Author: Jason
-
Factorial snaps up $120M from General Catalyst to boost its HR sales and marketing
While Rippling and Deel duke it out in the field and in the courtroom alleging illegal sales and marketing tactics, here’s another way to boost business growth: pick up a massive sum of cash to expand your operations in those areas. Factorial, the Barcelona-based “unicorn” startup that provides an all-in-one HR platform in the cloud… Read more
-
Trump fires FTC commissioners, setting up a legal battle
President Trump fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Tuesday, setting up a challenge to a 1935 Supreme Court precedent prohibiting the firing of FTC commissioners for reasons other than “good cause.” The White House terminated commissioners Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya earlier Tuesday, The New York Times reported.… Read more
-
Nvidia and Google DeepMind will help power Disney’s cute robots
Nvidia is collaborating with Disney Research and Google DeepMind to develop Newton, a physics engine to simulate robotic movements in real-world settings, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced at GTC 2025 on Tuesday. Disney will be among the first to use Newton to power its next-generation entertainment robots, like the Star Wars-inspired BDX droids — one… Read more
-
JD Vance claims freeing AI from regulation is good for American workers and tech innovators
On Tuesday, Vice President JD Vance said that the Trump administration’s support of AI and tech innovations should benefit both populists and those investing and leading tech companies. “I think there’s too much fear that AI will simply replace jobs rather than augmenting so many of the things that we do now,” said Vance at… Read more
-
Elon Musk’s DOGE leadership likely violates constitution’s appointments clause, judge says
Elon Musk’s role overseeing the Department of Government Efficiency is likely a violation of the United States constitution’s appointments clause, a federal judge wrote Tuesday. Theodore Chuang, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, wrote in an opinion there is more than enough evidence — mostly from statements made by… Read more
-
New $5M deep tech fund aims to lure founders from universities
Critical Venture Partners is betting that young founders plucked fresh from universities can solve some of the world’s most intractable problems. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Read more
-
NASA astronauts return from long Space Station stay prompted by Boeing problems
Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have returned to Earth after a nine-month stay on the International Space Station — a trip that lasted far longer than originally planned thanks to leaks and thruster problems on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they used to get there. Williams and Wilmore splashed down in the Gulf of… Read more
-
What Tesla can and can’t do in California with its new passenger transportation permit
Tesla received a permit Tuesday from the California Public Utilities Commission to operate a transportation service in the state, the beginning of a long regulatory road that could eventually lead to the company getting the OK to operate a robotaxi service there. The permit, which Tesla applied for in November 2024, doesn’t cover autonomous vehicle… Read more
-
An AI model from over a decade ago sparked Nvidia’s investment in autonomous vehicles
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s keynote Tuesday at the company’s GTC 2025 conference stuck with tradition and was chock full of announcements. But the company also snuck in a little history lesson. During the automotive portion of his speech, Huang referred to AlexNet, a neural network architecture that gained widespread attention in 2012 when it won… Read more
-
Nvidia announces two ‘personal AI supercomputers’
Nvidia at GTC 2025 announced a new lineup of “AI personal supercomputers” powered by the company’s Grace Blackwell chip platform. Jensen Huang, the semiconductor company’s founder and CEO, unveiled the two new machines, DGX Spark (previously called Project Digits) and DGX Station, during his keynote on Tuesday. The computers will allow users to prototype, fine-tune,… Read more