Author: GT

Amazon is making a sizable investment to support new and existing Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers in Chile. The tech conglomerate announced on Wednesday that it will pour more than $4 billion into building an AWS infrastructure region of data centers in Chile by the end of 2026. The investment will go toward establishing three availability zones, or groups of isolated data centers, in the new AWS region. Amazon said it also plans to hire and develop local talent to operate and support its region in Chile. “The AWS South America (Chile) Region will help serve the fast-growing demand for…

The institutional acceptance of crypto around the world has accelerated significantly recently, developing hand in hand with better-defined regulation. Here, BlockFills CEO Nick Hammer discusses the reasons for crypto’s increasing institutional usage and some of the latest products responding to that demand. What trends are you seeing now in the digital asset space? We’ve been seeing increased involvement from institutional players in this space such as hedge funds, family offices and asset managers, which underscores the growing credibility and maturity of the digital asset space. Institutional activity brings significant capital, greater liquidity and stability to this market. It also drives…

Uber and Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company WeRide plan to expand a commercial robotaxi partnership and bring the service to another 15 cities over the next five years. The expansion comes five months after the two companies launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi.  As part of that expansion, Uber will increase its investment into WeRide by $100 million, according to a Wednesday regulatory filing. WeRide said it expects the cash to come through by the second half of 2025. The companies said the expansion will include cities in Europe. Under the partnership, WeRide’s robotaxi services are available through the…

Digital bank Revolut is working with Lightspark to roll out bitcoin (BTC) transactions on Lightning Network to customers in the U.K. and select countries in the European Economic Area (EEA). The feature aims to cut transaction fees and payments processing time for crypto users, Lightspark said in a blog post. When asked in an email, the company didn’t specify the timeline for when the feature will go live. Lightspark, led by former PayPal executive David Marcus, provides backend infrastructure for connecting to what it calls the “Money Grid” — a decentralized network for real-time global payments. The Lightning Network is…

Microsoft says that it’s embracing Google’s recently launched open protocol for allowing AI “agents” to communicate with each other. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it would bring support for Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) spec to two of its AI development platforms, Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Microsoft has also joined the A2A working group on GitHub to contribute to the protocol and tooling. “By supporting A2A and building on our open orchestration platform, we’re laying the foundation for the next generation of software — collaborative, observable, and adaptive by design,” wrote the company in a blog post. “The best agents…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Google is partnering with Elementl Power on three project sites for advanced nuclear energy as the energy required to power burgeoning artificial intelligence projects rises sharply. Under the agreement announced Wednesday, Google will provide capital for the projects, which the companies say will each produce 600 megawatts of power capacity. No dollar figure for Google’s investment was given.“Our collaboration with Elementl Power enhances our ability to move at the speed required to meet this moment of AI and American innovation,” said Amanda Peterson Corio, Google’s head of data center energy.Google and Elementl said they will collaborative with…

NFTs may no longer be at the top of every headline, but according to Rarible co-founder Alexander Salnikov, their next chapter is only just beginning. Speaking with TheStreet Roundtable’s Mehab Qureshi, Salnikov outlined how NFTs are evolving beyond hype into real-world applications that could define the next era of digital ownership. Addressing the so-called NFT stagnation post-2021, Salnikov noted, “NFTs in 2021 had two components. First, the fundamental component of what NFTs actually are… and then the big 90% bubble on top of that was just speculative.” That speculative wave, he said, has now shifted to memecoins — but the…

The United Arab Emirates looks set to integrating AI education in its schools’ curricula, meaning all children from kindergarten to high school will learn about the technology, how it can be used day-to-day, and the best ways to implement the various types of models. There will also be classes covering the ethics of AI, something that the country’s young might eventually teach to the world, according to OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who once termed the UAE the world’s ‘sandbox’ in which issues around AI such as governance could be thrashed out, and from which the rest of the world can make…

Jonathan Raa | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesDemocrats turned up the pressure on President Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency ventures this week and the fortune that he and his family are making off the efforts as a vote rolls forward on a key crypto bill.Thursday’s vote on the GENIUS ACT, a bill to establish federal rules for stablecoins, will be a test of how far the crypto lobby’s influence goes after it heavily backed Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.Even with limited power, Democrats are calling for probes into Trump-connected coins and backers, seeking financial records and blocking legislation.On Capitol Hill Tuesday morning, California Rep.…

In February of 2024, equity management startup Carta revealed that it was getting into the startup winddown business with a new offering called Carta Conclusions. By December, the company had decided to “retire” that offering, according to a blog post. And now, SimpleClosure, a startup that has described itself as “the Turbo Tax of shutting down,” has announced that Carta is a new investor in its $15 million Series A round. Carta’s decision to shift gears was driven by the realization that it “made more sense to invest and partner with a team laser-focused on solving this problem rather than…