Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Cybersecurity startup NewCore emerged from stealth with $66 million in funding on Monday, aiming to solve a challenge it believes many companies will soon face as they deploy AI agents: how to authenticate, govern, and control them at scale. The seed round was led by cybersecurity-focused venture firm Cyberstarts, with participation from Index Ventures and Evolution Equity Partners, valuing NewCore at $300 million after investment. Companies are increasingly treating AI agents as workplace participants rather than software tools. Goldman Sachs last year tested AI coding agent Devin as a new employee, while McKinsey said earlier this year that 25,000 AI…

You made history. Now what?SpaceX’s high-profile IPO lived up to the hype. Elon Musk’s rocket company’s record-breaking public debut surged as much as 30%. It ended the day roughly 20% above its IPO price, right in the sweet spot for a new public company.The process included a lot of fanfare, and plenty of people got very rich, including minting the world’s first trillionaire. First Trade’s Joe Ciolli and I had a fun discussion about it on Friday. You can watch it here.The debate around SpaceX isn’t over. Now it’s about whether the stock can maintain its day-one momentum, its impact…

For the first time, an Earth observation satellite has found what it was looking for — on its own, without human analysts on the ground. The milestone, which occurred in April, marks the first reported use of a vision-language model in orbit, and offers a glimpse of how AI could fundamentally change what space-based sensors are capable of — and how much they’re worth. Typically, satellites download large chunks of data to analysts on the Earth below, who use machine learning algorithms or their own eyes to figure out what’s going on. But onboard Yam-9, a spacecraft built by space…

Scott Morton grew up in Wisconsin. He wasn’t tracking Wall Street.”My family was not super financially literate,” he said. “I didn’t hear about the stock market growing up.”Now, the money managers have found him.Morton, the founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based software company Revel, said he has been getting the hard pitch from wealth managers eager to court him ahead of SpaceX’s blockbuster initial public offering. In the past couple of months, a prominent firm sent a handwritten letter to his home asking to represent him, while another sent swag and a backpack. More have slid into his LinkedIn DMs.The…

AI is rapidly changing white-collar work.At many companies, it’s reducing the grunt work that employees — especially entry-level employees — have to do. At the same time, it is breeding anxiety among younger workers as they enter the workforce. Just look at the recent wave of commencement speakers booed for praising the power of technology.The consulting industry is no different. AI is rapidly changing the way these firms operate, pushing them to hire more strategically as they automate entry-level work, said Namaan Mian, the COO of Management Consulted, a company that trains and prepares students and others for careers in…

Roughly nine years into his tenure at Nvidia, Antons Davis hopped on a call with CEO Jensen Huang to pitch his ideas.Davis, who led design for several Nvidia gaming products, brought up an idea for how the company could build an educational ecosystem. Huang challenged him to move beyond theory and prove the concept. Instead, the Nvidia CEO urged him to build something.”‘If you can show me, then we can talk about it,'” Davis recalls Huang telling him. “And that was a good reality check for me.”Ultimately, that’s what Davis did. In 2022, he quit what would become one of…

Drew Dawson spent $449 on his AI subscriptions in May. He’s also a college junior.The 23-year-old isn’t some mega-coder, burning through tokens to build heaps of software. He’s not a computer science major; Dawson studies philosophy, politics, and economics at the University of Southern California.Rather, Dawson has a variety of income streams, from a college prep program to gigs on UpWork. He uses the Claude Max plan to help complete those tasks, though he recently switched to ChatGPT Pro.The hefty bill came from one month of overlap.”Obviously, $400 a month is quite steep,” Dawson said, “but I’ve been able to…

For decades, software ate the world. Venture investors chased companies that could grow without factories, supply chains, or machines. Hardware was almost a dirty word.But now, Silicon Valley is getting physical.As the software boom cools and AI moves from chatbots into the physical world, investors are piling into robotics and so-called “physical AI,” a term popularized by Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang to describe AI systems that can act in the real world. The pitch is that if AI transformed what happens on screens, robotics could transform work in warehouses, hospitals, construction sites, homes, and battlefields.Venture capital investment in global robotics…

Something strange is happening in tech right now. Companies are posting record profits and revenue while laying off tens of thousands of people, citing AI as the official explanation. So far this year, there have been an estimated 363 layoffs at tech companies this year, affecting nearly 150,000 people — a pace of about 974 people per day, 44% faster than last year — according to TrueUp, a tech job board and recruiting platform that also runs one of the most widely cited tech layoff trackers. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in two years last month, with nearly…

Google is one of the companies leading the AI revolution.Google CEO Sundar Pichai, however, made no mention of that during his commencement speech to Stanford University graduates on Sunday — and for good reason.Students relentlessly booed one of Pichai’s predecessors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, when he praised the promise of AI during his own commencement speech at the University of Arizona last month. Students also booed Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta when he talked about AI at Middle Tennessee State University. “I know today is about giving you all advice,” Pichai told the graduates. “But people have also…