AI’s insatiable demand for power has tech companies hunting for new energy sources — a search that has fueled competition and investment into fusion and fission startups. For many, natural gas is the easy answer for 24/7, baseload power. It’s tested, inexpensive, and widely available. But the war in the …
SourceLast August, a fire ripped through 10 acres of grass on either side of California’s I-280 near Redwood City. Traffic backed up as firefighters extinguished the blaze, and California Highway Patrol (CHP) officers directed drivers to turn around and travel the wrong way to exit the freeway. Some of those …
SourceAs the world electrifies, the oil and gas industry is counting on plastics to drive profits in the future. But not if Jacob Nathan has anything to say about it. Nathan started searching for a way to break down plastics when he was still in high school. Now, as founder …
SourceFor decades, humans have sought to harness the power of the stars to generate electricity here on Earth. And for nearly as long, achieving that goal always seemed just a decade away. Now, a slew of startups are closer than ever before and rushing to build fusion reactors capable of …
SourceThe AI-powered design platform Picsart is launching an AI agent marketplace, allowing creators to “hire” AI assistants to help them with specific tasks, like resizing and remixing social content, or editing product photos on Shopify. With over 130 million worldwide users that skew Gen Z, Picsart is like a more …
SourceIndia’s neobank Fi is discontinuing banking services on its platform more than four years after launching them in partnership with Federal Bank, directing customers to access their savings accounts through the bank’s mobile app as it winds down the Fi interface. Founded in 2019 by former Google Pay India executives …
SourcePeter Thiel’s Founders Fund is nearing the close of its fourth growth fund, Founders Fund Growth IV, with $6 billion in capital commitments, per sources close to the firm. As with most of the firm’s fundraises, demand from outside investors exceeds the fund’s capacity, according to those sources. Additionally, about …
SourceThe Occupational Safety and Health Administration has opened an investigation into the death of a worker at a Rivian warehouse in Illinois this week, the federal agency told TechCrunch on Friday. The agency said the probe could take up to six months. The man, identified by local authorities as 61-year-old …
SourceA group of notable open source programmers are joining with a VC investor to launch a nonprofit called the Open Source Endowment in hopes of permanently solving the perennial issue with developing open source software: funding. Backers of the Open Source Endowment include Thomas Dohmke (the former GitHub CEO who …
SourceAs space companies itch to push the most advanced chips into orbit, the problem of cooling those high-powered processors is top of mind. “It’s cold in space … [but] there’s no airflow, and so the only way to dissipate is through conduction,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said when asked about …
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