Author: GT

Austin Russell, the billionaire founder of Luminar, has made a bid to acquire the lidar-maker five months after he was replaced as CEO following an ethics inquiry. The takeover effort was disclosed in an SEC filing by Russell early Friday morning. It would involve his new company, Russell AI Labs, purchasing 100% of the outstanding shares of Luminar’s Class A Common Stock for an undisclosed price. If it happens, Luminar would remain publicly traded, and Russell AI Labs may “acquire a different, larger global automotive technology company” and merge it with Luminar “to create a unified technology platform business (‘Luminar…

The South Korean government spent 1.2 trillion won ($850m) on developing AI textbooks for schools, but the national programme has been rolled back after just four months, amid allegations of inaccurate texts, concerns about privacy, and increased workloads on staff and pupils.Writing in Rest Of World, journalist Junhyup Kwon quotes a student as saying, “All our classes were delayed because of technical problems with the textbooks. […] I found it hard to stay focused and keep on track. The textbooks didn’t provide lessons tailored to my level.”Kim Jong-hee, chief digital officer of Dong-A Publishing, one of the textbook developers, spoke…

Apple announced on Friday that it has secured exclusive U.S. broadcasting rights to Formula 1. The new five-year agreement between the tech giant and Formula 1 will make Apple TV the exclusive streaming home for all Formula 1 races starting in the 2026 season, taking over from current broadcaster ESPN. All practice, qualifying, Sprint sessions, and Grands Prix will be available to Apple TV subscribers. Select races and all practice sessions will also be available for free in the Apple TV app throughout the season, Apple says. Apple reportedly bid $140-$150 million annually for the rights, which is significantly more…

Today is your last chance to save! Register for TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 before 11:59 p.m. PT tonight and save up to $624 on your pass. This is the lowest rate available before Disrupt kicks off in San Francisco’s Moscone West on October 27-29. After today, prices rise to Late Bird rates and eventually Walk-up rates. Reasons to attend Disrupt Connect with 10,000 founders, VCs, operators, and innovators  Disrupt is known as a launchpad for scaling and innovation. Connections are how that happens. You can make a year’s worth of connections in just three days with the brightest minds in tech.  20,000+ curated and impromptu…

Ant Group has entered the trillion-parameter AI model arena with Ling-1T, a newly open-sourced language model that the Chinese fintech giant positions as a breakthrough in balancing computational efficiency with advanced reasoning capabilities.The October 9 announcement marks a significant milestone for the Alipay operator, which has been rapidly building out its artificial intelligence infrastructure across multiple model architectures. The trillion-parameter AI model demonstrates competitive performance on complex mathematical reasoning tasks, achieving 70.42% accuracy on the 2025 American Invitational Mathematics Examination (AIME) benchmark—a standard used to evaluate AI systems’ problem-solving abilities.According to Ant Group’s technical specifications, Ling-1T maintains this performance level while consuming an…

Oppenheimer updgraded Jefferies to outperform on Friday, describing its exposure to the bankrupt autoparts maker First Brands as “very limited.” Shares of Jefferies have plunged about 26% since First Brands filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 29. The stock is likely down on “atmospheric” credit concerns because credit managers, BDCs, and several banks are under pressure “for reasons we consider dubious,” analyst Chris Kotowski told clients in a note “While the direct financial exposure to First Brands seems limited, we suspect the outsized reaction in JEF’s stock is related to the fact Bear Stearns had hedge funds that contributed to their…

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesMeta on Friday announced new safety features that will allow parents to see and manage how their teenagers are interacting with artificial intelligence characters on the company’s platforms.Parents will have the option to turn off one-on-one chats with AI characters completely, Meta said. They will also be able to block specific AI characters, get insight into the topics their children are discussing with them.Meta is still building the controls,…

ChatGPT will be able to have kinkier conversations after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the artificial intelligence company will soon allow its chatbot to engage in “erotica for verified adults.”OpenAI won’t be the first to try to profit from sexualized AI. Sexual content was a top draw for AI tools almost as soon as the boom in AI-generated imagery and words erupted in 2022.But the companies that were early to embrace mature AI also encountered legal and societal minefields and harmful abuse as a growing number of people have turned to the technology for companionship or titillation. Will a sexier…

The surge of multi-billion-dollar investments in AI has sparked growing debate over whether the industry is heading for a bubble similar to the dot-com boom.Investors are watching closely for signs that enthusiasm might be fading or that the heavy spending on infrastructure and chips is failing to deliver expected returns. A recent survey by BofA Global Research found that 54% of fund managers believe AI stocks are already in bubble territory, while 38% disagree.Echoes of the dot-com eraDespite the optimism surrounding AI, sceptics remain unconvinced of its real-world impact. Some even call it a bluff or a bubble waiting to…

Spotify has been spotted developing a “SongDNA” feature that would allow users to discover music through the credits — the writers, collaborators, vocalists, engineers, lyricists, producers, composers, and others who worked on a given track or album. The feature was discovered in the app’s code by reverse engineer Jane Manchun Wong, who was able to generate screenshots of how SongDNA would appear in the app. Based on her findings, SongDNA would introduce a visual experience where you could essentially navigate through the credits, see how people were connected to each other, and explore their various works. For instance, Wong showed…