Author: GT

The tech layoff wave is still kicking in 2025. Last year saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 549 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. So far this year, more than 22,000 workers have been the victim of reductions across the tech industry, with a staggering 16,084 cuts taking place in February alone. We’re tracking layoffs in the tech industry in 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks and understand the impact on innovation across all types of companies. As businesses continue to embrace AI and automation, this tracker serves as a reminder of the human…

U.S. hyperscalers Meta and Alphabet ‘s Google are rolling out a fast-growing web of transcontinental subsea cables, looking to keep pace with ever-increasing bandwidth demand and artificial intelligence workloads. Submarine cables are the backbone of the world’s internet and telecommunications infrastructure, enabling everything from international phone calls to financial transactions. While satellites play a complementary role, these largely unseen data super-highways carry the vast majority of global internet traffic. By some estimates , as much of 95% of international traffic passes through fiber-optic cables across the ocean floor. Subsea cables have typically been the domain of telecom giants and state-backed…

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime chief…

Bedrock Robotics, an autonomous vehicle technology startup founded by veterans of Waymo and Segment, has been operating quietly for more than a year. Now, it’s breaking cover with an $80 million funding round from investors Eclipse and 8VC. Bedrock Robotics is focused on developing a self-driving kit that can be retrofitted to construction and other worksite vehicles, according to the company. The announcement confirms some of TechCrunch’s reporting in May. Bedrock is “upgrading existing fleets with sensors, compute, and intelligence that understands project goals, adapts to changing conditions, and executes work around the clock,” according to a blog post written…

Teaching a robot new skills used to require coding expertise. But a new generation of robots could potentially learn from just about anyone.Engineers are designing robotic helpers that can “learn from demonstration.” This more natural training strategy enables a person to lead a robot through a task, typically in one of three ways: via remote control, such as operating a joystick to remotely maneuver a robot; by physically moving the robot through the motions; or by performing the task themselves while the robot watches and mimics.Learning-by-doing robots usually train in just one of these three demonstration approaches. But MIT engineers…

Google is rolling out an agentic AI-powered business-calling feature to all users in the United States, the company announced on Wednesday. The tech giant is also enhancing Google Search’s AI Mode by bringing its Gemini 2.5 Pro model to the search experience and introducing deep research capabilities. The new business-calling feature uses AI to call local businesses on your behalf to collect information about availability and pricing. The idea behind the feature is to help you access information without having to actually pick up the phone and talk to someone. Google began testing the feature back in January with users…

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The Trump administration revoked federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project on Wednesday, intensifying uncertainty about how the state will make good on its long-delayed promise of building a bullet train to shuttle riders between San Francisco and Los Angeles. The U.S. Transportation Department announced it was pulling back $4 billion in funding for the project, weeks after signaling it would do so. Overall, a little less than a quarter of the project’s funding has come from the federal government. The rest has come from the state, mainly through a voter-approved bond and money from its…

Rare-earth elements appear to be behind Nvidia’s stance on China.  After announcing in June plans to essentially withdraw from the Chinese market, the semiconductor chip and AI giant reversed course and said it was filing an application to restart sales of its H20 AI chip to China. U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Tuesday that Nvidia’s plans to start selling its H20 AI chips are tied to ongoing trade discussions with China regarding rare-earth elements, according to reporting from Reuters. AMD plans to restart sales of its MI308 AI chip in China too. Rare-earth elements (REE) like lanthanum and cerium, which are…

Several players of the popular first-person shooter Call of Duty complained last week that they were permanently banned from the game for using a well-known cheat. Video game streamer ItsHapa wrote on X last week that Call of Duty players using ArtificialAiming, a cheat provider of more than 19 years, were the targets of a “massive wave of permabans,” referring to bans that cannot be reversed, which prevents cheaters from creating new accounts. The streamer also posted a series of screenshots from the private forum where users of ArtificialAiming’s cheat, particularly the one for 2024’s Call of Duty: Black Ops…

Sales of Tesla’s Cybertruck have plummeted from their peak last year, to the point that the hulking (and expensive) GMC Hummer EV outsold the polarizing steel-clad curiosity in the second quarter. Tesla sold just 4,306 Cybertrucks in the second quarter, just shy of the 4,508 Hummers that GMC moved in the same period, according to new data from Cox Automotive. Both were beat by Ford’s F-150 Lightning, which once again became the best-selling electric truck in the U.S. in the first quarter, beating out the Cybertruck. But even Ford’s offering is struggling; the 5,842 Lightnings sold in Q2 was the…