Author: arthursheikin@gmail.com
[ad_1] What happens when your first 10 hires aren’t people at all? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at San Francisco’s Moscone West, we’re digging into the new wave of startups replacing or augmenting early employees with AI agents. Think outbound sales, billing, and customer support — automated from day one. This panel, hosted on the Builders Stage, features a mix of technical founders and seasoned operators who are actually doing it, debating where the line between human and machine should be drawn — and how far is too far. Meet the speakers Caleb Peffer, founder and CEO of…
[ad_1] Warren Buffett’s late-career foray into Japan has turned into one of his most lucrative investments and JPMorgan believes the “Oracle of Omaha” is not done yet. Back in August 2020, when Buffett was approaching his 90th birthday, Berkshire revealed it had amassed positions of more than 5% in Itochu , Marubeni , Mitsubishi , Mitsui and Sumitomo — Japan’s top trading houses that deal with everything from energy to consumer goods. Over the subsequent five years, the stock prices of the five companies have all more than tripled with the best performer surging more than 500%, according to JPMorgan’s…
[ad_1] This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Steph Kumar, the 41-year-old founder of Two Cents, a research agency based in Barcelona. It’s been edited for length and clarity.When I was laid off from Twitter at the end of 2022, I quickly realized that my career was my social currency in the Bay Area, and I had lost it.I’ve worked in research and insights for a little over 15 years now, and I spent about 13 of those years working at Google, Twitter, Pinterest, and Yahoo.It was normal for the conversation at a children’s birthday party to be…
[ad_1] ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI also faced its share of internal drama, including the notable exits of high-level execs like co-founder and longtime…
[ad_1] This as-told-to-essay is based on a conversation with 26-year-old Vitoria Okuyama. Her former employment, tennis ranking, and medical diagnoses have been verified by Business Insider. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Citi didn’t provide a comment when contacted by Business Insider.As a tennis player, improving opened doors: the US Open, travel, and a scholarship to a good school. In investment banking, the better I got, the more dinners with friends I missed, the more 4 a.m. finishes I pulled, and the harder the projects I was given.I burned out in both careers: with tennis, I lasted…
[ad_1] Chatbot platforms like ChatGPT and Poe have allowed users to create repeated prompts in the form of GPTs and apps. Lately, browsers like Dia and Opera Neon have added a way for people to get repeated tasks done in the form of skills and cards. Now, meeting notetaker Granola is bringing its own spin with a feature called Recipes, which lets you create a prompt shortcut you can use again and again. You can invoke a recipe by using “/” in Granola chat and typing its name. You can create your own recipes by typing in a prompt and…
[ad_1] Imagine you’re a Formula One driver hurtling down a race track at 200 miles per hour when your engineer comes on the radio and says … something. You can’t make it out, but you’re also not going to spend a lap playing out that old Verizon commercial (“Can you hear me now?”) with the race — and your life — on the line. This is just one problem Norwegian startup Hance is solving with an impressively small and fast bit of audio-processing software that’s already attracted customers like Intel and Riedel Communications, the official radio supplier to F1. Hance is…
[ad_1] After teaming up with Google on agentic commerce this month, payments giant PayPal announced Tuesday it’s adding new features to its PayPal Honey browser extension. The features will provide AI chatbot users, who are researching items they want to purchase, Honey’s product recommendations, pricing, and access to deals. When users ask their preferred AI chatbot a shopping-related question, PayPal Honey’s extension will display links to the products the AI chatbot recommends, along with real-time pricing, merchant options, and offers, PayPal says. The system can also identify when the AI’s own recommendations may have left out major retailers and surface those additional options to…
[ad_1] At its annual hardware event, Amazon introduced a new lineup of Echo devices, built specifically for its AI assistant, Alexa+, which has already rolled out to millions of customers through its early access program. To showcase the AI’s capabilities, Amazon is releasing four new Echo devices with improved processing power and memory: the Echo Dot Max, Echo Studio, Echo Show 8, and Echo Show 11. Key to the devices are the Alexa+ integrations, allowing the speakers to respond to more queries than earlier models, offering support for natural language conversations, more complex questions, and soon, more add-ons and capabilities.…
[ad_1] At an event on Tuesday, Amazon unveiled a range of new AI-powered features for its latest Ring cameras and doorbells. The features will enable Ring users to recognize visitors’ faces and find lost pets by connecting with other Ring users in the same neighborhood. Amazon also launched an Alexa+ feature that functions as a smart doorbell assistant, providing details about visitors before users answer the door. Ring is also introducing its first 4K product line along with “Retinal Vision,” a new imaging technology designed to provide clearer video. Image Credits:Amazon Ring The most notable feature revealed at the event…