Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
OpenAI has acquired personal finance startup Hiro Finance, founder Ethan Bloch announced on Monday and OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch. The startup was backed by A-list fintech VC firm Ribbit, as well as General Catalyst and Restive. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, nor did Hiro ever disclose how much money it raised. Since Hiro said it will be shutting down its operations on April 20 and deleting all data from its servers on May 13, we’re going to call this an acquihire. Bloch said in his post that Hiro employees are coming with him to OpenAI. He didn’t specify…
WASHINGTON (AP) — After several deaths in her family and an eviction that left her homeless, Jevona Anderson’s life began to unravel. By 2025, Anderson — then 59 and nearing completion of her bachelor’s degree — was failing classes and falling behind on bills. Eventually, she dropped out, joining a growing group of students who have left college before finishing.Often referred to as “stopouts,” the group includes about 38 million working-age adults in the U.S. In many cases, they have student loans to pay but lack the credential of a degree to boost their earnings.While many leave college intending to…
The man accused of tossing a Molotov cocktail at the San Francisco home of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was found with an “anti-AI” document that listed off the names and addresses of other AI CEOs and investors, according to the feds. Loading audio narration… Daniel Moreno-Gama, who was booked on multiple state charges, including attempted murder, according to jail records, is now facing federal charges in connection with Friday’s attack. A federal criminal complaint viewed by Business Insider charged him with possession of an unregistered firearm and attempted damage and destruction of property by means of explosives.It was not immediately…
Microsoft is testing ways to integrate OpenClaw-like features into its existing Microsoft 365 Copilot tool. The new features, which the company confirmed to The Information, would be geared toward enterprise customers, with better security controls than the famously risky open source OpenClaw agent. OpenClaw is a tool that runs locally on a user’s computer and can create agents to perform tasks on behalf of the person. If Microsoft does come up with its own version of a Claw — meaning an agent that runs locally — the effort would join a number of other agentic tools the company has announced…
AI training is booming — and LinkedIn wants a piece of the pie. Loading audio narration… The careers networking site is in the early stages of launching an “AI labor marketplace” where people can make up to $150 an hour training AI chatbots to get better at everything from coding to nursing to finance, LinkedIn confirmed to Business Insider.A spokesperson for LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, said AI training is one of the fastest-growing jobs in the US right now and that it’s doing early testing.AI trainers are humans who help improve chatbots by rating their answers and testing…
AI experts and the public’s opinion on the technology are increasingly diverging, according to Stanford University’s annual report on the AI industry, which was released Monday. In particular, the report noted a growing trend of anxiety around AI and, in the U.S., concerns about how the technology will impact key societal areas, such as jobs, medical care, and the economy. The report’s findings follow growing negative sentiment about AI, with Gen Z reportedly leading the way, according to a recent Gallup poll. The study found that young people were growing less hopeful and more angry about the technology, even though…
The top downloaded app on Apple’s App Store ranking isn’t ChatGPT or Claude, it’s … Netflix Game Controller? Loading audio narration… On Monday, the simply titled accessory app from Netflix was No. 1 on Apple’s top free downloads chart. Below it were HBO Max — likely because of the “Euphoria” season three premiere — and the perennial frontrunner, ChatGPT. Claude, Google Gemini, and Meta AI followed.Netflix Game Controller has been steadily rising up the charts. It was No. 1 on Saturday, when Meta’s Alexandr Wang was tracking Meta AI’s rise. It was also No. 1 last Monday, per a screenshot in the…
Investors are betting a fresh $650 million that Slate can make its proudly bare-bones EV pickup a hit. Loading audio narration… The electric truck startup, which plans to sell its launch vehicle for in the “mid-20,000s,” told Business Insider it has closed a series C funding round led by TWG Global, the investment firm founded by Guggenheim Partners founder and longtime Slate backer Mark Walter. Slate declined to comment on the company’s current valuation.”Our Series C round of funding will enable Slate to reach the next stages of production this year: on time and on budget,” Peter Faricy, the company’s…
While many startups founded prior to the emergence of ChatGPT are struggling to position themselves for the AI era, Vercel, a 10-year-old dev tool and website hosting platform, is benefiting from the explosion of AI-generated apps and agents. “When I started this company, only tens of millions of people could deploy,” Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch told the audience at the HumanX conference in San Francisco last week. “Now we’re seeing that everybody in the world can create an app.” The explosion in app creation by non-developers has been a significant boon to Vercel’s business. The company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR)…
For many white-collar workers, AI use is becoming a job requirement. Loading audio narration… At Duolingo, however, it’s no longer part of performance reviews, the company’s CEO, Luis von Ahn, said on the April 10th episode of the “Silicon Valley Girl” podcast.The CEO said that after the company introduced a strategy to evaluate AI use in performance reviews, employees began asking, “Do you just want us to use AI for AI’s sake?””At the end, we backtracked, and we said no, look. The most important thing in your performance is that you are doing whatever your job is as well as…