The xAI–X merger is a good deal — if you’re betting on Musk’s empire

When Elon Musk announced that his AI startup, xAI, had acquired his social media company, X (formerly known as Twitter), in an all-stock deal, it raised some eyebrows. But in many ways, the deal made sense. xAI’s chatbot, Grok, was already deeply integrated with X, X was floundering financially, and Musk needed a way to […]

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Tokenization of the market, from stocks to bonds to real estate is coming, says BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, if we can solve one problem

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink thinks tokenization of stock and bond markets will revolutionize financial ownership and investing, but there’s a security challenge.

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Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund closes $4.6 billion growth fund

Founders Fund said in a filing with the SEC on Friday that it has closed a $4.6 billion late-stage venture fund.

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Everyone’s jumping on the AI doll trend – but what are the concerns?

As online users create Barbie-like dolls of themselves, experts urge caution over AI’s energy and data use.

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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 […]

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Meta adds former Trump advisor to its board

Dina Powell McCormick’s husband is a Republican senator who received Trump’s endorsement, and she served in Trump’s first administration.

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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 […]

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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

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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 […]

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38 consumer startup founders lobby over Trump tariffs: One faces a surprise $200K bill

Small businesses could be crushed under President Trump’s increased tariffs, according to an open letter by 38 female consumer product founders. While Trump paused his tariff increases for 90 days for various countries — setting the rate at 10% for now — China’s was raised to 145%, which includes the previous 20% levy. In the letter, […]

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