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The companies announced an initial $1.25 billion investment in September, and said at the time that Amazon would invest up to $4 billion. The deal was struck at the AI startup's last valuation, which was $18.4 billion, according to a source. Over the past year, Anthropic closed five different funding deals worth about $7.3 billion — and with the new Amazon investment, the total exceeds $10 billion. News of the Amazon investment comes weeks after Anthropic debuted Claude 3, its newest suite of AI models that it says are its fastest and most powerful yet. But multimodality, and increasingly complex AI models, also lead to more potential risks.

Persons: Claude, Anthropic, OpenAI's, what's, Swami Sivasubramanian, OpenAI's ChatGPT, OpenAI, Microsoft's OpenAI, Anthropic's Claude, Daniela Amodei, We've, Tesla, Brendan Burke, Bill Gurley, Gurley, Microsoft's, Lina Khan Organizations: Amazon, Google, CNBC, Fortune, Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, U.S . Federal Trade Commission Locations: San Francisco, Anthropic, OpenAI

Microsoft had no official say with the board when Altman, the company’s key contact, was fired. That is partly as a hedge for the fact it has no control over the start-up’s board. It involves the holy grail of OpenAI’s work: achieving artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I. Scott Syphax, a corporate governance expert, told DealBook that the deal could raise red flags with regulators if it threatens the nonprofit’s tax-exempt status. Another area Syphax is watching: the valuation that Microsoft placed on OpenAI after its investment and whether it acquired the I.P.

Persons: Altman, Nadella, Kara Swisher, Brockman, ”, Microsoft’s, Scott Syphax, DealBook, Bill Gurley, Satya Organizations: Microsoft, Times Locations: “, Grubhub

Venture capital investor Bill Gurley, a partner at Benchmark, said founders he works with believe Meta 's new large language model, Llama 2, has the "most momentum" in the battle of the large artificial intelligence models. Gurley told CNBC's Julia Boorstin Monday that the open-source nature of Meta's product is threatening to other leaders in the AI space. AI researchers typically compare LLMs when the software performs specific tasks. For instance, some AI researchers have found that Llama 2 outperforms other similar open-source AI language models and is on par with proprietary systems like OpenAI's ChatGPT. Google followed suit with its latest large language model called PaLM 2 in May, which powers the Google's generative AI features like its chatbot Bard.

Persons: Bill Gurley, Gurley, CNBC's Julia Boorstin, Meta, Bard Organizations: Microsoft, CNBC, Meta, Google Locations: OpenAI

☆ 'Where ambition goes to die': These tech workers flocked to Austin during the pandemic. Now they're desperate to get out.
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-31 | by ( Ben Bergman | Jordan Pandy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +11 min

Many tech workers in California moved to Austin during the pandemic in search of a new lifestyle. Some tech workers say they regret moving there, given its middling tech scene and "fake" atmosphere. They cited several contributing factors, including extreme temperatures, traffic, overcrowding, and — perhaps most surprising — a middling tech scene that fails to live up to the hype. From Silicon Valley to the Silicon HillsNot long ago, Austin's tech scene was ascendant, with national headlines suggesting it could take on Silicon Valley. He acknowledged there's not much of a tech scene there but will take that over what he perceived as Austin's smoke and mirrors.

Persons: Austin, Mike Chang, Chang, Tesla, Danielle Fountain, Fountain, Elon Musk, Jim Breyer, Joe Lonsdale, Bill Gurley, Musk, Gurley, Emily Chang, John Andrew Entwistle, who's, John Andrew Entwistle Entwistle, Entwistle, oversold, Nicholas Falldine, there's, Nick Thomas, Austin doesn't, Thomas, he's, Sam Parr, I'm, Sheharyar, Redfin, Bokhari, It's, frolic Organizations: Oracle, Facebook, Google, Apple, Breyer Capital, Austin Chamber, Austin, Lone Star, US Postal Service Locations: California, Austin, Los Angeles, Bay, Silicon, Silicon Valley, Austin's, Palo Alto, Westchester County , New York, Fayetteville , Arkansas, Austin , Texas, San Francisco

