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OpenAI has reorganized some of its leadership and picked a familiar face to lead its push into selling AI to business customers as the company looks to catch up to its rivals in 2026. The company appointed Barret Zoph to lead its efforts to sell its AI to enterprises, according to reporting from The Information, citing an internal OpenAI memo. TechCrunch reached out to OpenAI for confirmation and more information. Zoph returned to OpenAI last week after leaving Thinking Machine Labs, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati’s AI startup where Zoph had served as a co-founder and CTO since October 2024.…
“We are moving into a new phase of informational warfare on social media platforms where technological advancements have made the classic bot approach outdated,” says Jonas Kunst, a professor of communication at BI Norwegian Business School and one of the coauthors of the report.For experts who have spent years tracking and combating disinformation campaigns, the paper presents a terrifying future.”What if AI wasn’t just hallucinating information, but thousands of AI chatbots were working together to give the guise of grassroots support where there was none? That’s the future this paper imagines—Russian troll farms on steroids,” says Nina Jankowicz, the former…
Taco Bell is turning the drive-thru into haute cuisine.The fast-food chain’s new “Laps of Luxury” activation, created by agency Deutsch, celebrates the launch of its 10-item Luxe Value Menu by offering an immersive, multi-course tasting experience that transforms the mundane drive-thru into an event worthy of a Michelin star (or at least a very enthusiastic review).The tasting experience is a chauffeured, 10-course journey through the drive-thru that reimagines fast food as fine-dining theater. Each menu item, from the beefy potato loaded griller to the salted caramel churro, will be unveiled beneath a silver cloche as a string quartet serenades through…
Kais Khimji has spent most of his professional career as a venture investor, including six years as a partner at the prominent VC firm Sequoia Capital. But just like several other former Sequoia partners — including David Vélez, who founded the Brazilian digital bank Nubank — Khimji (pictured left) has always wanted to be a startup founder. On Thursday, he announced that he has revived an idea he began working on as a student at Harvard about 10 years ago, turning it into the AI calendar-scheduling company Blockit. In a major vote of confidence, Khimji’s former employer, Sequoia, led the…
When it comes to originals, Netflix and Amazon have the deepest libraries of prestige movies. But ever since CODA won the Best Picture Oscar, it’s become clear that some of the best movies are on Apple TV.As with any streaming service, not every film on the roster is a winner, but from the Billie Eilish documentary to Sundance darlings, Apple’s streaming service is building up a strong catalog to run alongside its growing slate of beloved TV shows.Below are WIRED’s picks for flicks you should prioritize in your queue. Once you’re done, hop over to our list of the best movies on Netflix and the best movies on…
WPP is consolidating its global production talent and operations under a new entity called WPP Production, the holding company told ADWEEK. The move brings together production powerhouse Hogarth Worldwide with production teams embedded across WPP agencies including Ogilvy and VML. The new unit, which will officially launch on Feb. 23, will employ roughly 10,000 people globally.Richard Glasson, formerly global CEO of Hogarth, will lead WPP Production as global CEO. As part of the reorg, WPP will formally retire the Hogarth brand.There are no layoffs as a result of the shift, and Glasson said the transition is not a cost-cutting exercise.
