Jack Dorsey just laid off half his company in a single post. Four thousand people gone. Not because Block is struggling, quite the opposite. Fourth-quarter gross profit jumped 24 percent year over year to $2.87 billion. Cash App surged 33 percent. Earnings beat estimates. The company raised its full-year 2026 guidance to $12.2 billion in…
Ruoming Pang, a prominent A.I. researcher recruited by Meta last year with a pay package reportedly worth more than $200 million, has left the company to join OpenAI, The Information reported yesterday (Feb. 25). His departure marks another setback for Mark Zuckerberg’s elite A.I. team and underscores the escalating A.I. talent war. Pang joined Meta…
Alex Kendall, the 33-year-old founder and CEO of Wayve, grew up on New Zealand’s South Island and came up with the name of his autonomous driving startup, Wayve, after surfing Auckland’s beaches. Now his attention is on the busy streets of London, where Wayve plans to deploy self-driving cars later this year after securing $1.5…
Apple’s A.I. leadership team has undergone a significant transition in recent months, following the December departure of longtime machine learning chief John Giannandrea. Giannandrea, who joined from Google in 2018, will remain in an advisory role until this spring. Filling Giannandrea’s shoes is Amar Subramanya, a former Microsoft and Google executive who joined Apple in…
The creators of Dark Sky, the cult-favorite weather app acquired by Apple in 2020, pulled off something rare: they made forecasting feel personal. Dark Sky was beloved for its hyperlocal rain predictions, precise alerts and emphasis on data visualization. Now, three of its creators—Adam Grossman, Josh Reyes and Dan Abrutyn—are taking another swing at weather…
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sees an autonomous driving revolution on the horizon, and he intends to lead it. Having ramped up Uber’s robotaxi efforts in recent months, Khosrowshahi is now launching a new division to accelerate the mainstream adoption of autonomous vehicles (AV). Known as Uber Autonomous Solutions, the unit will offer services ranging from…
Sam Altman is pushing back on mounting criticism over the environmental toll of A.I. The OpenAI chief has dismissed claims about A.I.’s water consumption as “fake” and drawn comparisons between the electricity required to power A.I. systems and the energy it takes to develop human intelligence. Figures suggesting that tools like ChatGPT consume multiple gallons…
OpenAI’s latest acqui-hire puts Peter Steinberger, the creator of the open-source A.I. agent OpenClaw, at the center of the fast-moving stage of agentic A.I. The A.I. powerhouse has hired Steinberger to lead its personal agents division, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced on X on Feb. 15, praising him as “a genius with a lot of…
It was meant to be a simple photo op. To mark a busy day at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi this week, a lineup of business and political leaders joined India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi onstage, raising their clasped hands in a show of unity. All but two. Standing side by side, OpenAI…
Observer’s inaugural New Media Power List recognizes the individuals who are defining how information, influence and capital move in the digital age. This is not a list about celebrity or follower counts alone, but a rigorous assessment of who holds real power in the new media ecosystem: the creators building loyal audiences outside traditional structures,…
