Author: TechBrunch
Welcome to TechCrunch FinTech! This week we cover the latest on the beleaguered fintech bench, Robinhood's $45 million settlement, some M&A deals, some great funding, and more. Get TechCrunch's roundup of the biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Tuesday at 8:00 AM PT. Subscribe here. big story Image credit: Getty Images After accounting startup Bench abruptly shut down on Dec. 27 and was acquired in a fire sale by Employer.com, Bench customers are now learning they can't simply walk away with their financial data. And some people are very unhappy about it. Meanwhile, Bench said,…
The tech layoff wave continued through 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, 2024 saw more than 150,000 job cuts across 542 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Large companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap, and Microsoft conducted sizable layoffs in 2024, while smaller-sized startups also experienced cuts, and in some cases, shut down operations altogether. We’re continuing to track the industry’s layoffs into 2025 so you can see the trajectory of the cutbacks. Later this year, we will break out our 2024 and 2025 lists in order to make the trends easier to parse. By…
Paid users of OpenAI's ChatGPT can now ask their AI assistant to schedule reminders and recurring requests. A new beta feature called Tasks will begin rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro users worldwide this week. Tasks allows users to set simple reminders in ChatGPT, such as “Notify me when my passport expires in 6 months,” and on any platform where Tasks is enabled, the AI assistant will follow up with a push notification. Users can now make recurring requests to ChatGPT, such as “Every Friday, tell me your weekend plans based on my location and weather forecast” or…
Meta is cutting its workforce by about 5% through performance-based layoffs, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an internal memo to employees that the company plans to hire a new person to fill the role. “We have decided to raise the bar on performance management and fire poor performers sooner,” Zuckerberg said in the memo. “We typically spend a year removing people who don't meet expectations, but this time we plan to make broader performance-based reductions during this cycle.” Meta employed about 72,000 people as of September, so a 5% layoff would affect about 3,600 people. Affected…
Apple has joined a consortium to develop next-generation technology to link chips in AI data centers together. The consortium, the Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium, is developing a standard called UALink to connect AI accelerator chips in a growing number of server farms. As of Tuesday, Apple is a member of the consortium's board of directors, along with Alibaba and semiconductor company Synopsys. Becky Loop, Apple's director of platform architecture, said in a statement that UALink “shows great potential” in addressing connectivity challenges and creating new opportunities to expand AI capabilities and demand. “There is,” he said. “Apple has a long…
Price Iebesi, 24, already has one way out. He is selling his cryptocurrency billing company, Utopia Labs, to Coinbase for an undisclosed amount. Some founders don't just have one company. Yebesi on Monday announced the launch of Open Ledger, a new company that will integrate automated accounting software into products that businesses and small businesses already use. He has already raised $3 million in a round led by Kindred Ventures and Blank Ventures. Yebesi said he came up with Open Ledger while still serving as chief product officer at Utopia Labs. He said he noticed that the companies he worked…
WhatsApp has new features like creating new stickers from your selfies, sharing sticker packs, and adding new camera effects. Stickers and camera effects are great engagement strategies to keep users interacting with your contacts. Last year, the chat app added the ability to create custom stickers from photos. Now the company is adding an option to convert selfies directly into stickers. With the new update, when you tap the “Create Sticker” button in the sticker menu, camera options will appear. Then, take a selfie and the app will convert the image into a sticker and save it to your sticker…
OpenAI quietly removed language supporting “politically unbiased” AI from one of its recently published policy documents. In its draft “economic blueprint” for the U.S. AI industry, OpenAI said AI models “should aim to be politically unbiased by default.” A new draft released Monday removes that language. When asked for comment, an OpenAI spokesperson said the edits are part of an effort to “streamline” the document and that other OpenAI documents, including OpenAI's model specifications, “[s] Point of objectivity. ” Model Spec, released by OpenAI in May, aims to clarify the behavior of the company's various AI systems. But the proposed…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang may have said that “very useful quantum computers” are probably still 20 years away, but his company is also making investments and investments in that very area. The partnership avoids risks beyond classic chips. Now, one of the companies Nvidia is partnering with in quantum development has announced funding. Quantum computing startup SEEQC has raised $30 million in funding, co-led by Booz Allen Ventures and Japanese-European VC firm NordicNinja, with participation from new backer SIP Capital and some existing investors. was procured. SEEQC CEO John Levy said the Series A extension is “a combination of financial,…
U.S. authorities have acknowledged disrupting the efforts of a Chinese state-backed hacker group that broke into millions of computers around the world and stole data as part of a years-long espionage campaign. The Justice Department and FBI announced Tuesday that they have successfully removed malware launched by a Chinese-backed hacker group known in court as Twill Typhoon or Mustang Panda from thousands of infected systems across the United States. did. -Operation will be approved in August 2024. French authorities led the operation with support from Paris-based cybersecurity firm Secoi. French prosecutors said in a press release last year that malware…