☆ ‘And Just Like That …’ Style Recap: Going as Yourself for Halloween
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-13 | by ( The Styles Desk | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

This article contains spoilers for Episode 5 of the second season of “And Just Like That …”As “And Just Like That …” nears its halfway point, its creators have sprinkled a series of self-referential winks into the new episode. For a Halloween charity benefit, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) dresses up as Helen Gurley Brown, the former editor of Cosmopolitan and, in some ways, the spiritual predecessor to Bradshaw. Ahead of Episode 5, members of The New York Times’s Styles desk discussed the looks, brands and wigs on display in the latest installment of the series. Louis Lucero II From a costuming perspective, this episode was a little front-loaded, wasn’t it? Charlotte’s Halloween benefit for the fictitious City Parks Conservancy showed us all three ways you can phone in a costume.

Persons: Carrie, Sarah Jessica Parker, Helen Gurley Brown, Bradshaw, Sara Ramirez, Herbert Wexley, Christopher Jackson, George Washington, “ Hamilton ”, Times’s Styles, Louis Lucero Organizations: Cosmopolitan, Broadway, The, Parks Conservancy Locations: “

☆ Barbie, Her House and the American Dream
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-23 | by ( Anna Kodé | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +17 min

Barbie, Her House and the American Dream Take a stop-motion journey with the young, single homeowner of the Dreamhouse. Today according to Mattel, the toymaker behind the iconic doll, a new Barbie Dreamhouse is sold every two minutes. A vintage Barbie doll puts a record on, dances and sits down. He came to Barbie’s house.”Now, Ms. Dalsing lives in Saint Joseph, Mo., in what she called her own dream house. “In the early 2000s, single women were the fastest growing group of home buyers in the United States,” she said.

Persons: Ken isn’t, Barbara Millicent Roberts, Roberts —, Barbie, ” Ruth Handler, Ken, Handler’s, —, Barbie’s Dreamhouse, ”, Deborah Dinner, wasn’t, weren’t, Barbie’s, Felix Burrichter, “ Barbie Dreamhouse, ” Barbie’s, Sue Dalsing, Dalsing, “ Ken didn’t, “, ” It’s, Elliot Handler, Handler, Lisa McKnight, Mattel’s Barbie, Hugh Hefner’s, Helen Gurley Brown’s, ’, Brown’s, Brown, Young, Tiffany, Barbie —, Houseplants, Burrichter, might’ve, Maddie Bone, Bone, Homer, …, Ms, Amy Castro, ” Ms, Castro, Isabelle Roy, ‘, Roy, He’s, Barbie couldn’t, Christie, Kim Culmone, Catherine E, McKinley, Sarah Greenwood, Katie Spencer, Greenwood, Spencer, It’s Organizations: Mattel, New York Times, “, Cornell University, Survey, Wisconsin ., Furniture, The Times, Spice, University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Locations: crave, Britain, Saint Joseph, Mo, Barbie’s, Wisconsin, Levittown, Waldoboro, United States, Canadian, Alberta, Palm Springs

☆ Titan submersible: Search crews heard banging sounds while scouring the Atlantic for manned craft now running out of oxygen
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Nouran Salahieh Ray Sanchez Priscilla Alvarez | Nouran Salahieh | Ray Sanchez | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +17 min

The banging on Tuesday first came every 30 minutes and was heard again four hours later, according to an internal government memo update on the search. The search for the missing submersible Titan has broadened to an area about two times the size of Connecticut. It was unclear when exactly the banging was heard Tuesday or how long it lasted, based on the memo. We have to keep working until we find the submersible,” Joyce Murray, minister of Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard, told reporters Wednesday. If the submersible is intact, the passengers would be dealing with dwindling oxygen levels and fighting cold, he told CNN.

