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Benoît Richaud might be one of the most visible people at the 2026 Winter Olympic Games. Not because he’s a star athlete, but because he is coaching 16 figure skaters from 13 different countries. Each time one of them is on the ice, he stands on the rink’s edge, changing into the jacket of their team.Richaud has become somewhat famous for this move. Olympics viewers began catching on to the French coach’s antics just a few days into the Games when they noticed the same slender bald man sitting next to so many different skaters. He always had on the…
Just hours after announcing his retirement from the NBA, Chris Paul spent All-Star Weekend stepping into a different role: AT&T brand ambassador. The newly retired point guard partnered with the telecom firm on a series of community-focused activations tied to the brand’s broader All-Star presence, which coincided with the 150th anniversary of the first phone call. As part of the effort, Paul spoke with HBCU athletes and participated in a live-streamed shoot-around with fans.For Paul, the partnership was more than another brand appearance.“AT&T has been a part of my life and my family, but I never thought about doing something with…
Nearly 20 U.S.-based AI startups have raised mega-rounds of $100 million or more in 2026 — and it’s been less than two months. If the first few weeks of 2026 are any indicator, the AI startup market is in for another year of monster funding rounds at eye-watering valuations. U.S. AI startups raised more than $76 billion through mega-rounds in 2025, per TechCrunch’s count. Will startups see the same success in 2026? Time will tell. Here are all the U.S.-based AI startups that have raised $100 million or more thus far: February Simile, which builds AI to mimic human decisions, raised a $100 million Series A round led by Index Ventures. The round was announced on February…
Other Smart Rings We’ve TestedWe have tested several other entrants in this category, some good, some bad, and some in between. Here is the lowdown on some of your smart ring alternatives.Photograph: Simon HillLeep Ring 1 for $200: A new British smart ring that is affordable, subscription-free, and offers simplified, accessible stats on your activity, sleep, and stress? Sign me up. The Leep Ring 1 is slim and stylish, with a subtle diagonal indent to help you line up the knobbly internal sensors. It comes with a handy charging case that’s supposedly capable of providing an extra 60 days of…
Baby registry site Babylist is revamping its advertising business that allows marketers to reach parents.The company has selected commerce media platform Koddi to power a new version of its ad business, ADWEEK can exclusively reveal. Babylist had been using in-house tech tools to sell ad products on its website since 2019. The platform made more than $500 million in revenue in 2024, and sees over a billion impressions annually.Koddi’s tech gives advertisers more flexibility in buying onsite ads on Babylist. Koddi’s pitch includes technology that improves pacing, forecasting, attribution, and revenue optimization for brands, the companies said. Koddi also powers…
Amazon is rolling out a new user interface for its Fire TV streaming devices, designed to put more focus on the content, while also simplifying navigation. The update, which is initially available to Fire TV owners in the U.S., represents the first major Fire TV redesign in years. The changes arrive after an explosion of streaming content has made it more difficult to know what’s available to watch on which service, requiring streaming platforms like Fire TV to serve more as a discovery hub than just a tool to launch streaming apps. The company first previewed the new design at…
The project needed more than mere technical insight. It needed a president of play. A fun foreman.Lego Group design director Michael Fuller has been at the company for 18 years. “The Lego Batman Movie, that was five, six years of my life,” Fuller says. After wrapping the 2017 film, Fuller was trying to work out what he was going to do next when Donaldson approached him.“I actually tried to convince him I wasn’t right for it. I’m not techie at all. I’m old-school. But Tom said, ‘No, that’s what we need. I’ve got lots of smart engineers and techie people.…
Over the past few months, several countries have announced plans to restrict social media access for children and teens. Australia became the first to implement such measures at the end of last year, setting a precedent that other countries are now closely watching. Australia’s regulations, along with other countries’ proposals, aim to reduce the pressures and risks that young users may face on social media, which include cyberbullying, addiction, mental health issues, and exposure to predators. Of course, there are concerns about privacy regarding invasive age verification and excessive government intervention. Critics, including Amnesty Tech, have said such bans are…
