Author: GT

Bret Taylor, chairman of the board of directors of OpenAI, attends the annual Allen and Co. Sun Valley Media and Technology Conference at the Sun Valley Resort in Sun Valley, Idaho, on July 8, 2025.David A. Grogan | CNBCBret Taylor’s artificial intelligence startup Sierra has just joined an exclusive club: The company sports a new $10 billion valuation after raising $350 million in fresh capital.Sierra is one of just a handful of AI startups, including OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Safe Superintelligence and Thinking Machines that are valued at or above $10 billion. Investors are pouring money into this competitive group of…

The Trump administration wants the United States to be the dominant force when it comes to artificial intelligence, and one way the administration hopes to achieve primacy is by bringing semiconductor manufacturing back to the U.S. To help with that transition, President Donald Trump has introduced potential chip tariffs and policies in recent months meant to bring more semiconductor manufacturing stateside. In late August, the Trump administration took an unprecedented step toward that goal when it converted an existing government grant, meant for domestic semiconductor manufacturing, into a 10% equity stake in Intel. This deal was structured to grant the…

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A federal jury has ordered Google to pay $425.7 million for improperly snooping on people’s smartphones during a nearly decade-long period of intrusions.The verdict reached Wednesday in San Francisco federal court followed a more than two-week trial in a class-action case covering about 98 million smartphones operating in the United States between July 1, 2016, through Sept. 23, 2024. That means the total damages awarded in the five-year-old case works out to about $4 per device.Google had denied that it was improperly tracking the online activity of people who thought they had shielded themselves with privacy…

Google’s AI note-taking and research assistant NotebookLM now lets users customize the tone of their Audio Overviews, which are podcasts with AI virtual hosts that summarize and discuss documents shared with NotebookLM, such as course readings or legal briefs. When generating an Audio Overview, users can now choose whether they want their AI podcasts to be formatted as a “Deep Dive,” “Brief,” “Critique,” or “Debate.” A Deep Dive features conversational dialogues where two AI hosts unpack the topic with depth and questions. A Brief is a bite-sized overview that’s designed to help you quickly grasp the core ideas from your…

Gold prices could crack $4,000 per ounce by mid-2026 in response to President Donald Trump’s threats against the independence of the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs analysts told clients this week. Damage to the Fed’s independence would result in higher inflation, lower stock and long-dated bond prices, and an erosion of the U.S. dollar’s status as the global reserve currency, the Goldman analysts said. And this instability would encourage flight into the safe-haven asset gold, according to the bank. “Should private investors diversify more heavily into gold, we see potential upside to gold prices to well above our $4,000 mid-2026 baseline,”…

Inspired by his grandparents, who were apple farmers in China, Charlie Wu got the idea to apply technology to agriculture while studying computer science at Cornell University, a top agriculture school. “I got to meet fruit professors who are the best in the world at what they do,” Wu told TechCrunch. “Through talking to them, I realized even the largest farms in the nation basically have no idea what is actually growing out in their fields.” He dropped out of Cornell, became a Thiel fellow, and in 2022 began building Orchard Robotics, a startup that uses cameras and AI to…

Figma shares plummeted nearly 20% on Thursday, falling to the lowest price since the design software vendor’s IPO in July after the company reported earnings for the first time as a public company.Results for the second quarter were largely inline with expectations, as Figma had issued preliminary results a little over a month ago. Revenue increased 41% from a year earlier to $249.6 million, slightly topping analyst estimates of $248.8 million, according to LSEG.Analysts at Piper Sandler described the report as “largely a non-event,” but noted that the “shares have witnessed hyper-volatility” following their 250% surge in the trading debut.Since…

Google announced on Wednesday that it’s bringing a slew of new features to the Android ecosystem and Pixel devices. The tech giant is introducing Material 3 Expressive to Pixel phones, Adaptive Audio for the Pixel Buds Pro 2, on-wrist navigation for the Pixel Watch, new AI writing tools in Gboard, enhanced audio sharing capabilities, the ability to create custom Android bots, and more. Starting Wednesday, Material 3 Expressive is coming to Pixel 6 and newer devices, as well as Pixel Tablet. Google says Material 3 Expressive will make your Pixel feel even more personal, as you can use Live effects…

Attendees during a media tour of the Revolution Wind construction hub at the Port of Providence in Providence, Rhode Island, US, on Thursday, June 13, 2024. Adam Glanzman | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThe Danish renewable energy company Orsted sued the Trump administration on Thursday to prevent it from blocking the completion of a wind farm off the coast of New England.The Interior Department abruptly ordered Orsted on Aug. 22 to halt construction on Revolution Wind off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut. The fully permitted project is 80% complete and would provide enough power for more than 350,000 homes…

Pornhub owner Aylo will pay a $5 million settlement to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Utah over allegations that the company knowingly profited off of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and nonconsensual material (NCM). Formerly MindGeek, Aylo made some significant changes to the way it moderates content in late 2020, when The New York Times published an exposé showing how Pornhub — Aylo’s most popular portfolio website — failed to prevent and remove uploads of CSAM and NCM. It was only after pressure from credit card operators that the company began to verify the ages of all actors in…