Author: GT

Former Tesla executive Drew Baglino has a new startup developing solid-state transformers for the electric grid, Axios reported. The new company, Heron Power, is raising between $30 million to $50 million for a Series A, according to the report, with Capricorn Investment Group pegged to lead the round. Baglino was a longtime employee at Tesla, starting at the company in 2006, two years before Elon Musk took over as CEO. He rose through the ranks, designing the powertrain for the first Model S and leading engineering for Tesla’s battery storage products before being named senior vice president of powertrain and…

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives slashed his price targets for Apple and Tesla over the weekend as President Trump’s tariffs threaten to disrupt both businesses.  “The tariff economic Armageddon unleashed by Trump is a complete disaster for Apple given its massive China production exposure,” Ives said in a warning note over the weekend. “In our view, no U.S. tech company is more negatively impacted by these tariffs than Apple with 90% of iPhones produced and assembled in China.” Wedbush cut its price target for Apple stock by $75, down to $250 per share. Apple’s shares are down this afternoon by…

Microsoft has fired two employees who interrupted the company’s 50th anniversary celebration to protest its work supplying artificial intelligence technology to the Israeli military, according to a group representing the workers.Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Monday. The protests began Friday when Microsoft software engineer Ibtihal Aboussad walked up to a stage where an executive was announcing new product features and a long-term vision for Microsoft’s AI ambitions. “You claim that you care about using AI for good but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military,” Aboussad shouted at Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman. “Fifty-thousand people…

NurPhoto / Contributor / Getty Images Bitcoin and crypto-related stocks fell Monday, extending last week’s losses in the wake of President Donald Trump’s latest tariff announcement. The Trump administration showed no signs over the weekend of backing down from its plan to impose wide-ranging tariffs. Bitcoin’s price fell to around $76,000 Monday, down from above $100,000 in February. Bitcoin and crypto-related stocks fell Monday, extending last week’s losses in the wake of President Donald Trump’s latest tariff announcement. The price of Bitcoin was down to around $76,000 early Monday, after dropping below the $80,000 threshold over the weekend. The cryptocurrency had…

A Meta exec on Monday denied a rumor that the company trained its new AI models to present well on specific benchmarks while concealing the models’ weaknesses. The executive, Ahmad Al-Dahle, VP of generative AI at Meta, said in a post on X that it’s “simply not true” that Meta trained its Llama 4 Maverick and Llama 4 Scout models on “test sets.” In AI benchmarks, test sets are collections of data used to evaluate the performance of a model after it’s been trained. Training on a test set could misleadingly inflate a model’s benchmark scores, making the model appear…

(Bloomberg) — Michael Saylor’s Strategy said it will register an unrealized $5.9 billion loss in the first quarter after adopting an accounting change that requires valuing the digital asset at market prices. Most Read from Bloomberg Shares of the dot-com-era software maker turned leveraged Bitcoin proxy formerly known as MicroStrategy fell as much as 14% on Monday. Earlier, Bitcoin wiped out almost all of its gains since Donald Trump’s US presidential election win in early November. Strategy and fellow corporate buyers of Bitcoin are being made to recognize the unrealized changes that often produce big swings in earnings or, in…

Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify, speaks at the Collision conference in Toronto, Canada, on May 22, 2019.David Fitzgerald | Sportsfile | Getty ImagesShopify CEO Tobi Lutke is changing his company’s approach to hiring in the age of artificial intelligence.Employees will be expected to prove why they “cannot get what they want done using AI” before asking for more headcount and resources, Lutke wrote in a memo to staffers that he posted to X on Monday.”What would this area look like if autonomous AI agents were already part of the team?” Lutke wrote in the memo, which was sent to employees…

NEW YORK (AP) — A bogus rumor that President Donald Trump was considering a pause in tariffs briefly lifted markets Monday before the White House shot down the unfounded reports.The confusion — which was amplified on social media and by some traditional media outlets — lasted less than a half hour but reflected a jittery mood on Wall Street as stocks plunged over worries that Trump’s tariffs could torpedo the global economy.The origin of the false report was unclear but it appeared to be a misinterpretation of comments made by Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council,…

The Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) announced new regulatory guidance permitting licensed Virtual Asset Trading Platforms (VATPs) and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to offer staking services. This initiative is part of Hong Kong’s broader roadmap to establish itself as a significant player in the crypto sector. The SFC emphasized the growing demand from investors for staking services, which can enhance the security of blockchain networks. However, VATPs must secure prior written approval from the SFC before launching staking services. Similarly, crypto ETFs are also required to obtain regulatory consent to engage in staking activities. The guidelines mandate that firms…

Thirteen years ago, when Chris Farmer founded early-stage venture firm SignalFire with data analysis at the core of its investment strategy, many were skeptical about the approach — conventional wisdom dictated that nascent companies didn’t have enough data to make investment algorithms effective. “This was a very radical idea, and everyone thought I was crazy,” Farmer (pictured above, on the right, alongside CTO and partner Ilya Kirnos) told TechCrunch.  A lot has changed since SignalFire raised its first $53 million fund 2015. Today, more venture firms are adopting data-driven strategies in addition to, or sometimes even instead of, traditional VC…