February 9, 2025

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admits that AI’s benefits may not be widely distributed

In a new essay on his personal blog, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is open to a “compute budget,” among other “strange-sounding” ideas, to “enable everyone on Earth to use a lot of AI” and ensure the benefits of the technology are widely distributed. “The historical impact of technological progress suggests that most […]

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Technology

First sneak peek at the judges for Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023

July 20, 2023
The Startup Battlefield pitch competition is the crown jewel of Disrupt, and we can’t wait to see which of the Startup Battlefield 200 companies will be selected to pitch to panels of top-tier VCs at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 on September 19–21 in San Francisco. It’s always epic, and every contender is on the road to […]

The Download: US facial recognition, and battery ingredients

July 20, 2023
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Face recognition in the US is about to meet one of its biggest tests Just four years ago, the movement to ban police departments from using face recognition in the US was riding…

Want to know where batteries are going? Look at their ingredients. 

July 20, 2023
This article is from The Spark, MIT Technology Review’s weekly climate newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. I was chatting with a group recently about which technology is the most crucial one to address climate change. With the caveat that we’ll definitely need a whole host of solutions to…

Michael Moritz moves on, bookmarking a long chapter at Sequoia Capital

July 20, 2023
Michael Moritz, the journalist-turned-VC who has long been one of the most prominent and respected investors at Sequoia Capital, has left firm to “deepen his advisory relationship” with Sequoia Heritage, the wealth management unit he spun up in 2010 with longtime Sequoia colleague Doug Leone and on whose board he has sat for years. The […]

China’s OpenAI challenger Zhipu AI gets Meituan funding

July 20, 2023
Zhipu AI, one of China’s most promising challengers to OpenAI, has received funding from the country’s food delivery giant Meituan, which has a market cap of around $100 billion at the time of writing. An affiliate of Zhipu AI recently added a Meituan subsidiary as its shareholder, which now owns a 10% stake in the […]

Farizon, Geely’s truck unit, raised $600M to expand outside China

July 20, 2023
Farizon, a maker of hybrid and electric trucks owned by China’s Geely, has closed a $600 million Series A raise, the company said in a statement. The Hangzhou-based company plans to use the funds to expand its operations outside of China. A key focus for Farizon’s expansion will be Europe, where the automaker plans to […]

With $37M seed round, Maka Motors begins EV pilot on Indonesia’s streets

July 20, 2023
A recent report said that Indonesia’s electric vehicle (EV) market is projected to reach $20 billion by 2029, up from $533 million in 2022. Moreover, as much as half of the overall motorbike market in Southeast Asia could be replaced by electric two-wheelers by 2030, McKinsey associate partner Rahul Gupta said at the G20 summit last […]

Kitchen robot Botinkit raises $13M from DJI angel and others

July 20, 2023
Having worked in the food industry for several years, Shirley Chen saw firsthand the challenges of managing staffing and training for restaurant expansion. So when she met her future co-founders, she saw an opportunity to leverage their expertise in chemistry and electrical and electronic engineering, along with her own food and beverage background, to start […]