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Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.The writer is an FT contributing editorThis month the Federal Reserve decided it would cut its own workforce by a tenth over the next several years. The move has been reported as a way to find savings at the Fed before the so-called Department of Government Efficiency knocks on the door. That may be right, but the Fed has another problem it doesn’t like to talk about: it’s operating at a loss. On purpose.When a commercial bank lends you money, it’s adding…
Venture capitalists have always focused on investing in companies that leverage technology to either disrupt established industries or create entirely new business categories. But some VCs are starting to flip the script on their investing styles. Rather than funding startups, they are acquiring mature businesses — such as call centers, accounting firms, and other professional service firms —and optimizing them with artificial intelligence to serve more customers through automation. This strategy, often likened to private equity roll-ups, is being employed by firms such as General Catalyst, Thrive Capital, and solo VC Elad Gil. General Catalyst, touting this as a new…
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joins ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss a possible 50% tariff on the European Union, a 25% tariff on Apple, possible Senate changes to Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ and the push to modernize the IRS. President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” cleared the House and is making its way through the Senate. Still, critics point out the bill, which is over 1,000 pages, will add trillions to what is already ballooning government debt hovering at $36 trillion and deficits. However, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent believes this can be managed. “We think that we can both grow the economy…
Mistral AI, the French company behind AI assistant Le Chat and several foundational models, is officially regarded as one of France’s most promising tech startups and is arguably the only European company that could compete with OpenAI. But compared to its $6 billion valuation, its global market share is still relatively low. However, the recent launch of its chat assistant on mobile app stores was met with some hype, particularly in its home country. “Go and download Le Chat, which is made by Mistral, rather than ChatGPT by OpenAI — or something else,” French president Emmanuel Macron said in a…
(Check out Carter’s worthcharting.com for actionable recommendations and live nightly videos.) The encouraging recent price action in beaten-down beverage company Celsius Holdings (CELH) is important and bullish, by our work. Some would characterize the current CELH circumstance as a stock that’s basing — and so it is. Others would characterize the current CELH circumstance as a rounding bottom — and so it is. As long-time readers will know, the nomenclature of Worth Charting characterizes the current set-up in a stock like CELH as a ” bearish-to-bullish” reversal BUY. The two identical charts below show a heretofore bearish stock in an established…
Hello, and welcome to your weekly dose of Big Tech news and insights. These are the moments I feel so lucky to be a journalist in Silicon Valley. AI is rapidly changing so much important stuff, for better or worse. Even just witnessing this from the sidelines is a joy.I had a fancy newsletter ready to go, all about Google’s big I/O conference. Then, OpenAI bought Jony Ive’s AI gadget startup for $6.5 billion. It’s called io. Lowercase. I’m not joking. That’s the name.AgendaWhat you need to know about this OpenAI-io megadeal and what it means for Apple, Google, and…
Last week, Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok experienced a “bug” that made it tell users about the “white genocide” conspiracy theory in South Africa, even when prompted with questions that had nothing to do with the topic … and soon after, Grok expressed skepticism over the Holocaust death toll, which it chalked up to a “programming error.” But with a degree of mental gymnastics that could put Simone Biles to shame, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has decided that Elon Musk’s robot baby Grok is too far left. Image Credits:Twitter/X (screenshot) “Grok is left leaning and continues to spread fake news…
OpenAI just made its biggest acquisition yet, scooping up Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s secretive device startup, io, in a $6.5 billion all-equity deal. Ive, the legendary designer behind the iPhone and other iconic Apple products, will now lead creative and design work at OpenAI through his firm LoveFrom. The goal? To take AI “beyond the screen” and build a new generation of AI-powered consumer devices. Beyond the tech, there’s a clear narrative play here. OpenAI is framing Altman as the Jobs-esque visionary and Ive as the design genius who makes it all real. Social media had a field day…
OpenAI is updating the AI model powering Operator, its AI agent that can autonomously browse the web and use certain software within a cloud-hosted virtual machine to fulfill users’ requests. Soon, Operator will use a model based on o3, one of the latest in OpenAI’s o series of “reasoning” models. Previously, Operator relied on a custom version of GPT-4o. By many benchmarks, o3 is a far more advanced model, particularly on tasks involving math and reasoning. “We are replacing the existing GPT‑4o-based model for Operator with a version based on OpenAI o3,” OpenAI wrote in a blog post. “The API version…
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joins ‘America’s Newsroom’ to discuss a possible 50% tariff on the European Union, a 25% tariff on Apple, possible Senate changes to Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ and the push to modernize the IRS. A federal judge rejected an emergency lawsuit this week aimed at stopping President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs from taking force, punting the case to the U.S. Court of International Trade for further review. U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II rejected a Florida-based stationary company’s emergency motion to stay their challenge to Trump’s tariffs, agreeing that the case should be heard by the…