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☆ Developer tool startups in Y Combinator's latest class are grabbing the attention of investors like Elad Gil and Google's Gradient Ventures. Here are 4 that have already landed funding.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Developer tool startups that were part of Y Combinator's latest class are drawing strong interest from several high-profile venture capitalists. Sequoia partner Lauren Reeder personally participated in the code review startup's recent funding round, according to a Sequoia spokesperson. That fundraising was at a $30 million post-money valuation, one person familiar with the deal said. Developer tool startups accounted for 26% of the companies in YC's winter 2023 batch, up from 16% of the summer 2022 class, according to the accelerator's startup directory. Have a tip on a startup funding round?

☆ I used ChatGPT to build a simple Chrome extension in 10 hours. Here's how I sold it for thousands on Acquire and what I learned about my fastest launch-to-exit ever.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Ihor Stefurak | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

He used ChatGPT to build a Chrome extension and sold it for thousands on Acquire. While it took 10 hours to build, Stefurak recommends using ChatGPT to help with certain projects. We crafted a Chrome extension and received $1,000 worth of pre-orders within 24 hours. I recommend using the AI chatbot if you're starting a simple project with JavaScript or Python. These models help enhance self-understanding and ultimately lead to better decisions and big overall improvements.

☆ Google employees who tested its ChatGPT rival Bard reportedly called it 'cringeworthy' and a 'pathological liar,' and said the AI's responses could 'result in serious injury or death'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-19 | by ( Aaron Mok | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google employees who tested Bard called it "cringeworthy" and a "pathological liar," per Bloomberg. Google employees tasked with testing their employer's AI chatbot Bard were not all that pleased by what they found, according to Bloomberg. After testing the bot, one employee reportedly called Bard "cringeworthy," and another called it a "pathological liar," according to screenshots of internal discussions obtained by Bloomberg. Google employees called the announcement "rushed" and "botched." Read Bloomberg's full report on Google employees' responses to Bard here

☆ Why MLM Sales 'Huns' Get so Much Hate on Reddit, TikTok
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( Aimee Pearcy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

Over the past few years, MLM companies have been under increased scrutiny. MLM companies largely appeal to those who are disconnected and looking for a way to get on solid financial footingAt first, Stimson felt optimistic. And a 2018 AARP survey found that just 25% of MLM participants made a profit. US direct-sales companies, which include MLM companies, earned $42.7 billion in retail sales in 2021, according to the Direct Selling Association — a 21% increase from 2019. And two-thirds of MLM participants said that "knowing what they know now, they would not join the same MLM company again."

☆ Google-parent stock drops on fears it could lose search market share to AI-powered rivals
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Samantha Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

CNN —Shares of Google-parent Alphabet fell more than 3% in early trading Monday after a report sparked concerns that its core search engine could lose market share to AI-powered rivals, including Microsoft’s Bing. In an effort to address the heightened competition, Google is said to be developing a new AI-powered search engine called Project “Magi,” according to the Times. Google’s search engine has dominated the market for two decades. That’s particularly true when it comes to search engines, a product that many use to find accurate and reliable information. “This is going to impact every product across every company and so that’s, that’s why I think it’s a very, very profound technology,” he said.

☆ As NYC's first-ever rat czar gets to work, cities like Boston and Chicago are looking for inspiration to fix their own rodent problems
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Jordan Hart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

New York City Mayor Eric Adams appointed a "rat czar" to help eliminate rodents in the city. One Boston city official says the Massachusetts city should follow suit and hire a rat slayer of their own. Days later, Boston City Council President Ed Flynn recommended the Massachusetts city hire someone in a similar position ""to hopefully one day eliminate rats in Boston," the Boston Herald reported. In 2022, Chicago was named the number one "rattiest" city in the US over both New York City and Boston. "You can hear them screaming — ee, ee, ee, ee!"

