Andy Rubin, creator of Android and a former Google executive, has launched a new startup focused on humanoid robots, said a person with direct knowledge of the venture. His venture is the latest addition to the red-hot and frothy humanoid space, crowded with companies ranging from Tesla to startups such as Figure AI. Rubin’s startup, Genki Robotics, is based in Tokyo, where he is currently living, according to the person.... Read more ›
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Here’s a new one in the annals of shareholder politicking. Activist investor Nelson Peltz, whose campaign for seats on Disney’s board has drawn an aggressive response from the company lately, declared on Monday that he is a supporter of CEO Bob Iger. Yes, after he has for weeks been assailing Disney’s poor performance, Peltz put out a statement saying his beef isn’t with Iger but with the Disney board. Riiiiight,... Read more ›
0
When then-President Donald Trump tried to ban Chinese-owned app WeChat in 2020, hundreds of WeChat users banded together to sue. They argued that WeChat was a vital communications tool for many elderly Chinese Americans. The tactic worked and the court blocked the ban. Now TikTok, which is facing a potential ban in a bill now before the Senate, is hoping to repeat WeChat’s feat. Its prospects look good, say lawyers.... Read more ›
0
Many of the big investors weighing Reddit’s initial public offering weren’t convinced by the company’s pitch in the weeks leading up to the listing, fretting about the firm’s lack of profits or uncertainty around big licensing deals for its data. But the doubts dissipated for many by the time Reddit’s bankers closed the deal, which valued the company richly compared to some competitors. Reddit’s strong performance—as of Monday afternoon, its... Read more ›
0
As time goes on and some buyers of generative AI grow disillusioned with the meager returns they’ve seen, many are experimenting with new ways to eke better performance out of large language models without paying up for the latest, state-of-the-art LLM.One way to do this is through a technique called retrieval augmented generation, which aims to reduce the AI’s tendency to hallucinate or give incorrect answers by giving it access... Read more ›
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To better compete for artificial intelligence researchers, Meta Platforms is making unconventional moves, including extending job offers to candidates without interviewing them and relaxing a longstanding practice of not increasing compensation for employees threatening to leave. In a sign of how seriously the social media company is taking the competition for AI talent, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has personally written to researchers at Google’s DeepMind unit to recruit them, according to... Read more ›
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In March 2023, Musk and his 16 top executives on Tesla Investor Day. Photo: Via YouTubeFor months after Elon Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter, investors voiced increasing concerns about his capacity to juggle the leadership of both the social media platform and Tesla, the electric vehicle manufacturer where he is CEO. So in March 2023, Musk organized a live demonstration of why he could effectively run both companies: At Tesla’s... Read more ›
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HeyGen, a three-year-old startup that uses artificial intelligence to generate avatars and voices for videos, is raising $60 million at a pre-investment valuation of $440 million, six times higher than the startup’s valuation four months ago, according to a person with direct knowledge of the round. Benchmark, the early-stage venture capital firm that bet early on Snap and Uber, is leading the round, which has not yet closed, the person... Read more ›
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Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:Inside Jeff Bezos’ plan for Blue Origin to rocket past Elon Musk’s SpaceXThey counsel Zuckerberg and advise Sam Altman: our picks of the top lawyers for startupsPlus: “3 Body Problem”; a startup’s glowing Frankenplant; and an unshakable source of American anxietyOver the last few days, I’ve spent much of my time thinking about Jeff Bezos and his ambition to transform life on Earth by extending life... Read more ›
0
Anyone who was thinking of taking their company public this year must be feeling more upbeat today. Shares of Reddit, the newest social media firm to go public, finished the week up 35% from the company’s IPO price, having lost only a bit of Thursday’s opening-day pop on Friday. Meanwhile, shares of Astera Labs, an artificial intelligence data center that went public a day before Reddit, are now up 94%... Read more ›
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Nvidia isn’t the only beneficiary of the unprecedented boom in artificial intelligence chips. One of its key suppliers, memory chip maker Micron, is sold out for this year and into 2025. Yet a senior executive acknowledged that even Micron doesn’t know how long the frenzy will last, given the high costs businesses face in using the latest AI. “We’re all wondering, how much of this is going to be sustained?... Read more ›
