprise data."

Salesforce chose to retain the Slackbot brand despite the fundamental technical overhaul. "People know what Slackbot is, and so we wanted to carry that forward," Harris said.

Why Anthropic's Claude powers the new Slackbot — and which AI models could come next

The new Slackbot runs on Claude, Anthropic's large language model, a choice driven partly by compliance requirements. Slack's commercial service operates under FedRAMP Moderate certification to serve U.S. federal government customers, and Harris said Anthropic was "the only provider that could give us a compliant LLM" when Slack began building the new system.

But that exclusivity won't last. "We are, this year, going to support additional providers," Harris said. "We have a great relationship with Google. Gemini is incredible — performance is great, cost is great. So we're going to use Gemini for some things." He added that OpenAI remains a possibility as well.

Harris echoed Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff's view that large language models are becoming commoditized: "You've heard Marc talk about LLMs are commodities, that they're democratized. I call them CPUs."

On the sensitive question of training data, Harris was unequivocal: Salesforce does not train any models on customer data. "Models don't have any sort of security," he explained. "If we trained it on some confidential conversation that you and I have, I don't want Carolyn to know — if I train it into the LLM, there is no way for me to say you get to see the answer, but Carolyn doesn't."

Inside Salesforce's internal experiment: 80,000 employees tested Slackbot with striking results

Salesforce has been testing the new Slackbot internally for months, rolling it out to all 80,000 employees. According to Ryan Gavin, Slack's chief marketing officer, the results have been striking: "It's the fastest adopted product in Salesforce history."

Internal data shows that two-thirds of Salesforce employees have tried the new Slackbot, with 80% of those users continuing to use it regularly. Internal satisfaction rates reached 96% — the highest for any AI feature Slack has shipped. Employees report saving between two and 20 hours per week.

The adoption happened largely organically. "I think it was about five days, and a Canvas was developed by our employees called 'The Most Stealable Slackbot Prompts,'" Gavin said. "People just started adding to it organically. I think it's up to 250-plus prompts that are in this Canvas right now."

Kate Crotty, a principal UX researcher at Salesforce, found that 73% of internal adoption was driven by social sharing rather than top-down mandates. "Everybody is there to help each other learn and communicate hacks," she said.

How Slackbot transforms scattered enterprise data into executive-ready insights

During a product demonstration, Amy Bauer, Slack's product experience designer, showed how Slackbot can synthesize information across multiple sources. In one example, she asked Slackbot to analyze customer feedback from a pilot program, upload an image of a usage dashboard, and have Slackbot correlate the qualitative and quantitative data.

"This is where Slackbot really earns its keep for me," Bauer explained. "What it's doing is not just simply reading the image — it's actually looking at the image and comparing it to the insight it just generated for me."

Slackbot can then query Salesforce to find enterprise accounts with open deals that might be good candidates for early access, creating what Bauer called "a really great justification and plan to move forward." Finally, it can synthesize all that information into a Canvas — Slack's collaborative document format — and find calendar availability among stakeholders to schedule a review meeting.

"Up until this point, we have been working in a one-to-one capacity with Slackbot," Bauer said. "But one of the benefits that I can do now is take this insight and have it generate this into a Canvas, a shared workspace where I can iterate on it, refine it with Slackbot, or share it out with my team."

Rob Seaman, Slack's chief product officer, said the Canvas creation demonstrates where the product is heading: "This is making a tool call internally to Slack Canvas to actually write, effectively, a shared document. But it signals where we're going with Slackbot — we're eventually going to be adding in additional third-party tool calls."

MrBeast's company became a Slackbot guinea pig—and employees say they're saving 90 minutes a day

Among Salesforce's pilot customers is Beast Industries, the parent company of YouTube star MrBeast. Luis Madrigal, the company's chief information officer, joined the launch announcement to describe his experience.

"As somebody who has rolled out enterprise technologies for over two decades now, this was practically one of the easiest," Madrigal …

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🔗 Sumber: venturebeat.com