Author: GT

On Wednesday, AI security firm Irregular announced $80 million in new funding in a round led by Sequoia Capital and Redpoint Ventures, with participation from Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport. A source close to the deal said the round valued Irregular at $450 million. “Our view is that soon, a lot of economic activity is going to come from human-on-AI interaction and AI-on-AI interaction,” co-founder Dan Lahav told TechCrunch, “and that’s going to break the security stack along multiple points.” Formerly known as Pattern Labs, Irregular is already a significant player in AI evaluations. The company’s work is cited in security…

Ticket reseller StubHub went public on Wednesday. Although StubHub’s shares closed 6% below their IPO price of $23.50, valuing the company at over $7 billion, the public debut itself is a testament to the co-founder’s decades-long perseverance. StubHub CEO Eric Baker co-founded the company with Jeff Fluhr in 2000 while they were attending the Stanford Graduate School of Business. This was shortly after the dotcom bubble burst and NASDAQ crashed, but the pair didn’t give up. “Stupid competitors went away and many of us got a real opportunity to build a lasting business after getting through that dip,” he said…

NEW YORK (AP) — Nvidia, the world’s leading chipmaker, announced on Thursday that it’s investing $5 billion in Intel and will collaborate with the struggling semiconductor company.The two companies will team up to work on custom data centers that form the backbone of artificial intelligence infrastructure as well as personal computer products, Nvidia said in a press release. Nvidia said it will spend $5 billion to buy Intel common stock at $23.28 a share. The investment, which is subject to regulatory approvals, comes a month after the U.S. government took a 10% stake in Intel. Visitors give commands to a…

AI chip startup Groq confirmed Wednesday that it raised a fresh $750 million in funding at a post-money valuation of $6.9 billion.   This topped the rumored numbers when word leaked in July that Groq was raising. At that time, reports suggested that the raise would be about $600 million, at near a $6 billion valuation.  Groq, which also sells data center computing power, previously raised $640 million at a $2.8 billion valuation in August 2024, making this more than double the valuation in about a year. Groq has now raised over $3 billion to date, PitchBook estimates. Groq has been a…

At Meta Connect 2025 on Wednesday, the company unveiled its new Oakley Meta Vanguard smart glasses that are geared toward runners, cyclists, and other athletes. The glasses retail for $499 and are launching on October 21. Meta Connect is the social networking giant’s biggest conference of the year, where it unveils smart glasses and VR headsets. The glasses feature a large unified front lens, instead of having two cameras positioned at the top corners of the frames, which is in previous Meta smart glasses and the Oakley Meta HSTN model. The new glasses can capture video in up to 3K…

BEIJING (AP) — China’s Huawei Technologies said Thursday that it would roll out the world’s most powerful AI computing clusters over the next two years as it seeks to outperform global leaders despite relying on less powerful domestic semiconductors.China is racing to develop its own technology as America restricts what can be sold to China, including its most advanced chips. At the same time, the Chinese government has reportedly told companies to stop buying some American chips as it seeks to transform China into a global tech leader and one that is less reliant on imported components.Huawei, at the forefront…

Meta on Wednesday unveiled a new pair of Ray-Ban branded smart glasses with a built-in display for apps, alerts, and directions on the right lens. The smart glasses are controlled by a wristband that picks up on subtle hand gestures, called Meta Neural Band, the same one it unveiled at last year’s Connect as part of its Orion demo. CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the new product, called Meta Ray-Ban Display, onstage at the company’s annual developer conference, Meta Connect 2025. Unlike Orion, Zuckerberg says this is a product that people can buy in a couple of weeks, starting September 30,…

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Poland’s defense chief traveled to Kyiv on Thursday in search of Ukrainian help in developing his country’s drone warfare capabilities, just over a week after Russian drones entered Polish airspace and exposed NATO’s vulnerability to drone warfare.Drones used for defense and attack have taken a central battlefield role in the more than three years since Russia invaded Ukraine, transforming how wars are waged, and countries are keen to master the new and quickly developing battlefield technology.“We will be signing an agreement concerning cooperation between the (defense) ministries, but also acquiring capabilities when it comes to operating…

Although today’s Meta Connect developer conference was largely about new smart glasses, the social networking company did announce a handful of metaverse updates during Wednesday’s keynote. Of these, one of the largest was the introduction of Hyperscape, first demoed at last year’s event, which allows developers and creators to build more photorealistic spaces in virtual reality. The company announced that Hyperscape Capture is now rolling out in Early Access, meaning Quest device owners will be able to scan a room in a few minutes, then turn it into an immersive and photorealistic world that’s like a digital replica of a…

Google’s Nano Banana image-generation model, officially known as Gemini 2.5 Flash Image, has fueled global momentum for the Gemini app since launching last month. But in India, it has taken on a creative life of its own, with retro portraits and local trends going viral — even as privacy and safety concerns begin to emerge. India has emerged as the No. 1 country in terms of Nano Banana usage, according to David Sharon, multimodal generation lead for Gemini Apps at Google DeepMind, who spoke at a media session this week. The model’s popularity has also propelled the Gemini app to…