Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Just how much human engineering work is AI capable of delivering? Grindr put a number to it.In a letter to shareholders, Grindr CEO George Arison touted the company’s advances with AI. He gave a “conservative estimate” that engineering output increased by 2.5x between July 2025 and April 2026, with “minimal growth” in its engineering staff.Arison later said that the actual multiple was 3.5x on Grindr’s second-quarter earnings call. The company changed it to 2.5x because they thought the larger increase sounded “unreasonable,” he said.”Before GenAI, producing that much technical output would have required roughly 200 additional engineers and approximately $60…
Airbnb might be taking slow steps to roll out AI features to its consumer-facing interface, but the company is rapidly adopting the tech to build product. Earlier this year, the company said AI is writing 60% of its code. In its latest earnings call, co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said AI is helping Airbnb create features at rapid rate. Chesky said that because of AI, the company has reduced time from conceptualization to finally shopping features by 60%. “Today, we’re building, testing, and iterating faster than we could just a year ago. Across some of our key initiatives, we’ve reduced…
A New Mexico Court judge on Thursday ordered Meta to pay a fine of $567 million, on top of the $375 million levied in March, in a case regarding social media harms and addiction. This brings the total fines the company has to pay to $942 million. The court also ordered Meta to make changes to its platforms: it wants the company to removing Like counts, and only showing such metrics to children under 18 only with approval from a parent or a guardian. Push notifications to underaged users are also to be paused between 10 p.m. and 7 a.m,…
The “SaaSpocalypse” isn’t an AI-eats-all story: the market is rewarding some software company earnings and punishing others.Friday morning’s premarket trading reflected that divide.Atlassian and Twilio surged before the market open after strong earnings, while Five9 made modest gains. HubSpot closed 19% down on Thursday.The idea that AI can replace software sold by SaaS companies has hit each of those stocks at various points this year. Over time, though, a more nuanced picture has emerged.Some SaaS firms have better moats than others, many are also embracing AI, and some firms face company-specific factors.AtlassianAtlassian, which makes workplace tools including Jira and Confluence,…
Free the knee? Our readers want the knee locked away.Instagram boss Adam Mosseri recently came out as “pro” shorts in the workplace. He said that it was a “hot debate” in the Instagram office, though “not all shorts are created equal” and not everyone can “pull them off.”We posted the question to our readers on LinkedIn: Do you think it’s appropriate to wear shorts to the office? Over 7,000 people have cast their vote so far.As of Friday morning, the majority of respondents, 54%, said no, compared to 20% who voted yes. Another 25% of respondents said “it depends.”The survey…
Google needs a win in the AI race. Employees say moving Demis Hassabis into a chief scientist role is the kind of gambit that could deliver one as the industry pushes toward AI that can surpass human intelligence.Google’s shock leadership reshuffle on Wednesday, which saw longtime chief scientist Jeff Dean depart and Hassabis step down as DeepMind CEO, comes at a critical juncture for the search giant.After riding high in late 2025, the company is trailing the competition in coding — AI’s first big commercial takeoff — and continues to postpone its new frontier model.Placing Hassabis in his new role…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with William Tunstall-Pedoe, a 57-year-old founder and CEO who sold his voice recognition company Evi Technologies to Amazon in 2012, becoming a co-creator of Alexa.Business Insider previously interviewed Tunstall-Pedoe about how Evi, an AI-powered search engine that answered spoken or typed questions, became an integral part of Amazon’s Alexa. He told us his addiction to tech started in his high school and that early in his career, after graduating from Cambridge in 1991, he worked for Acorn Computers and the Isaac Newton Institute, where he did what he called “some more niche…
Ashton McGrady was horrified to discover that TikTok had slapped an “AI-generated” label on a post she’d made for Disability Pride Month.The creator had spent hours making a collage of images, stickers, and advice.”It was really jarring to me, because that’s not something that I personally align with, and neither does my audience,” McGrady told Business Insider. “The whole point of being a creator is to create myself.” The post later had its AI note removed without explanation.McGrady’s upload was one of the billions that TikTok says it has flagged using a mix of human labeling and automated tools. McGrady…
OpenAI is sprinting ahead with upgrades for ChatGPT ads.The AI lab revealed a new raft of releases to advertisers in a Wednesday email reviewed by Business Insider, part of its rapid push to build up a cash-printing ads business from scratch as it explores routes to make more money. ChatGPT users are now guinea pigs for the quickly evolving tool, with new countries coming online and new ad styles in early testing.The new releases arrive shortly after OpenAI announced in late July that ChatGPT had hit the milestone of 1 billion active users. A company spokesperson confirmed the email’s contents…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Marc Palet, 26, a Singapore-based venture capitalist at OMVC. The following has been edited for length and clarity.I was first exposed to venture capital while running an e-commerce fashion business in college back home in Barcelona. During a study abroad program in Hong Kong, I did a ton of networking and came across a VC firm investing in fintech, blockchain, and AI — all the things I liked. I ended up staying with them after graduation and spent three years in Hong Kong before moving to Singapore to lead the firm’s…