Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
By Bhanvi Satija and Maggie FickLONDON (Reuters) -Boardroom drama at Wegovy-maker Novo Nordisk has laid bare the company’s biggest challenge: how to better tap into America’s mass market for weight-loss drugs.The Danish drugmaker that initially soared on the success of its obesity drug has lost its market lead to U.S. rival Eli Lilly and cheaper copycats, with pressure on prices from U.S. President Donald Trump and growing direct-to-consumer sales.On Tuesday, Novo’s top investor, the non-profit Novo Nordisk Foundation, moved to take control of the company’s board. It vowed a sharper focus on the key U.S. market to boost sales growth…
The idea for EagleEye is as old as Anduril, says Palmer Luckey.In an episode of the “TBPN” podcast released on Tuesday, the Anduril cofounder said the company has been working on its recently launched EagleEye range of devices since the defense tech startup was founded in 2017.”A lot of people think that this move into announcing our augmented reality efforts is this new thing that we pivoted into rather than the culmination of 8 years of platform building, building the software that you need, building the data integration techniques you need,” Luckey said.Luckey added: “There’s so much you have to…
Global businesses are forecast to spend $160 billion on marketing technology — or martech — this year, and roughly $215 billion by 2027, McKinsey estimates. So it must be helping these companies make boatloads of money, right?No one really knows.McKinsey recently surveyed 233 senior global marketing and technology leaders who each invest more than $500,000 annually in martech and adtech tools and services. As part of the study, published on Tuesday, the consultancy conducted in-depth interviews with 50 senior Fortune 500 marketers. There was a clear trend: Not one could clearly articulate how they were quantifying the return on investment…
As the entertainment industry reckons with when and how to use generative AI in filmmaking, Netflix is leaning in. In its quarterly earnings report released on Tuesday afternoon, Netflix wrote in its letter to investors that it is “very well positioned to effectively leverage ongoing advances in AI.” Netflix isn’t planning to use generative AI as the backbone of its content but believes the technology has potential as a tool to make creatives more efficient. “It takes a great artist to make something great,” Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said on Tuesday’s earnings call. “AI can give creatives better tools to…
LangChain raised $125 million at a $1.25 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. TechCrunch reported in July that the provider of a popular open source framework for building AI agents was raising fresh funds at a valuation of at least $1 billion. The deal was led by IVP, as we previously reported. New investors CapitalG and Sapphire Ventures joined in, as did existing investors Sequoia, Benchmark, and Amplify. LangChain began in 2022 as an open source project founded by machine learning engineer Harrison Chase. The startup was an early darling of the AI era, solving problems that made building…
Netflix’s quarter — and stock price — was dragged down by a hefty $619 million tax-related expense that took Wall Street by surprise.Netflix otherwise had another standout quarter, notching record revenue fueled by robust viewership for Korean-themed megahits like “Kpop Demon Hunters” and “Squid Game,” as well as its live boxing event, “Canelo vs. Crawford.”Netflix’s revenue rose 17.2% to a record $11.5 billion in the third quarter, largely in line with expectations from analysts and the company’s guidance.The company said its ad tier, a key growth area for the streamer, had its “best ad sales quarter ever” and doubled commitments…
Sesame, a conversational AI startup and smart glasses maker, has raised a $250 million Series B round and is opening up its beta to a select group of testers, the company announced Tuesday. The startup, headed by former Oculus co-founder and CEO Brendan Iribe and Ankit Kumar, former CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working to create a personal AI agent that interacts with users using a natural-sounding human voice. The company plans to embed the personal AI agent into lightweight eyewear designed to be worn throughout the day and which users can interact with via voice. The startup first…
Today, OpenAI launched its new Atlas web browser in a surprise livestream. The show started with CEO Sam Altman himself, speaking directly to the audience. “We think AI represents a rare, once-a-decade opportunity to rethink what a browser can be,” Altman said. “In the same way that, for the previous way people used the internet, the URL bar and the search box were a great analogue, what we’re starting to see is that the chat experience and the web browser can be a quick analogue.” It was an inspiring note, in the classic Steve Jobs mode. But even more important than…
When I think of the term “lunch hour,” I picture Jon Hamm as Don Draper in Mad Men, schmoozing with clients over prime rib and several martinis, even though that’s certainly not what my work lunch looks like. The endless array of fast and fast-casual food joints available in the U.S. suggests that it’s not the way most Americans are spending their midday meals either. (There’s even a “sad desk lunch” hashtag that went viral a few years ago.)It makes me wonder: Does anyone take a real lunch break anymore? To find out, Yahoo/YouGov polled 1,676 U.S. adults between Sept. 25…
Fal.ai, a startup that hosts image, video, and audio AI models for developers, has closed a new round valuing the company at over $4 billion, four people familiar with the deal said. The company raised approximately $250 million, two of the people said. Major investors in the round are Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia, according to our sources. Fal didn’t respond to a request for comment. Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins declined to comment. The new round is coming less than three months after Fal announced a $125 million Series C at a $1.5 billion valuation led by Meritech. At that time,…