Hello!These are turbulent times for TikTok employees. On Tuesday, we reported that TikTok is planning significant layoffs—including a large percentage of the roughly 1,000 people working in TikTok’s global user operations, content and marketing teams. The planned cuts are likely to further sap employee morale, already frayed by the possibility of a U.S. ban and past restructurings. The company is also poised to make a fresh push into Europe, which... Read more ›
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Groq, an Nvidia rival that develops specialized server chips and software for artificial intelligence, has told investors it wants to raise about $300 million, according to two people who spoke to the company’s leaders. It has tapped Morgan Stanley to help with the fundraising, according to one of the people and a third person. The new round would roughly double its total funding, bringing it closer to startup rivals such... Read more ›
0
Inside Google a year ago, conventional wisdom held that artificial intelligence chatbots from OpenAI and Microsoft would shrink its lucrative search advertising business—and fast. Not only was that wrong, but the company’s annual event for advertisers on Tuesday showed how conversational AI can take that business to new heights.Google executives said the company will start testing ads directly in AI-generated answers that summarize content from the web to answer certain... Read more ›
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Over the past decade, Amazon has assembled a vast network of delivery drivers to reduce its reliance on shippers like United Parcel Service. Now, Amazon wants those drivers to start tackling another task that has become a major problem: returns. In a new pilot program, Amazon drivers will pick up returns from customers’ houses and bring them to its facilities for processing, according to messages the company sent to drivers... Read more ›
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Sam Altman’s naughty streak has been key to his success. This week, it may have gotten him in trouble.The OpenAI CEO came under fire yesterday after the actress Scarlett Johansson said she, through her lawyers, complained to OpenAI after they used a voice that resembled her own for its ChatGPT assistant. OpenAI says the voice wasn’t meant to imitate the actress, but it nevertheless took it down on Monday. Read more ›
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Another day, another deal. Artificial intelligence startup Poolside is raising more capital from investors and wants a valuation of around $2 billion, according to a person briefed on the deal. The startup, which was co-founded by former GitHub CTO Jason Warner, is developing a specialized large-language model to automate coding. It’s already raised $126 million since it was founded in April last year, and the new financing could roughly quadruple... Read more ›
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TikTok has told employees it plans significant layoffs in its operations and marketing teams this week, according to current employees. The precise number of job cuts could not be learned, but the employees said the layoff will affect a large percentage of the roughly 1,000 people working in TikTok's global user operations, content and marketing. TikTok plans to disband its global user operations team, which handles user support and user... Read more ›
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What a mess OpenAI seems to have created with Scarlett Johansson! One bright note for creators is that her allegations that the startup ripped off her voice after she refused an offer to voice its chatbot could help speed up national legislation that protects artists. I spoke to two legal experts today to get a better understanding of the current legal protections for celebrities and creators when it comes to... Read more ›
0
Anthropic, the maker of artificial intelligence chatbot Claude, has hired Airbnb veteran Krishna Rao as its first chief financial officer, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said. The executive hire, which the company plans to announce this week, is a sign the three-year-old startup is bolstering its executive ranks as it tries to accelerate revenue and burns through cash to keep up with rivals like OpenAI. The startup... Read more ›
0
HubSpot investors better hope that Google actually buys it. The marketing software company’s growth is slowing as the small businesses it caters to try to cut down their bills, and it faces mounting competition from flashy AI tools that could chip away at its business. As Google reportedly discusses an acquisition of HubSpot, which sells services for companies to manage their digital marketing campaigns and information about their customers, similar... Read more ›
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New York isn’t known for its roomy apartments, which is why my electric piano is currently gathering dust on top of my kitchen cabinets. So I was especially excited to use Suno, an artificial intelligence music generator. It turns simple text descriptions like “a dark disco song about when you're not around” and “a romantic garage song about being trapped in an AI music factory” into songs that often sound... Read more ›
3
OpenAI and its artificial intelligence rivals get all the headlines, but few venture-backed companies have benefited more from the AI boom than CoreWeave, a cloud provider. That's thanks to Nvidia, which allocated some of its precious AI server chips to CoreWeave rather than large clouds like Amazon Web Services, prompting startups and even Microsoft to collectively commit to spending billions of dollars to rent CoreWeave’s servers. On Friday, CoreWeave said... Read more ›
0
It was Microsoft’s turn today to talk about all of the ways it plans to make your life better with artificial intelligence. The various new features and products it announced felt a little—dare we say it?—bland. But that might be more than okay. In one case, it showed a new version of its Copilot assistant for Windows PCs that can observe what you’re doing on your computer, then coach you... Read more ›
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Military defense startup Anduril has had early discussions to raise what would be one of the largest venture capital rounds of the year so far, seeking about $1.5 billion of fresh funds that would value the company at $12.5 billion or more, two people who have spoken to the company said. The potential funding round would be an increase from the $8.5 billion valuation at which investors including Valor Equity... Read more ›
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In classic OpenAI fashion, big drama dropped on Friday. Jan Leike, who formerly co-led OpenAI’s superalignment team with Ilya Sutskever—the co-founder and chief scientist who temporarily ousted CEO Sam Altman in November—explained on X why he left the company. Altman & Co. failed to give superalignment, which aimed to be a check on OpenAI researchers developing the AI, enough resources and say over the company’s work, he said. Disagreements about... Read more ›
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In China, dozens of startups have been competing to develop conversational artificial intelligence for the Chinese market. Now some are starting to pull ahead, in part due to backing from tech giants with large cloud operations like Tencent and Alibaba. Among them is Moonshot AI, developer of a chatbot that can process millions of Chinese characters in a single prompt. The one-year-old startup’s executives have been in talks with investors... Read more ›
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In January, China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd., the world’s largest battery manufacturer, slashed the price of its iron-based battery cells 40% below the global industry average. Western battery industry veterans told me at the time that the price had to be a one-off promotion for CATL’s best customers. It was not possible to make money at such prices, they said.Today, CATL is still advertising the cells at about $56 per... Read more ›
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Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:A cautionary tale of startup ego and herd mentalityWhere to stay, network and dine in CannesPlus: The dangers around astro-ambitions; an intriguing underworld all over again; and a Hollywood resurrection that actually went well. Remember a few years ago when Mark Zuckerberg existed in the public consciousness mostly as a stiff automaton and evil tech overlord? Well, he’s cool now! We’re not talking about Facebook and... Read more ›
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France’s most famous meet-and-greet resort has downed a triple espresso martini. Over the past 12 months, Cannes has been upgraded with enough new clubs, bars and hotels to satiate all the celebrities, movie moguls, global creatives and CEOs jetting in for the Cannes film festival happening right now, followed by the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, the media and advertising fete that starts next month. And while the old... Read more ›
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It’s Friday so it seems fitting to take a break from cloud computing, artificial intelligence, balance sheets and the other themes we usually cover here to talk briefly about a more recreational topic: video games. Earlier this week, Take-Two Interactive Software dropped some big news when it said Grand Theft Auto VI will come out in the fall of next year. The last new version of the megahit franchise came... Read more ›
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15.06.2026 03:47
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