Persons: Jamie Frederick, ”, Frederick, Stone, ” Joyce Murray, “, Ray Scott “ Chip ” McCord, ” Scott, David Hiscock, we’ve, John Mauger, ” Carl Hartsfield, John Cabot –, Hamish Harding, Shahzada Dawood, Sulaiman Dawood, Paul, Henri Nargeolet, ” David Gallo, John’s, Gallo, ” Gallo, Joe MacInnis, who’s, Frederick didn’t, Mauger, David Lochridge, Lochridge, OceanGate, Oceangate, ” OceanGate, Suleman Dawood, Stockton Rush, J, Van Gurley, Gabe Cohen, ” Cohen, Aaron Newman, ” John “ Danny ” Olivas, ” Olivas, CNN’s Victor Blackwell Organizations: CNN, US Coast Guard, Coast Guard, Fisheries, Canadian Coast Guard, OceanGate Expeditions, Canadian Armed Forces, New York Air National Guard, U.S . Air Force, “ CBS, Naval, Oceanographic Systems Laboratory, USCG, National Oceanic, Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, Stockton Rush, Strategic Initiatives, Daylight, Horizon Services, US Navy, Facebook, OceanGate, Titan, Manned, Vehicles, Marine Technology Society, New York Times, Times, Stockton, Polar Prince, Navy, KOMO, CBS Locations: Connecticut, Canadian, Everest, NewfoundlandSaturday, Cape Cod , Massachusetts, OceanGate, Rush, Titan

☆ What it's like inside the Titan submersible that went missing with 5 people on board
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-21 | by ( Emma Tucker | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —Though it’s roughly the size of a minivan, with five adults aboard, the Titanic-touring submersible that went missing Sunday may seem small and cramped. ‘Not your grandfather’s submersible’Titan is sparse on the inside, according to CBS correspondent David Pogue, who took a trip on Titan down to the Titanic wreck last year. The interior of OceanGate's Titan submersible, seen in 2018. The game controller is used for wireless control, according to Aaron Newman, an investor in OceanGate who went down to Titanic on Titan in 2021. After boarding the Titan, temperatures inside the vessel get hot quickly before starting to get colder as it descends towards the ocean’s bottom, he said.

Persons: Hamish Harding, Paul, Henri Nargeolet, Shahzada Dawood, Suleman Dawood, David Marquet, David Pogue, Pogue, it’s, ” Rush, “, J, Van Gurley, ”, Gabe Cohen, Aaron Newman, Newman, ” Newman, David Gallo Organizations: CNN, OceanGate Expeditions, Stockton Rush, Navy, CBS, KOMO, ”, Crew, Strategic Initiatives Locations: British, French, Titan, OceanGate

☆ AI startup cloud deals by Microsoft, Google and Amazon ring 'accounting alarm bells' across Silicon Valley over revenue 'round-tripping'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-19 | by ( Eugene Kim | Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +10 min

Some investors question whether these arrangements are artificially juicing cloud revenue growth. When Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI earlier this year, the deal made Azure the ChatGPT-maker's "exclusive cloud provider." There's another deal in the works with similar attributes involving Runway AI and a major cloud company. But they are drawing more scrutiny lately because they could artificially inflate cloud revenue, a key driver of growth for Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, according to Ted Mortonson, managing director of financial-services firm Baird. Is OpenAI a regular cloud customer that is getting no investment money from Microsoft?

☆ How a deadly bat virus found new ways to infect people
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-17 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +16 min

Scientists found bats with Nipah virus roosting near Sabith’s home. A search of the neighborhood led to a colony, near their house, of flying foxes, a common fruit bat. NETTING NIPAH: Researchers in Bangladesh use nets to catch bats and collect samples to find the Nipah virus in the wild. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir HossainWhether Sabith ate contaminated fruit or somehow came into direct contact with a bat, the virus entered his cells. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir HossainA year later, Chua’s team found the same strain of Nipah virus in flying foxes.

☆ Bebe Buell, Rock ’n’ Roll Muse, Sings Her Own Song
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( George Gurley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Bebe Buell was back in town. The neighborhood was familiar to Ms. Buell. Soon after she arrived in New York from Camp Lejeune, N.C., in 1972, she became a regular at Max’s Kansas City, the famed night spot just a few blocks away. At the time she was an 18-year-old model signed to the Eileen Ford Agency who lived at the St. Mary’s Residence on the Upper East Side. She went from It Girl of Manhattan to Miss November in Playboy magazine.

