OpenAI announced on Tuesday that it is shutting down Sora, a TikTok-like social app that launched six months ago. OpenAI did not give a reason for the shut down, nor did it share information about when it will officially be discontinued. When Sora first opened up as an invite-only social network, it seemed like everyone…
A jury in Santa Fe on Tuesday ordered Meta to pay $375 million in civil penalties after finding the company misled consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangered children. New Mexico attorney general Raúl Torrez’s office called the decision a “watershed moment for every parent concerned about what could happen to their kids…
When I speak to Blake Resnick, he’s walking around his drone startup’s newest office space in Seattle—a cavernous 50,000-square-foot facility that, Resnick estimates, won’t be fully set up until later in the year—potentially November. Still, the big (and for now, largely empty) building offers the promise of a fast-growing company intent on conquering its particular…
Kleiner Perkins, the prominent U.S. venture firm, announced on Tuesday that it raised $3.5 billion in fresh capital across two funds, a significant increase from the firm’s $2 billion fundraise less than two years ago. The firm, founded back in 1972, says it raised $1 billion for its 22nd early-stage venture fund, and $2.5 billion…
Amazon has confirmed that it has acquired Fauna Robotics, a two-year-old startup founded by former Meta and Google engineers who are developing kid-size humanoid robots. The acquisition was first reported by Bloomberg. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. What we do know is that Fauna’s employees, including its two founders, will join Amazon in New…
As the world electrifies, the oil and gas industry is counting on plastics to drive profits in the future. But not if Jacob Nathan has anything to say about it. Nathan started searching for a way to break down plastics when he was still in high school. Now, as founder and CEO of Epoch Biodesign,…
For generations, Ida Huddleston and her family have owned a farm in Northern Kentucky. And they’ve turned down at least one multimillion-dollar offer to preserve it. Last year, a “major artificial intelligence company” offered them $26 million to sell part of their farm for a proposed data center, according to a recent report from WKRC….
For developers using AI, “vibe coding” right now comes down to babysitting every action or risking letting the model run unchecked. Anthropic says its latest update to Claude aims to eliminate that choice by letting the AI decide which actions are safe to take on its own — with some limits. The move reflects a…
With an overflowing war chest from its $5 billion raise that closed last month (not to mention billions in revenue), Databricks is acquiring. The company, best known for its cloud data analytics platform, announced on Tuesday that it was launching a new security product called Lakewatch. Lakewatch takes Databricks’ ability to store massive amounts of…
OpenAI’s plans to make ChatGPT into an e-commerce hub aren’t exactly panning out—at least, not yet. In an announcement on Tuesday, the company revealed that it’s pivoting away from a recently launched feature that let users buy items directly from the chatbot’s interface. OpenAI originally launched buying capabilities in ChatGPT last year—positioning itself as a…