February 7, 2025

These documents are influencing the DOGE-sphere’s agenda

Reports from the US Government Accountability Office on improper federal payments in recent years are circulating on X and elsewhere online, and they seem to be a big influence on Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and its supporters as the group pursues cost-cutting measures across the federal government.  The payment reports have been…

Technology

Inbenta, a provider of AI-powered chatbots and more, lands $40M

January 11, 2023

In 2011, Jordi Torras, a former Oracle VP, had a realization: companies weren’t optimizing their search technologies as well as they could be. He founded Inbenta to solve this, providing professional consulting services while simultaneously developing an internal AI toolkit for search optimization. Over the years, Inbenta transitioned from consulting to providing conversational AI as […]

Inbenta, a provider of AI-powered chatbots and more, lands $40M by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

China’s Paxlovid cyber scams are everywhere

January 11, 2023
China Report is MIT Technology Review’s newsletter about technology developments in China. Sign up to receive it in your inbox every Tuesday. Lots going on this week. First, MIT Technology Review announced yesterday our picks for this year’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies. If you’ve been watching China, several items on the list should ring a bell, like the…

The entrepreneur dreaming of a factory of unlimited organs

January 11, 2023
Organs on demand is one of MIT Technology Review’s 10 Breakthrough Technologies of 2023. Explore the rest of the list here. I met the entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt for the first time at a meeting at West Point in 2015 that was dedicated to exploring how technology might expand the supply of organs for transplant. At…

OpenAI begins piloting ChatGPT Professional, a premium version of its viral chatbot

January 11, 2023

OpenAI this week signaled it’ll soon begin charging for ChatGPT, its viral AI-powered chatbot that can write essays, emails, poems and even computer code. In an announcement on the company’s official Discord server, OpenAI said that it’s “starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT” as one of the ways to “ensure [the tool’s] long-term […]

OpenAI begins piloting ChatGPT Professional, a premium version of its viral chatbot by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Twitter launches its Blue subscription service in Japan

January 11, 2023

After launching Elon Musk’s version of the Twitter Blue subscription service last month in five countries, the company has expanded the paid plan to users in Japan. Both the old (launched in 2021) and revamped Twitter Blue subscriptions were available in the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand. Twitter noted on its support […]

Twitter launches its Blue subscription service in Japan by Ivan Mehta originally published on TechCrunch

Alphabet X graduates robotic agtech firm Mineral

January 10, 2023

A little over two years after its public debut, Mineral is becoming its own Alphabet company. The team, which was formerly known as the “Computational Agriculture Project” (no prizes for guessing why they adopted the new name), just graduated from the X “moonshot” labs. “After five years incubating our technology at X, Alphabet’s moonshot factory, […]

Alphabet X graduates robotic agtech firm Mineral by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Oxbotica raises $140M more as its B2B autonomous vehicle platform gains ground

January 10, 2023

Activity in the self-driving car industry, frenetic for years, has somewhat stalled in more recent times; but a handful of the most promising companies are continuing to see their businesses grow and attract investment in the process. In one of the more recent developments, Oxbotica, a startup out of England that develops software to power […]

Oxbotica raises $140M more as its B2B autonomous vehicle platform gains ground by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch