Author: GT

NEW YORK (AP) — The typical compensation package for chief executives who run companies in the S&P 500 jumped nearly 10% in 2024 as the stock market enjoyed another banner year and corporate profits rose sharply. Many companies have heeded calls from shareholders to tie CEO compensation more closely to performance. As a result, a large proportion of pay packages consist of stock awards, which the CEO often can’t cash in for years, if at all, unless the company meets certain targets, typically a higher stock price or market value or improved operating profits. The Associated Press’ CEO compensation survey,…

Oil prices eased on Tuesday as market participants weighed the possibility of an OPEC+ decision to further increase its crude oil output at a meeting later this week.Anadolu | Anadolu | Getty ImagesEight oil-producing nations of the OPEC+ alliance could hike output by as much as 411,000 barrels per day in July, two OPEC+ delegates told CNBC, continuing a rapid unwinding of voluntary production cuts.Markets are awaiting a final decision on July production, with the eight countries — heavyweight producers Russia and Saudi Arabia, alongside Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — set to review market…

Odyssey, a startup founded by self-driving pioneers Oliver Cameron and Jeff Hawke, has developed an AI model that lets users “interact” with streaming video. Available on the web in an “early demo,” the model generates and streams video frames every 40 milliseconds. Via basic controls, viewers can explore areas within a video, similar to a 3D-rendered video game. “Given the current state of the world, an incoming action, and a history of states and actions, the model attempts to predict the next state of the world,” explains Odyssey in a blog post. “Powering this is a new world model, demonstrating…

Karat Financial, the company known for its credit cards for creators, is launching a creator-focused business banking product. Powered by digital bank Grasshopper, Karat’s banking product is a natural extension of its credit card offering with Visa. “Six years in, the problem we’re solving is still the same,” co-founder and co-CEO Eric Wei told TechCrunch. “Creators are real businesses, and banks don’t understand them.” Despite their prominent position in culture, creators still encounter hiccups when doing simple things like applying for a business credit card or opening up a bank account, even when their businesses are booming. In some cases,…

Salesforce has agreed to acquire data management firm Informatica in a deal valued at around $8 billion. This includes equity value, minus Salesforce’s existing investment in the company. Informatica shareholders will receive $25 in cash per share.The move aims to help Salesforce build a stronger foundation for AI tools that can act on their own, often called agentic AI. Informatica’s software is known for helping businesses collect, manage, and organise large sets of data – the kind of support Salesforce needs to improve its AI systems’ work in different business applications.The deal brings together tools for organising and cleaning data…

Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, during the Computex conference in Taipei, Taiwan, on May 20, 2025.Annabelle Chih | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesNvidia shares jumped in premarket trading on Thursday after posting a positive set of earnings, sparking a rally in global semiconductor stocks.Shares of Nvidia were 6.5% higher at 05:53 a.m. ET after the company posted better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Wednesday, even as it took a hit from U.S. semiconductor export restrictions to China.Nvidia has been seen by investors as a bellwether for the broader semiconductor industry and artificial intelligence-related stocks, with its latest strong numbers sparking…

DeepSeek has gone viral. Chinese AI lab DeepSeek broke into the mainstream consciousness this week after its chatbot app rose to the top of the Apple App Store charts (and Google Play, as well). DeepSeek’s AI models, which were trained using compute-efficient techniques, have led Wall Street analysts — and technologists — to question whether the U.S. can maintain its lead in the AI race and whether the demand for AI chips will sustain. But where did DeepSeek come from, and how did it rise to international fame so quickly? DeepSeek’s trader origins DeepSeek is backed by High-Flyer Capital Management, a Chinese quantitative hedge fund…

Three years ago, Stellantis announced it was pairing up with Amazon to create in-car software that would bring a slew of connected products and services to vehicles by 2024 as part of the automaker’s broader plan to generate $22.5 billion annually from software. That never happened. And now the partnership is “winding down,” Reuters reported. The article also reported that Amazon staff working on the project had been reassigned or left the company, according to unnamed sources. Stellantis confirmed the Reuters report and told TechCrunch it would be pivoting to an Android-based system. “Amazon remains a valuable partner for Stellantis,…

Deepseek’s logo on Jan. 29, 2025.Andrey Rudakov | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesChinese startup DeepSeek, which caused shockwaves across markets this year, quietly released an upgraded version of its artificial intelligence reasoning model.The company did not make an official announcement, but the upgrade of DeepSeek R1 was released on AI model repository Hugging Face.DeepSeek rose to prominence this year after its free, open-source R1 reasoning model outperformed offerings from rivals including Meta and OpenAI. The low-cost and short time of development shocked global markets, sparking concerns that U.S. tech giants were overspending on infrastructure and wiping billions of dollars of value…

GameStop announced on Wednesday that it bought 4,710 bitcoin, which is worth over $500 million at the time of the purchase. The video game retail chain has struggled to stay relevant in a time when digital gaming purchases are increasingly popular — plus, the company took on a new kind of notoriety when it unwittingly became the center of a short squeeze in 2021. GameStop stock remains a bit inflated from where it was before the meddling of Reddit community r/WallStreetBets, but years out from its unpredictable moment in the spotlight, GameStop is still reporting annual declines in net sales.…