☆ Inside the Rise and Fall of Kittyhawk, Larry Page's Failed Flying Car Company
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Hugh Langley | Rob Price | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +22 min

Killing off projects had become something of a tradition at Kittyhawk, the secretive flying-car startup launched by the Google cofounder Larry Page. Larry Page has used his Google money to found a series of flying car companies with one common goal: "to free the world of traffic." "When Bloomberg did their original exposé, that's when urban air mobility became a thing," a former Kittyhawk employee recalled. Everyone thought: If Larry Page is in this space, there must be something here." Interpreting "Larry-isms" or "learning to speak Larry" were essential skills for any Kittyhawk employee who wanted to retain their sanity.

☆ When I worked at Uber it was painfully obvious that too many of our women employees had to quit to raise kids. I started a childcare insurance company to fix that.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-16 | by ( Lakshmi Varanasi | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Siran Cao is the co-founder of Mirza, a platform for employer-sponsored childcare insurance. Siran CaoMy mandate was to onboard tens of thousands of drivers really, really, quickly. Even at a well-funded tech company like Uber, though, what struck me was how childcare became a daily operational disruption. The data shows that women who take just one a year off earn 39% less overall than women who don't. While women continue to quietly bear the bulk of this work, I don't believe this is solely women's issue.

☆ Y Combinator's latest class is a feeding frenzy for VCs looking to back AI startups: 'There's hysteria for a reason'
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

VCs are scrambling to back the AI startups in Y Combinator's latest batch. Several generative AI startups have already secured funding from top firms, sources say. And while valuations are down across the board, YC AI startups are still hot. Startups focused on AI, and generative AI specifically, which saw a substantial jump in the latest batch, were some of the most highly sought after by investors. An AI feeding frenzyVC buzz was common across generative AI startups both in the application and infrastructure layers.

☆ Elon Musk dreams of Twitter's AI power
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Emilia David | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Elon Musk's personal AI ambitions. Elon Musk was one of the more prominent names on an open letter calling for a pause in AI development. My teammate Asia Martin points out that Musk's position on AI is contradicted by Twitter's investment in generative AI. Twitter's recent purchase of hardware normally used to develop generative AI products shows the extent of this ambition. Read more on Elon Musk's AI ambitions.

☆ Wall Street sees a semiconductor industry bottom coming. Here's how we're playing the stocks
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Zev Fima | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

NVDA AMD YTD mountain Nvidia vs. AMD year to date So, the question now is: Can the rally in semis continue? To help us read the tea leaves, here's a look at what Wall Street analysts are saying about the underlying fundamentals of the industry. Evercore said a "fundamental bottom" for the semiconductor industry currently playing out in March and April "has only strengthened" recently. Analysts there believe the inventory correction that's plagued the industry in recent quarters will be largely complete by the second quarter. Bottom line While there's some variation on timing, Wall Street clearly believes a bottom is in the process of playing out in the semiconductor industry.

☆ ChatGPT may be able to predict stock movements, finance professor shows
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( Kif Leswing | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

Alejandro Lopez-Lira, a finance professor at the University of Florida, says that large language models may be useful when forecasting stock prices. If ChatGPT can display the emergent ability to understand headlines from financial news and how they might impact stock prices, it could could put high-paying jobs in the financial industry at risk. About 35% of financial jobs are at risk of being automated by AI, Goldman Sachs estimated in a March 26 note. But the specifics of the experiment also show how far so-called "large language models" are from being able to do many finance tasks. "On the regulation side, if we have computers just reading the headlines, headlines will matter more, and we can see if everyone should have access to machines such as GPT," said Lopez-Lira.

☆ Leaked Amazon memo shows plans to reduce employee stock awards in 2025
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-06 | by ( Asia Martin | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Leaked Amazon memo shows plans to reduce employee stock awards in 2025. The company is considering increasing the cash portion of compensation to help cushion employees against its stock price going down in the future. In other news:The late Cash App founder Bob Lee. Cash App creator Bob Lee died after a reported stabbing in San Francisco Tuesday. Silicon Valley is grieving the loss of the founder of Cash App and the former chief technology officer at Square.

