Author: GT

Deep Cogito has released Cogito v2, a new family of open-source AI models that sharpen their own reasoning skills.Released under an open-source licence, the new Cogito v2 lineup includes four hybrid reasoning AI models: two mid-sized at 70B and 109B parameters, and two large-scale versions at 405B and 671B. The largest, a 671B Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model, is already being touted as one of the most powerful open-source AIs in the world. The company reports that it competes with the latest from DeepSeek and is closing the gap on proprietary systems like O3 and Claude 4 Opus.But the real story isn’t just…

Jaque Silva | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesOpenAI is set to hit 700 million weekly active users for ChatGPT this week, up from 500 million in March, marking a more than fourfold year-over-year surge in growth, the company said Monday.The figure spans all ChatGPT artificial intelligence products — free, Plus Pro, Enterprise, Team, and Edu — and comes as daily user messages surpassed 3 billion, according to the company. The growth rate is also accelerating, compared with 2.5 times year-over-year growth at this time last year.”Every day, people and teams are learning, creating, and solving harder problems,” said Nick Turley, VP…

Harvey co-founders Winston Weinberg and Gabe PereyraCourtesy of HarveyArtificial intelligence startup Harvey on Monday announced it has reached $100 million in annual recurring revenue, or ARR, just three years after its launch. Harvey runs an AI-powered legal platform for lawyers at law firms and large corporations. Its technology can help with legal research, drafting and diligence projects, and the company is also building industry-specific use cases. Winston Weinberg, co-founder and CEO of Harvey, said the startup’s ARR milestone has largely been driven by usage. Harvey has surpassed 500 customers, including CNBC’s parent company, Comcast, and its weekly average users have quadrupled over…

Tesla’s board of directors has announced a new compensation package for CEO Elon Musk worth around $29 billion in shares, with the company citing the “ever-intensifying AI talent war and Tesla’s position at a critical inflection point” as reasons for the payout. The massive pay package is being allocated through a 2019 Equity Incentive Plan that is already approved by shareholders, so it won’t go to a vote, according to a regulatory filing and Ann Lipton, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School. Tesla says it will put “a longer-term CEO compensation strategy” to a vote at the…

Electric air taxi developer Joby Aviation has agreed to buy Blade Air Mobility’s helicopter ride-share business for as much as $125 million. Joby is buying the Blade brand and the company’s passenger business, which includes operations in the United States and Europe. Blade founder and CEO Rob Wiesenthal will continue to lead the business, which will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Joby. Blade’s medical division, which transports organs, isn’t included in the transaction and will remain a separate company. The deal gives Joby instant access to a network of 12 terminals in key markets like New York City —…

Tesla is awarding CEO Elon Musk 96 million shares of restricted stock valued at approximately $29 billion, just six months after a judge ordered the company to revoke his massive pay package. The electric vehicle maker said in a regulatory filing on Monday that Musk must first pay Tesla $23.34 per share of restricted stock that vests, which is equal to the exercise price per share of the 2018 pay package that was awarded to the company’s CEO. In December Delaware Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick reaffirmed her earlier ruling that Tesla must revoke Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package. She found…

The Reliance Industries Ltd. oil refinery in Jamnagar, Gujarat, India, on Saturday, July 31, 2021.Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesIndia is navigating a tricky balancing act after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened a “penalty” over its continued imports of Russian oil — a trade that New Delhi appears reluctant to end anytime soon.Despite Trump telling reporters Friday that he “heard” India would halt purchases, officials in New Delhi have remained noncommittal. Foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said that the country decides its energy import sources “based on the price at which oil is available in the international market and depending…

Heat waves and longer summers are driving seasonal spikes in demand for cooling units, highlighting the need for efficient technologies and adequate power supply to keep Europe cool. This year is set to bring another record hot summer, with temperatures reaching as high as 39 degrees Celsius in Paris. The increase in heat, as well as cultural shifts and income changes, is boosting demand for air conditioning (AC) units, according to a report from the International Energy Agency published last week. Total ownership of AC units remains relatively low at 20% in Europe, the IEA data showed. Meanwhile, AC penetration…

The outcry after a recent marketplace crackdown on games with adult content, seemingly due to pressure from payment processors, prompted Mastercard to release a brief statement Friday pushing back against recent headlines. “Mastercard has not evaluated any game or required restrictions of any activity on game creator sites and platforms, contrary to media reports and allegations,” the company said, adding, “At the same time, we require merchants to have appropriate controls to ensure Mastercard cards cannot be used for unlawful purchases, including illegal adult content.” This follows an open letter by the advocacy group Collective Shout addressed to executives at…

Shortly after Hunter Lightman joined OpenAI as a researcher in 2022, he watched his colleagues launch ChatGPT, one of the fastest-growing products ever. Meanwhile, Lightman quietly worked on a team teaching OpenAI’s models to solve high school math competitions.  Today that team, known as MathGen, is considered instrumental to OpenAI’s industry-leading effort to create AI reasoning models: the core technology behind AI agents that can do tasks on a computer like a human would. “We were trying to make the models better at mathematical reasoning, which at the time they weren’t very good at,” Lightman told TechCrunch, describing MathGen’s early…