Alphabet's Verily closes its R&D centers in Israel after launching them in August 2021, as part of Alphabet's decision to concentrate all R&D activity in the US — Verily was launched in Israel in August 2021, but its approximately 30 remaining employees, based in Tel Aviv and Haifa …
An interview with Illia Polosukhin, a co-author of Google's Attention Is All You Need paper, on open-source AI, his Web3 company Near, “user-owned AI”, and more — Illia Polosukhin doesn't want big companies to determine the future of artificial intelligence.
Source: Amazon plans to use a controversial trade rule used by Temu and Shein, which exempts packages worth $800 or less from tariffs, for its discount section — Amazon is planning to use the same controversial trade rule as Temu and Shein to import items sold on its upcoming discount …
The White House will host the first-ever White House Creator Economy Conference in August to “emphasize the Administration's commitment to creators” — President Joe Biden's administration is doubling down on its interest in the creator economy.
The US SEC sues Consensys over its MetaMask service, alleging the wallet tool was an unregistered broker that “engaged in the offer and sale of securities” — The SEC alleged that MetaMask acted as an unregistered securities broker and that its staking service violated securities laws.
Amazon folds its Amazon Clinic telehealth service into One Medical, with more affordable per-visit pricing: $49 for a video call or $29 to text a doctor — Amazon is folding its Amazon Clinic telehealth service into its primary care business One Medical, the company announced on Thursday.
Meta starts testing user-created AI chatbots on Instagram in the US; Mark Zuckerberg says the chatbots, made using Meta AI studio, will be clearly labeled as AI — Mark Zuckerberg said today that in an early test in the U.S., Meta is surfacing AI characters made by creators through Meta AI studio on Instagram.
Intel shows off a fully integrated bidirectional optical compute interconnect chiplet, which enables higher-bandwidth data transfers for AI workloads — Intel Corp. said today it has achieved another key milestone as it strives to make integrated photonics technology for high-speed data transfers a reality.
Meta's Quest v67 PTC update adds an experimental option to let users freely position and resize 2D windows as well as “take any window fullscreen” — Quest v67 will finally let you freely position 2D windows, the Public Test Channel build reveals. — What Is the Public Test Channel (PTC)?
Nvidia stock is down ~15% from June 20, losing ~$500B in market cap, after becoming the most valuable company on June 18; its CEO recently sold ~$95M in shares — Chipmaker's shares have fallen 15% since Thursday, ending brief stint as world's most valuable company last week
Interviews with ~12 media executives, including Brian Roberts, John Malone, Barry Diller, and Ted Sarandos, about the future of streaming, bundling, ads, more — When the media titans Brian Roberts, John Malone and Barry Diller cast off in early February on Mr. Diller's 156-foot …
Y Combinator and 140 AI startups sign a letter opposing California's AI safety bill, saying the bill could harm California's ability to retain its AI talent — THE BUZZ: FIRST IN PLAYBOOK: One of Silicon Valley's heaviest hitters is wading into the fight over California's AI regulations.
An interview with Netflix's senior encoding technology director Anne Aaron about the company's cutting-edge codecs, preparing for livestreaming, and more — How cutting-edge codecs and obsessive tweaks have helped Netflix to stay ahead of the curve — until now. … Anne Aaron just can't help herself.
Despite a $3T+ valuation, Nvidia remains a little-known brand outside gaming and tech industries due to the speed of its ascent and lack of consumer contact — Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and Google were the four leading global brands at the end of 2023, according to consulting firm Interbrand.
Sources: Amazon has considered a $5 to $10 monthly price tag for a revamped Alexa with generative AI features, dubbed “Remarkable Alexa” — Amazon (AMZN.O) is planning a major revamp of its decade-old money-losing Alexa service to include a conversational generative AI with two tiers …
Sources: Revolut plans to sell ~$50M worth of existing shares, including those held by employees, at a $40B+ valuation, up from $33B during a 2021 fundraising — SoftBank-backed fintech is confident its value has increased over 20% since 2021 fundraising — UK fintech Revolut is targeting …
Ilya Sutskever, Daniel Gross, and Daniel Levy announce Safe Superintelligence, an American company “with one goal and one product: a safe superintelligence” — Superintelligence is within reach. Building safe superintelligence (SSI) is the most important technical problem of our time.
Forbes demands Perplexity not infringe on Forbes IP and drop Forbes-sourced articles; Perplexity-made content remains without attribution, including on YouTube — - The chatbot tried to give credibility to the Forbes story it presented by citing other “sourced” reports that were actually …
HPE and Nvidia unveil private cloud offerings for generative AI workloads coming this fall, including HPE Private Cloud AI, a co-developed “turnkey” option — Hewlett Packard Enterprise and Nvidia teamed up to launch a set of private cloud offerings and integrations designed for generative AI workloads.
Finaloop, which offers accounting tools to e-commerce businesses, raised a $35M Series A led by Lightspeed and says its customer base grew 400% in the last year — For consumers, one of the big pluses of e-commerce is the convenience: You can shop anytime, from anywhere …
Kids are interacting with AI in school and online, serving as testers for a new generation of tech, making them the ones to experience some of its worst effects — AI is quickly becoming a regular part of children's lives. What happens next? — This spring, the Los Angeles Unified School District …
Apple added a Vocal Shortcuts accessibility feature in iOS 18 that lets users give Siri a new wake word, such as “hello, computer” — Apple in iOS 18 added a Vocal Shortcuts accessibility feature, and now that iOS 18 is available in a beta capacity, users have figured …
How Duolingo uses streaks and notifications to keep users coming back to the app; 5M of Duolingo's 30M+ DAUs have one year streaks and 70% have weeklong streaks — The learning app doesn't just teach languages. It harnesses the power of streaks and hooks you with perfectly timed nudges.
A profile of game publisher Devolver Digital, which gives indie studios immense creative freedom, doesn't take IP rights from them, and is turning 15 on June 25 — Devolver Digital teams with independent video game studios and gives them immense freedom. Just don't kill Jeff Bezos.
Sources: Mustafa Suleyman's presence at Microsoft is causing some awkwardness with OpenAI, as he looks at the algorithms behind models like GPT-4 — The Scoop — OpenAI was founded, in large part, as an AI safety countermeasure to DeepMind, the AI company acquired by Google in 2014.
Sources: the EU plans to charge Meta under the DMA, focusing on its pay or consent model where users pay a subscription for an ad-free Facebook and Instagram — Apple (AAPL.O) and Meta Platforms (META.O) will likely face charges for failing to comply with landmark EU rules aimed at reining …
Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg : Sources: Seoul-based AI chip designer FuriosaAI seeks to raise a $300M-$500M Series D to fund mass production of...
