Preetika Rana / Wall Street Journal:
Uber and Lyft are embracing autonomous vehicle operators like Waymo, May Mobility, and others, after abandoning their own self-driving car programs — After ending their own driverless plans, the ride-sharing companies are embracing autonomous-vehicle operators and offering new app features
Avataar releases Velocity, a generative AI tool that creates product videos based on a product link, says HP, Victoria’s Secret, and others are using the tool (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Avataar releases Velocity, a generative AI tool that creates product videos based on a product link, says HP, Victoria’s Secret, and others are using the tool — Generative AI models have reached a baseline capability of producing at least a passable video from a single image or short sentence.
Sources: India plans $2.7B in fresh subsidies and import tariff cuts to boost local manufacturing, especially of smartphones made by companies like Apple (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg:
Sources: India plans $2.7B in fresh subsidies and import tariff cuts to boost local manufacturing, especially of smartphones made by companies like Apple — – Proposed incentives will help smartphone makers like Apple — Final decision to be made by cabinet; details likely in budget
A look at the rise of Watch Duty, a wildfire alert app that is active in 14 US states and has gained up to 7.2M active users in three years since its launch (Gabrielle Canon/The Guardian)
Gabrielle Canon / The Guardian:
A look at the rise of Watch Duty, a wildfire alert app that is active in 14 US states and has gained up to 7.2M active users in three years since its launch — Watch Duty – which began in California and has expanded across 14 states – alerted the public to more than 9,000 wildfires in 2024
A profile of headhunter Peterson Conway, who worked with Palantir and other Silicon Valley defense and hard tech firms and is now the talent head at VC firm A* (Margaux MacColl/TechCrunch)
Margaux MacColl / TechCrunch:
A profile of headhunter Peterson Conway, who worked with Palantir and other Silicon Valley defense and hard tech firms and is now the talent head at VC firm A* — In 2023, defense tech recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled up to the offices of nuclear fusion startup Fuse in a black suburban, donning his signature cowboy hat.
Sam Altman says OpenAI is currently losing money on its ChatGPT Pro plan, which costs $200 per month, because “people use it much more than we expected” (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Sam Altman says OpenAI is currently losing money on its ChatGPT Pro plan, which costs $200 per month, because “people use it much more than we expected” — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that the company is currently losing money on its $200-per-month ChatGPT Pro plan because people are using it more than expected
Singapore-based Digital Edge, which operates 21 data centers in Japan, Korea, India, and others, raised over $1.6B, including ~$640M in equity and $1B in debt (Yantoultra Ngui/Reuters)
Yantoultra Ngui / Reuters:
Singapore-based Digital Edge, which operates 21 data centers in Japan, Korea, India, and others, raised over $1.6B, including ~$640M in equity and $1B in debt — Singapore-headquartered data centre company Digital Edge said on Monday it had raised over $1.6 billion in new capital via …
Samsung unveils a suite of AI experiences for its TVs, including Click to Search, Live Translate, and a way to recognize food on the screen and provide recipes (Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat)
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Samsung unveils a suite of AI experiences for its TVs, including Click to Search, Live Translate, and a way to recognize food on the screen and provide recipes — For this year’s lineup, Samsung said that AI will come to life in more ways than just great picture quality.
Advertising company Outfront, whose clients include Mercury, Brex, and Venmo, says fintech ad spend over the past three years has grown an average of 45%+ YoY (Teresa Xie/Bloomberg)
Teresa Xie / Bloomberg:
Advertising company Outfront, whose clients include Mercury, Brex, and Venmo, says fintech ad spend over the past three years has grown an average of 45%+ YoY — – Fintech ad spend has grown average of more than 45%: Outfront — Push comes as companies mature and IPO, M&A buzz builds
Q&A with Sam Altman on the first years of OpenAI and ChatGPT, his removal as CEO, OpenAI’s structure, AGI, AI safety, nuclear fusion, Trump, Musk, and more (Josh Tyrangiel/Bloomberg)
Josh Tyrangiel / Bloomberg:
Q&A with Sam Altman on the first years of OpenAI and ChatGPT, his removal as CEO, OpenAI’s structure, AGI, AI safety, nuclear fusion, Trump, Musk, and more — On Nov. 30, 2022, traffic to OpenAI’s website peaked at a number a little north of zero. It was a startup so small and sleepy …
