YouTube is changing how it counts views on YouTube Shorts to give creators a deeper understanding of how their short-form content is performing, the company announced on Wednesday. Shorts views will now count the number of times a creator’s Short starts to play or replay. In the past, a view had been counted after a … Read more
Fintech Block laid off 931 people, roughly 8% of the company’s staff, on Tuesday, according to a leaked message from the company seen by TechCrunch. The news was announced to staff in an email from Block’s co-founder and CEO, Jack Dorsey. Dorsey told staff that on Tuesday, Block will be “making some org changes, including … Read more
Microsoft is introducing a “deep research” AI-powered tool in Microsoft 365 Copilot, its AI chatbot app. There’s been a raft of deep research agents launched recently across chatbots, including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and xAI’s Grok. Powering them are so-called reasoning AI models, which posses the ability to think through problems and fact-check themselves — … Read more
More and more hackers are targeting regular people with the goal of breaking into their bank accounts, stealing their crypto, or simply stalking them. These types of attacks are still relatively rare, so there’s no need for alarm. But it’s important to know what you can do to protect yourself if you suspect someone accessed … Read more
When Kat Abughazaleh got laid off from her job as an extremism researcher and video producer at Media Matters last year, Elon Musk personally chimed in on X to celebrate her misfortune. “Karma is real,” Musk said. But as Abughazaleh said in a video on Monday announcing her campaign for Congress, she’s not afraid of … Read more
French VC firm Daphni is announcing the first closing of its new fund, Daphni Blue. The firm has raised €200 million (around $215 million at current exchange rates). It expects to raise as much as €250 million ($270 million) by the end of the year. Some of Daphni’s most remarkable past investments include Back Market, … Read more
OpenAI released updates Monday for Advanced Voice Mode, its AI voice feature that enables real-time conversations in ChatGPT, to make the AI assistant more personable and interrupt users less frequently. Manuka Stratta, an OpenAI post-training researcher, announced the changes in a video posted Monday to the company’s official social media channels. OpenAI’s latest update aims … Read more
Founders Future, a Paris-based VC firm with €300 million in assets under management (around $324 million at current exchange rates), is opening up the capital of the holding company that manages Founders Future’s funds and Sowefund. The company has sold a 25% stake in the holding company to MACSF, the Dassault family, CMA CGM Group … Read more
The Department of Energy has told employees that documents used by DOGE to assess the agency’s grants and contracts should be marked with “legal privilege” to prevent them from being disclosed under Freedom of Information Act requests. DOGE has supplied the agency with spreadsheets, which are to be completed by agency officials, to identify grants … Read more
FuriosaAI, a South Korean startup that makes chips for AI applications, has rejected an $800 million acquisition offer from Meta, opting instead to focus on developing and producing its AI chips, according to a local media report. Disagreements over post-acquisition business strategy and organizational structure, rather than price issues, caused the negotiations to break down, … Read more
