Author: Sabnam Hossain

According to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, the company’s latest model, GPT-4.5, has to be released in phases since it is “out of GPUs.” In a post on X, Altman described  GPT-4.5 as “giant” and “expensive,” and will require “tens of thousands” more GPUs before more people can access ChatGPT. Beginning Thursday, ChatGPT Pro members will be the first to receive GPT-4.5, with ChatGPT Plus users following the following week. GPT-4.5 is quite costly, possibly because of its massive size. OpenAI charges $150 for every million tokens produced by the model and $75 for each million tokens (around 750,000 words) fed…

The software behemoth that specializes in cloud-based data storage, Snowflake, announced on Thursday that it intends to add $200 million in new commitments to its startup accelerator. The recent cash infusion comes after a series of actions taken by Snowflake in recent months that demonstrate the company’s aspirations for expansion. Previously called the Powered by Snowflake Funding Program, the Snowflake Startup Accelerator makes investments in a variety of early-stage businesses. Notably, the accelerator funds businesses using Snowflake to develop AI-based products tailored to particular industries. The accelerator gives startups access to co-marketing opportunities, technical help from Snowflake, and credits for…

The Trump administration has directed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Elon Musk-led effort to minimize federal spending, to establish a “centralized technological system” in each agency to track grant awards and contracts in a recently released executive order (EO). Agency staff members who authorize individual contracts and grant payments will be required to provide a written explanation for their decisions as part of the rollout of these systems. According to the EO, agency chiefs will have the ability to “pause and rapidly review” any payment for which authorizing staff have not provided a rationale. Additionally, with DOGE’s help,…

On Wednesday, Amazon unveiled a stunning picture of an “agentic” future in which Alexa+, the company’s enhanced version of Alexa, manages a wide range of routine chores, from ordering takeout to locating appliance repair technicians. With its extensive, customer-focused agent tool, Amazon may be the first to market if it can meet expectations. The business wants to combine the capacity to access first- and third-party apps, services, and platforms in a completely autonomous, intelligent manner with a more expressive, natural Alexa that is driven by generative AI models. Amazon Alexa and Echo VP Daniel Rausch stated in a keynote Wednesday…

During the most recent earnings call on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang reiterated his belief that DeepSeek won’t affect sales and expressed his continued optimism about the company’s future. A historic decline in Nvidia’s stock price occurred last month due to speculation that DeepSeek’s R1 model needed far fewer processors to train.  But during the earnings call, Huang praised R1 as an “excellent innovation,” stressing that it and other “reasoning” type models are great news for Nvidia since they need so much more computing. Huang also said “Reasoning models can consume 100 times more compute, and future reasoning models will…

Shops migrated online as a result of the post-pandemic surge in e-commerce. To handle supply chains, inventory, and marketing, some retailers, however, had to work with dozens of different app providers. Shop Circle’s founders were aware of this and created or purchased numerous apps of this type. To scale up this approach, the company has recently raised $60 million in a Series B investment headed by Nextalia Ventures. Shop Circle has also successfully acquired Aiden, an AI-powered “guided-selling” program utilized by e-commerce behemoths including LG, Prenatal, and Intersport, among others, thanks to this finance.  Shop Circle argues that its focus…

Just a few years ago, Commercetools, a “headless commerce” platform that offers APIs to businesses creating online storefronts, experienced a significant uptick in business. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses rushed to improve their e-commerce operations, and the company raised a staggering $1.9 billion. The playbook for e-commerce with Commercetools looks a little different now.  Additionally, it is redistributing the responsibilities previously held by its chief information security and compliance officer and resigning its chief revenue officer and CFO, among other executive moves.  The full memo, shared by a source and confirmed as authentic by the company, is…

On Wednesday, the semiconductor and storage business Phison and the data storage and resilience company Lonestar launched a data center infrastructure aboard a SpaceX rocket bound for the moon. The businesses are loading Lonestar’s clients’ data onto a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that is scheduled to land on March 4 with Phison’s Pascari storage, which are solid state drives (SSDs) designed for data centers. This is the start of the first-ever lunar data center, which the firms intend to grow until it can accommodate a petabyte of storage. The idea to construct a data center in space was first conceived…

Lucid Motors is changing its CEOs for the first time in nearly six years. The latest news coming from Peter Rawlinson and he is stepping down from the CEO and the CTO roles. Rawlinson also left Lucid’s board, according to news of the regulatory filing. Now Lucid appointed its chief operating officer Marc Winterhoff as its interim CEO. Rawlinson will go on to serve as “strategic technical advisor” to Turqi Alnowaiser. Turqi Alnowaiser is a chairman of the board and also comes under the top executive at the Saudi Arabia Sovereign Wealth Fund. The Lucid is the majority owner. Leadership…

German nuclear fusion startup Proxima Fusion is a two-year-old. They have published plans for a working fusion power plant in a peer-reviewed journal. There they being taught as step change in a race to generate the limitless energy. Today’s nuclear fission reactors produce radioactive waste. Nuclear fusion radiates vast amounts of energy, with zero carbon emissions. The so-called tokamaks and stellarators are the specific type of fusion that uses electromagnets to contain fusion plasma. Tokamaks entirely rely on external magnets. It induces plasma current but is also known for instability. Stellarators, by contrast, use only external magnets. According to the…