Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
NanoCo, the company behind security-focused OpenClaw alternative NanoClaw, has raised an oversubscribed $12 million seed round following a viral launch, its founders tell TechCrunch. The funding was led by Valley Capital Partners and saw participation from Docker, Vercel, Monday.com, Slow Ventures, and angels like Clem Delangue, CEO of Hugging Face. In a matter of weeks, NanoClaw creator Gavriel Cohen (pictured above, left) said he went from coding the project on his couch to receiving viral endorsements from Andrej Karpathy and Singapore’s foreign minister, fielding inbound interest from dozens of investors, and even a roughly $20 million acquisition offer that he…
Like it or not, Google products are about to get another big infusion of AI. Loading audio narration… Artificial intelligence was, unsurprisingly, the star at the tech giant’s annual developer conference, Google I/O. And it included major updates to Google’s core products. (Don’t hold your breath for Gemini 3.5 Pro, though.)That includes the crown jewel, with Google pushing AI features deeper into the classic search bar. Google’s search head Liz Reid described it as Search’s biggest upgrade since its launch over 25 years ago. BI’s Hugh Langley has the full breakdown here.Many of the changes essentially make AI Mode, which…
A group of local Indigenous leaders and Lawrence Hall of Science researchers strolled through the lobby of the discovery-based UC Berkeley museum last week as workers put the finishing touches on its latest exhibit, “Yuutka” (The Place of the Acorn).Replicas of black oak trees towered overhead, while California poppies, wild roses, yarrow, and black sage plants were projected on the floor and a creek and bridge were under construction nearby. A cartoon version of East Bay Ohlone matriarch Dolores Lameira smiled encouragingly from one wall as she coached visitors to the mixed reality experience on how to gather virtual acorns…
A lawsuit filed Wednesday on behalf of students and community organizations in Massachusetts argues the state is illegally maintaining schools that are racially segregated, concentrating Black and Latino students in high-poverty districts with fewer opportunities.The lawsuit challenges the state’s practice of assigning students to schools based solely on where they live, which can lead to patterns of housing segregation being replicated in school systems. The case is the latest example of efforts to address segregation and funding inequities through state-level litigation. Even before the Trump administration began taking steps to release districts in the Deep South from court-ordered desegregation efforts,…
Over the last few months, Figma has struck partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI to bake in support for AI CLI tools like Claude Code and Codex to allow users to use these coding environments alongside its design software. The company is now baking in its own take on AI smarts via a new AI agent that operates within its collaborative canvas. Figma says users can employ natural language text prompts to direct its new AI agent to generate new designs, edit existing ones, or automate tasks such as generating iterations of existing designs. Users can even fire up multiple agents…
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and the fourth-richest man in the world, says low earners in the US should pay no tax. Loading audio narration… “1% of taxpayers pay 40% of all the tax revenue; the bottom half pay only 3%. I think it should be zero,” Bezos said in an interview with CNBC on Wednesday.”There’s something very powerful about zero.”During the interview, Bezos repeatedly criticized taxation on lower-income workers, using the example of a “nurse in Queens earning $75,000.”Speaking from his Blue Origin rocket facility in Florida, Bezos said the US in 2026 is a “tale of two…
Cava doesn’t merely want to sell you a Mediterranean slop bowl anymore. It wants to predict when you’ll order it, optimize the labor used to make it, personalize the app that sells it to you, and maybe eventually know you want extra feta before you do. Loading audio narration… On the company’s earnings call on Tuesday, Cava executives framed the fast-casual chain less like a traditional restaurant company and more like a tech platform that happens to serve pomegranate-glazed salmon and harissa chicken.CEO Brett Schulman said the company was laying the groundwork to become “a real-time AI-enabled business” as Cava…
Minnesota has become the first state to ban prediction markets, but the fight over these platforms’ right to operate is far from over. Loading audio narration… On Tuesday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz signed and approved a state ban on prediction markets. Per the bill, any person who creates, operates, or advertises a prediction market that involves wagers on events such as sports, elections, and government actions will be guilty of a felony.The ban is set to go into effect on August 1.Hours after the bill was passed, the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, filed a lawsuit against Minnesota…
South Korea’s Samsung Electronics has become one of the biggest beneficiaries of the artificial-intelligence boom. Now the company faces a battle over who deserves a share of the gains. Loading audio narration… Talks between Samsung and its largest labor union broke down, according to Yonhap news agency, putting around 48,000 workers on track to begin an 18-day strike on Thursday over bonuses and profit-sharing.Samsung shares tanked as much as 5% after reports that negotiations had collapsed.The dispute comes at a sensitive moment for Samsung, which recently joined the trillion-dollar club as investors piled into AI-linked semiconductor stocks. The tech titan’s…
The day that Meta employees have dreaded for a month is here. Loading audio narration… Emails have begun going out to roughly 10% of Meta’s 78,000 employees, notifying them that they are being laid off. The notifications are being sent in three waves at 4 a.m. local time on May 20 across different regions, according to a memo that Meta HR chief Janelle Gale sent to an employee resource group on Monday.The layoffs are expected to eliminate around 8,000 roles. US employees will receive a severance package including 16 weeks — or four months — in base pay, plus two…