Defense tech company Anduril on Thursday announced its plans to expand its Southern California presence with a major campus in Long Beach, the coastal town where founder Palmer Luckey grew up. The expanded campus will eventually support about 5,500 jobs. Luckey told TechCrunch that these will be new jobs, not transfers from other operations. Anduril’s headquarters is nearby, in Costa Mesa, California, and it also has a massive manufacturing facility in Ohio. The Long Beach campus will span 1.18 million square feet across six buildings, combining office space and industrial areas dedicated to R&D. It is expected to be ready…
At the end of the day, local residents may feel disconnected from these batteries, and from the green energy transition they enable, because Hungarians are not the target consumers. Most lithium batteries produced in Hungary are destined for Western European car markets, where consumers are wealthier and already sold on the need to shift to clean energy. “The average Hungarian has the money to buy a 10-year-old used car from Germany, usually powered by diesel or gas. They don’t have the money to buy electric vehicles,” says Bartók.Sluggish DemandIt’s worth keeping in mind that not all of the international deals…
The Oscar nominations are in, and it’s clear that for studios, it’s one battle after another this award season. However, amid ongoing M&A, winning those battles is even more important.The 98th Academy Awards are slated for March 15, with Conan O’Brien set to return as host. Last year’s awards saw a ratings boost to around 19.7 million viewers despite streaming glitches during the Oscars’ first year on Hulu and Anora, a relatively small film, emerging as the awards darling.Now, with the nominations in thanks to a livestream hosted by Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple) and Lewis Pullman (The Testament of…
Vimeo, the video-hosting platform, is laying off some of its global staff, according to a report from Business Insider. The move comes shortly after the company’s acquisition by the Italian tech conglomerate Bending Spoons, which purchased it in an all-cash deal last year for $1.38 billion. Bending Spoons confirmed the layoffs to BI but wouldn’t share how many people would lose their jobs. The Verge reports that the cutbacks will impact a “large portion” of the company’s total workforce, citing a LinkedIn post from Vimeo’s former VP of Global Brand and Creative, who stated that he, “along with a large portion of the company,” had been “impacted by…
As this year’s Oscar nominations rolled out this morning, I told my boyfriend that Sinners, with 16 noms in total, had made history. “Woke is back,” he replied.He was joking (don’t come for him!), but his quip highlights a pretty stark dichotomy. Last year, as everyone from President Donald Trump down harped on about the perils of DEI, the biggest cultural breakthroughs—Sinners, KPop Demon Hunters, Heated Rivalry, One Battle After Another—all showcased diversity in fresh ways. And it succeeded. These works weren’t just popular among leftists or critics, they were bona fide cultural phenomena.Sinners, a horror movie set in the…
Liquid Death‘s Super Bowl teaser suggests the water brand is bringing serious energy to the Big Game for the second year running.The famously rebellious brand will air a 30-second national ad during the first half of Super Bowl 60 on Feb. 8. Created in-house by its creative team and production arm Death Machine, the commercial will promote Liquid Death’s new energy drink line, Sparkling Energy.A teaser for the ad, released today (Jan. 22), zooms in on a row of grinning, wide-eyed, papier-mâché heads.Sparkling Energy, launched in December, broke into the top 20 brands by market share on Amazon in its…
LiveKit, a developer of infrastructure software for real-time AI voice and video applications, has announced the raise of $100 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation. The round, which comes 10 months after LiveKit’s previous fundraise, was led by Index Ventures with participation from existing investors, including Altimeter Capital Management, Hanabi Capital, and Redpoint Ventures. LiveKit powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT voice mode. The startup’s other customers include xAI, Salesforce, Tesla, as well as 911 emergency service operators and mental health providers. The company was founded in 2021 by Russ d’Sa and David Zhao as an open source software project for…
Elon Musk, the richest man on earth, is very good at making money. His track record of predicting the future is less stellar.Through the years, Musk has made several outlandish forecasts—about self-driving cars, about space exploration, about brain chips, about robotics—that have not panned out. The Tesla CEO and former steward of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency seems at least a bit self-aware. During a surprise appearance and his debut at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday, he concluded with something like a mission statement: “Generally, for quality of life, it’s better to err on the…
OpenAI’s recent launch of Atlas marks a pivotal moment for digital marketing, and for the evolution of the internet itself. Atlas showcases the rise of the agentic web, an internet in which AI completes tasks on users’ behalf and actively represents them.For marketers, this means algorithms will increasingly mediate how people discover, evaluate and interact with brands. The path forward lies in diversification and data: Expanding how we reach audiences and unifying how we measure performance across every screen. The Diversification ImperativeFirst, we have to acknowledge that AI is already reshaping online behavior. Gartner predicts that by 2026, traditional search traffic…
It’s been nearly two years since Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella predicted AI would replace knowledge work — the white-collar jobs held by lawyers, investment bankers, librarians, accountants, IT and others. But despite the huge progress made by foundation models, the change in knowledge work has been slow to arrive. Models have mastered in-depth research and agentic planning, but for whatever reason, most white-collar work has been relatively unaffected. It’s one of the biggest mysteries in AI — and thanks to new research from the training-data giant Mercor, we’re finally getting some answers. The new research looks at how leading AI…