Rep. Gerald Connolly, ranking member of the U.S. House Oversight Committee, has initiated an investigation into whether expense management startup Ramp is receiving preferential treatment in its bid for a $25 million government contract. Connolly sent a letter to the General Services Administration (GSA) Acting Administrator, Stephen Ehikian, demanding information and documents related to the […]
Mercury co-founder and CEO Immad Akhund today announced the launch of a $26 million fund to back early-stage startups, a move that formalizes his extensive history of angel investing. Axios first reported this in February. Akhund has been an active angel investor since 2016, backing over 350 startups at their earliest stages. His portfolio includes […]
On Monday, Google announced the launch of its AI Futures Fund, a new initiative that seeks to invest in startups that are building with the latest AI tools from Google DeepMind, the company’s AI R&D lab. The fund will back startups from seed to late stage and will offer varying degrees of support, including allowing […]
Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, launched an AI company called Humain to bolster the country’s artificial intelligence sector. The company plans to build out the country’s AI infrastructure, including the construction of data centers. This news arrives as Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are expected to attend a U.S.-Saudi investment forum on […]
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is using his olive oil inefficiently in an “offense to horticulture,” the Financial Times humorously reports. For its “Lunch with the FT” series, the paper joined Altman in his kitchen. He prepared a garlicky pasta and salad, taking a rare break from his demanding job of advocating for the disruption of […]
OpenAI’s ambitious Stargate data center project is facing delays thanks to tariff-related economic uncertainty, reports Bloomberg. Growing market volatility and cheaper AI services have made banks, private equity investors, and asset managers wary of investing in Stargate, an OpenAI-led project that aims to raise up to $500 million for AI infrastructure in the U.S. and […]
General Motors has turned to Sterling Anderson, a veteran of the autonomous vehicle industry, to oversee its entire product line of gas-powered and electric vehicles, in a newly created job that will touch nearly every department at the U.S. automaker. The new VP of global product and chief product officer position will cover the entire […]
Google’s openly available Gemma collection of AI models has reached a milestone: over 150 million downloads. Omar Sanseviero, a developer relations engineer at Google DeepMind, announced the figure on X over the weekend, also revealing that developers have created more than 70,000 variants of Gemma on the AI dev platform Hugging Face. Google launched Gemma […]
VCs are known to move in herds, which is why Eric Slesinger stands out a bit. While most American investors chase AI startups or U.S.-based defense tech startups, the former CIA officer is hunting for defense tech deals in Europe. In fact, Slesinger, founder of 201 Ventures, recently closed a $22 million fund focused on […]
