Microsoft is forming a new unit to study AI’s impacts

January 31, 2025

Microsoft says that it’s creating a new unit, the Advanced Planning Unit (APU), within its Microsoft AI business division that will help the company understand the societal, health, and work implications of AI the company hopes to build. Microsoft AI, which encompasses Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, and Edge products, is becoming core to Microsoft’s growth strategy […]

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Custom feed builder Graze is building a business on Bluesky, and investors are paying attention

January 31, 2025

A startup called Graze, which lets you build your own feeds for the Bluesky social network, has caught investors’ attention. In addition to offering tools to easily build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds, Graze will soon allow feed creators to monetize their efforts with advertising, sponsored posts, and subscriptions. In other words, Graze has […]

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WeDoSolar pivots to B2B, after stake acquired by Chinese solar giant

January 31, 2025

Last year Wind and solar energy overtook fossil fuels to provide 30% of the EU’s electricity. With that in the background, startups in the solar space have been riding a generational change in how we get our power. In 2022 we covered how a small B2C European startup planned to bring solar to homes via […]

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AI startup Perplexity sued for alleged trademark infringement

January 31, 2025

Perplexity, the venture-backed startup building AI-powered search products, has been sued in federal court for allegedly violating another company’s trademark. In a complaint filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, attorneys representing a company called Perplexity Solved Solutions accuse Perplexity of infringing on its trademark rights by using the […]

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How DeepSeek ripped up the AI playbook—and why everyone’s going to follow it

January 31, 2025
When the Chinese firm DeepSeek dropped a large language model called R1 last week, it sent shockwaves through the US tech industry. Not only did R1 match the best of the homegrown competition, it was built for a fraction of the cost—and given away for free.  The US stock market lost $1 trillion, President Trump…