☆ Google CEO says he used the company's Bard AI chatbot to plan his father's 80th birthday party
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google CEO Sundar Pichai said he used Google Bard to help plan his father's 80th birthday. Pichai said Bard told him he should make a scrapbook for the event. "It's not that it's profound, but it says things and kind of sparks the imagination," Pichai told the Times. Pichai's experience echoes similar stories from early users of Google's competitor, Microsoft's Bing AI chatbot. Pichai told the Times he understands the concerns people have, but remains optimistic about AI technology.

☆ There are more generative AI startups that are launching out of Y Combinator than ever before. Here are 55 of them.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +1 min

The startup accelerator Y Combinator had the most generative AI startups ever in this cohort. These startups are set to reveal what they've been working on at Demo Day on April 5 and 6. Here are 55 generative AI startups in the startup accelerator's winter 2023 batch. This year, the hottest topic in startup and VC land is generative AI, and this cohort saw a jump in the number of generative AI startups that made the cut. The last cohort had only nine startups that described themselves as generative AI companies, but the current one has over 50 startups in the category.

☆ I've scoured Detroit's dumps, streets, and abandoned homes for wood and metal to make furniture. It's exciting to be part of a movement that redefines how society should use reclaimed materials.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-04 | by ( Alcynna Lloyd | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

At first, I didn't even know that car design was an actual career or business. Woodward Throwbacks' Detroit showroom. It is a sustainable design studio that custom builds furniture and home goods with recycled materials found in the city. I was falling out of love with car design, and the possibility of being my own boss excited me. What Woodward Throwbacks is doing — redefining how society sees and uses reclaimed materials for everyday use — has never been done before.

☆ ABC News staffers were stunned at the departures of veteran colleagues and 'outraged' about how the exits were handled
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-01 | by ( Claire Atkinson | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

Some ABC News staff were in tears on Thursday after layoffs of respected news veterans. Kim Godwin has made positive changes as ABC News president and has faced a string of complex situations. ABC News staffers are in shock over the departure of multiple senior-level colleagues, most notably Wendy Fisher, SVP news gathering. ABC News alone lost 50 staffers on Thursday as part of the slim-down and a leadership reorganization by division President Kim Godwin. A second ABC News insider said it was unprecedented to dismiss longtime veterans in such a manner.

☆ Investing in Space: Boeing's got to get going
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Michael Sheetz | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

The Starliner spacecraft for the Crew Flight Test is seen in the company's processing facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center. CNBC's Investing in Space newsletter offers a view into the business of space exploration and privatization, delivered straight to your inbox. Even then, each company had faced its share of delays, but NASA estimated flight tests were months apart. I'm not advocating for anything akin to "go fever" for Boeing's upcoming Starliner crewed flight test (CFT), which just got delayed from mid-April to late July. Assuming the test flight goes according to plan, then there are the redesigns of Starliner's propulsion valves and module separation system – and potentially batteries – that are underway for missions after CFT.

☆ Leaked org chart shows the 15 most important leaders in Google's AI division as it races to catch Microsoft
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-30 | by ( Hugh Langley | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Central to those efforts is its Research and AI group, led by senior vice president Jeff Dean. An internal org chart seen by Insider shows the 14 other leaders under Dean who drive Google's efforts to catch the sudden success of OpenAI. Jeff Dean, senior vice president, Google AI Thomas Samson/Getty ImagesReporting directly to Dean is Eli Collins, a VP leading work on Google's ChatGPT competitor, Bard. Collins also works on AI Test Kitchen, an app that gives select users access to some of Google's latest AI demos. Jay Yagnik, VP of research, oversees the biggest number of employees within Dean's organization.

