Madrona just announced its biggest fund ever, closing on $770M as other venture funds grow smaller

Seattle-based Madrona Ventures is celebrating its 30 years in business by raising $770 million in fresh capital. This is the firm’s largest fundraise to date, exceeding $690 million across two funds Madrona closed in 2022.  While an 11% capital pool upsize may not seem significant, any

Tesla’s redesigned Model Y is coming to North America in March for $60,000

Tesla has announced that its redesigned Model Y SUV is coming to the U.S., Canada, and Mexico in March, with a starting price just shy of $60,000. The news comes just two weeks after Tesla revealed the new-look Model Y and said the SUV was coming to China and other Asian markets, also in March. T

JetBrains launches Junie, a new AI coding agent for its IDEs

JetBrains, the company behind coding tools like the IntelliJ IDE for Java and Kotlin (and, indeed, the Kotlin language itself), on Thursday launched Junie, a new AI coding agent. This agent, the company says, will be able to handle routine development tasks for when you want to create new applicati

Trump orders formation of working group to evaluate crypto stockpile

President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered the formation of a working group to propose federal regulations for “digital assets” — including cryptocurrencies, digital tokens, and stablecoins — and evaluate a national crypto stockpile. Ex-PayPal COO and founder of VC firm Cr

OpenAI says it may store deleted Operator data for up to 90 days

OpenAI says that it might store chats and associated screenshots from customers who use Operator, the company’s AI “agent” tool, for up to 90 days — even after a user manually deletes them. OpenAI has a similar deleted data retention policy for ChatGPT, its AI-powered chatbot p

Everyone wants MrBeast on their TikTok bid, but he hasn’t committed yet

YouTube celebrity MrBeast — real name Jimmy Donaldson — is in talks to join a number of bids for TikTok's U.S. operations. But he hasn't chosen one exclusively yet. First, on Monday, the CEO of Employer.com, Jesse Tinsley, said MrBeast is part of an all-cash bid for TikTok that

Anthropic’s new Citations feature aims to reduce AI errors

In an announcement perhaps timed to divert attention away from OpenAI’s Operator, Anthropic Thursday unveiled a new feature for its developer API called Citations, which lets devs “ground” answers from its Claude family of AI in source documents such as emails. Anthropic says Cit

Fitbit fined $12M over Ionic smartwatch burns

Fitbit has settled with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) over a long-standing defect that caused some wearers to sustain burns. The deal finds the Google-owned fitness company paying a $12.25 million penalty for the issues surrounding its Ionic smartwatch. The issue dates back to

Threads rolls out a post scheduler, ‘markup’ feature, and more

While Meta lures TikTok creators to Instagram and Facebook with cash bonuses, its X competitor Instagram Threads is now making things easier for creators, brands, and others who need more professional tools to manage their presence on the app. On Thursday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced a sm

Tom Brady’s Autograph merges with digital fitness company Future

Autograph, the NFT company co-founded by Tom Brady, is merging with the digital fitness company Future. As part of the merger, Brady will join the board of directors of Future and serve as co-chair of the company.  Brady co-founded Autograph in 2021 to find ways to connect athletes and artists wi

Hidden Waymo feature let researcher customize robotaxi’s display

A security researcher found a hidden unreleased feature in the Waymo app that allowed her to display whatever characters she wanted on the robotaxi's top display.  Jane Manchun Wong, a well-known security researcher, posted an image on X on Saturday showing the top display of a Waymo car

Bedrock Energy wants geothermal to make data centers cooler and offices more comfortable

Oil and gas isn't the only source of energy lurking under our feet. Drill deep enough and Earth's temperature stays consistent enough that it can be a source of heating and cooling for homes, offices, and data centers. But in many regions, geothermal wells today bottom out at around 500 fe

Android 16's first beta version brings iOS-style live notifications

After releasing two developer beta versions last year, Google introduced the first public beta for Android 16 on Thursday. New features include live updates on the lock screen (like Live Activities on iOS), Advanced Professional Video (APV) codec for high-quality video recording, and a framework fo

Substack introduces a $20M funding guarantee to entice creators to migrate to its platform

Substack on Thursday announced the launch of its Creator Accelerator Fund, which provides a $20 million funding guarantee aimed at helping creators grow their audience and move their paid subscribers from another subscription-based platform (Patreon, Supercast, and others) to Substack. The company