xAI blames Grok’s obsession with white genocide on an ‘unauthorized modification’

xAI blamed an “unauthorized modification” for a bug in its AI-powered Grok chatbot that caused Grok to repeatedly refer to “white genocide in South Africa” when invoked in certain contexts on X. On Wednesday, Grok began replying to dozens of posts on X with information abou

Sam Altman's goal for ChatGPT to remember ‘your whole life' is both exciting and disturbing

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman laid out a big vision for the future of ChatGPT at an AI event hosted by VC firm Sequoia earlier this month.  When asked by one attendee about how ChatGPT can become more personalized, Altman replied that he eventually wants the model to document and remember everything in a

Vibe-coding startup Windsurf launches in-house AI models

On Thursday, Windsurf, a startup that develops popular AI tools for software engineers, announced the launch of its first family of AI software engineering models, or SWE-1 for short. The startup says it trained its new family of AI models — SWE-1, SWE-1-lite, and SWE-1-mini — to be optimized f

Viral outrage over Apple’s EU payment warnings misses key fact

Apple says the warning messages now appearing next to EU App Store listings that use third-party payment systems are not actually new. According to a number of recent reports, Apple added a warning with a red exclamation mark next to apps that it found were not using its own “private and sec

Redpoint raises $650M 3 years after its last big early-stage fund

Redpoint Ventures, a San Francisco-based firm that is about a quarter century old, has raised a $650 million 10th early-stage fund, according to a regulatory filing. Redpoint’s new fund matches the size of its prior fund, which was raised just under three years ago. In a market where many ve

Sprinter Health raises $55M to expand its at-home healthcare service

When Max Cohen and Cameron Behar set out to launch a startup together during the pandemic, they decided to focus on the most top-of-mind sector of the era: healthcare. But since neither Cohen nor Behar had a background in healthcare (both worked at Google and Facebook previously), they had to thin

Anthropic's lawyer was forced to apologize after Claude hallucinated a legal citation

A lawyer representing Anthropic admitted to using an erroneous citation created by the company’s Claude AI chatbot in its ongoing legal battle with music publishers, according to a filing made in a Northern California court on Thursday. Claude hallucinated the citation with “an inaccur

Fieldstone Bio is building microbes that can sense everything from TNT to arsenic

The world is awash in data about, well, the world — thanks to satellites and environmental sensors. But there's still a lot we can't see, and Fieldstone Bio thinks microbes can change that. “They've evolved to sense and respond to information. It's just trillions of calculation

Lucid's record quarter got a lift from rental sales and company leases

Lucid Motors set a company record for deliveries in the first quarter of 2025, shipping 3,109 EVs to customers in North America, Europe, and Saudi Arabia. It appears that a new company car program and sales to rental fleets helped it get there.  According to a footnote in Lucid Motors' la

Startups Weekly: A brighter outlook, but don’t get carried away

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can't miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Startup news this week was fairly routine — in a good way: Aside from a minor kerfuffle between Y Combinator and Google, there was no he

TikTok rolls out a new meditation feature to help you get off the app and sleep

TikTok is launching in-app guided meditation exercises, the social network announced on Thursday. The company began testing the meditation exercises with select teens earlier this year and is now making the feature available to all users on its app. The idea behind the feature is to help users imp

Google rolls out new AI and accessibility features to Android and Chrome

Google announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out new AI and accessibility features to Android and Chrome. Most notably, TalkBack, Android's screen reader, now lets you ask Gemini about what’s in images and what’s on your screen. Last year, Google brought Gemini’s capa

Cognichip emerges from stealth with the goal of using generative AI to develop new chips

Chips are a critical component of the AI industry. But new chips don’t hit the market with the same speed as new AI models and products. Cognichip has a lofty goal of creating a foundational AI model that can help bring new chips to market faster. San Francisco-based Cognich

Threads now lets creators add up to 5 links to profiles, track clicks

Instagram Threads is taking on Linktree and other “link-in-bio” solutions by introducing a way for creators to use their Threads profile to share links to their other interests and online presences. At launch, the feature will support adding up to five links to a bio, which can connect