Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
Spotify made the rare move of naming two CEOs to share its top job. Netflix may have the playbook for making it a success.Founder Daniel Ek said Tuesday that he’s stepping down as CEO of Spotify and into an executive chairman role. Co-presidents Gustav Söderström and Alex Norström are set to take his place as co-CEOs in 2026, reporting to Ek.Dual executives aren’t the norm, but there are prominent examples of companies that have adopted the model. In 2023, for example, Netflix named Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos co-CEOs, replacing cofounder and former CEO Reed Hastings. Online eyewear retailer Warby…
What happens when your first 10 hires aren’t people at all? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, we’re digging into the new wave of startups replacing or augmenting early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support — automated from day one. This panel, hosted on the Builders Stage, features a mix of technical founders and seasoned operators who are actually doing it, debating where the line between human and machine should be drawn — and how far is too far. Meet the speakers Caleb Peffer, founder and CEO of Firecrawl,…
The Hillshire Brands Company has announced a voluntary recall of 58 million pounds of corn dogs and breakfast-on-a-stick products due to potential extraneous material contamination.According to an announcement from the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service over the weekend, the recalled products may contain pieces of wood “embedded in the batter.”Tyson Foods, the parent company of Hillshire said in a statement Saturday that the recall specifically includes select State Fair Corn Dogs on a Stick and Jimmy Dean Pancakes & Sausage on a Stick products.The company said “a limited number of products” were impacted, and that it initiated…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime chief…
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -French pharmaceutical group Sanofi said on Tuesday that representatives of the European Commission had visited its premises in France and Germany on Monday in connection with an investigation into its conduct in the seasonal flu vaccine space.The company said it is confident that it is compliant with the relevant rules and regulations and will cooperate fully with the European Commission.The EU executive arm said earlier on Tuesday it was carrying out unannounced inspections at the premises of a company active in the vaccines sector, without naming the firm.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementThe EU executive arm said it had concerns the company had…
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that his administration is close to reaching a deal with Harvard University, which it has targeted with a series of investigations and billions of dollars in funding cuts as it presses for changes to its policies and governance.A truce with the country’s oldest and wealthiest college would end a clash that has tested the independence of America’s colleges.Trump came into office saying he would cut funding for schools that defied his agenda, vowing to eliminate “wokeness.” His pressure campaign zeroed in on the Ivy League institution after it rebuffed his demands.Trump initially…
Chatbot platforms like ChatGPT and Poe have allowed users to create repeated prompts in the form of GPTs and apps. Lately, browsers like Dia and Opera Neon have added a way for people to get repeated tasks done in the form of skills and cards. Now, meeting notetaker Granola is bringing its own spin with a feature called Recipes, which lets you create a prompt shortcut you can use again and again. You can invoke a recipe by using “/” in Granola chat and typing its name. You can create your own recipes by typing in a prompt and giving…
Imagine you’re a Formula One driver hurtling down a race track at 200 miles per hour when your engineer comes on the radio and says … something. You can’t make it out, but you’re also not going to spend a lap playing out that old Verizon commercial (“Can you hear me now?”) with the race — and your life — on the line. This is just one problem Norwegian startup Hance is solving with an impressively small and fast bit of audio processing software that’s already attracted customers like Intel and Riedel Communications, the official radio supplier to F1. Hance…
This week on StrictlyVC Download, TechCrunch Editor in Chief Connie Loizos and StrictlyVC’s Alex Gove spoke with with Amjad Masad, founder and CEO of Replit, fresh off the company’s $250 million Series C at a $3 billion valuation. They discussed Replit’s remarkable journey from hovering around $2.8 million in ARR for years to hitting $150 million — and how a controversial pivot away from professional developers made it all possible. Masad explained why targeting non-technical users actually requires more compute power than serving experienced coders, and how his company survived a viral production database disaster that briefly threatened to derail…
After teaming up with Google on agentic commerce last month, payments giant PayPal announced Tuesday it’s adding new features to its PayPal Honey browser extension. The features will provide AI chatbot users, who are researching items they want to purchase, Honey’s product recommendations, pricing, and access to deals. When users ask their preferred AI chatbot a shopping-related question, PayPal Honey’s extension will display links to the products the AI chatbot recommends, along with real-time pricing, merchant options, and offers, PayPal says. The system can also identify when the AI’s own recommendations may have left out major retailers and surface those additional options to the…