The DOJ is investigating Andreessen Horowitz over competing board seats
The DOJ is investigating Andreessen Horowitz over competing board seats

The US Justice Department is investigating Andreessen Horowitz. At issue is whether partners at the venture capital firm improperly sit on the boards of competing artificial intelligence companies. Bloomberg reported the investigation on Monday, citing…

Aachen’s amber raised €7mn to sell AI sovereignty to the Mittelstand
Aachen’s amber raised €7mn to sell AI sovereignty to the Mittelstand

Aachen-based amber has closed a €7mn Series A. Ventech co-led it with NRW.Venture, the venture arm of NRW.BANK. NRW.BANK is the development bank owned by the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. By the standards of this year’s AI rounds, €7mn is sma…

Higgsfield raised $400mn at $5.4bn, four times its January valuation
Higgsfield raised $400mn at $5.4bn, four times its January valuation

Higgsfield has raised $400mn at a $5.4bn valuation. DST Global led the round. Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, and Liberty Global Tech Ventures all took part, alongside Tribe Capital, Smash Capital, Fifth Wall, Valor Capital, Mirae Asset Capital, and NTT …

OpenAI disbanded the team that assessed catastrophic model risks
OpenAI disbanded the team that assessed catastrophic model risks

OpenAI shut down its preparedness team at the end of July, the Financial Times reports. The team existed to work out whether OpenAI’s models posed catastrophic risks. It also designed the ways to contain them. The work has not disappeared. Responsibili…

EY will keep interns on for a year before offering them a job
EY will keep interns on for a year before offering them a job

EY is launching a paid Career Residency that keeps assurance interns employed part-time for 8 to 12 months after their eight-week internship, working remotely on EY projects during their final year of college. Those who complete it and receive an offer…

OpenAI is funding 13 Axios local newsletters in a three-year deal
OpenAI is funding 13 Axios local newsletters in a three-year deal

OpenAI is paying the startup costs of 13 new Axios Local newsletters, covering both staff and technology. Axios employees also get free credits for OpenAI’s enterprise tools. In return, Axios lets OpenAI train its models on its free published coverage….

What Flock’s defenders are missing

This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Flock, the police-tech giant known for its network of some 120,000 automatic license plate readers around the US, announced some changes to its platform last Thursday. The updates are meant to prevent…

California’s first self-driving trucks are on the road, and the rules behind them are in court
California’s first self-driving trucks are on the road, and the rules behind them are in court

California has issued its first permits to test autonomous trucks on public roads, to Aurora Innovation and Kodiak AI, with Kodiak already running vehicles around Mountain View. Teamsters California filed suit on 5 August asking a court to repeal the r…

Synchrony wants your Amazon and Walmart store cards inside ChatGPT
Synchrony wants your Amazon and Walmart store cards inside ChatGPT

Synchrony Financial, which issues store credit cards for Amazon, Walmart and Lowe’s, is working with OpenAI so shoppers can buy inside ChatGPT using those cards. Its chief strategy officer says general-purpose cards will take six to twelve months and s…

Jeff Gundlach says making AI chips an asset class looks like a market top
Jeff Gundlach says making AI chips an asset class looks like a market top

Jeff Gundlach has criticised Nvidia’s plan with six asset managers to mobilise more than $500bn for AI infrastructure, asking why assets of unknown life are collateral for long-term debt. Mark Cuban compared chips as an asset class to crypto. Jeff Gund…