☆ Y Combinator's head of admissions is reviewing over 20,000 startups for its summer 2023 cohort. Here's what she's looking for.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Madeline Renbarger | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

For early-stage founders looking to grow their startups in an accelerator, few names spark as much excitement as Y Combinator. Several of Silicon Valley's marquee companies are Y Combinator graduates, including Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. While the number of startups that were part of last year's summer cohort were down 40% from the previous batch, this winter batch had 17.5% more startups accepted, said a Y Combinator spokesperson. Now, Y Combinator is looking ahead to its next batch, accepting applications for the summer 2023 cohort, which are due by April 7th. Stephanie Simon, the head of Y Combinator's admissions team, wants founders to know she's still sifting through all those applications.

☆ Elon Musk and other tech leaders call for pause in ‘out of control’ AI race
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

The letter comes just two weeks after OpenAI announced GPT-4, an even more powerful version of the technology that underpins the viral AI chatbot tool, ChatGPT. The wave of attention around ChatGPT late last year helped renew an arms race among tech companies to develop and deploy similar AI tools in their products. Artificial intelligence experts have become increasingly concerned about AI tools’ potential for biased responses, the ability to spread misinformation and the impact on consumer privacy. The letter hints at the broader discomfort inside and outside the industry with the rapid pace of advancement in AI. Correction: An earlier version of this story said Microsoft founder Bill Gates and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had signed the letter.

☆ Disney layoffs are expected to hit ABC News this week, sources say, with scores of roles to be eliminated following cuts from TV, engineering, and metaverse teams
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Claire Atkinson | Lucia Moses | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Cuts at Disney's ABC News are coming before the end of the week, according to sources. Disney firings are expected to affect its ABC News division this week, according to two company insiders familiar with the situation. TV production and acquisition execs at Hulu, Freeform, and 20th Television were also impacted, according to a report in Deadline. Leaders will be communicating the news directly to the first group of impacted employees over the next four days. I want to thank each of you again for all your many achievements here at The Walt Disney Company.

☆ Elon Musk, Bill Gates and other tech leaders call for pause in ‘out of control’ AI race
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-29 | by ( Samantha Murphy Kelly | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +3 min

The letter comes just two weeks after OpenAI announced GPT-4, an even more powerful version of the technology that underpins the viral AI chatbot tool, ChatGPT. The wave of attention around ChatGPT late last year helped renew an arms race among tech companies to develop and deploy similar AI tools in their products. Artificial intelligence experts have become increasingly concerned about AI tools’ potential for biased responses, the ability to spread misinformation and the impact on consumer privacy. Lian Jye Su, an analyst at ABI Research, said the letter shows legitimate concerns among tech leaders over the unregulated usage of AI technologies. But he called parts of the petition “ridiculous,” including the premise of asking for a hiatus in AI development beyond GPT-4.

☆ Google Bard is already behind in the AI wars with OpenAI and Microsoft
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-23 | by ( Hasan Chowdhury | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Google Bard, the search firm's answer to ChatGPT, has underwhelmed early testers. Users in the US and UK trying out the AI chatbot find it pales in comparison to OpenAI's tech. The makers of the Twofer Goofer word puzzle found ChatGPT was much better at solving the brainteasers than Google's Bard. It's possible that the company does have a super impressive AI tool up its sleeve. Insider's Hugh Langley reported earlier in March that Google employees are testing a more intelligent version of Bard, nicknamed "Big Bard."

☆ Google CEO tells employees 'things will go wrong' as the public tests its ChatGPT rival Bard
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-22 | by ( Beatrice Nolan | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Google's CEO told employees "things will go wrong" with the company's AI chatbot, Bard. Google began rolling out staggered access to its ChatGPT rival on Tuesday. On Tuesday, Google began rolling out staggered public access to its much-anticipated ChatGPT rival, Bard. A spokesperson for Google told Insider that "Bard can sometimes give inaccurate or inappropriate information that doesn't represent Google's views." In the email to employees on Tuesday, Pichai said that public feedback is "critical" to improving Bard's functionality.

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