Circle, the issuer of USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, filed to go public on Tuesday. The company, which makes money from interest earned on its reserve assets, reported that its 2024 revenue and reserve income was $1.68 billion, up from $1.45 billion the year prior. Circle’s 2024 net income was $156 million, […]
Tech Crunch
OpenAI’s o3 model might be costlier to run than originally estimated
When OpenAI unveiled its o3 “reasoning” AI model in December, the company partnered with the creators of ARC-AGI, a benchmark designed to test highly capable AI, to showcase o3’s capabilities. Months later, the results have been revised, and they now look slightly less impressive than they did initially. Last week, the Arc Prize Foundation, which […]
Epic Games CEO calls Apple and Google ‘gangster-style’ businesses in need of competition
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose company makes Fortnite and tools for other developers, including Unreal Engine, called out Apple and Google as “gangster-style businesses” engaged in illegal practices while speaking at a Y Combinator event on Wednesday. The executive also emphasized how the big tech companies’ practices directly affected his own business by scaring […]
You might be following Second Lady Usha Vance on Instagram now
Starting Wednesday, Meta says it will begin combining the Instagram accounts of the Second Lady of the United States, Usha Vance, and the former Second Gentleman of the United States, Doug Emhoff. As a result, the 1.2 million people who were previously following the Instagram account of Kamala Harris’s husband, @secondgentleman46archive (recently archived by the […]
The affidavit of a Rippling employee caught spying for Deel reads like a movie
Rippling released the affidavit of the its employee who admitted he was spying for Deel.
WordPress maker Automattic lays off 16% of staff
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, Tumblr, WooCommerce, and a range of other online services, is reducing its workforce. The layoffs will impact 16% of staff across divisions, an Automattic blog post published Wednesday reveals. Ahead of the layoffs, Automattic’s website listed 1,744 employees, which means north of 270 people may have lost their jobs. (Automattic […]
Epic Games introduces automated 3D tagging to help detect IP violations in Fortnite
Epic Games announced on Wednesday the launch of a Loci integration to assist creators with the labor-intensive process of tagging 3D assets as well as to help detect potential intellectual property (IP) violations. Loci, which uses computer vision models to understand 3D content, automatically tags 3D assets, making content easier to search, share, and discover. […]
Redwood Materials preps for expansion spree with new R&D center in San Francisco
Redwood Materials has been on an expansion tear in recent years — growth that has extended the lithium-ion battery recycling and materials startup’s footprint well beyond its Carson City, Nevada headquarters as it locked up deals with Toyota, Panasonic, and, GM, started construction on a South Carolina factory, and made an acquisition in Europe. And […]
DeepMind’s 145-page paper on AGI safety may not convince skeptics
Google DeepMind on Wednesday published an exhaustive paper on its safety approach to AGI, roughly defined as AI that can accomplish any task a human can. AGI is a bit of a controversial subject in the AI field, with naysayers suggesting that it’s little more than a pipe dream. Others, including major AI labs like […]
A new security fund opens up to help protect the fediverse
A new security fund aims to help apps in the fediverse — like Mastodon, Threads, and Pixelfed — to pay researchers for disclosing security bugs.