In a lengthy essay published over the weekend, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made a proposal that the AI industry would have rejected instantly even a year ago: embed third-party evaluators inside all frontier AI companies, giving them the power to report safety incidents, assess whether AI models are truly aligned, and share their unvarnished findings … Read more
When Snap debuted its long-awaited smart glasses, Specs, earlier this year, the reveal was not only underwhelming but a genuine disaster. The glasses — which cost a whopping $2200 and are vaguely reminiscent of scuba gear — inspired jeers online and calls for the company’s CEO, Evan Spiegel, to resign. The company’s stock subsequently nosedived. Since … Read more
VC firm Valor Equity Partners, founded by Antonio Gracias, a long-time Elon Musk backer and current SpaceX board member, has opted to simply give away a chunk of its SpaceX stock to its limited partner investors, according to an SEC filing spotted by Bloomberg. Valor made a killing on SpaceX after investing in it over … Read more
Al Gore has spent more than two decades as one of the most recognizable voices in the climate movement, so when he talks about AI, it’s worth trying to understand what he considers truly scary compared with what’s disturbing people so much that they are protesting in the streets. In an interview with TechCrunch this … Read more
It turns out that the one thing that can apparently bridge Washington’s partisan divide is AM radio. U.S. automakers may be forced to build AM radio into new vehicles within the next year. The House of Representatives, in a rare instance of bipartisan support, overwhelmingly approved legislation on Wednesday that would require new cars, trucks, … Read more
Cap table management platform Pulley announced this week on its website that it was shutting down, and its final day of operations and services will be December 8. In a twist, it said it has partnered with its rival, Carta, to offload customers; it’s also redirecting prospective clients to Carta. Yin Wu, a serial founder … Read more
Marketing platform Noise aims to connect brands with content creators at a much lower cost than hiring traditional influencers or running standard ad campaigns. That’s because many creators on the Noise platform are everyday people—anyone can download the app, regardless of follower count — and Noise presents them with campaigns they can join and create … Read more
X will now allow users to trade from their timelines. The Elon Musk-owned social network on Wednesday launched a feature called Cashtag that will let U.S. users on X place stock trades via participating brokerages. Initial partners in the effort include Interactive Brokers, Moomoo, Gemini, Kraken, and Coinbase. The move takes advantage of what users … Read more
Meta’s camera-equipped smart glasses have proven more successful than other entrants into the market, but they have also deeply disturbed certain consumers who see them as invasive emblems of a dystopian surveillance society run amok. Now, as the company weathers complaints that it’s selling “pervert glasses,” it has reportedly decided to sell a pair that … Read more
Elisa de Martel, who was chief financial officer at Alphabet’s autonomous vehicle company Waymo, has been hired to the same position at buzzy self-driving vehicle startup Wayve. Outgoing CFO Max Warburton, who held the position at Wayve since 2024, is moving into a strategic advisory role supporting the company’s leadership team. Her appointment as CFO … Read more