Author: GT

Some fusion companies might be hitting a rough patch, but Realta Fusion is bucking the trend with a new fundraising round it says will allow it to finalize the design of its Anvil prototype reactor. “By the end of our Series A investment period, we’ll have said, ‘Hey, we have a design. We’re shovel ready to go and build Anvil,’” Kieran Furlong, co-founder and CEO of Realta, told TechCrunch.  The company hopes to make sufficient progress this year and next so it can pitch investors on a Series B, which would go toward building the Anvil prototype, Furlong said. Realta…

U.S. chip maker Nvidia will partner with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund-owned AI startup Humain and will ship 18,000 chips to the Middle Eastern nation to help power a new data center project. The partnership was revealed Tuesday as part of a White House trip to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia has been working to develop its artificial intelligence capacity and strengthen its cloud computing infrastructure with the help of foreign investment.“AI, like electricity and internet, is essential infrastructure for every nation,” said Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia. “Together with Humain, we are building AI…

U.K. retail giant Marks & Spencer has confirmed hackers stole its customers’ personal information during a cyberattack last month. In a brief statement with London’s stock exchange on Tuesday, the retailer said an unspecified amount of customer information was taken in the data breach. The BBC, which first reported the company’s filing, cited a Marks & Spencer online letter as saying that the stolen data includes customer names, dates of birth, home and email addresses, phone numbers, household information, and online order histories. The company also said it was resetting the online account passwords of its customers. Marks & Spencer…

FILE PHOTO: Coal moves on an overland belt from inside the newly opened Ramaco Resources Inc. Stonecoal Alma mine near Wylo, West Virginia, U.S., on Tuesday, Aug. 8, 2017.Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesA small coal miner headquartered in Kentucky could play an important role in helping the U.S. break its dependence on China for rare earth elements that are crucial for national defense.Ramaco Resources unexpectedly discovered in 2023 that a Wyoming coal mine it purchased for $2 million is sitting on top of a major trove of rare earth elements. The Brook Mine outside Sheridan is estimated to…

Robinhood revealed Tuesday that it’s acquiring Canadian crypto leader WonderFi for CA$250 million (around $178.56 million) in an all-cash deal as it pushes into Canada’s growing digital asset market. WonderFi operates two regulated crypto platforms, Bitbuy and Coinsquare, with over CA$2.1 billion in assets under custody. The transaction offers WonderFi shareholders CA$0.36 per share, representing a 41% premium over the company’s recent closing price. (WonderFi went public in Canada through a reverse takeover in 2021.) The tie-up follows Robinhood’s $200 million purchase of European exchange Bitstamp last year and reinforces its global expansion strategy.  WonderFi’s team, including CEO Dean Skurka, will…

The Trump AI chip policy reversal announced this week signals a shift in how advanced computing technologies will flow in global markets, as the administration prepares to dismantle Biden’s complex three-tier regulatory framework.Set to take effect on May 15, 2025, the Biden administration’s Framework for Artificial Intelligence Diffusion would have created a stratified global technology landscape with significant implications for international trade, innovation, and geopolitical relationships.According to a Commerce Department on Wednesday, the Trump administration views the existing approach as fundamentally flawed. “The Biden AI rule is overly complex, overly bureaucratic, and would stymie American innovation,” a Commerce Department spokeswoman…

Melbourne O’Banion co-founded insurtech Bestow with Jonathan Abelmann in 2017 after struggling to secure his own life insurance policy. His goal was to make it easier for people to obtain life insurance and make the process more tech-enabled. Initially, Bestow operated as a direct-to-consumer insurance provider — selling, underwriting, and servicing life insurance policies. In those first few years, the startup processed over a million applications. Its no-exam underwriting platform gained traction during the COVID pandemic as traditional medical exams were paused. As it grew its D2C business, Bestow in parallel developed software to help modernize the whole process.  Recognizing…

Hinge Health co-founders Gabriel Mecklenburg (left) and Daniel Perez (right).Courtesy of Hinge HealthHinge Health said in a filing on Tuesday that it plans to raise up to $437 million in its upcoming initial public offering.The digital physical therapy startup filed its initial prospectus in March, and it updated the document with an expected pricing range for its Class A common stock of $28 to $32 per share. Hinge said it plans to sell about 13.7 million shares in the offering.Based on the number of Class A and Class B shares outstanding after the offering, the deal would value the company at $2.42 billion…

In a bid to make its AI DJ feel more interactive, Spotify is updating the feature to let users request music or change the mood of a playlist using voice commands. The company is rolling out this feature, supported only in English, in over 60 markets for its premium subscribers. Until now, you could only listen to the AI DJ play songs with some commentary in between. The company is now adding an interactive element to the feature. Users can now tell the AI DJ to change the mood or genre, or have it play tracks from specific artists. Image…

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Major social media platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X have failed to protect LGBTQ+ users from hate and harassment, in part, because they intentionally rolled back previous safety practices, the advocacy group GLAAD said Tuesday in its annual Social Media Safety Index.The report said that recent “unprecedented hate speech policy rollbacks” from Instagram and Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are “actively undermining the safety of LGBTQ people” both online and offline. Meta’s rollback now allows users to call LGBTQ people “mentally ill,” among other policy changes.The scorecard assigns numeric ratings to each platform…