According to Index Ventures Partner Shardul Shah, cybersecurity startup Wiz sits “at the center of three tailwinds: AI, cloud, and security spend. ” Those tailwinds powered what just became the largest venture-backed acquisition in history — Google’s $32 billion deal, finalized after a declined 2024 offer, antitrust review on both …

At the SXSW conference on Friday, Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström announced a new feature, launching in beta, that will allow listeners for the first time to review and edit their Taste Profile, the algorithmically generated model of their music preferences. This Taste Profile is key to Spotify’s recommendations, including personalized …

It’s been a whirlwind for NanoClaw creator Gavriel Cohen. About six weeks ago, he introduced NanoClaw on Hacker News as a tiny, open source, secure alternative to the AI agent-building sensation OpenClaw, after he built it in a weekend coding binge. “I sat down on the couch in my sweatpants,” …

Uber founder Travis Kalanick has a new company called Atoms focused on robotics that, according to its website, will operate in the food, mining, and transportation industries. Kalanick is rolling his existing ghost kitchen company, CloudKitchens, into Atoms. It’s not immediately clear how he plans to tackle mining and transportation. …

You can chart a year through product launches, or you can measure it in the greater moments that change the way we look at AI. The AI industry is constantly churning out news, like major acquisitions, indie developer successes, public outcry against sketchy products, and existentially dangerous contract negotiations — …

Legendary filmmaker Steven Spielberg spoke out against the use of AI technology when used in creative endeavors in an interview at the SXSW conference in Austin on Friday. Asked how he viewed AI’s utility as part of the filmmaking process, Spielberg said, “I’ve never used AI on any of my …

After widespread complaints that Facebook has become an “AI slop hellscape,” Meta on Friday announced new tools to detect impersonation, as well as updated creator guidelines that better define what Facebook considers to be “original content. ” Last year, the company announced a crackdown on spammy and unoriginal content — …

AI agents are expected to soon start making autonomous purchasing and scheduling decisions on behalf of humans. But Michael Fanous, a UC Berkeley computer science graduate and former machine learning engineer at CareRev, argues that these agents are currently missing a critical piece of the puzzle: the full context required …

Digg — Kevin Rose’s reboot of his once-popular link-sharing site — is laying off a sizable portion of its staff, the company announced on Friday. The startup is not closing, however, Digg CEO Justin Mezzell said. Instead, Rose will return to work on Digg full-time as the company tries to …

In the lead up to the Tumbler Ridge school shooting in Canada last month, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar spoke to ChatGPT about her feelings of isolation and an increasing obsession with violence, according to court filings. The chatbot allegedly validated Van Rootselaar’s feelings and then helped her plan her attack, …