News
Bio-tech firm develops 3D printed replacement cornea for human eyes
After successfully transplanting the first 3D-printed cornea in an animal, North Carolina company Precise Bio has recently announced the launch of a dedicated business for creating marketable, 3D-printed products for human eyes. Founded by scientists from the Wake Forest Institute of Regenerative Medicine, this company is developing bio-fabrication printers that can restore cells, tissues, and organs. Their proprietary technology, a 4D bio-printing platform, is said to resolve existing limitations presented by other bioprinters to enable more complex tissues to be engineered for transplants and treatments. By focusing on developing marketable products for the eye, the company aims to achieve rapid advancement in its field and move to overhaul the whole organ transplant system.
A cornea transplant with sutures still visible. | Credit: National Institutes for Health, National Eye Institute
When a cornea is damaged by disease or injury, a replacement is often needed to restore vision. Transplant surgery using donated corneas is an available solution, however, it relies on a deceased donor. While the waiting list in the United States is nearly non-existent, other countries require longer wait times, some over a year, before one is available. The Eye Bank Association of America estimates that around 10 million people suffer from corneal blindness that could potentially be restored via transplant surgery. An artificially manufactured cornea would overcome supply limitations while also contributing to the knowledge base to develop more complex organs such as hearts and livers.
The cornea is the transparent layer covering the front part of the eye that, along with the lens, accounts for about two-thirds of the eye’s optical power. It does not contain blood vessels, making it a prime candidate for bioprinting, the field of 3D printing involving biological materials. Bioprinters differ from traditional 3D printers in ways that might not be surprising given their name. Instead of heated filament applied in layers on a plate to build an object, layers of cells and biocompatible materials are printed to form tissue. Along with a lack of blood vessels, the layered structure of the cornea also makes it well suited for bioprinting.
Precise Bio refers to its printing technique used for the corneas and other biomaterials as “4D” over the usual “3D” label due to the curing stage for the printed cells. The fourth dimension referred to is time needed, 10-14 days specifically, for the bio-printed cells and fibers to connect themselves together for biological operation in a bioreactor that keeps them warm for the duration. Aryeh Batt, Precise Bio’s CEO, summarized this step in an interview with IEEE Spectrum: “Essentially, the biology does the work, but you have to put them in the correct environment to make it happen.”
Initial animal safety studies for the corneal transplant have already been completed, and now the company must clear some additional hurdles to begin human testing. One of the major proofs for Precise Bio will be the demonstration of normal behavior of the bio-printed products. For example, during production using the 3D/4D printer, the printed cells grow rapidly into the form needed in a way that does not occur in a normal eye. The company will have to demonstrate in clinical studies how this process is controlled and stopped before transplant.
The field of 3D bioprinting is a research area receiving a significant amount of attention due to its potential for developments in tissue engineering, drug delivery, and cancer studies. In fact, hundreds of scientific articles were published on the topic this year alone. As with most new technology, however, the challenge of moving a development out of the laboratory and into the consumer marketplace is significant, but Precise Bio hopes to meet it head on with its new dedicated business.
For more on bioprinting, watch the below Tedx Talk by Dr. Sam Wadsworth of Aspect biosystems Ltd.
Elon Musk
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Elon Musk told investors Semi self-driving should start working by early 2027, per today’s earnings.
During Wednesday’s’ Tesla Q2 earnings call, an analyst asked Elon Musk when Tesla would look at autonomy for the Semi. His answer set a real timeline for the first time, noting that self-driving on the Tesla Semi is expected to start working “around the end of this year or early next year”.
Musk framed the delay as a matter of priority, not capability. Tesla’s self-driving team is currently focused on Model 3, Model Y, and Cybercab, the vehicles that make up the overwhelming majority of Tesla’s fleet. Since Semi trucks on the road remain a small fraction of that total even after the recent Nevada factory ramp, Musk said it made more sense to keep the software team’s attention on what he called “the march of nines of safety” for the higher volume vehicles first. Autonomous Semi development is “taking a bit of a backseat for the next six months or so,” he said, before adding that it “will definitely be working next year and in time for the scale-up to high production of the Tesla Semi.”
Tesla Semi’s official battery capacity leaked by California regulators
The timeline lines up with what’s already been showing up on public roads. In June, a Tesla Semi was spotted in Sunnyvale wearing a full validation rig, the same rooftop sensor array Tesla mounts on vehicles ahead of an FSD milestone.
