Food Franchises Are Going After Starbucks With a $100 Billion Beverage Strategy — Here’s What They’re Selling
McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell, Wendy’s and Burger King are launching crafted drinks with boba and cold foam to cash in on the trend.
The Download: failed social media bans, and extending pets’ lives
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. Kids are outsmarting social media bans. That’s not a problem we need to solve. —Michal Luria, Aliya Bhatia, and Danah Boyd Social media bans are stacking up. In July, France joined…
This startup’s new mechanistic interpretability tool lets you debug LLMs
The San Francisco–based startup Goodfire just released a new tool, called Silico, that lets researchers and engineers peer inside an AI model and adjust its parameters—the settings that determine a model’s behavior—during training. This could give model makers more fine-grained control over how this technology is built than was once thought possible. Goodfire claims Silico…
Salesforce is crowdsourcing its AI roadmap — with customers
Salesforce lets its customers lead its product roadmap with the thinking that if one enterprise customer has a problem, the others likely do too.
Uber taps Hertz to clean, charge, and fix its Lucid Motors robotaxis
Hertz is creating a new affiliate company called “Oro Mobility” to provide fleet management solutions “across a range of mobility segments.”
SpaceX backer 137 Ventures raises $700M for two growth-stage funds
VC firm 137 Ventures has raised over $700 million to back growth-stage startups. Its portfolio includes SpaceX, Anduril, Hadrian.
Dental practice software maker fixes bug that exposed patients’ medical records
The security bug is now fixed, but the patient who found it said it was challenging to alert the software company about the issue.
X announces a rebuilt ad platform powered by AI
X is rolling out a rebuilt ads platform powered by AI as it works to grow revenue again.
Skims Boss Emma Grede Says This Popular Workplace Perk Is ‘Career Suicide’
Grede is a serial entrepreneur worth a reported $405 million.
Spirit Called Itself ‘The Dollar General of the Skies’ — Then It Lost the Battle to the Major Airlines
Spirit Airlines has filed for bankruptcy twice in recent years and is now facing potential liquidation. Here’s what went wrong.
You Can Now Book Hotels On Uber: ‘We Want to Become the One App for Everything,’ Says the CEO
The partnership adds 700,000 hotels to the Uber app, with Uber One members getting 20% discounts and earning credits on bookings.