Author: GT

Bench, the accounting and tax startup that was bought in a fire sale last December, has conducted a round of significant layoffs, it confirmed to TechCrunch. Bench didn’t specify how many people were affected, but one person who works there estimated that Bench was eliminating dozens of positions – that’s a big chunk of the around 300 people who work for the company. Departments like client success and tax services were directly impacted, with one person directly familiar with the matter telling TechCrunch that most of Bench’s U.S.-based tax advisory team was eliminated.  Employer.com, the San Francisco HR tech company…

LONDON (AP) — British retailer Marks & Spencer said Friday that it’s “working day and night” to resolve a cyberattack nearly two weeks ago that has left it unable to process any online orders, a day after luxury London department store Harrods confirmed it had become the latest target. With Co-op also having shut down some of its information technology systems as a precaution following a hack, there are growing concerns within the retail sector that hackers are taking calculated risks by trying to replicate the actions of others to cause as much disruption as they can.According to reports, a…

Zach Witkoff (left) announced the deal at a crypto conference, in which he appeared on stage with Eric Trump – Giuseppe Cacace/AFP The UAE is planning to spend $2bn (£1.5bn) on one of Donald Trump’s cryptocurrencies in a move that has triggered accusations of a conflict of interest. Emirati investment firm MGX, which is backed by Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth fund, said it planned to do a deal using a so-called stablecoin called USD1. The coin, which is meant to track the value of the US dollar, was developed by World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture that launched last autumn…

Daniel Ek, co-founder and chief executive officer of Spotify Technology SA, during the Acquired LIVE event at the Chase Center in San Francisco, California, US, on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesSpotify on Friday said Apple has approved the company’s U.S. app update, which will allow users to access pricing information, links to make purchases and select from more payment options within the music streaming app.The approval comes after a U.S. federal judge on Wednesday ordered Apple to stop imposing the commissions it makes on purchases through web links inside an iPhone app. Spotify acted…

FutureHouse, an Eric Schmidt-backed nonprofit that aims to build an “AI scientist” within the next decade, has launched its first major product: a platform and API with AI-powered tools designed to support scientific work. Many, many startups are racing to develop AI research tools for the scientific domain, and some have with massive amounts of VC funding behind them. Tech giants seem bullish on AI for science, too — earlier this year, Google unveiled “AI co-scientist,” which the company said could aid scientists in creating hypotheses and experimental research plans. The CEOs of AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic have asserted…

LONDON (AP) — A European Union privacy watchdog fined TikTok 530 million euros ($600 million) on Friday after a four-year investigation found that the video sharing app’s data transfers to China put users at risk of spying, in breach of strict EU data privacy rules. Ireland’s Data Protection Commission also sanctioned TikTok for not being transparent with users about where their personal data was being sent and ordered the company to comply with the rules within six months. The Irish national watchdog serves as TikTok’s lead data privacy regulator in the 27-nation EU because the company’s European headquarters is based…

Despite rising more than 40,000% in the past decade, Bitcoin still faces notable risks that investors can’t overlook. Bitcoin challenges the current monetary system, so there will always be a risk that major governments intervene to prevent the crypto’s adoption. If Bitcoin fails at successfully scaling up to drive faster and cheaper transactions, it might not reach its full potential. Not everyone will have the same perspective, but Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) continues to prove that it’s a superior asset. As of this writing in the early afternoon of April 29, the world’s oldest and most valuable cryptocurrency is up 3%…

We’ve heard endless predictions about how AI chatbots will transform work, but data paints a much calmer picture—at least for now. Despite huge and ongoing advancements in generative AI, the massive wave it was supposed to create in the world of work looks more like a ripple so far. Researchers Anders Humlum (University of Chicago) and Emilie Vestergaard (University of Copenhagen) didn’t just rely on anecdotes. They dug deep, connecting responses from two big surveys (late 2023 and 2024) with official, detailed records about jobs and pay in Denmark. The pair zoomed in on around 25,000 people working in 7,000…

Dub, the copy-trading platform that says it’s transforming how Gen Z invests, has secured a $30 million Series A funding round, bringing its total raised to $47 million. The deal, which founder Steven Wang had previously hinted to TechCrunch was in the works, comes a year after its official launch. The 23-year-old Harvard dropout’s platform has been steadily growing, surpassing 1 million downloads, says Dub, by allowing users to mirror the investment strategies of successful traders. “The ultra-wealthy have long leveraged expert money managers. Now, Dub brings that same advantage to everyday investors,” says a press release citing Wang, who…

Some key opinion leaders in crypto think Bitcoin is going to hit $1 million by 2028. Their estimates aren’t as outlandish as they may seem at first glance. It’s easy for investors to get exposure to the underlying trend here. At the Token2049 cryptocurrency conference in Dubai on April 30, Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of the crypto exchange BitMEX, made a bold prediction about the future of Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC). “Don’t worry,” Hayes said, “Bitcoin is going to $1 million by 2028.” He isn’t the only big figure in crypto to make similar predictions, give or take a couple of…