Author: GT

A Waymo self-driving car, seen with a driver, stops at a red light outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Friday, March 31, 2025.Bill Clark | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty ImagesWaymo co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana told CNBC on Tuesday that the Alphabet-owned ride-hailing company has reached 10 million trips, doubling in the past five months.”These are all paid trips, and they represent people who are really integrating Waymo Driver into their everyday lives,” said Mawakana, speaking at the Google I/O developer conference. The 10 million figure includes rides in Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Phoenix area.Waymo is…

Semiconductor giant AMD followed through with its plan to spin out ZT Systems’ server-manufacturing business. AMD announced on Monday that it was selling ZT Systems’ server-manufacturing business to electronic manufacturing services company Sanmina. The $3 billion deal is a mix of cash and stock: $2.25 billion in cash; a $300 million premium, including 50% cash and 50% equity; and a $450 million contingent payment based on financial performance over the next three years, according to Reuters. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2025, subject to regulatory approval. After this divestiture, AMD will maintain control of ZT…

Palo Alto Networks signage displays on the screen at the Nasdaq Market in New York City, U.S., March 25, 2025. Jeenah Moon | ReutersPalo Alto Networks reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue for the latest quarter but its gross margin was below estimates. The stock dropped 4% in extended trading on Tuesday.Here’s how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG:Earnings per share: 80 cents, adjusted vs. 77 cents expectedRevenue: $2.29 billion vs. $2.28 billion expectedSales in the company’s fiscal third-quarter grew 15% from $1.98 billion a year earlier. Net income fell to $262.1 million, or 37 cents per…

Google is buying another 600 megawatts of solar power to supply electricity to its data centers. The new deal covers solar and storage projects being developed in South Carolina by EnergyRe. The company says it has 16 gigawatts under development; most projects listed on its site have deployed around 60 MW to 75 MW of solar, though some are larger. Google has recently invested heavily in renewables. Last year, it pledged to invest $20 billion with Intersect Power and TPG Rise Climate to build enough zero-carbon power plants to provide electricity for several gigawatts’ worth of data centers. And in…

President Donald Trump signed the Take It Down Act on Monday, a bipartisan law that enacts stricter penalties for distributing nonconsensual explicit images, including deepfakes and revenge porn.  The bill criminalizes the publication of such images, whether they’re authentic or AI-generated. Whoever publishes the photos or videos can face criminal penalties, including fines, imprisonment, and restitution.  Under the new law, social media companies and online platforms must remove such material within 48 hours of notice from the victim. The platforms also have to take steps to delete duplicate content.  Many states have already banned sexually explicit deepfakes and revenge porn,…

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, speaks at the Google I/O developer conference. Andrej Sokolow | Picture Alliance | Getty ImagesGoogle on Tuesday announced Veo 3, an AI video generator that can also create and incorporate audio. The artificial intelligence tool competes with OpenAI’s Sora video generator, but its ability to also incorporate audio into the video that it creates is a key distinction. The company said Veo 3 can incorporate audio that includes dialogue between characters as well as animal sounds.”Veo 3 excels from text and image prompting to real-world physics and accurate lip syncing,” Eli Collins, Google DeepMind product vice…

Google announced on Monday that it has officially released the NotebookLM apps for Android and iOS, a day before Google I/O 2025 and a day before the company said it would roll out. Since its launch in 2023, the AI-based note-taking and research assistant has only been accessible via desktop. Google has now made the service available on the go. NotebookLM is designed to help people better understand complex information through features like smart summaries and the ability to ask questions about documents and other materials. Image Credits:Google The app gives access to Audio Overviews, which are NotebookLM’s AI-generated podcasts based…

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai during the Google I/O developers conference in Mountain View, California, on May 10, 2023.David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesGoogle is adding a new artificial intelligence subscription service that offers exclusive access to the company’s most “cutting edge” AI products.Called “Google AI Ultra,” the new plan includes the highest usage limits and access to its latest AI models and premium features, the company announced Tuesday at its annual developer conference Google IO.At $249.99 per month, the subscription plan also includes early access features to experimental products as well as a YouTube premium subscription.”It’s for people…

With the current economic uncertainties and geopolitical challenges, securing funding for startups in Asia has recently become more difficult. Venture capital firms have also been impacted by the downturn, leading to a decrease in the number of funds being closed. The VC market is “going through [one of its] cyclical winters marked by high interest rates, tightened liquidity, and cautious LP sentiment,” Akio Tanaka, a co-founder of and partner at Headline Asia, a Tokyo- and Taipei-based VC firm, told TechCrunch in an interview. Yet funds are still closing. Headline Asia said Tuesday it had completed one of its largest funds…

Google on Tuesday unleashed another wave of artificial intelligence technology to accelerate a year-long makeover of its search engine that is changing the way people get information and curtailing the flow of internet traffic to websites.The next phase outlined at Google’s annual developers conference includes releasing a new “AI mode” option in the United States. The feature makes interacting with Google’s search engine more like having a conversation with an expert capable of answering questions on just about any topic imaginable.AI mode is being offered to all comers in the U.S. just two-and-half-months after the company began testing with a…