Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

In just 6 days, the doors to TechCrunch All Stage swing open in Boston’s SoWa Power Station — and your chance to save up to $475 slams shut. This isn’t just another founder event. It’s the summit designed to help startups move faster, fundraise smarter, and scale more effectively. Whether you’re refining your pitch, preparing to raise capital, or leading a growing team, TC All Stage delivers the tools, tactics, and connections you need to move forward. Right now, Founder Passes are only $100 and Investor Passes are $200 — the lowest prices available. Once they’re gone, ticket prices rise…

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans are urging seven U.S. universities to cut ties with a Chinese scholarship program that lawmakers call a “nefarious mechanism” to steal technology for the Chinese government.In letters to Dartmouth College, the University of Notre Dame and five other universities, leaders of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party raise concerns about the schools’ partnerships with the China Scholarship Council, a study abroad program funded by China.The program sponsors hundreds of Chinese graduate students every year at U.S. universities. After graduating, they’re required to return to China for two years. In the letters sent…

As generative AI reshapes industries, one of its most important yet invisible challenges is retrieval, the process of fetching the right data with relevant context from messy knowledge bases. Large language models (LLMs) are only as accurate as the information they can retrieve. That’s where ZeroEntropy wants to make its mark. The San Francisco-based startup, co-founded by CEO Ghita Houir Alami and CTO Nicolas Pipitone, has raised $4.2 million in seed funding to help models retrieve relevant data quickly, accurately, and at scale. The round was led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Y Combinator, Transpose Platform, 22 Ventures, a16z…

MADRID (AP) — A Spanish court on Wednesday sentenced Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti to a one-year prison term for tax fraud when he was Real Madrid manager in 2014. The Madrid court also fined Ancelotti 386,000 euros ($452,187).Spanish prosecutors accused Ancelotti of defrauding the state of 1 million euros ($1 million) in 2014 and 2015. State prosecutors sought a prison sentence of up to four years and nine months on two counts of tax fraud.In March 2024, they accused Ancelotti of having used shell companies to hide his true earnings. Prosecutors claimed Ancelotti, for example, used one company that lacked…

Pharmaceutical giant Merck is buying Verona Pharma, a company that focuses on respiratory diseases, in an approximately $10 billion deal.With the acquisition, Merck gets access to Verona Pharma’s chronic obstructive pulmonary disease medication Ohtuvayre. The Food and Drug Administration approved Ohtuvayre in June 2024 for the maintenance treatment of COPD in adults.“Ohtuvayre complements and expands our pipeline and portfolio of treatments for cardio-pulmonary diseases while delivering near- and long-term growth as well as value for shareholders,” Merck Chairman and CEO Robert Davis said in a statement.”We believe Merck’s commercial footprint and industry-leading clinical capabilities will help accelerate the potential of…

LONDON (AP) — Jannik Sinner sure didn’t play like someone dealing with an injured right elbow Wednesday, using terrific serving and his usual booming forehand to dismiss 10th-seeded Ben Shelton 7-6 (2), 6-4, 6-4 and earn a second appearance in the Wimbledon semifinals.The No. 1-ranked Sinner wore a white sleeve on his right arm with strips of tape visible underneath — one above the elbow, one below it — two days after he was hurt when he slipped and fell in the opening game of his fourth-round match against Grigor Dimitrov.Sinner said he felt pain when he hit serves or…

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration sued the California Department of Education on Wednesday for allowing transgender girls to compete on girls sports teams, alleging the policy violates federal law. The move escalates an ongoing battle between the Republican administration in Washington and Democratic-led California over trans athletes competing in girls and women’s sports. The lawsuit filed by the Justice Department says California’s transgender athlete policies violate Title IX, the federal law that bans discrimination in education based on sex. The department says California’s rules “are not only illegal and unfair but also demeaning, signaling to girls that their…

LONDON (AP) — Iga Swiatek reached the Wimbledon semifinals for the first time with a 6-2, 7-5 victory over 19th-seeded Liudmila Samsonova that went from a stroll to a bit of a struggle in the late stages Wednesday.“Even though I’m in the middle of the tournament, I already got goosebumps after this win,” said Swiatek, who will face unseeded Belinda Bencic on Thursday for a spot in the final. “I’m super happy and super proud of myself.”Bencic beat No. 7 Mirra Andreeva 7-6 (3), 7-6 (2) to reach her first Grand Slam semifinal since the 2019 U.S. Open. The other…

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tabby Toney, a 37-year-old former software engineer based in Oklahoma, about leaving tech for a blue-collar career. It’s been edited for length and clarity.My path into software engineering wasn’t direct. I followed a friend into tech and started doing manual testing, knowing nothing; I was just doing user-experience work. I self-studied, paid for virtual classes, and bugged all of my software engineer friends until I could get a job as a software engineer.I loved tech because of the intellectual stimulation it provided. I enjoyed the creative problem-solving and critical thinking required…

In the 22 years that Emergence Capital has been making investments, the venture capital firm says it’s never lost a partner to another firm.That’s a surprising stat in VC, where partner turnover has become a growing source of anxiety for firms and founders alike. The stakes are high: when a partner leaves a firm to join another or to start their own firm, they may take founder relationships, deal flow, and institutional knowledge with them.Other disillusioned investors are leaving the industry altogether. That churn can also leave a firm’s portfolio companies scrambling to bring in a new board member when…