In 2017, “new retail” began appearing in Alibaba’s earnings reports. Coined by the Chinese e-commerce behemoth, the term refers to the seamless integration of online and offline retail. Six years later, Alibaba is having a moment of reckoning with this strategy as it looks to offload some of its offline retail assets. On its recent…
GM is expanding access to Super Cruise with plans to let drivers use the hands-free advanced driver assistance system on about 750,000 miles of roads in the United States and Canada. The expansion, which will nearly double the automaker’s Super Cruise network by 2025, will include rural and minor highways that often connect smaller cities…
TikTok will launch localized election resources in its app to reach users in each of the European Union’s 27 Member States next month and direct them towards “trusted information”, as part of its preparations to tackle disinformation risks related to regional elections this year. “Next month, we will launch a local language Election Centre in-app…
If you think growing leaves is easy, think again. Lettuce isn’t the world’s most challenging crop, but as any farmer knows, there are plenty of problems that pop up between planting and harvest. The gamut runs from pests to pathogens and rain — both too little and too much. To shield the tender greens from…
Mushrooms are having a moment. Whether it’s in the form of a functional beverage, using the mushroom root to make alternative protein, creating leather-like materials or just the mushroom itself, the fungi is gaining an audience. Spacegoods is the latest startup to join this craze. The London-based wellness brand is tapping into functional mushrooms and…
Andrej Karpathy, a widely respected research scientist, announced today that he has left OpenAI. This is the second time Karpathy has left the top AI firm and his departure is not because of any event, issue or drama, he said. Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI, initially left the company to join Tesla in 2017.…
In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI firm launched by Siri’s co-founder, called GamePlanner.AI. The deal valued the secretive startup at around $200 million, according to reports. Though the hosting company didn’t telegraph its plans for GamePlanner at the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky today shared a high-level overview of Airbnb’s larger plans…
Nvidia, ever keen to incentivize purchases of its latest GPUs, is releasing a tool that lets owners of GeForce RTX 30 Series and 40 Series cards run an AI-powered chatbot offline on a Windows PC. Called Chat with RTX, the tool allows users to customize a GenAI model along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT by…
The European Parliament’s civil liberties (LIBE) and internal market (IMCO) committees have overwhelmingly endorsed draft legislation setting out a risk-based framework for regulating applications of artificial intelligence. In a vote this morning the committees voted 71-8 (with 7 abstentions) in favor of the compromise negotiated with EU Member States at the back end of last…
Macquarie dramatically cut its 12-month price target on One97 Communications, the parent company of digital payments firm Paytm, citing risks of customers leaving the platform in the wake of heightened regulatory scrutiny. Macquarie, which famously predicted the slump at Paytm before the listing, lowered its target to 275 rupees (down 57.7% from its previous target of…
