Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department on Thursday announced a reduction in interest rates for federal student loans, describing it as part of a plan to make higher education more affordable. With growing numbers of borrowers in default, the Trump administration pitched the temporary, 1% reduction in student loan interest rates as a salve for those struggling with repayment. Education Undersecretary Nicholas Kent said the change is a way of “making student loan repayment easier than ever” and of improving “the overall health of the federal student loan portfolio.”But the change does not apply to all borrowers, and those pursuing…

SpaceX’s post-IPO mega-rally has hit its first slowdown.Shares in Elon Musk’s rocket company, which raised a record $75 billion when it went public last week, had dropped nearly 5% on market close on Wednesday, its first down day since the offering on June 12. The slide continued on Thursday, with the stock down 10% to $172.11. Shares are still up 27% from the IPO price of $135. The drop ended a monster share price rally that had seen SpaceX’s market cap soar to nearly $3 trillion in its first days of trading, eclipsing Amazon as the world’s fifth most valuable…

General Intuition, the New York-based startup building a foundation model that trains AI agents how to move through space and time, is in talks to raise around $300 million, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.  The raise comes eight months after General Intuition spun out of Medal, a platform for uploading and sharing video game clips, with a $134 million seed round. The fresh funds would bring the startup’s valuation up to just over $2 billion, sources say.  Sources tell TechCrunch General Intuition has secured funds from backers including Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt, as well as existing investors…

A grassroots movement is forming among everyday tech workers who are demanding their companies develop and deploy AI responsibly. And the Guardrails Alliance, a new super PAC dedicated to supporting AI legislation, aims to leverage that discontent. Democratic operatives Shaunna Thomas and Leah Hunt-Hendrix launched the Guardrails Alliance on Thursday with backing from tech employees, labor unions, and other groups, according to The New York Times. “Our fundamental belief here is that people still do have the power to stop this autocratic takeover of the Trump administration and the tech sector,” Thomas told the NYT.  Guardrails positions itself as a…

Sebastian Kurz once worked out of Austria’s chancellery on Vienna’s Ballhausplatz, an imposing government building that resembles a Baroque palace. Today, he welcomes visitors to a sleek glass office tower that blends seamlessly into Tel Aviv’s skyline.The contrast between the two workplaces couldn’t be greater. What hasn’t changed is Kurz’s relentless ambition — or the remarkable speed with which he continues to rack up achievements.At 27, Kurz became Austria’s foreign minister. At 31, he became the country’s youngest-ever chancellor. Now, at 39, he has emerged as one of Europe’s and Israel’s most prominent startup founders.His company, DREAM, announced on Thursday…

Forget stickers, GIFs, and emoji reactions. Pixi is betting that the next evolution of messaging is interactive augmented reality (AR). The startup launched its messaging-native app on the App Store on Wednesday, allowing users to send AI-powered AR characters through iMessage. Instead of appearing as static media, the characters come to life through the recipient’s iPhone camera, where they can react to their surroundings, interact with people, and respond in real time. While AR isn’t new and shiny anymore—companies like Snap have created AR filters and lenses for years—Pixi believes its approach is different. By combining AR with on-device AI,…

Higgsfield, a San Francisco startup that makes tools for easily creating AI-generated videos, told Business Insider its revenue run rate has reached $500 million, up from $50 million last September. It doubled revenue this year, becoming one of the few AI companies to be cash-flow positive.With that kind of growth, Higgsfield wants to be in the same conversation as Cursor and Lovable, two companies that have become shorthand for the rapid speed of AI software adoption.AI coding platform Lovable said this month that it reached $500 million in ARR, the revenue a company expects to collect over a year. Fellow…

Will they? Won’t they? That’s the question on Tesla investors’ minds as chatter grows about a possible merger with SpaceX.The bigger question: Does it make sense?On Friday, the EV giant was eclipsed by SpaceX, which, after a blockbuster $85 billion IPO, is now worth over $1 trillion more than Musk’s other public company.SpaceX’s rapid ascent has fuelled speculation among analysts and Tesla investors that Musk’s next move might be to merge the two companies together, creating a massive conglomerate that spans rockets, EVs, chatbots, and social media.SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell didn’t rule out a tie-up with Tesla as she prepared…

Prediction markets aren’t sure whether California Gov. Gavin Newsom can stop the state’s proposed billionaire tax.Newsom previously vowed to fight California’s so-called billionaire tax before it reached the ballot. His efforts are down to the wire, as there is a June 25 deadline to certify whether the proposal will be on the November ballot.As of Wednesday, June 17, Kalshi and Polymarket showed it was just under a coin flip on whether the tax would make the ballot.Both prediction markets took a major dive after Bloomberg and Politico separately reported in the last week that Newsom was working to kill the…

Inside Amazon’s newer, robot-filled warehouses, the next big efficiency drive focuses on how humans move around the facilities, not just packages.If the plan works and scales, this could wring millions of labor hours out of the company’s e-commerce operations every year, according to internal analysis viewed by Business Insider.These planning documents reveal Amazon is piloting a system called Full Facility Load Balancing, or FFLB, that automatically reassigns workers as package volumes and workloads change throughout the day.The goal, according to one of the documents, is to “remove the dependency on manual staffing decisions.”Initial estimates show the technology could recover roughly…