OpenAI lays out its for-profit transition plans

OpenAI says its corporate structure must evolve to advance its mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence (AGI) — AI that can complete most tasks humans can — benefits all humanity. The company currently has a for-profit org controlled by a nonprofit, with a “capped profit̶

Record-breaking ransoms and breaches: A timeline of ransomware in 2024

It was another record-breaking year for ransomware. When file-locking malware wasn’t causing widespread disruption, like downing online services and lasting outages, ransomware was the cause of unprecedented data theft attacks affecting hundreds of millions of people, in some cases for life.

AI sales rep startups are booming. So why are VCs wary?

When you really probe venture capitalists about investing in AI startups, they’ll tell you that businesses are experimenting wildly but are very slow to add AI solutions into their ongoing business processes.  But there are some exceptions. And one of them appears to be an area known as

ChatGPT and Sora went down for the second time this month

ChatGPT, Sora, and OpenAI’s developer-facing API were down on Thursday for more than four hours. OpenAI says it started experiencing a major outage at 11 a.m. PT, but now says its services are slowly coming back online as of 3:16 p.m. PT. Frequent users of ChatGPT may recall that the service

DeepSeek’s new AI model appears to be one of the best ‘open’ challengers yet

A Chinese lab has created what appears to be one of the most powerful “open” AI models to date. The model, DeepSeek V3, was developed by the AI firm DeepSeek and was released on Wednesday under a permissive license that allows developers to download and modify it for most applications

The fall of EV startup Fisker: A comprehensive timeline

"">Henrik Fisker once envisioned a burgeoning EV empire at the startup he named after himself, which was to be led by the Ocean SUV. But cracks started showing in that vision almost as soon as the Ocean hit the road in 2023.  Fisker cut production targets multiple times, failed to meet sales g

Executive assistants, high salaries, and other ways early-stage founders will trigger a seed VC

VC Jenny Fielding (pictured above), co-founder of Everywhere Ventures and former Techstars managing director, was basically trolling on X when she posted, “Y'all have strong opinions about pre-seed founders who have EAs to help them schedule? Just checking.” Fielding knew the post was “a

PharmEasy investor cuts value of its stake drastically, implying new valuation of $456M

Indian online pharmacy PharmEasy is now being valued at about $456 million after its investor Janus Henderson said in a filing that it valued its stake of 12.9 million shares in the startup at $766,043. The asset manager’s Global Research Fund had originally spent $9.4 million to acquire th

Bluesky is testing a trending topics feature

Social network Bluesky said on Christmas that it is testing a trending topics view. The trending topics are visible both on the desktop and mobile apps of the social network for users across the world. On the desktop, you can see trending topics on the right sidebar, and on the mobile app, you can

Elon Musk’s xAI lands $6B in new cash to fuel AI ambitions

Updated December 25, 12:21 p.m. Pacific: Added details of xAI’s valuation and Kingdom Holdings’ contribution. xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, has raised $6 billion in a Series C financing round. The company announced this week that Andreessen Horowitz , Blackrock, F

$132K – $149K, here’s what seed-stage founders pay early employees, based on data

Once a startup has raised its seed round, the perennial question becomes how much should the founders pay themselves and their first few employees? Kruze Consulting, a CPA firm that specializes in venture-backed startups, recently analyzed average salary ranges for over 450 seed-stage startups and

GV, the VC team backed by Google, has a broad remit, but it can’t do one thing

David Krane is in an enviable position. As the CEO of GV, the venture firm that is funded entirely by Google to the tune of $1 billion a year, his team of roughly 100 gets to make a lot of bets — with just a couple of notable restrictions. During a technewss StrictlyVC event in San Francisco ea

Home for the holidays? Share this top cybersecurity advice with friends and family

For the millions of people at home with friends and family for the festive season, it’s also the time of year where many get roped into fixing the house’s spotty Wi-Fi or face a barrage of questions about tech.  Instead this holiday season, give the gift of good security advice. T

Onyx Motorbikes is back, one year after its owner died leaving the company in shambles

A year after Onyx Motorbikes owner James Khatiblou died suddenly, leaving customers with unfulfilled orders and millions in unpaid debts, the brand has been revived by its original founder. “I'm excited to announce I have resurrected my original brand Onyx with incredible backers!” founder