Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

The company that operates online learning system Canvas said it struck a deal with hackers to delete the data they pilfered in a cyberattack that created chaos for students, many of them in the middle of finals. Instructure, the parent company of Canvas, said in an online post that it “reached an agreement with the unauthorized actor involved in this incident.”The company didn’t provide any details on the agreement, including whether it involved a payment, and didn’t elaborate who was behind the hack. Instructure temporarily took the system offline while it investigated, locking out students and faculty. A hacking group…

Thinking Machines Lab, the AI startup founded last year by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, on Monday announced something called interaction models, which, at its essence, sounds like AI that can interrupt you. Right now, every AI model you’ve ever used works the same way. You talk, it listens. It responds, you listen. Thinking Machines is trying to change that by building a model that processes your input and generates a response at the same time, so it’s more like a phone call than a text chain. The technical term for this is “full duplex,” and the company claims its…

Just two months after listing its first venture fund on the stock market, Robinhood is preparing to launch a second. The company has filed a confidential registration for RVII, a standard regulatory step that allows it to work through the approval process before making details public. Unlike its first fund, which currently holds stakes in 10 late-stage companies — Airwallex, Boom, Databricks, ElevenLabs, Mercor, OpenAI, Oura, Ramp, Revolut, and Stripe — RVII will cast a wider net, investing in growth-stage and early-stage startups. It’s a meaningful distinction, given that early-stage startups are younger and carry more risk but also offer the potential…

GitLab employees are the latest group to be sweating it out for a few weeks as they wait to learn whether they dodged the layoff blade. Loading audio narration… The software company, which had 2,580 employees as of January, announced on Monday that it was restructuring to meet “the agentic era” and planned to cut an unspecified number of its workforce by June 1.Shares in the company fell 7% after hours following the announcement.GitLab CEO Bill Staples wrote in a memo to employees and investors that the restructuring would happen “openly” and entail flattening the org chart — removing “up…

General Motors has laid off more than 10% of its IT department, or about 600 salaried employees — in a deliberate skills swap: clearing out workers whose expertise no longer fits and making room for some with AI-focused backgrounds. GM confirmed to TechCrunch that it had conducted layoffs; they were first reported by Bloomberg News. In an emailed statement, the automaker framed the layoffs as a means to prepare it for the future, without providing specifics. “GM is transforming its Information Technology organization to better position the company for the future,” the company said. These layoffs are not all permanent…

The chaos that followed Sam Altman’s firing was one of the biggest business stories of 2023. Loading audio narration… Ilya Sutskever, one of the board members who voted to fire Altman, wasn’t checking the play-by-play that followed his decision online, he testified on Monday.”Did you pretty much avoid the internet over the weekend?” Sutskever was asked at the trial for Elon Musk’s lawsuit against Altman and OpenAI on Monday.”Yes,” Sutskever answered.Sutskever is one of the most important early employees at OpenAI. Musk and Altman, who co-founded the artificial intelligence organization, wooed him from Google, where he gave up a $6…

On Monday, the Musk v. Altman trial entered its final stretch, with Elon Musk’s side calling its final witnesses — including Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. Loading audio narration… The charismatic CEO described the inner workings of the decadelong, multi-billion-dollar partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI.It’s a key dynamic in Musk’s lawsuit against Sam Altman and OpenAI. According to Musk, Altman joined in “looting” OpenAI by turning a nonprofit meant to benefit humanity into a goliath that made billions through its relationship with the Big Tech company.Nadella’s testimony seemed to mostly work against Musk. He showed jurors an email in which…

OpenAI is upping its aggressive push into the enterprise market. Loading audio narration… On Monday, OpenAI announced the creation of stand-alone company, OpenAI Deployment Company, that it said is “designed to help organizations build and deploy AI systems.”OpenAI and 19 other companies, including Goldman Sachs, Brookfield, and Bain Capital, partnered to create the new firm. The deployment company will launch with an initial investment of more than $4 billion at a $10 billion pre-money valuation.As part of the announcement, OpenAI said it had acquired Tomoro, an applied AI consulting and engineering firm, which will give the new OpenAI firm a…

How many board directors does it take to fire OpenAI’s Sam Altman? More than was required in 2023, Elon Musk’s expert witness writes in new court documents. Loading audio narration… During OpenAI’s 2025 for-profit transition, it changed its governance structure to make it harder to fire the CEO, according to the documents released by the executive’s lawyers on Sunday.Bylaws adopted by OpenAI in October 2025 allow the CEO to remain at the helm so long as he or she has at least one-third support from the for-profit entity’s board, according to an analysis of the bylaws by Musk’s expert witness…

Tesla once arranged its core vehicle lineup to spell “S3XY.” Now, the company is left with “3Y” — plus the Cybertruck. Loading audio narration… Tesla said Saturday that it had produced the final Model S and Model X vehicles at its Fremont, California, factory, ending 14 years of Model S production and 11 years of Model X production.The retirements aren’t a major surprise. In January, CEO Elon Musk announced during an earnings call that the Model S and Model X would receive an “honorable discharge.”Still, it closes a chapter that helped turn the company from a Silicon Valley curiosity into…