The European Parliament has reportedly blocked lawmakers from using the baked-in AI tools on their work devices, citing cybersecurity and privacy risks with uploading confidential correspondence to the cloud. Per an email seen by Politico, the parliament’s IT department said it could not guarantee the security of the data uploaded to the servers of AI companies and that the full extent of what information is shared with AI companies is “still being assessed.” As such, the email said, “It is considered safer to keep such features disabled.” Uploading data to AI chatbots, like Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s Copilot, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT,…
When we talk about the cost of AI infrastructure, the focus is usually on Nvidia and GPUs — but memory is an increasingly important part of the picture. As hyperscalers prepare to build out billions of dollars’ worth of new data centers, the price for DRAM chips has jumped roughly 7x in the last year. At the same time, there’s a growing discipline in orchestrating all that memory to make sure the right data gets to the right agent at the right time. The companies that master it will be able to make the same queries with fewer tokens, which…
A federal district court in Northern California ruled in favor of Cameo, a platform that allows users to get personalized video messages from celebrities, and ordered OpenAI to stop using “Cameo” in its products and features. OpenAI was using the “Cameo” name for its AI-powered video generation app Sora 2. Users could use that feature to insert digital likenesses of themselves into AI-generated videos. In a ruling filed Saturday, the court said the name was similar enough to cause user confusion, and rejected OpenAI’s argument that “Cameo” was merely descriptive, finding that “it suggests rather than describes the feature.” In…
Lowe’s Home Improvement grew the old-fashioned way, working its way up from a single, small, family-owned North Carolina general store founded in 1921. But the Lowe’s hardware store empire is plenty big these days. A tool-filled Lowe’s superstore is now about as big as a New York City block. The focus stays mostly on appliances and tools for the home DIYer, more than large building contractors. I like to pop in for grill and griddle tools, or just some propane. But you can also buy a pre-finished door complete with the frame—or the lumber, sanders, routers, and saws you’d use…
Travis Brashears, Cameron Ramos, and Serena Grown-Haeberli began collaborating at SpaceX, developing optical communications links that keep thousands of Starlink internet satellites in constant contact. Now, the three engineers are co-founders of Mesh Optical Technologies, a Los Angeles startup that announced a $50 million Series A led by Thrive Capital on Tuesday. Mesh aims to mass-produce optical transceivers, devices that convert optical signals from fiber or laser into electrical signals for computers. CEO Brashears, President Ramos, and VP of Product Grown-Haeberli realized the opportunity when designing a new generation of compute-hungry SpaceX satellites forced them to assess the optical transceiver…
The California Department of Motor Vehicles will not suspend Tesla’s sales and manufacturing licenses for 30 days because the EV maker has stopped using the term “Autopilot” in the marketing of its vehicles in the state. The decision, issued late Tuesday, means Tesla can continue selling its EVs in California without interruption and officially settles a case that has been dragging on for nearly three years. California is Tesla’s biggest U.S. market. In November 2023, the DMV filed accusations that Tesla violated state law by using deceptive marketing of Autopilot, its basic advanced driver assistance system, as well as its…
Thrive Capital just raised $10 billion for a new fund — the largest fund it has ever raised and nearly double the size of its last fund. Of this, $1 billion is dedicated to early-stage investments, while the rest is for growth-stage investments, according to an announcement from the firm. Thrive told Bloomberg that this latest fundraise was oversubscribed. This is the firm’s 10th fund — called Thrive X — and comes as some of the firm’s biggest investments, including OpenAI, Stripe, and SpaceX, continue to soar in value. Some of the firm’s other notable investments include Databricks, Anduril, and…
Ford is promising to deliver an EV truck next year that starts at $30,000 and can compete with Chinese automakers without undermining profit margins. A combination of 3D-printed Lego-like parts, Formula 1 thinking, and a bounty program will help the company hit that target, Ford said Tuesday. It will have to. Ford took a $19.5 billion hit in December and ended production of its battery-electric F-150 Lightning. It can’t afford for this new EV business strategy to fall flat. Ford’s bet on a line of affordable EVs began several years ago with a skunkworks team led by Alan Clarke, a…