Author: GT

Alexandr Wang, CEO of ScaleAI speaks on CNBC’s Squawk Box outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Jan. 23, 2025.Gerry Miller | CNBCScale AI founder Alexandr Wang told employees in a memo on Thursday that he’s leaving for Meta, confirming reports from earlier in the week about his departure and a large investment from the social networking company. Meta is pumping $14.3 billion into Scale AI as part of the deal, and will have a 49% stake in the artificial intelligence startup, but will not have any voting power, a Scale AI spokesperson said.”As you’ve probably gathered from recent…

When Apple unveiled Image Playground last year, the company touted it as a quick and easy way to generate personalized, original images with the help of Apple Intelligence. Upon launch, the app was met with skepticism, as some users were disappointed by its limitations and low-quality results. For example, one Reddit user was surprised to find that Image Playground kept generating an image of a hand with six fingers when prompted to create an “up close image of a hand.” In another instance, a user was unable to receive images of simple descriptions, such as “old man” or “flower.” Some…

Meta is making a $14.3 billion investment in artificial intelligence company Scale and recruiting its CEO Alexandr Wang to join a team developing “superintelligence” at the tech giant.The deal announced Thursday reflects a push by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to revive AI efforts at the parent company of Facebook and Instagram as it faces tough competition from rivals such as Google and OpenAI.Meta announced what it called a “strategic partnership and investment” with Scale late Thursday. Scale said the $14.3 billion investment puts its market value at over $29 billion.Scale said it will remain an independent company but the agreement…

TechCrunch is turning 20. I’ve somehow been here half that time, and this has been the best job of my life, which is maybe why the time has gone so fast. Before I dive (quickly!) into the nostalgia that milestone birthdays inevitably bring, I want to pause and explain why this particular anniversary matters so much to me. After working at multiple major media companies earlier in my career (Time Inc., Dow Jones, Reuters), I can say with certainty that there is nothing like the culture here. Contrarian, smart, hilarious, and hard-working. Almost everyone at TC wears multiple hats, as…

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting in Tehran, Iran, May 20, 2025. Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader.Office Of The Iranian Supreme Le | Via ReutersCrude oil futures jumped more than 7% Thursday evening after Israel launched airstrikes against Iran without U.S. support.U.S. West Texas Intermediate rose $5.33, or 7.83%, to $73.37 per barrel, while global benchmark Brent jumped $5.18, or 7.47%, to $74.56 per barrel.Israel launched a “targeted military operation” against Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile program, Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address. Israel hit Iran’s main enrichment site at Natanz, its…

Spanish startup Multiverse Computing on Thursday said it has raised an enormous Series B round of €189 million (about $215 million) on the strength of a technology it calls “CompactifAI.” CompactifAI is a quantum computing-inspired compression technology that is capable of reducing the size of LLMs by up to 95% without impacting model performance, the company said. Specifically, Multiverse offers compressed versions of well-known, open source LLMs — primarily small models — such as Llama 4 Scout, Llama 3.3 70B, Llama 3.1 8B, and Mistral Small 3.1. The company plans to release a version of DeepSeek R1 soon and said…

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The two people killed in a shooting over the weekend on the Las Vegas Strip captured it on video while livestreaming to their shared YouTube channel, according to a police report.The married victims were identified by the Clark County coroner’s office as Tanisha Finley, 43, and Rodney Finley, 44. Both died of multiple gunshot wounds.Las Vegas police said the shooting on Sunday night near the landmark Bellagio fountains was an isolated incident between the victims and the suspect, who had been feuding on social media since at least 2023. The suspect, identified by police as Manuel…

Meta has sued the maker of a popular AI “nudify” app, Crush AI, that reportedly ran thousands of ads across Meta’s platforms. In addition to the lawsuit, Meta says it’s taking new measures to crack down on other apps like Crush AI. In a lawsuit filed in Hong Kong, Meta alleged Joy Timeline HK, the entity behind Crush AI, attempted to circumvent the company’s review process to distribute ads for AI nudify services. Meta said in a blog post that it repeatedly removed ads by the entity for violating its policies but claims Joy Timeline HK continued to place additional…

Beset by near-universal bearish outlooks just a month ago, oil prices could spike to more than $100 a barrel in the event of an Israeli attack on Iran, some analysts are warning. Crude prices spiked as much as 5% overnight — before paring gains — on fears of military escalation between Iran and Israel as President Donald Trump announced the withdrawal of some U.S. personnel from embassies and bases across the Middle East. The front-month August contract for global benchmark Brent crude was trading at $69 per barrel at 3:20 p.m. ET on Thursday, while the front-month July U.S. WTI…

A central premise of robotaxis is that high usage and lower labor costs will ultimately make it a cheap transportation option. That is still far from true, but now there’s some data that gives us an idea of by how much. Obi, an app that aggregates real-time pricing and pick-up times across multiple ride-hailing services, has just published what it’s calling the “first in-depth examination of Waymo’s pricing strategy.” The company found Waymo’s self-driving car rides to be consistently more expensive than comparative offerings from Uber and Lyft — and it doesn’t seem to matter. The report, shared exclusively with…