☆ SVB collapse is double-whammy for tech startups already navigating brutal market
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-19 | by ( Ashley Capoot | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

He'd started the process six months earlier during a brutal period for tech stocks and a plunge in venture funding. Investors were just pulling in their horns, the SPAC market had fallen apart, valuations for tech companies were collapsing." In the absence of venture funding, money-losing startups have had to cut their burn rates in order to extend their cash runway. Since the beginning of 2022, roughly 1,500 tech companies have laid off a total of close to 300,000 people, according to the website Layoffs.fyi. Kruze Consulting provides accounting and other back-end services to hundreds of tech startups.

☆ Benchmark's Bill Gurley calls Silicon Valley Bank's collapse 'a black swan event' at SXSW, and casts aside criticism of the move to secure its depositors
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-13 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Benchmark's general partner Bill Gurley defended the decision to cover SVB's depositors. The venture capital veteran spoke briefly about the bank after interviewing Tim Ferriss at SXSW. Gurley called Silicon Valley Bank's collapse a "black swan event." Gurley retweeted US Senator Mitt Romney Sunday night after federal regulators announced that depositors in Silicon Valley Bank would have full access to their cash. Bill Gurley shared his thoughts at the end of a conversation with Tim Ferriss at SXSW.

Police officers involved in the deaths have become an intense focus of investigation, protest, and media coverage. Despite being at the heart of some of the most defining incidents in modern policing, most of the officers involved continue to live their lives under the radar. Insider's review of 72 cops involved in two dozen of the most notorious police killings of the past 30 years shows the many different paths officers have taken. There's no nationwide view into what happens to officers involved in egregious incidents of violence. In rare cases, cops involved in these killings have tried to publicly rehabilitate their image rather than seek out anonymity.

☆ Retail CEO crisis: With recent shakeups at Kohl's, Adidas, Dollar General, and more, the industry's top job is suddenly the hardest to fill
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-11 | by ( Matthew Kish | Avery Hartmans | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

It's the surest sign yet of a crisis facing the retail industry. Supply chains got snarled, shoppers stopped visiting stores, and stimulus payments spiked demand, each making it difficult to measure how business was doing. Then stimulus payments sent demand for everything from sneakers to home goods spiking while supply chains snarled. And just when supply chains started to sort themselves out, inflation hit, and shoppers started to scale back spending. Retail CEOs need 'peripheral vision'Workers at Starbucks stores and Amazon warehouses across the country have pushed to unionize, with many calling out the pay disparity between front-line workers and top executives.

☆ The Things We Might Cringe At in the Future
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-26 | by ( George Gurley | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

One day we’ll look back on this moment and wonder: What were we thinking? What are the things we do today that will seem embarrassing or otherwise regrettable to our future selves — the stuff that will make us cringe when we look back on how we lived our lives in the early 2020s? More than 30 people from academia, fashion, media, the arts and business weighed in, as did a certain infamous chatbot. One day, perhaps very soon, many of these prognosticators said, we will blush to recall how we fished for likes on social media or shared our most private thoughts (and pics) with strangers. But our online behavior was just one of a multitude of potentially lamentable habits and trends cited by those who took a moment to predict what will make our future selves ashamed.

☆ Retail CEO crisis: why the industry's top job is suddenly the hardest to fill
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-23 | by ( Matthew Kish | Avery Hartmans | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

As the cost of signing up new customers rises, “lifetime value” is set to become must-use jargon for technology executives, investors and analysts in 2023. The concept of lifetime value is not new, but a common definition remains elusive. The problem is that everyone seems to have a different definition of lifetime value. But lifetime value isn’t a silver bullet, as Gurley noted a decade ago. As with previous buzzwords, investors may find that references to lifetime value do more to confound than clarify.

