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Lachy Groom, one of Silicon Valley’s most closely watched solo investors, decided to back Indian startup Pronto just 20 minutes into his first meeting with its 24-year-old founder. The meeting, which took place in February through a mutual connection, led to Groom investing $20 million in Pronto as an extension of its Series B round, valuing the startup at $200 million after the investment — double its valuation just over two months earlier, as TechCrunch had previously reported. The deal came together within weeks, bringing the solo investor on board as the Bengaluru-based startup expands to meet growing demand for…
Mexico City is one of the fastest sinking cities in the world. Now, a powerful satellite from the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) confirms the accelerated advance of this silent threat that puts nearly 20 million people at risk.The satellite designed by NASA and the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), known as NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar), was able to capture with unprecedented precision the magnitude and evolution of this phenomenon in different areas of the Mexican capital. The analysis is based on preliminary measurements taken from space between October 2025 and January of this year, during the…
Billionaire media mogul Barry Diller doesn’t think OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is untrustworthy, despite recent reporting to the contrary. On stage at The Wall Street Journal’s “Future of Everything” conference this week, Diller vouched for the AI exec, who has been accused by some former colleagues and board members of being manipulative and deceptive at times. Diller, who is friendly with Altman, was responding to a question about whether or not people should put their faith in Altman to ensure that artificial intelligence benefits humanity. In particular, he was asked about the theoretical form of AI known as Artificial General…
Meta is beefing up its age-verification mechanisms with an AI system that analyzes images and videos on Instagram and Facebook for “visual cues,” such as height and bone structure, to identify and delete accounts of users under the age of 13. The company announced the move amid a wave of cases in which hundreds of children have managed to evade social network access restrictions, even through simple tricks such as drawing on a mustache.The new approach is part of a series of measures Meta adopted as part of an AI-based security strategy designed to correct the limitations of traditional methods,…
Business insurance startup Corgi announced on Wednesday a $160 million Series B, led by TCV, valuing the startup at $1.3 billion, the startup’s co-founder Nico Laqua said on LinkedIn. This comes just four months after the company announced a $108 million Series A. The company has now raised $268 million in funding to date, Laqua said and has become Y Combinator’s latest unicorn. Laqua started the company with Emily Yuan in 2024 and was part of the YC’s Spring 2024 batch. Corgi, who names Deel and Artisan as customers, offers coverage for general liability, cyber liability, and tech and AI…
Using AI chatbots for even just for 10 minutes may have a shockingly negative impact on people’s ability to think and problem-solve, according to a new study from researchers at Carnegie Mellon, MIT, Oxford, and UCLA.Researchers tasked people with solving various problems, including simple fractions and reading comprehension, through an online platform that paid them for their work. They conducted three experiments, each involving several hundred people. Some participants were given access to an AI assistant capable of solving the problem autonomously. When the AI helper was suddenly taken away, these people were significantly more likely to give up on…
Microsoft is weighing whether to delay or scale back one of its most ambitious clean energy goals as its rapid buildout of AI data centers puts pressure on its ability to meet those targets. Microsoft has yet to make any public announcements, but according to Bloomberg the company is having internal discussions over its hourly clean energy matching goal. The tech company has said that by 2030 it intends to match 100% of its hourly energy use with clean power on the same grid. But Microsoft’s rush to build AI data centers has apparently sparked debate within the company about…
President Donald Trump’s negotiators face the arduous task of trying to convince the president that a deal he previously rejected is their best option in Iran.Last month, Trump initially gave his blessing for a so-called “cash for uranium” deal, under which the US would release around $20 billion in frozen funds in exchange for Iran handing over its stockpile of highly enriched uranium, sources familiar with the matter tell WIRED.Trump’s negotiators, vice president JD Vance, special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son in law, received repeated approvals from the president while they were in Islamabad, giving them confidence…