A second unit was seen near Fremont days later with a matching camera suite and lens washers. Separately, Tesla analyst Nic Cruz Patane posted video this month of the production Semi’s exterior camera array, ten AI4 based units built directly into the truck rather than added later.
Tesla Semi AI4 cameras. The production version has 10 cameras on its exterior.
These trucks are designed to be autonomous. pic.twitter.com/GH3BamxIBQ
— Nic Cruz Patane (@niccruzpatane) April 14, 2026
Musk also gave the reason autonomy on the Semi matters in the first place, a persistent shortage of qualified truck drivers. “There is a really serious shortage of truckers,” he said on the call, framing a self-driving Semi as important both for addressing that shortage and for improving safety and comfort for the drivers running the truck today.
The timing also tracks with the Semi’s production reality. Tesla’s Q2 shareholder letter, dropped language promising the Semi would reach volume production this year. Musk pointed to 4680 battery cell output as the near-term constraint on Semi and Cybercab production. A software timeline landing in early 2027 gives Tesla’s autonomy team room to work while the hardware ramp catches up behind it.
It’s worth nothing that this isn’t necessarily a promise the Semi ships driverless next year. Musk’s own language, self-driving “working” by early 2027, describes internal validation catching up to hardware already riding on every production truck, not a public unsupervised rollout.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) reported its earnings for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday afternoon. Here’s what the company reported compared to what Wall Street analysts expected.
The earnings results come after Tesla reported a massive beat on vehicle deliveries for the second quarter, delivering 489,126 vehicles and building 451,758 cars during the three-month span.
This was a major shock for those on Wall Street as they anticipated somewhere around 400,000 deliveries for the quarter, and showed Tesla still has plenty of demand for its vehicles around the world and in the U.S. despite losing the $7,500 EV Tax Credit last year.
Tesla Q2 2026 Earnings Results
- Non-GAAP EPS – $0.33 reported vs. $0.53 expected
- Revenues – $28.236 billion reported vs. $26.4 billion expected
- Free Cash Flow- -$1.092B
- Profit -$ 4.751B
Tesla (beat/missed) analyst expectations, so the market response to the company’s quarter is what we will look for next.
Tesla shares closed today down just over 1 percent, trading at $374.01.
In the past, it has been anyone’s guess with what Tesla shares will do after they report earnings. Strong quarters have resulted in sharp drops, while lackluster quarters have seen the stock shoot up considerably.
Tesla will hold its Q2 2026 Earnings Call in about 90 minutes at 5:30 p.m. on the East Coast. Remarks will be made by CEO Elon Musk and other executives, who will shed some light on the investor questions that we covered earlier this week.
You can stream it below. Additionally, we will be doing our Live Blog on X and Facebook.
Q2 2026 Earnings Call https://t.co/zZS6ii2TWK
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
Tesla is about to make parking in busy parking lots at businesses and other points of interest less stressful than ever by allowing drivers more control over where they park and how, CEO Elon Musk confirmed on X.
Tesla has been working to improve the parking performance of vehicles utilizing the Full Self-Driving suite, but now it is looking to add more customization, allowing drivers to choose the specific space they park in, but also potentially the orientation the car pulls into the spot:
It’s coming soon
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 21, 2026
Musk has reiterated on X twice over the past several weeks that Tesla is working to make things with the FSD suite based more on the driver’s specific preferences and behaviors that were seen in past drives.
Essentially, it sounds like if you tend to park away from a business to avoid other vehicles, Tesla FSD will soon recognize that preference of yours and start parking further away as well. Additionally, the prospect of assigned parking spaces has been something many owners have voiced concerns about.
Living in a community with assigned parking spaces makes using FSD incredibly difficult as it will rarely park in the correct spot when there are so many to choose from. This is also pertinent in work settings where there are sometimes assigned parking spaces.
The updates to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite in terms of listening to driver preferences with parking are also extending to routing. Tesla announced yesterday that with the release of its 2026 Summer Update, it was adding Automatic Navigation and Preferred Routes:
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
Tesla has always maintained the idea that any human input is bad input, and that, ideally, Tesla Full Self-Driving will always make the right decision. Of course, this is all in theory, but the issue is that so many of Tesla’s interventions have come because it does something that is not necessarily wrong, but perhaps not what the driver would prefer.
Taking these preferences into account will help Tesla alleviate some of the potentially unnecessary interventions that drivers perform.
Tesla Semi finally has an FSD timeline and it’s waiting on the Cybercab
Tesla (TSLA) Q2 2026 earnings results: miss on EPS, beat on revenue
