Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged the founders of a crypto-mixing service called Samourai Wallet with conspiracy to commit money laundering and operating an unlicensed money transmitter business.
Why it matters: The U.S. government is cracking down on crypto-mixing tools that criminals can use to hide their tracks.
The Biden campaign will stay on TikTok even after President Biden signed a bill Wednesday that could lead to a potential ban of the app.
The big picture: The bill has a provision thatwill force TikTok's Chinese parent company ByteDance to divest from its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban over data risk and privacy concerns.
President Joe Biden signed a bill Wednesday that will force TikTok's Chinese parent company to divest from its U.S. operations or face a nationwide ban.
Why it matters: The move potentially sets up a protracted legal fight over the fate of the popular social media app, as TikTok has vowed not to go down without a fight.
Xaira Therapeutics, an AI drug discovery startup, has launched with more than $1 billion in funding co-led byArch Venture Partners and Foresite Capital.
Why it matters: Xaira is the landing spot for CEO Marc Tessier-Lavigne, the former Genentech chief scientific officer and Denali Therapeutics co-founder who last year resigned as Stanford University president after findings of research manipulation in his lab.
By lowering the bar on its first quarter results,Tesla has managed to reverse waning investor confidence — for now — even as specifics about its future product lineup remain lacking.
Why it matters: The wider electric vehicle transition is intertwined with Tesla, the world's largest seller of battery-powered cars.
The gigantic and costly industry Silicon Valley is building around generative AI is still struggling to explain the technology's utility.
Why it matters: AI chatbots and image generators are making headlines and fortunes, but a year and a half into their revolution, it remains tough to say exactly why we should all start using them.
With about six months until the U.S. elections, researchers say they've seen less foreign-backed disinformation at this point in the cycle than normal.
Why it matters: Things may be moving slowly, but a wave of social media disinformation campaigns is starting to emerge, experts say.
Perplexity, the 2-year-old AI-generated "answer engine," Tuesday launched its first business offering, Perplexity Enterprise Pro.
Why it matters: AI for business is big business and Perplexity is trying to take a piece of that pie at a time when younger generations are flocking to Google alternatives to satisfy their search needs.
As a TikTok divestment law races to passage, TikTok's parent company ByteDance must reckon with the legislation across all of its apps, many of which are growing rapidly in the U.S.
Why it matters: The broad language included in the bipartisan TikTok ban bill could make it impossible for most ByteDance apps to operate in the U.S. unless the Chinese firm sells them to U.S. companies.
A cybersecurity startup offering an AI-powered platform to network defenders is emerging from stealth Tuesday with $11 million in seed funding, the company exclusively tells Axios.
Why it matters: As investors continue to pour money into AI security startups, these companies have become an exception to the narrative that cyber investments are drying up.
Google fired around 20 workers for participating in protests against its $1.2 billion cloud computing contract with the Israeli government, according to an activist group representing the workers.
Why it matters: In total, the company has now fired around 50 employees over sit-in protests held in Google offices last week that were part of yearslong discontent among a group of Google and Amazon workers over claims that Israel is using the companies' services to harm Palestinians.
AI is forcing corporate boards to change how they operate, with the most aggressive companies appointing AI bots as observers to their boards and putting tech at the center of their board strategy work.
Why it matters: The world's largest companies are increasingly obsessed with AI — mentioning it repeatedly in 2024 earnings calls — but most boards lack the expertise to effectively guide AI strategies.
Adobe said Tuesday it's bringing text-to-image capabilities directly into Photoshop and releasing an improved version of its AI-powered Firefly image engine.
Why it matters: The company is trying to maintain a tricky balance of assuaging content creators' concerns about the technology while also offering AI tools to those who want them.
A day of reckoning has come for Elon Musk, who's set to address investors and analysts about Tesla on Tuesday evening following a disastrous start to the year for the world's most valuable car company.
Why it matters: A perfect storm of slumping sales, a plummeting stock price, thousands of job cuts, internal leaks, product recalls, and a mercurial CEO has set the stage for a potentially explosive earnings call.
Microsoft on Tuesday began publicly sharing Phi-3, an update to its small language model that it says is capable of handling many tasks that had been thought to require far larger models.
Why it matters: Smaller models use less computing power than larger ones and, in many cases, can run on smartphones or laptops, offering additional performance and privacy benefits.
