Tech

OpenAI on Tuesday said it had completed its recapitalization, splitting the AI lab into a for-profit corporation nested inside a non-profit foundation. It’s the end result of a complex legal process that had been strenuously resisted by its estranged co-founder, Elon Musk. Under the new structure, the non-profit OpenAI Foundation will have legal control over a public benefit corporation called …

Amazon said on Tuesday that it plans to reduce its corporate workforce by 14,000 jobs as it seeks to reduce bureaucracy, remove layers and invest more in its AI strategy. This marks the e-commerce giant’s second-largest job cuts since it slashed 22,000 jobs in 2022. Amazon had nearly 1.2 million employees as of October 31, 2024, of which more than …

Adobe said on Tuesday that it is launching the latest iteration of its image generation model, Firefly Image 5. The company is also adding more features to the Firefly website, support for more third-party models, the ability to generate speech and soundtracks. Notably, the update allows artists to come up with their own image models using their existing art. Image …

Paypal said on Tuesday that it is adopting a protocol in combination with OpenAI’s “Instant Checkout” feature to let users pay for their shopping directly within ChatGPT, starting in 2026. Paypal is adopting the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), an open-source specification developed by OpenAI that lets merchants make their products available within AI apps, consequently enabling users to shop using …

OpenAI is offering its ChatGPT Go plan available free of charge for one year to users in India who sign up during a limited promotional period starting November 4, as the company looks to expand in one of its top markets. On Tuesday, OpenAI announced the promotion but did not specify how long the offer would remain available. Existing ChatGPT …

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Sequoia managing partner Roelof Botha argued that the venture industry isn’t an asset class, and that throwing more money into Silicon Valley doesn’t lead to better companies. “Investing in venture is a return-free risk,” Botha said during an interview on TechCrunch’s Disrupt’s main stage on Monday. “Anybody who’s studied the capital asset pricing model understands the …

Astro Teller, CEO of X, Alphabet’s “moonshot factory,” where the company incubates the nearly impossible, shared a look into what makes a moonshot and detailed the company’s “fail fast” mantra at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Monday. Notable companies that started out as moonshots from X’s moonshot factory include Waymo and Wing. Teller noted that X has a “2% …

Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan believes that AI assistants will finally allow us to shorten our workweek. Speaking on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 conference on Monday, Yuan discussed his videoconferencing product’s embrace of AI, which includes a “digital twin” feature where an AI avatar can speak for you. Yuan began using his AI avatar in an earnings …

During an interview at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 on Monday, Sequoia Capital managing partner Roelof Botha answered questions about his colleague, Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire, and controversial comments Maguire made earlier this year, calling Sequoia a believer in its partners’ right to “free speech.” In a July 4 post on X, Maguire attacked New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, calling …

Plastic recycling has fallen short. Only about 9% of all plastic is recycled globally, which sounds pretty bad until you compare it with textiles. Only 0.5% of those are recycled. One of the biggest challenges is that textiles are seldom one material. Buttons and zippers complicate matters, but spandex is even worse. Novel synthetic blends have made for clothing that’s …