Author: GT

The Santos Ltd. Logo atop Santos Place building, which houses the company’s office, in Brisbane, Australia, on Monday, Dec. 11, 2023.Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesAbu Dhabi’s National Oil Company has walked away from its $19 billion offer for Australia’s Santos, ending months of speculation over what would have been one of the country’s largest energy deals.The consortium, which includes Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ and investment firm Carlyle, made the $19 billion indicative offer for Santos in June, but confirmed on Wednesday that it will not proceed with a binding takeover.”It’s over,” a source familiar with the matter…

Packages ride on a conveyor belt during Cyber Monday, one of the company’s busiest days at an Amazon fulfillment center on December 2, 2024 in Orlando, Florida. Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo | Getty ImagesAmazon on Wednesday introduced an artificial intelligence agent that will help third-party merchants operate their online businesses.The company is adding agentic capabilities to Seller Assistant, its AI tool for third-party sellers, meaning the software can take action on a merchant’s behalf with their permission, Amazon said. The update was announced during Amazon’s annual Accelerate conference for sellers in Seattle.Amazon said tools like Seller Assistant free merchants up to…

Meta Connect 2025 — the company’s biggest conference of the year where it unveils smart glasses and VR headsets — kicks off on Wednesday night. We’re expecting the star of Meta Connect 2025 to be the company’s new AI-powered smart glasses with Ray-Ban and Oakley, but the company may have some other surprises in store regarding the Metaverse, Quest headsets, or even its broader AI ambitions. Meta says it has sold millions of Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and earlier this year, Meta unveiled its latest AI-powered smart glasses with Oakley, which were designed for athletes. Silicon Valley is leaning heavily…

LONDON (AP) — The CEO of Nvidia, which faces tight restrictions on selling its chips to China amid the U.S.-China battle over trade and tech, said he’s disappointed about the situation. Jensen Huang said he expects to discuss the issue with President Donald Trump at a state banquet hosted by the British government that they’ll be attending on Wednesday night. Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia, the world’s most valuable company, is restricted from exporting its most advanced chips, which are in demand for developing artificial intelligence, to China. This week, Beijing regulators also targeted the company, accusing it of antitrust breaches…

Fintech, regtech, and cybersecurity vendor, CSI has teamed with HuLoop, a provider of an AI-powered, no-code automation platform, to help banks improve efficiency. The partnership will present CSI’s NuPoint Core Banking System to financial institutions, and is designed to help companies manage accounts, transactions, and other banking operations.NuPoint customers will have access to HuLoop’s Work Intelligence platform, which is designed for community and regional banks. The solution is intended to help them address regulatory overheads and running costs.Challenges in the sector include customer onboarding and document-based workloads that are prone to errors and can create approval bottlenecks. Employee fatigue from…

Twenty-five years ago, Al Gore was in the final stretch of his U.S. presidential campaign, just weeks away from an election that would ultimately slip through his fingers despite winning the popular vote. His platform included ambitious climate action, with America positioned as the natural leader of a global environmental transition. The irony of what has transpired since is not lost on him. “Looking from the standpoint of 25 years ago, I have to say no, I would not have seen this as the most likely outcome,” Gore admits when asked about China’s emergence as the world’s leading force in…

U.S. President Donald Trump sits next to Crypto czar David Sacks at the White House Crypto Summit at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025.Evelyn Hockstein | ReutersWhat was meant to be a short-term assignment for venture capitalist David Sacks in President Donald Trump’s White House appears to have stretched into something much bigger, according to leading Democratic lawmakers.Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Rep. Melanie Stansbury, D-N.M., have teamed up with a number of other progressive politicians to question whether Sacks has blown past the 130-day limit for Special Government Employees.In a letter delivered Wednesday morning, the…

Groww, India’s largest retail brokerage firm, is set to test the country’s public markets with a multi-billion-dollar IPO. The listing comes comes just over a year after the company restructured its corporate headquarters from Delaware back to India — a move that could make it the first Indian startup to list at home following a relocation from the U.S. Backed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and marquee investors including Peak XV Partners, Y Combinator, Ribbit Capital, and Tiger Global, Groww’s listing — expected later this year — is set to double as a major exit opportunity for global venture funds.…

Meta is expected to show off artificial intelligence-powered smart glasses at its Connect developer conference Wednesday as CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues to evangelize the glasses as the next step in human-computer interactions. “Last year’s Meta Connect was far less metaverse and far more AI. Expect this year’s event to be virtually dominated by AI, specifically AI glasses and superintelligence,” said Forrester research director Mike Proulx. “While Meta has the head start on AI glasses, competition is chomping at the bit with new entrants.”The Menlo Park, California-based company teased a prototype for Orion, which Zuckerberg called “the most advanced glasses the…

The Alibaba office building in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, China, on Aug. 28, 2024.CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty ImagesAlibaba shares rose on Wednesday after Chinese state media reported that the e-commerce giant secured a major customer for its artificial intelligence chips.China Unicom will deploy Alibaba’s AI accelerators from its semiconductor unit called Pingtouge or T-Head, according to a report from China state broadcaster CCTV. Alibaba does not sell chips directly, but companies can effectively use the computing power based on those semiconductors by buying Alibaba cloud services.A person familiar with the matter endorsed the accuracy of the CCTV report to…