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Find the right lawyer and they can fill many roles: advisor, defender—let’s be real—therapist. In recent decades, the white-shoe law firms that once mostly catered to—and chased—blue-chip industrial companies, conglomerates and banks have set up practices targeting startups, and as Silicon Valley has boomed, plenty of tech-focused specialist firms have popped up in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere. Many have long track records of representing companies from seed... Read more ›
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Cameo authorized a $28 million round of funding last week that will drastically reduce its valuation, the company told shareholders, reflecting a big slowdown in the celebrity video shoutout app’s business. The funding, led by existing investor Valor Equity Partners, would value the company at less than $100 million, measured after the investment, an investor said. That would represent at least a 90% drop from its previous value. Its $1... Read more ›
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There are weeks when it is really fun to be a reporter! And then even more fun to discuss what is happening with your friends! This was one of those. Lots of AI news, a Reddit IPO and more. I hope you enjoy! Apple Spotify YouTube Read more ›
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At some point during the second half of this year, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, will stuff his feet into a pair of cowboy boots and, if everything goes as planned, watch as a rocket made by his space startup, Blue Origin, blasts off from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The boots are a good luck charm that Bezos wears whenever Blue Origin launches a rocket. For the launch... Read more ›
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Yesterday, we published the results of our March subscriber survey, in which more than half of the 742 respondents said they had bought goods or services through social media. Another result that interested me: 53% of respondents said a creator had inspired them to buy something, regardless of whether they bought it on social media or not.Jasmine Enberg, a principal social media analyst at market researcher eMarketer, said creators may... Read more ›
0
Rippling, a human-resources software startup valued at more than $11 billion, was a relative latecomer to the business of helping companies hire staff overseas. Now its expansion into dozens of countries, including the U.K. and Ireland, is starting to pay off. The eight-year-old startup’s annual recurring revenue roughly doubled to more than $350 million by the end of 2023 compared with a year earlier, according to two people who spoke... Read more ›
0
The Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple completes the set of antitrust cases now outstanding against four big tech firms, also including Amazon, Meta Platforms and Alphabet (which faces two, one of which has gone through a trial and is awaiting a judgment). But the Apple case is symbolically important, given how respected and rich the company is. Perhaps that’s why DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter drew a parallel between... Read more ›
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It’s been a busy week. Reddit went public Thursday, marking a rare initial public offering after a two-year winter for new listings. Shares jumped 48% in its first day trading, earning the company a market cap of over $9 billion.That’s a promising sign for IPO-ready, aging unicorns, and good news for Reddit’s backers, especially Condé Nast parent company Advance Publications, Tencent and Sequoia Capital, Cory reports. But the more noteworthy... Read more ›
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TikTok has poured hundreds of millions of dollars to coax its U.S. users to shop on the app. But for The Information’s readers, Instagram is still the number one social media destination, according to a new survey of subscribers.About 35% of the 742 respondents said they have shopped using Instagram and 20% said they have shopped on Facebook Marketplace, where users can buy and sell goods similar to Craigslist. Less... Read more ›
0
Microsoft doesn’t want its plan to hire two of Inflection AI’s co-founders and most of its 70-person staff to be seen as an acquisition. But it’s still writing a hefty check to the two-year-old artificial intelligence startup. The software giant has agreed to pay Inflection approximately $650 million, mostly in the form of a licensing deal that makes Inflection’s models available for sale on the software giant’s Azure cloud service,... Read more ›
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Most popular sources
Business Insider
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32% 4 |
Android Authority
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13% 12 |
Gizmodo
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8% 6 |
The Verge
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8% 5 |
Tom's Hardware
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5% 12 |
| View sources » | |
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17.11.2025 09:37
Last update: 09:30 EDT.
News rating updated: 16:31.
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