Author: GT

GM is sending new and old EV batteries to recycler Redwood Materials, which then repurposes the packs for stationary energy storage, the two companies announced today. Second-life batteries from GM have already made their way through Redwood’s process and into a 12 megawatt microgrid at the company’s Sparks, Nevada, headquarters. Electricity from that installation then flows to a nearby 2,000 GPU data center owned by Crusoe. The microgrid is part of Redwood’s new energy storage division that launched publicly in June and focuses on repurposing EV batteries for grid-scale energy storage. Through testing, the company found that many of the…

AI safety researchers from OpenAI, Anthropic, and other organizations are speaking out publicly against the “reckless” and “completely irresponsible” safety culture at xAI, the billion-dollar AI startup owned by Elon Musk. The criticisms follow weeks of scandals at xAI that have overshadowed the company’s technological advances. Last week, the company’s AI chatbot, Grok, spouted antisemitic comments and repeatedly called itself “MechaHitler.” Shortly after xAI took its chatbot offline to address the problem, it launched an increasingly capable frontier AI model, Grok 4, which TechCrunch and others found to consult Elon Musk’s personal politics for help answering hot-button issues. In the…

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — An $8 billion class action investors’ lawsuit against Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and company leaders — current and former — begins Wednesday, with claims stemming from the 2018 privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.Investors allege in their lawsuit that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump’s successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016. Shareholders say Facebook officials repeatedly and continually violated a 2012 consent order with the Federal Trade Commission under which Facebook agreed to stop collecting…

China’s Geely Auto is officially taking its luxury EV subsidiary Zeekr private, just over a year after the company debuted on the New York Stock Exchange. The news comes two months after Geely offered to take Zeekr private, following President Donald Trump’s threats earlier this year to delist Chinese stocks from U.S. exchanges. When the merger closes, Zeekr shareholders will receive either $2.69 in cash per share or 1.23 newly issued Geely shares for each Zeekr share they own, per a regulatory filing. Holders of Zeekr American depositary shares (ADSs), which each represent 10 Zeekr shares, will receive either $26.87…

PHNOM PENH, Cambodia (AP) — Cambodia on Wednesday said that an order by Prime Minister Hun Manet for government bodies to crackdown on criminal cybercrime operations being run in the country had resulted in the arrest of more than 1,000 suspects so far this week.Hun Manet issued the order authorising state action for “maintaining and protecting security, public order, and social safety.” “The government has observed that online scams are currently causing threats and insecurity in the world and the region. In Cambodia, foreign criminal groups have also infiltrated to engage in online scams,” Hun Manet’s statement, dated Tuesday, said.The…

Facade with logo at headquarters of Scale AI, San Francisco, California, June 2, 2025. Smith Collection | Gado | Archive Photos | Getty ImagesWeeks after Meta poured $14.3 billion into Scale AI and hired founder Alexandr Wang, the artificial intelligence startup is cutting 200 full-time employees, or 14% of its staff. Scale AI’s interim CEO Jason Droege, who took over for Wang, told employees in a memo on Wednesday that the startup ramped up its generative AI capacity “too quickly” and created too many layers of “excessive bureaucracy.” He said Scale AI remains a well-resourced and well-funded company.”These changes will…

Apple is investing $500 million in MP Materials, the only fully integrated rare-earth mining company currently operating in the United States, as part of a broader effort to strengthen the domestic rare-earth supply chain. The tech giant announced on Tuesday that with this deal, it’s committed to buying American-made rare-earth magnets developed at MP Materials’ flagship facility in Fort Worth, Texas. The factory will develop a series of neodymium magnet manufacturing lines specifically designed for Apple products. Apple says that once the American-made magnets are built, they will be shipped across the country and all over the world to help…

ATLANTA (AP) — Cal Raleigh was just as successful with the first robot umpire All-Star challenge as he was in the Home Run Derby.Seattle’s catcher signaled for an appeal to the Automated Ball-Strike System in the first inning of the National League’s win Tuesday night, getting a strikeout for Detroit’s Tarik Subal on San Diego’s Manny Machado.“You take ‘em any way you can get ’em, boys,” Skubal said on the mound.Four of five challenges of plate umpire Dan Iassogna’s calls were successful in the first All-Star use of the ABS system, which could make its regular-season debut next year.Athletics rookie…

Joseph Rutakangwa spent eight years looking for tools to help companies gather consumer insight data. Eventually, he decided to just build them.  Now his startup, called Rwazi, has raised a $12 million Series A led by Bonfire Ventures to help companies with market intelligence and consumer insights. He founded the company in 2021 with co-founder Eric Sewankambo.  “There was an abundance of consumer and market-level data for places like the U.S., U.K., and a few parts of Western Europe, maybe some traces in Canada and Australia. But when it came to international markets, including economic giants like India, Brazil, Mexico,…

For 18 months, Rivian and Google engineers worked together. Today, they’re showing off their work. Rivian is pushing out a software update that will bring a unique version of Google Maps into its EVs. It’s the latest step in Rivian’s continued effort to distinguish its vehicles with software — an effort that has helped it strike up a joint venture with one of the world’s biggest automakers, Volkswagen. This isn’t a typical Google Maps integration and it’s unlike the tech company’s other collaborations in the automotive sector. For years, Google has pushed into automotive through its smartphone projection app called…