The market for investing in mature startups has been in the dumps for the last year, as higher interest rates curb these startups’ growth. But plans by one of Silicon Valley’s oldest growth-stage VC firms to raise a new fund suggest such investors are ready to get back to work.IVP, a 43-year-old venture capital firm that’s backed Coinbase and Twitter and usually focuses on Series B deals or later, plans... Read more ›
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I’m Kalley, a reporter covering Meta Platforms and social media. I’m now regularly contributing to AI Agenda.Google this morning launched Gemini Ultra, the long-awaited flagship version of its most advanced large language model. It also renamed its ChatGPT rival to Gemini from Bard, which seemed like a logical move. These announcements had already leaked over the weekend in an accidental post by Google, but how Google is rolling out Ultra... Read more ›
0
For Flexport, a logistics company billing itself as the future of trade, it’s hard to think of a more impressive client than Apple, the poster child of globalization. Since late 2022, the iPhone maker has been using Flexport’s air freight services to fly products from some of its factories in Asia to U.S. cities for distribution to customers, according to two people familiar with Flexport’s business. While that previously unreported... Read more ›
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Shaking up its troubled battery development unit, General Motors has hired Kurt Kelty, a senior executive with silicon anode developer Sila Nanotechnologies, for a newly created position as vice president of batteries. Read more ›
0
Taylor Swift! Fortnite! Disney CEO Bob Iger dropped the names of both entertainment icons as he ramped up his campaign to defeat the two activist shareholders—Nelson Peltz and Blackwells Capital—trying to win seats on Disney’s board. Using the power of incumbency, Iger on Wednesday unveiled a deluge of glitzy new entertainment ventures alongside improved earnings for the December quarter, a 50% increase in the quarterly dividend and the first stock... Read more ›
0
When you’re not scanning Sunday’s Super Bowl broadcast for a Taylor Swift sighting, look out for some high profile creators like MrBeast, Mark Rober and Deestroying. The National Football League, as part of a strategy to turn more Gen Z viewers into football fans, is working with a record number of creators around the big game this year—in the dozens—in large part due to its partnership with YouTube for its... Read more ›
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OpenAI’s first major product, ChatGPT, proved so popular that it sparked a generation of wannabes. But as rivals like Google catch up, OpenAI is hustling to release a product that could prove almost as revolutionary. OpenAI is developing a form of agent software to automate complex tasks by effectively taking over a customer’s device. The customer could then ask the ChatGPT agent to transfer data from a document to a... Read more ›
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Sex sells, and sex created by artificial intelligence is no exception.While many generative AI startups have struggled to manage the exploding costs of AI and retain their customers, AI-powered romantic chatbots haven’t had much trouble attracting and keeping their users. Since OpenAI released ChatGPT in late 2022, a thriving ecosystem has emerged, ranging from relatively tame AI “companions” to pornographic chatbots accompanied with explicit pictures. Many of these companies have... Read more ›
0
Amazon’s executives pride themselves on their obsession with customers rather than competitors. A year ago, though, the head of Amazon’s e-commerce business, Doug Herrington, had one Amazon competitor very much on his mind. Herrington sent his subordinates a news article about Temu, at the time a little-known subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce powerhouse PDD Holdings that was preparing a splashy statement in the U.S. with its first Super Bowl commercial. Herrington... Read more ›
0
Apple is building prototypes of at least two iPhones that fold widthwise like a clamshell, according to a person with direct knowledge of the situation. If Apple ends up launching a foldable iPhone, it would be one of the biggest hardware design changes in the product’s history. Foldable phones can be smaller and more portable than typical smartphones and take photos without the help of a stand when they are... Read more ›
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Whoa! We got very big news in the television world late Tuesday, as Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox announced they were joining forces to create a new streaming joint venture for sports. By including access to programming on traditional cable channels such as Disney’s ESPN, Fox’s sports channels and Warner’s TNT and TBS, the new service will offer pretty much every major sport—including the NFL, NBA, MLB, hockey, college... Read more ›
0
Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, is having a rough week. Snap’s stock plunged 30% in after-hours trading on Tuesday, after the company reported revenue that fell within its own guidance but below stock pickers’ expectations. That followed Snap’s decision to lay off 10% of staff, a move that targeted senior (and thus expensive) employees as the company sought to cut costs, I reported yesterday.  What’s going on? It’s likely... Read more ›
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Amazon is working on several new safety features for Amazon Flex gig drivers who make deliveries in their own vehicles, the company said. The measures follow several incidents in which residents had shot Flex drivers or threatened them with guns, in many instances saying they had mistaken them for intruders. Amazon is working on a feature in its app that would display Flex drivers’ pictures and names to customers, spokesperson... Read more ›
3
Steven Kaye, chief scientific officer of embattled next-generation battery developer Our Next Energy, has resigned. The move is the latest blow to the Novi, Mich., startup, coming two months after company founder Mujeeb Ijaz stepped down as CEO and became chief technology officer. Kaye’s departure was announced at a company meeting Monday, a spokesman said. Read more ›
0
Put aside all of the scary talk about bad people theoretically using large language models to build bombs or bioweapons for a moment. A more urgent threat, says investor Rama Sekhar, are AI models that could leak sensitive corporate data or hackers that trigger ChatGPT service outages. Sekhar is a longtime cybersecurity investor who joined Menlo Ventures as a partner last month after many years at Norwest Venture Partners.He isn’t... Read more ›
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For the past year, owning a stake in OpenAI was akin to possessing Silicon Valley gold, signaling that the investor had a ticket to the next great tech transformation. But as the valuation of the startup has tripled, some investors have refrained from buying more. And a number of marquee venture capital firms have shied from investing in dozens of artificial intelligence startups out of fears that the sector is... Read more ›
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Hold the front page! A tech company is acknowledging that stock compensation is a real expense. On Monday, Snap said it was cutting 10% of its global workforce. As it was the latest in a very long list of tech companies to undertake layoffs in recent weeks, the news might not seem like a big deal. Like other companies, Snap said the layoffs were designed to ensure it has the... Read more ›
0
Shein lawyers have plenty of work on their plate right now, as the China-founded fast-fashion firm fends off a raft of trademark infringement lawsuits and gears up for a potential U.S. initial public offering. But Shein’s internal legal ranks are going through a change in leadership, with Shein’s top U.S. lawyer, Valerie Ho, departing the company, according to a person briefed on the matter, who wasn’t authorized to speak on... Read more ›
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Stripe returned to profitability last year in part by squeezing spending on sales and marketing. The executive in charge of growing sales to large customers isn’t sticking around to see how the slimmed-down strategy plays out. Mike Clayville, a former Amazon Web Services executive who became a marquee Stripe hire three and a half years ago reporting to founders Patrick and John Collison, left the payments giant last month, The... Read more ›
0
Snap cut several senior executives in its layoffs announced on Monday, aiming in part to reduce the amount of stock based compensation it pays out to senior people, CEO Evan Spiegel told staff on Monday. The company said it would cut its workforce by 10%, or around 550 employees. Included in the cuts were Sam Corrao Clanon, director of content; Ding Zhou, vice president of content engineering; and Konstantinos Papamiltiadis,... Read more ›
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Most popular sources
Business Insider
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23% 1 |
Tech Wire Asia
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22% 16 |
CNET
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8% 5 |
The Verge
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5% 4 |
Gizmodo
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5% 3 |
| View sources » | |
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28.11.2024 07:39
Last update: 07:31 EDT.
News rating updated: 14:32.
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