The Download: weight-loss drugs slowing aging and carbon dioxide batteries

This is today's edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what's going on in the world of technology. Popular weight-loss drugs may do more than help people shed pounds. They might also slow the aging process.

Drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk say patients taking their GLP-1 drugs age less quickly, according to molecular “aging clocks” that track changes in DNA or levels of key proteins. The findings add to speculation that GLP-1 drugs could be acting on basic causes of aging and might be true longevity treatments. But how much can we read into these results?

Read the full story on what the new findings reveal about GLP-1 drugs and aging. Energy Dome is one of MIT Technology Review’s10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch 2026, available exclusively to subscribers. Solar and wind are among the cheapest and quickest ways to add electricity to the grid.

But they’re subject to variations in weather patterns, so supplies can be intermittent. Energy Dome has an unusual solution: massive batteries that use compressed carbon dioxide to store energy for when the grid needs it. Compressing gas to store energy isn’t new.

Utilities have used compressed air in underground caverns to hang on to reserves for decades. But Energy Dome’s approach doesn’t require any specific geology to work, so it could be more easily scaled to help grids around the world. Here’s how the company is using carbon dioxide to store renewable energy.

Subscribers can now access the full 10 Climate Tech Companies to Watch, spanning everything from mobile flood barriers and electric buses to next-generation nuclear reactors. —Thore Graepel, a core member of DeepMind’s AlphaGo team Ten years ago, I watched a program I helped build stun the world by beating Go champion Lee Sedol. AlphaGo won after making a move so strange that some commentators thought it was a programming glitch. It was AlphaGo’s powers of reasoning that made this creative choice—and these are powers that today’s AI lacks.