A court hearing on the sale of bankrupt electric truck startup Nikola’s assets to Lucid Motors was going smoothly on Friday. No objections had been filed to the transaction, and Delaware bankruptcy Judge Thomas Horan verbally approved it without hesitation. Until, that is, a lawyer piped up on the Zoom call towards the end of […]
Tech Crunch
Blue Water Autonomy comes out of stealth promising autonomous naval ships
A new ship-building startup called Blue Water Autonomy has emerged from stealth with the promise of developing captain-less naval ships. The Boston, Massachusetts-based company has raised a $14 million seed round from Eclipse VC, Riot, and Impatient Ventures. The startup was founded in 2024 by former members of the U.S. Navy, leaders of Amazon Robotics, […]
Ex-OpenAI staffers file amicus brief opposing the company’s for-profit transition
A group of ex-OpenAI employees on Friday filed a proposed amicus brief in support of Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI, opposing OpenAI’s planned conversion from a non-profit to a for-profit corporation. The brief names twelve former OpenAI employees: Steven Adler, Rosemary Campbell, Neil Chowdhury, Jacob Hilton, Daniel Kokotajlo, Gretchen Krueger, Todor Markov, Richard […]
GM cuts 500 jobs because of weak demand for BrightDrop electric vans
General Motors is laying off 500 workers at a factory in Canada because of weak demand for its all-electric BrightDrop vans, according to CNBC. GM told CNBC that the cuts were not related to the ongoing trade war being waged by President Donald Trump. The company is cutting one of the two shifts at the […]
ChatGPT became the most downloaded app globally in March
ChatGPT became the world’s most downloaded app in March, excluding games, topping the usual contenders for the No. 1 spot, Instagram and TikTok. This is the first time the app has topped the monthly download charts and ChatGPT’s biggest month ever. According to new data, ChatGPT’s installs jumped 28% from February to March to reach […]
YouTube considers a daily timer for users looking to cut back on Shorts
YouTube is looking into potentially offering a feature that would allow users to set a daily timer to limit how long they spend on Shorts. Recent findings from the beta version of the YouTube app, first reported by Android Authority, suggest that the platform is developing a feature to help users stop the endless scrolling […]
Stripe CEO says company management regularly asks customers for ‘candid feedback’
Digital payments platform Stripe invites customers to join its management team meetings on a bi-weekly basis so it can get “candid feedback,” according to co-founder Patrick Collison. In an April 8 post on X, the fintech giant’s CEO said the company has a customer join for the first 30 minutes of the meeting, which is […]
Ireland’s data regulator investigates X’s use of European user data to train Grok
Ireland’s data regulator, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), said Friday that it has opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s X over the social media platform’s use of personal data collected from European users to train Grok. The DPC will investigate how X processes personal data “comprised” in publicly accessible posts by European users for the […]
Parallel Systems is building autonomous electric rail for short-distance freight
The business of moving goods in the United States is dominated by trucks, which handles about two-thirds of the 20.2 billion tons of freight that’s transported annually. Parallel Systems founder and CEO Matt Soule wants to change that by putting a modern autonomous and electric twist on the centuries-old railroad system. The Los Angeles-based company […]
OpenAI is winding down its GPT-4 AI model in ChatGPT
OpenAI will soon retire GPT-4, an AI model it launched over two years ago, from ChatGPT, the company announced in a changelog on Thursday. Effective April 30, GPT-4 will be “fully replaced” by GPT-4o, the current default model for ChatGPT, OpenAI said. However, GPT-4 will remain available in OpenAI’s API. “In head‑to‑head evaluations, [GPT-4o] consistently […]