Election “uncertainty” won’t dent dealmaking in 2024

May 17, 2024

(Axios) Dealmakers aren’t sweating this year’s presidential election, even if it’s the most important of our lifetimes. Read more here.

Billionaire Frank McCourt Plans Bid for TikTok in U.S.

May 15, 2024

(WSJ) The real-estate mogul said he is organizing a bid to acquire platform, saying he will put users and data security at the center of its design and purpose. Read more here.

Kids Hooked on Video Games Prompt a Flurry of Lawsuits

May 13, 2024

(Bloomberg) Attorneys for parents say publishers are addicting users and causing health issues like ADHD and depression. Read more here.

Uber’s results hit by legal costs after decade of regulatory battles

May 8, 2024

(FT) First-quarter operating profit sharply misses analysts’ expectations after payouts related to driver lawsuits Read more here.

San Jose Police boosts its VC exposure

May 7, 2024

(Venture Capital Journal) City of San Jose Police and Fire Department Retirement Plan increased its target to venture capital by 0.5 percent, seeing a chance to benefit from a depressed VC marketplace. Read more here.

Stanford AI leader Fei-Fei Li building ‘spatial intelligence’ startup

May 3, 2024

(Reuters) Prominent computer scientist Fei-Fei Li is building a startup that uses human-like processing of visual data to make artificial intelligence (AI) capable of advanced reasoning, six sources told Reuters, in what would be a leap forward for the technology. Read more here.

ChatGPT’s ‘hallucination’ problem hit with another privacy complaint in EU

April 29, 2024

(TechCrunch) OpenAI is facing another privacy complaint in the European Union. This one, which has been filed by privacy rights nonprofit noyb on behalf of an individual complainant, targets the inability of its AI chatbot ChatGPT to correct misinformation it generates about individuals. Read more here.

General Catalyst, a16z capture 44% of US VC fundraising in 2024

April 29, 2024

(Pitchbook) Despite a major LP pullback from venture, an elite cohort of VC firms is still successfully raising huge sums of LP capital. General Catalyst, a giant of Sand Hill Road that has led rounds for companies like Snap, Warby Parker and Deliveroo, is wrapping up a $6 billion VC fund, the Financial Times reported Sunday. Earlier this month, Andreessen…

Meta sparks tech selloff as AI splurge spooks Wall Street

April 25, 2024

(Reuters) Shares of Meta Platforms (META.O) sank 13% on Thursday, sparking a selloff in big technology stocks after the social media firm signaled its costly bet on AI could take years to pay off. The drop was set to erase nearly $170 billion from the company’s market value and triggered a fall of 3% to 4.2% in…

How impact investments in Anthropic can strengthen responsible innovation in tech

April 23, 2024

(ImpactAlpha) In the realm of AI discourse, much attention is directed towards fostering responsible development of the technology itself (e.g. Is it free from bias? Transparent? Explainable?).  Whether or not AI is developed responsibly, it functions as an accelerant; it can be either a clean or dirty one.  Read more here.