Over nearly two decades in the advertising industry, Brian Chap has worked across every holding company, on the brand side at L’Oreal, and the sales side at Warner Bros. Discovery. Regardless of which side he was on, he noticed the same operations gap: disorganized, disjointed data.“The industry incentives shiny keys over digital fundamentals,” he explained. I understand standardizing taxonomy or tightening your operating model isn’t easy, but nothing great came from easy.”So in 2019 he started Tech Recipes, a strategic consultancy that creates custom operating models for brands and agencies. How has AI changed your business?To create these models, Tech…
In late August 2017, key figures at OpenAI (then a small nonprofit research lab) gathered to discuss how they would create a for-profit to commercialize its technology and raise the funds needed to realize AGI. Elon Musk was demanding full control of the company and had just given each of his co-founders a Tesla Model 3. CTO Greg Brockman said he saw that as way of buttering them up at a time when Musk and Sam Altman were vying to win support for their respective visions of the company’s future. OpenAI’s head of research, Ilya Sutskever, had commissioned a painting…
Anthropic and Elon Musk’s SpaceX said on Wednesday that the two entities have signed an agreement for Anthropic to use computing resources from xAI’s data center in Memphis, Tennessee. It’s the latest tie up in an industry that is scrambling to find enough computers to run complex AI software. SpaceX and xAI were previously separate companies, but the two merged earlier this year. The combined entity, also owned by Musk, is called SpaceXAI.Anthropic executives made the announcement on stage at the company’s annual developer conference in San Francisco. SpaceXAI also put out a blog post sharing more details about the…
Gap Inc. has brought on veteran brand executive Michael Francis as chief customer officer (CCO) of Old Navy and head of marketing shared services for the apparel group.Francis will report to Haio Barbeito, president and CEO of Old Navy. He will work closely with Old Navy leaders, including interim chief marketing officer (CMO) Derek Yarbrough, to strengthen its brand, marketing, and customer experience strategies. As Gap Inc.’s head of marketing shared services, he will also oversee media strategy and the shared influencer platform, and drive integration and effectiveness across the portfolio of brands, including Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, and Athleta.Francis,…
SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company that also houses his AI company, xAI, is considering spending $55 billion, at least initially, to build a semiconductor factory in Grimes County, Texas, according to a proposal on the county website. The company estimates it may spend a total of $119 billion on the project, which would be a “multi-phase, next-generation, vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturing and advanced computing fabrication facility,” according to the filing. Musk has previously outlined plans for the project, dubbed “Terafab,” that will also see Tesla contributing resources. The companies have roped chipmaking giant Intel into the effort, aiming to develop…
Anthropic just announced a new feature called “dreaming” at the company’s developer conference in San Francisco. It’s part of Anthropic’s recently launched AI agent infrastructure designed to help users manage and deploy tools that automate software processes. This “dreaming” aspect sorts through the transcript of what an agent recently completed and attempts to glean insights to improve the agent’s performance.Folks using AI agents often send them on multistep journeys, like visiting a few websites or reading multiple files, to complete online tasks. This new “dreaming” feature allows agents to look for patterns in their activity log and improve their abilities…
The digital media company Ziff Davis acquired four media brands from Recurrent Ventures on Friday, picking up the home titles Dwell, Domino, and Business of Home, along with the science publisher PopSci.The three home brands will form the basis of a new lifestyle group within Ziff Davis, led by Business of Home founder Julia Noran Johnston, according to the company. PopSci will join the company’s technology division, slotting in alongside CNET, Mashable, PCMag, and Lifehacker. All staff at the four titles will be retained.Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Ziff Davis, a publicly traded company, reports its quarterly earnings…
Chrome on Android now lets users share their approximate location with websites rather than their precise location, Google announced this week. The tech giant says that while some cases require precise location, such as when you’re placing a delivery order or trying to find the closest ATM, there are instances when your approximate location is enough, like when you’re getting access to local weather and news. “By letting you share your approximate location, we’re giving you more control over your location data,” Google explained in a blog post. “And you can still share your precise location when it’s needed —…