Author: GT

Companies like Google and Microsoft have equipped their productivity suites with AI features and assistants, while startups such as ClickUp and ReadAI have focused heavily on building AI integrations and search capabilities. In alignment with this growing trend of infusing digital work suites with AI, Dropbox on Thursday upgraded its AI search tool, Dash, first introduced in 2023. The company is adding AI “understanding” of different types of content in Dash, which means users can search across audio, video, and images in addition to text. The company is also adding people search to let users search for a person who…

Bitcoin’s (BTC) breakout to $93,000 is being driven by deep-pocketed institutions, not retail exchange traded-fund (ETF) buyers, said Coinbase Institutional’s John D’Agostino on CNBC. The rally began in early April, as institutional investors, and sovereign wealth funds quietly accumulated BTC with their “patient pools of capital” while retail investors were still pulling capital from spot ETFs. “Institutions, sovereigns, patient pools of capital were piling in,” he said. “Retail via the ETF were exiting. So you’ve got to ask yourself, what do the institutions know?” That institutional conviction is now being formalized. Earlier this week, Strike CEO Jack Mallers and Cantor…

U.S. Department Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum looks on during CERAWeek in Houston, Texas, U.S., March 12, 2025. Kaylee Greenlee | ReutersOKLAHOMA CITY — The Trump administration is considering investing in companies that mine and process critical minerals in an effort to end U.S. dependence on imports from countries including China, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said this week.”We should be taking some of our balance sheet and making investments,” Burgum said late Wednesday at a conference organized by the Hamm Institute for American Energy. “The U.S. may need to make an “equity investment in each of these companies that’s taking…

Major tokens fell as much as 5% on Thursday as traders took profits on a steady move higher from earlier this week, with memecoin dogecoin (DOGE) leading losses among the largest assets. Bitcoin (BTC) clung to the $93,000 zone in the past 24 hours, but XRP, Solana’s SOL, BNB Chain’s BNB and DOGE showed losses above 2%. Ether (ETH) fared relatively better with a 1.5% slump. Overall market cap decreased 2.5%. The broad-based CoinDesk 20, a liquid index tracking the largest tokens by market cap, fell over 3%. Spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the U.S. bagged over $916 million…

Sometimes the simpler idea is the winner. That’s certainly the case with the winner of the Xprize Carbon Removal competition, which was announced on Wednesday. Mati Carbon walked away with the $50 million grand prize for its enhanced rock weathering program that locks carbon in soils for thousands of years. The Musk Foundation underwrote the prize. The runners up were NetZero, which produces biochar; Vaulted Deep, which processes and buries waste biomass; and Undo Carbon, another enhanced rock weathering startup. Mati also beat finalists that spanned a range of technologies, from direct air capture to ocean alkalinity enhancement. “It’s really…

By Elizabeth Howcroft and Tommy Reggiori Wilkes LONDON (Reuters) -Revolut’s pretax profit surged 149% last year to 1.1 billion pounds ($1.46 billion) as the financial technology firm rode a wave in crypto trading and earned more from interest rates and card fees, the company said on Thursday. Revenue at the London-based fintech rose to 3.1 billion pounds, up from 1.8 billion pounds in 2023, it said, driven by income from interest on the back of higher rates, card payments and the company’s “Wealth” segment, which includes trading and crypto products. Its pretax profit was more than double the 438 million…

Swedish fintech startup Froda has secured a $22.7 million (€20 million) Series B round led by Incore Invest, also based in Sweden. The move bucks the trend of a slight slowdown in investments into fintech, plus a further confirmation of the long-term trend toward the “embedded finance” model.  Largely operating in northern European countries, from Finland down to the U.K., Froda offers debt financing for small businesses (SMEs) and is embedded in verticals such as marketplaces or payment platforms. The investment will be used to fuel broader European expansion.  The financing is assessed via a cash flow analysis through an…

Adobe’s new artificial intelligence image models, Firefly Image Model 4 and Firefly Image Model 4 Ultra, can generate hyper-realistic pictures in response to user prompts.AdobeLONDON — Adobe plans to launch a mobile version of its artificial intelligence image generation tool Firefly, stepping up a challenge to OpenAI as the Microsoft-backed startup advances its efforts on visual applications for the technology.The design software giant said Thursday at its MAX creativity conference in London that it will release Firefly on both iOS and Android “soon,” without giving a specific date.”Creative people think on the go,” Alexandru Costin, vice president of Adobe Firefly,…

Small and medium businesses are the latest targets for cybersecurity attacks, with one in three small businesses experiencing a data breach last year. SMBs are becoming more proactive in detecting and stopping these threats, and today a startup called Cynomi is announcing $37 million in funding to meet that demand. Insight Partners and Entrée Capital are co-leading this Series B, with previous backers Canaan, Flint Capital, and S16VC also participating. Sources close to the deal told TechCrunch that the company was valued at more than $140 million post-money.  Cynomi previously raised around $23 million (including this seed round we covered in 2022). London and Tel…

On Tuesday, Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw nearly $1 billion in inflows — one of the largest surges of capital into the popular crypto products since January. The funds now collectively have $108.16 billion in assets under management. According to Farside Investors, ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF saw net inflows of $267 million, while BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) logged $193.5 million. The uptick in inflows to ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF marks a shift from IBIT consistently leading the pack, according to Eric Balchunas, a Bloomberg senior ETF analyst. “Good sign to see flow depth vs. say $IBIT doing 90% of…