Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
The cofounder of a green banking startup that drew celebrity backers like Steve Ballmer and Leonardo DiCaprio pleaded guilty on Monday to two counts of wire fraud.Joseph Sanberg, 46, entered the plea in Los Angeles federal court roughly six months after prosecutors accused him of participating in a scheme that they said defrauded investors out of $248 million.Sanberg, an early investor in Blue Apron, faces up to 40 years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for February 23, 2026.His company, Aspiration Partners, offered environmentally focused financial services, including tree-planting services intended to help customers reduce their carbon footprints. In 2021,…
A DNS error appears to have been the culprit behind a major Amazon Web Services outage at its oldest and largest data center.Early Monday morning, Amazon’s AWS experienced an outage that brought down more than 100 of its services. Platforms like Snapchat, Reddit, and Venmo that use AWS for hosting servers and delivering content all suffered the impact, as did games like Roblox, Wordle, and Fortnite.Based on the AWS service status page, the outage started with an error with its Domain Name System at Amazon’s northern Virginia data plant, located in what is known as the “Data Center Alley,” where…
Some are born to be a CEO. Others have it thrust upon them.Dustin Moskovitz cofounded two large, publicly traded companies. The first was Facebook; he was Mark Zuckerberg’s sophomore year roommate. The second was Asana, which he led as CEO for over a decade.Moskovitz stepped down as CEO in July. Despite his history of leadership, he told Stratechery that he didn’t love the role.”I don’t like to manage teams, and it wasn’t my intention when we started Asana,” Moskovitz said. “I’d intended to be more of a independent or Head of Engineering or something again.”Moskovitz said that he found being…
The $3 billion developer AI startup Replit is riding the boom in vibe coding — and it has ambitious projections to match.The Silicon Valley startup, which builds technology to help people build apps and websites with AI, expects to surpass $1 billion in revenue by next year, its CEO and founder Amjad Masad told Business Insider. That’s about four times as much as the $240 million in annual sales that Replit is now generating, Masad added.Masad disclosed the updated projections after Business Insider obtained a leaked memo for investors from this summer, showing it projected $1 billion by the end…
HONOLULU (AP) — A lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. court in Honolulu challenges an admissions policy of a wealthy and prestigious private school that gives preference to applicants who are Native Hawaiian. A leading opponent of affirmation action launched a campaign last month to test the policy’s legality and stop Kamehameha Schools from favoring Hawaiians. It’s part of a movement to expand the legal definition of racial discrimination in education, which comes on the heels of a Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action in college admissions and is bolstered by the Trump administration’s war against diversity, equity and inclusion.Now, they’re…
Periodic Labs, a new startup by one of OpenAI’s most respected researchers, Liam Fedus, and his former Google Brain colleague, Ekin Dogus Cubuk, came out of stealth last month with an enormous $300 million seed round. It was led by Felicis and included a who’s who of angels and other top VCs. The startup began when Fedus had a conversation with Cubuk (whose friends call him “Doge”) about seven months ago. Cubuk was one of Google Brain’s foremost machine learning and material science researchers. After endless Silicon Valley takes on how generative AI would radically change scientific discovery, they decided that the…
2025-10-20T21:06:48Z Share Facebook Email X LinkedIn Reddit Bluesky WhatsApp Copy link lighning bolt icon An icon in the shape of a lightning bolt. Impact Link Save Saved Read in app This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in. OpenAI is working with Bryan Cranston and Hollywood groups to limit deepfakes on Sora 2. Cranston raised concerns to SAG-AFTRA after his likeness was replicated without his consent. OpenAI said its improved guardrails around the replication of an invidiual’s voice and likeness. OpenAI is working with actor Bryan Cranston…
Microchips implanted into the back of the eyes of legally blind patients have helped some of them read again, according to a new study published Monday.Out of the 32 patients with geographic atrophy — an advanced form of dry age-related macular degeneration — who completed the clinical study, 26 of them showed “meaningful improvement in visual acuity from baseline” 12 months after receiving the implant, the research published in the New England Journal of Medicine said.The treatment involves inserting a tiny implant thinner than human hair under the retina. Patients then have to wear specia glasses, which have a video camera…
New data indicates that use of Meta AI’s mobile app for iOS and Android has seen a significant increase. According to a new analysis from market intelligence provider Similarweb, the app’s daily active users across both platforms jumped to 2.7 million as of October 17, up from around 775,000 just four weeks ago. In addition, Meta AI’s app installs are also up, reaching 300,000 new downloads per day, compared with under 200,000 daily downloads a few weeks ago. For comparison, Meta AI’s app had just 4,000 daily downloads a year ago, on October 17, 2024. Image Credits:Similarweb The firm says…
The hype around the iPhone 17 is real.Apple’s latest lineup is outpacing its predecessor in both the US and China, two key markets for iPhone sales, according to new data from market research firm Counterpoint Research. iPhone 17 sales outsold the iPhone 16 series by 14% during the first 10 days of availability.In the US, the iPhone 17 Pro Max — the most expensive iPhone model — saw the strongest demand in the lineup through the first two weekends of availability. The research firm credited the growth to COVID-era shoppers upgrading their devices.Counterpoint Research said Monday that the popularity of…