Failed fintech startup Bench racked up over $65 million in debt, documents reveal

Bench, the accounting startup that imploded over the holidays, filed for bankruptcy in Canada on January 7 revealing massive debts, documents seen by technewss show.  The filings — one for Bench and another for 10Sheet, Bench's original name — show that Bench had $2.8 million

Apple pauses AI notification summaries for news after generating false alerts

Apple is pausing AI notification summaries for news and entertainment apps after facing backlash for generating inaccurate news alerts. In addition, the company is introducing changes to notification summaries as a whole to allow for greater transparency. With the latest round of developer preview

Threads might let you add music to your posts in the future

Meta’s Threads is internally prototyping the ability to add music to posts, the company confirmed to technewss. The option to add music to posts is already available on Meta’s other social apps, Instagram and Facebook. It looks like the company is now thinking about bringing the featur

Trump administration might give a boost to deep-sea mining for critical minerals

Critical minerals are the new oil: Everyone needs them, but not every country has them. That's led some to search for them in some pretty wild places. And few places are as outlandish as the ocean deep. But deep-sea mining appears poised to get a boost from the incoming Trump administration, a

Climate tech matured in 2024 as investors favored bigger rounds, later stages

Climate tech may have had a down year in 2024, but new data also shows a maturing sector with larger deal sizes. Venture investment in the climate tech sector was down 7% to $12.9 billion, $1 billion shy of 2023's tally, according to data in a new PitchBook report. The report found that round

Nvidia releases more tools and guardrails to nudge enterprises to adopt AI agents

Nvidia is releasing three new NIM microservices, or small independent services that are part of larger applications, to help enterprises bring additional control and safety measures to their AI agents. One of these new NIM services targets content safety and works to prevent an AI agent from gener

Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky’s AT Protocol

Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky’s AT Protocol, he shared in a TikTok video posted on Wednesday. In anticipation of the coming U.S. TikTok ban, which will go through on Sunday unless paused by the Supreme Court, users have been fleein

A rising EV startup star snags $100M and Tesla’s win-lose federal funding moment

Welcome back to technewss Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click technewss Mobility! Before we move into the news of this week, we have one more roundup of transportation tech at CES 2025. As I noted last week, au

Instagram Threads won’t share a timeline for account portability

Will Instagram Threads truly integrate with the fediverse, also known as the open social web, to allow its users to interact with people on other services like Mastodon and to move their account elsewhere if they decide that Meta’s policies are no longer to their liking? Today that answer re

This MIT spinout wants to spool hair-thin fibers into patients’ brains

You can't start a company without a healthy dose of daring, and that's certainly the case with NeuroBionics. The MIT-spinout thinks it could one day improve the lives of millions of people who live with neurological conditions like depression, epilepsy, and Parkinson’s disease. 

Symbotic set to take over Walmart's robotics business

Walmart and Symbotic announced a deal Tuesday that would find the Massachusetts robotics firm taking control of the mega-retailer's automation business. Symbotic is paying $200 million in cash for the program, plus up to $350 million in “additional contingent consideration,” depending on ho

Polestar digs in for another grim year

Volvo spinoff Polestar had a rough 2024, and 2025 looks like it could be just as difficult. The EV maker announced Thursday that it expects to generate less revenue in fiscal year 2024 than it did in 2023, after previously estimating sales would stay the same. That’s thanks to “fewer t

Clop ransomware gang names dozens of victims hit by Cleo mass-hack, but several firms dispute breaches

The prolific Clop ransomware gang has named dozens of corporate victims it claims to have hacked in recent weeks after exploiting a vulnerability ??in several popular enterprise file transfer products developed by U.S. software company Cleo.  In a post on its dark web leak site, seen by TechC

Nintendo teases Mario Kart as first Switch 2 title

A console is only as good as its games. While Nintendo didn't reveal anything in the way of specs for the forthcoming Switch 2 platform, the gaming giant showed off what appears to be the first game confirmed for the hybrid platform: a new take on the racing classic, Mario Kart. After all, it