IBM acquires consultancy Hakkoda in continued AI investment push

April 7, 2025
IBM on Monday announced that it acquired Hakkoda, a data and AI consultancy based in New York, for an undisclosed amount. Mohamad Ali, SVP and head of IBM’s consulting business, said that the acquisition would “further expand” IBM’s ability to bring consultants and AI to clients, particularly customers in industries like financial services, public sector, […]

SignalFire raises over $1B as LPs embrace data-driven investing

April 7, 2025
Thirteen years ago, when Chris Farmer founded early-stage venture firm SignalFire with data analysis at the core of its investment strategy, many were skeptical about the approach — conventional wisdom dictated that nascent companies didn’t have enough data to make investment algorithms effective. “This was a very radical idea, and everyone thought I was crazy,” […]

OpenAI reportedly mulls buying Jony Ive and Sam Altman’s AI hardware startup

April 7, 2025
OpenAI is said to have discussed acquiring the AI hardware startup that former Apple design lead Jony Ive is building with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. According to The Information, OpenAI could pay around $500 million for the fledgling company, called io Products. Ive, who left Apple in 2019 to start his own design firm called […]

How the Pentagon is adapting to China’s technological rise

April 7, 2025
It’s been just over two months since Kathleen Hicks stepped down as US deputy secretary of defense. As the highest-ranking woman in Pentagon history, Hicks shaped US military posture through an era defined by renewed competition between powerful countries and a scramble to modernize defense technology.   She’s currently taking a break before jumping into her…

Want to stay young? Peter Diamandis says survive the next 10 years

April 7, 2025
Peter Diamandis, a futurist with degrees from both MIT and Harvard, has spent much of the past two decades evangelizing a vision of an “abundant future” driven by exponential technologies that will lengthen our lives. The serial entrepreneur and founder of organizations like the XPRIZE Foundation and Singularity University has also cultivated close ties with […]

Meta’s benchmarks for its new AI models are a bit misleading

April 6, 2025
One of the new flagship AI models Meta released on Saturday, Maverick, ranks second on LM Arena, a test that has human raters compare the outputs of models and choose which they prefer. But it seems the version of Maverick that Meta deployed to LM Arena differs from the version that’s widely available to developers. […]