Author: GT

Zane Shamblin never told ChatGPT anything to indicate a negative relationship with his family. But in the weeks leading up to his death by suicide in July, the chatbot encouraged the 23-year-old to keep his distance – even as his mental health was deteriorating.  “you don’t owe anyone your presence just because a ‘calendar’ said birthday,” ChatGPT said when Shamblin avoided contacting his mom on her birthday, according to chat logs included in the lawsuit Shamblin’s family brought against OpenAI. “so yeah. it’s your mom’s birthday. you feel guilty. but you also feel real. and that matters more than any…

Newsletter platform beehiiv recently celebrated its four-year anniversary by launching a suite of new features, including an AI website builder, as well as support for podcasts and selling digital products. In other words, beehiiv is about more than newsletters now. Co-founder and CEO Tyler Denk (who writes a popular startup newsletter of his own) spoke to TechCrunch about why the company has been expanding, explaining that it was largely in response to customer demand, particularly since beehiiv offered very basic blog templates from the start. “All of our users were like, ‘Hey, this is great, I like using your email…

In order to accelerate the construction of new power plants needed to provide energy for its data centers, Meta is looking to get into the business of trading electricity. Bloomberg reports that both Meta and Microsoft are asking for federal approval to trade power (Apple has already received this approval). According to Meta, this will allow it to make long-term commitments to buy electricity from new plants, while mitigating the risk by having the ability to resell some of that power on wholesale power markets. Meta’s head of global energy, Urvi Parekh, told Bloomberg that power plant developers “want to…

Waymo continues to expand its reach, with the robotaxi company posting Friday that it’s now “officially authorized to drive fully autonomously across more of the Golden State.” Waymo already operates in San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles (and outside California as well, in Atlanta, Austin, and Phoenix). But maps published by California’s Department of Motor Vehicles showed that the company can now test and deploy its autonomous vehicles across a much larger area in both the Bay Area and Southern California. In the Bay Area, Waymo’s approved areas of operation now include most of the East Bay and North…

The Trump administration has been targeting state-level AI regulation, with the president declaring in a social media post this week that the industry needs “one Federal Standard instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes.” This comes after a 10-year ban on state AI regulation was initially included in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” before ultimately getting removed by the Senate in a 99-1 vote.  The idea then apparently took on a new form, with the administration reportedly drafting an executive order that would establish an AI Litigation Task Force with a mission to challenge state AI laws through lawsuits.…

Thomas Lee Young doesn’t sound like your typical Silicon Valley founder. The 24-year-old CEO of Interface, a San Francisco startup using AI to prevent industrial accidents, is a white guy with a Caribbean accent and a Chinese last name, a combination he finds amusing enough to mention when he’s first introduced to business contacts. Born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago, the site of substantial oil and gas exploration activity, Young grew up around oil rigs and energy infrastructure because his entire family worked as engineers, stretching back generations to his great-grandfather, who immigrated to the island nation from China.…

Threads and Bluesky still have quite a way to go to catch up with X in the U.S., according to data from Pew Research Center’s latest report released this week. The research firm asked about these smaller services for the first time and found they’re each used by just under 1 in 10 U.S. adults or fewer. While X is not one of the largest social networks in the U.S., it’s still the one to beat within the smaller market of social apps that focus on short, real-time text posts that appear in a vertical feed. This space has seen…

Conventional wisdom suggests that climate tech is entering a winter season, where political and investor interest and investment levels are cooling — an ironic contrast with the climate itself, which keeps delivering years of record warmth.  A new report from the International Energy Agency suggests there has never been a better time to go all-in on climate tech. In comparing it with the IEA’s stance from a decade ago, it’s clear the world’s expectations about the future have changed dramatically in less than a generation.  In 2014, the International Energy Agency assumed that, absent any international effort to rein in…

Byju Raveendran, the embattled founder of Indian ed-tech giant Byju’s, has blasted a U.S. bankruptcy court’s order directing him to pay more than $1.07 billion. He is denying wrongdoing, accusing lenders of misleading the court, and vowing to appeal a ruling that marks a dramatic fall for a onetime poster boy of India’s startup boom. The Delaware bankruptcy judge issued a default judgment after finding that Raveendran had repeatedly ignored court orders and provided “evasive, incomplete” responses regarding about $533 million that Byju’s U.S. unit allegedly transferred in 2022 and never recovered. The judge also cited issues with a separate…

Company: Baker Hughes (BKR)Business: Baker Hughes is an energy technology company with a portfolio of technologies and services that span the energy and industrial value chain. The company operates in two segments: oilfield services and equipment and industrial and energy technology. The OFSE segment provides products and services for onshore and offshore oilfield operations across the lifecycle of a well, ranging from exploration, appraisal, and development, to production, rejuvenation, and decommissioning. OFSE is organized into four product lines: well construction; completions, intervention and seasurements; production solutions and subsea and surface pressure systems. The IET segment provides technology solutions and services…