Colossal Biosciences, a “de-extinction” startup working to revive long-lost species such as the woolly mammoth, is acquiring a Texas-based company with an equally eye-catching mission: cloning pets. The deal marks Colossal’s first-ever acquisition and brings under its wings ViaGen, a venture specializing in reproducing deceased dogs, cats and horses. Its star-studded client list features Barbra…
Honda has moved in and out of Formula 1 multiple times over the past 60 years, depending on the state of business. “Business is going good sometimes, and going bad sometimes,” Honda Global CEO Toshihiro Mibe told a roundtable of reporters, including Observer, in Mexico City last week, ahead of the F1 World Championship Grand…
Psychosis, mania and depression are hardly new issues, but experts fear A.I. chatbots may be making them worse. With data suggesting that large portions of chatbot users show signs of mental distress, companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Character.AI are starting to take risk-mitigation steps at what could prove to be a critical moment. This week,…
The heyday of Nextdoor saw the neighborhood-focused social app thrive as a hub for connections, local recommendations and coordinated responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. But after years of slowing growth and accusations of toxic content, the platform began to falter. Now, returning CEO Nirav Tolia is on a mission to revamp Nextdoor not by restoring…
Reddit is thriving in the A.I. era, even as fast, synthetic content floods nearly every corner of the internet. The community-driven discussion site is the third most visited website in the U.S., behind Google and YouTube (and ahead of Amazon and Facebook), the company said yesterday (Oct. 30) on its third-quarter earnings call, citing Semrush’s…
Porsche’s billion-dollar loss last week isn’t just a setback for one of the world’s most profitable automakers—it’s a warning shot for the entire luxury economy. After years of record profits fueled by cheap credit and post-pandemic “revenge spending,” the German carmaker’s sudden slowdown shows that even the world’s most coveted brands are losing altitude as…
Shishir Mehrotra, who became CEO of Grammarly at the beginning of 2025, isn’t just updating the company’s A.I. writing tools—he’s rebranding the entire company. From now on, Grammarly will be known as Superhuman, a name that Mehrotra says better reflects its expanding suite of products and mission to empower users. “It was very important for…
Tinder, the world’s most popular dating app with more than 50 million monthly users, could have easily ventured into A.I. companionship—but chose not to. “We thought about it a lot, [but ultimately decided] to help people connect in the real world, human to human,” said Mark Kantor, head of product at Tinder, while speaking at…
Life Biosciences, a Boston-based biotechnology company founded in 2017 by Harvard Medical School professor David Sinclair, is poised to become the first to conduct human clinical trials for a therapy that targets aging by rejuvenating cells without altering their core function. The company is developing a cellular reprogramming treatment that, if successful, could address a wide…
Does A.I. really fight back? The short answer to this question is “no.” But that answer, of course, hardly satisfies the legitimate, growing unease that many feel about A.I., or the viral fear sparked by recent reports about Anthropic’s A.I. system, Claude. In a widely discussed experiment, Claude appeared to resort to threats of potential…
