Stories & Media
Founder journeys, bold bets and the ideas changing industries — every story we’ve published, in one place.
AI reasoning models – like OpenAI’s o3 – have recently made big breakthroughs in math and programming. But according to a new analysis by Epoch AI, a non-profit research group, future gains may be harder to come by. Reasoning models differ from regular AI models by using reinforcement learning (RL), a process that gives feedback…
In a move that could change the landscape of US-China tech investments, the US Treasury Department is reportedly reviewing Benchmark’s investment in Manus, a Chinese affiliated AI startup that has been making waves in the AI agent space. This review is a sign of growing concerns around US restrictions on investments in Chinese tech companies.…
Microsoft has officially banned its employees from using the DeepSeek app. Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith confirmed this during a U.S. Senate hearing, citing data security and propaganda risks. “We don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,” Smith said, referring to the desktop and mobile app. “We don’t offer it…
In a world where tech giants flaunt trillion-parameter AI models and billion-dollar GPU clusters, Palo Alto-based startup Fastino is taking a radically different path training powerful, task-specific AI models using low-cost gaming GPUs. Fastino has just raised $17.5 million in seed funding, led by Khosla Ventures, bringing its total funding to nearly $25 million. The…
In another strategic move, Employer.com has acquired MainStreet.com, a fintech startup focused on helping startups claim R&D tax credits. The acquisition amount remains undisclosed, but it’s the latest sign of Employer.com’s aggressive growth strategy in workforce and business back office management. MainStreet, based in San Jose and founded in 2019, had early success by…
Defense Tech Startup Mach Industries Nabs $100M Mach Industries, the hot defense tech startup, is closing in on a $100M round. According to sources, the round is co-led by new investor Khosla Ventures and existing backer Bedrock Capital. Khosla’s lead is Keith Rabois. Valuation Hits $470M With this round, Mach Industries’ valuation is expected…
Reddit is moving beyond community-driven content and targeting a new audience: searchers. In the Q1 2025 earnings call, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman announced a new product, Reddit Answers, an Reddit’s AI-powered feature for users who search Google and add “Reddit” to find real opinions and advice. Launched in beta in December 2024, Reddit’s AI…
Tesla’s board has reportedly taken steps to search for Elon Musk’s potential successor, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report. The move comes as Tesla battles declining sales, shrinking profits, and growing investor unease over Musk’s political activities in Washington. About a month ago, board members quietly approached executive search firms to explore possible…
Meta just launched LlamaCon, their first-ever conference. I’m at the Meta HQ in Menlo Park. The mission was clear: beat OpenAI by accelerating the adoption of their open-source Llama models. They released two big things: a Meta AI chatbot app for consumers and a Llama API for developers. The chatbot app is integrated with…
In its latest security report, Google has revealed that government-backed hackers were the top users of zero-day exploits in 2024. Out of the 75 total zero-day vulnerabilities discovered last year, 23 were attributed to state-sponsored actors. Zero-day exploits are serious software flaws unknown to the vendor at the time of the attack. Google reported that…
Latin America has seen a dramatic rise in the number of Latin American startups that have reached billion-dollar valuations, with some companies becoming global household names. These unicorns are playing a pivotal role in shaping the region’s business ecosystem, with sectors such as fintech, e-commerce, health tech, logistics, and proptech driving innovation and growth. Here…
Bluesky, the decentralized social network built on the AT Protocol, went down yesterday evening. Decentralized platforms can still go down. The outage lasted about an hour and users couldn’t access the service through web or mobile apps. Bluesky confirmed the issue on their status page, “Major PDS Networking Problems”. PDS stands for personal data…