☆ Elon Musk's Crackdown at Twitter Offers Hope to Fellow Tech Founders
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-19 | by ( Melia Russell | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +9 min

But there's one group, almost unnoticed in the midst of the online firestorm, that has been cheering Musk on from the sidelines: other tech executives. To some founders, Musk is simply a monstrous version of the executive they wish they could be. Musk is getting rid of perks like free meals in the Twitter cafeteria — and other tech executives are taking note. Musk's slash-and-burn approach gives tech executives cover for making unpopular decisions. But now, as tech companies cut back to prepare for a recession, the "rough waters out there" have forced his staff to "reevaluate" their demands.

☆ Wall Street ignored Big Tech's bloat during boom times. Now it's ready to slice and dice.
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-17 | by ( Jake Swearingen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

As tech companies' stock has slumped, Wall Street now has leverage over companies. One reason for those layoffs: Wall Street is increasingly getting a say in how the tech giants are run. But 2022's slumping tech stocks and dismal revenue forecasts mean Wall Street suddenly has leverage. The more open question is whether tech companies are truly bloated regarding headcount. Wall Street will want to see companies cut costs, which will mean more layoffs.

☆ Tech investor says Elon Musk's decision to 'cut deep' in Twitter layoffs could set a new standard for Silicon Valley
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-08 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tech investor David Friedberg said Twitter's layoffs could encourage other companies to follow suit. Elon Musk laid off about 50% of Twitter's staff, while other tech companies have had more conservative cuts. Tech investor David Friedberg said Musk's cost-cutting measures at Twitter could quickly become a new Silicon Valley standard as companies struggle to address the economic downturn in the months to come. Twitter staff were told to listen to the podcast episode to learn why layoffs were necessary, according to tech newsletter Platformer. However, some experts have pointed to Musk's layoffs — which were conducted via blunt emails signed by "Twitter" — as an example of what not to do.

☆ Young Silicon Valley workers are in for a rude awakening as industry giants make major job cuts and ditch ambitious projects for the first time in their careers
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-27 | by ( Samantha Delouya | Kali Hays | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Workers now fear layoffs after tech companies that hired thousands of workers with high pay face a slowing economy. For years, Big Tech companies have competed on pay and perks to lure workers in a tight labor market. It's a first for many tech workers, an entire generation of whom have known nothing but non-stop growth and a bull market. Earlier, the company told managers not to approve employee travel and team offsites unless they are "business critical." Younger tech workers don't just have to fear losing perks.

☆ Now might be 'as good a time as you've had in a decade' to build a company from scratch, says famed investor Bill Gurley
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-29 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Venture capitalist Bill Gurley talked about the environment for startups on a McKinsey podcast. Gurley said now might be as good a time as any in the past decade to build a company from scratch. The environment of the past five years was "really crazy" to start a company, Gurley said. In the macro environment, Gurley said events like Russia's war in Ukraine and Chinese escalations in Taiwan "are not things that start-ups can impact or control." So while they may "add anxiety," Gurley said they're not things that will "have any real impact" on startups.

☆ Meet the brightest investors and dealmakers under 35 from firms like Blackstone and Bridgewater navigating today's choppy markets.
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-29 | by ( Aaron Weinman | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

After months of interviews and countless rounds of fact checking, meet 25 best-in-class investors, traders, and dealmakers under the age of 35, from firms like JPMorgan, BlackRock, and Apollo, among others. Here is the latest crop of rising stars — Wall Streeters under the age of 35 who are pushing their teams to the top. The end result celebrates people from all walks of life who are infusing new ideas at the biggest firms. He works across the firm's funds TPG Capital and TPG Growth, and also covers TPG's impact-oriented initiative called The Rise Fund. HBCUvc's operating chief reviews hundreds of applications for the program that offers paid internships at VC firms.

☆ Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Gurley said he 'hates' small rounds of layoffs: 'You get 100 percent of the pain and very little gain'
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-28 | by ( Britney Nguyen | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Bill Gurley talked about startups in today's economy on a podcast. In the interview, Gurley said small-scale layoffs bring more pain and "very little gain." Gurley said that, compared to 2001 and 2009, which "had broadscale layoffs," layoffs today "happen so infrequently." "I hate the 5 to 10 percent layoffs," Gurley said in the podcast. Despite an unpredictable environment for startups, Gurley said right now is a good time for people "to build something from scratch."

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