Author: Admin

In episodes like the railroad boom and the dot-com bubble, creditors and shareholders were wiped out, because investment in a genuinely transformative technology outpaced any plausible near-term return. With the US financial system and asset markets having become a one-way bet on AI, such an outcome today could be catastrophic. BERKELEY—US Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh recently announced a new task force that will “survey the pace, the reach, [and] the economic impact of new general-purpose technologies, including AI, and explore the implications for the Fed” as it pursues its “employment and inflation mandates.” Notably absent from Warsh’s statement was…

If lawmakers are serious about addressing the threat that dynastic wealth poses to American democracy, they can draw on considerable research that has gone into designing a wealth tax that avoids the pitfalls of other countries’ attempts. With the appearance of the world’s first trillionaire, there is no time to waste. WASHINGTON, DC—Following SpaceX’s IPO in June, Elon Musk briefly became the world’s first trillionaire, making him wealthier than the poorest 46% of the world’s people combined. His wealth has more than tripled since the 2024 presidential election, when he spent roughly $290 million to support Donald Trump’s candidacy—more than…

A Katalyst Space robot that was launched to grab on to a space telescope and raise it to a higher orbit tumbled out of control after a series of failures, NASA and the company said today. The company is trying to stabilize the spacecraft using back-up systems, before NASA will decide if the mission can continue. This is the first time the space agency has hired a private company to lift one of its space telescopes to a higher orbit, allowing the observatory to continue operations beyond its expected lifespan. The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory was launched in 2004, with…

Visa is slashing about 2,600 jobs, roughly 7% of its workforce. The layoffs will mainly hit technology and product teams, Bloomberg reports. CEO Ryan McInerney wrote to his staff that AI is “helping to accelerate this evolution and shape the way work gets done at Visa.” But AI isn’t the whole story. According to a person familiar with the company’s reasoning, the cuts are also about freeing up money to reinvest in newer bets such as stablecoins, cross-border payments and business-to-business services. Visa had about 34,100 employees at the end of its last fiscal year, more than triple what it…

Enterprise AI startup Freehand has raised $75 million in a Series B funding round to scale its autonomous AI agents, which manage complex supply chain spend and back-office operations for enterprise companies. Battery Ventures and NewRoad Capital Partners co-led the financing, which included participation from Nexus Venture Partners and former U.S. Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker. With its latest capital injection, San Francisco-based Freehand has now raised $100 million. While Freehand declined to reveal its valuation, CEO and co-founder Nitin Jayakrishnan said it was “a significant step up” from the startup’s $25 million Series A that was raised in March 2024.…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that it may be time to “pace” AI development so the world will be ready for it. “We may have to pace the rate of AI development to give ourselves enough time for society to harden around some of these new capability levels,” he told Patrick O’Shaughnessy, the host of the Invest Like the Best podcast, while also “trying to figure out how we do that in a way that does not feel like regulatory capture for anyone and also does not feel like collusion among the frontier labs.” Both OpenAI and Anthropic came out…

Data security company Cyera, which recently raised $600 million at a $12 billion valuation, announced Tuesday that it signed a letter of intent to acquire Oasis Security for approximately $1 billion in a deal expected to be paid mostly in cash, with the remainder in Cyera shares. Oasis focuses on non-human identities, primarily AI agents. As the number of AI agents proliferates, companies must deploy cybersecurity software that monitors these agents’ behavior and grants them permission to access other software. Founded in 2022, Oasis has raised about $195 million from Accel, Craft Ventures, Cyberstarts and other investors. The deal highlights…

New York-based AI detection startup Pangram is on a mission to combat the AI slop infestation spreading across the internet, and it just raised $9 million on a bet that demand for tools that distinguish human-generated content from AI-generated text will only grow.  Pangram’s fundraise — led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Haystack, ScOp, Script Capital, and Cadenza — comes as the startup also launches its next-generation AI text detection model, Pangram 4, and an AI image detection model, Pangram Image.  Pangram says the new text detection model is over 99% accurate at finding AI-assisted writing and mixed human-AI…

Aluminum has left an indelible mark on the world — more than 3 billion tons of red mud, a waste product of the refining process, are currently stored in open-air ponds or mounds. But to Sumedh Gostu, co-founder and CEO of Fast Metals, there’s treasure in the caustic waste.  “It is a very rich resource,” he told TechCrunch. “If you attack with the right chemistry, it can be very profitable.” Gostu thinks Fast Metals has found that chemistry, which just so happens to be partially comprised of another waste stream, also produced from alumina refineries. The startup recently raised a…

DoorDash is building a drone delivery business, including its own aircraft, as part of an effort developed by its robotics and autonomy team, which will eventually operate within the company’s delivery app. The company unveiled the new business, called DoorDash Air, after receiving a Part 135 air carrier certification from the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. The certification allows the company to legally operate a commercial drone delivery service in the United States. This does not mean DoorDash’s custom-built drones will be delivering burritos tomorrow, or even next month. The company didn’t provide a detailed timeline for when its aircraft would…