Author: arthursheikin@gmail.com

[ad_1] In early 2023, David Petrou, a distinguished engineer and a founding member of both Google Goggles and Google Glass, made a surprising move. After more than 17 years at the company, he departed to launch his own startup. “I was seeing how fast technology was changing, and I felt there are certain ideas that are best explored in the context of a startup,” Petrou told TechCrunch. His ultimate idea was to build Continua, a consumer-facing company that uses AI agents to enhance collaboration and interaction in group chats on SMS, iMessage, and Discord. “The simple way to think about…

[ad_1] In a moonshot move, AI search engine Perplexity has offered to buy Chrome from Google for $34.5 billion cash in an unsolicited offer, Reuters reported and Perplexity has confirmed to TechCrunch. Perplexity tells TC the terms of the offer include a commitment to keep Chrome’s underlying engine, Chromium, open source and continue to invest in it. Perplexity’s offer includes a promise to invest $3 billion into the open source project. Perplexity is also promising not to change the user defaults of Chrome users, including the default search engine. That is, Perplexity is promising to leave Google as the search…

[ad_1] Menard Jr. is the 99th richest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of $21.1 billion as of August, Forbes reported. In 2024, he was named Wisconsin’s richest person, a title that has since been taken over by ABC Supply cofounder Diane Hendricks.After spending a summer constructing pole buildings to put himself through college at the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, Menard Jr. started a construction company in 1958, according to Menards’ official website. That led him to the building-materials business, and he opened the first Menards retail location in 1964.Now with over 300 locations across 15 Midwestern…

[ad_1] Microsoft is going after Meta’s AI talent.The software giant has compiled a list of its most-wanted Meta engineers and researchers, and is starting a new process intended to make offers more competitive, including a mandate to match Meta’s compensation for top talent, according to insiders and internal documents viewed by Business Insider.Microsoft recently reported blowout earnings, sending its market valuation toward $4 trillion, thanks in large part to excitement around generative AI. Microsoft needs to lure top AI engineers and researchers to keep that success going. The company has cut thousands of employees this year but has insisted its…

[ad_1] Rick Rieder, BlackRock’s chief investment officer for global fixed income, is sticking with his call for a jumbo rate cut from the Federal Reserve next month after new inflation data showed less-than-expected price pressures. “We expect the Fed to begin cutting rates in September, and it could be justified cutting the Funds rate by 50 basis points, to get it more aligned with longer-term inflationary expectations and some of the productivity enhancement we are seeing across multiple industries,” Rieder said Tuesday in a note to clients. (1 basis point equals 0.01%.) A half-point cut in September would mirror the Fed’s…

[ad_1] Day traders have had a blockbuster summer, outpacing professional money managers and leaving some hedge funds bruised. But that dominance may be short-lived.If historical trends hold, a seasonal pullback in retail activity could collide with a surge in volatility this September, threatening to derail the rally they helped drive.While nothing has topped the meme-stock craze of 2021, retail traders have been enjoying a busy — and lucrative — summer.Citadel Securities, which handles more than a third of the US retail equity trades, said in a client note last week that Main Street has remained consistently bullish over the last…

[ad_1] New York City streets: honking cabs, zig-zagging delivery bikes, pedestrians with little respect for traffic lights, and, perhaps soon, Tesla robotaxi testers.As Tesla lays the groundwork to expand its robotaxi service to more US cities, recent job listings indicate that it’s hiring autonomous vehicle operators in the Big Apple to help it do so.Tesla is hiring prototype vehicle operators in Queens, New York, to operate engineering cars with “autonomous driving systems” and collect driving data, according to a job listing on the company’s website titled “Vehicle Operator, Autopilot.”The gig pays up to $33.66 an hour, but not all drivers…

[ad_1] Anthropic is increasing the amount of information that enterprise customers can send to Claude in a single prompt, part of an effort to attract more developers to the company’s popular AI coding models. For Anthropic’s API customers, the company’s Claude Sonnet 4 AI model now has a 1 million token context window — meaning the AI can handle requests as long as 750,000 words, more than the entire “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, or 75,000 lines of code. That’s roughly five times Claude’s previous limit (200,000 tokens), and more than double the 400,000 token context window offered by OpenAI’s…

[ad_1] This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Kailyn Lowry, founder of the KILLR Podcast Network. It has been edited for length and clarity.I grew up poor. It was normal not to know where my next meal was coming from or where I was sleeping that night. I’m 33 now, but that early poverty still impacts me. I’ve made plenty of money since, but I’m still afraid that I could lose everything I’ve built in an instant.I first made significant money on “16 & Pregnant” and later on “Teen Mom.” Still, there was uncertainty. Everyone — the stars…

[ad_1] Just a week after OpenAI announced it would offer ChatGPT Enterprise to the entire federal executive branch workforce at $1 per year per agency, Anthropic has raised the stakes. The AI giant said Tuesday it would also offer its Claude models to government agencies for just $1 — but not only to the executive branch. Anthropic is targeting “all three branches” of the U.S. government, including the legislative and judiciary branches.  The package will be available for one year, says Anthropic. The move comes after OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind were added to the General Services Administration’s list of…