In a quiet transformation from merchandising giant to (also) healthcare giant, Amazon may be positioning its sprawling logistics network and growing medical footprint to potentially save lives, starting with your front door. According to Bloomberg, back in 2023, Amazon piloted a several months-long pilot program called Project Pulse, equipping delivery vans with defibrillators and training...
Category: Tech Crunch
Trump exempts smartphones, laptops, and semiconductors from new tariffs
The Trump administration is carving out big tariff exemptions for the tech industry. While President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he would delay many of the market-shaking tariffs that he’d announced the previous week, he kept a universal baseline 10% tariff in place, while also increasing tariffs on Chinese goods to 125% (on top of...
Cofertility’s radical model for women: Freeze your eggs for free by donating half of them
In recent years, focus on career and delayed marriage age is driving some women to consider preserving their fertility through egg freezing. But the steep cost of the procedure, estimated at $10,000 to $15,000 per attempt, means many women can’t afford it during their most fertile years: 20s and early 30s. Cofertility, a startup founded...
OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence reportedly valued at $32B
Safe Superintelligence (SSI), the AI startup led by OpenAI’s co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, has raised an additional $2 billion in funding at a $32 billion valuation, according to the Financial Times. The startup had already raised $1 billion, and there were reports that an additional $1 billion round was in the works....
Meta adds Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and Dina Powell McCormick to its board
Banking executive and former presidential advisor Dina Powell McCormick and Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison are joining the board of Meta, according to a report from Axios. Powell McCormick spent 16 years in several leadership roles at Goldman Sachs. She also served as Deputy National Security Advisor to President Donald J. Trump during his...
The most interesting startups showcased at Google Cloud Next
Google Cloud announced a long list of impressive AI startups as customers during its Cloud Next conference this week
Meta’s vanilla Maverick AI model ranks below rivals on a popular chat benchmark
Earlier this week, Meta landed in hot water for using an experimental, unreleased version of its Llama 4 Maverick model to achieve a high score on a crowdsourced benchmark, LM Arena. The incident prompted the maintainers of LM Arena to apologize, change their policies, and score the unmodified, vanilla Maverick. Turns out, it’s not very...
Forerunner’s long game: As startups stall before IPO, all options are on the table
Thirteen years ago, Forerunner Ventures began helping to usher in a new era of consumer startups, including Warby Parker, Bonobos, and Glossier. None has gone through a traditional IPO process. Warby Parker was taken public through a special purpose acquisition vehicle. Bonobos was acquired by Walmart. Glossier is still privately held, along with many other...
Law professors side with authors battling Meta in AI copyright case
A group of professors specializing in copyright law has filed an amicus brief in support of authors suing Meta for allegedly training its Llama AI models on e-books without permission. The brief, filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, San Francisco Division, calls Meta’s fair use defense “a...
Tesla used car listings skyrocketed in March
A growing number of Tesla owners are putting their used vehicles up for sale, as consumers react to Elon Musk’s political activities and the global protests they have fueled. In March, the number of used Tesla vehicles listed for sale on Autotrader.com skyrocketed, Sherwood News reported, citing data from Autotrader parent company Cox Automotive. The...