The intelligence layer for technology news

Former Google employees have launched a new venture together, founding the company “On Me.” On Me offers mobile gift cards categorized by interest. The company announced it raised $6 million in a seed funding round. The CEO argues that most plastic gifts harm the environment and that it is now necessary to move to digital. On Me stated that it has facilitated over $2.5 million in gifting to 26,000 users and is growing at a rate of 50% per month. The company raised $1.7 million in seed funding last year.

Do Kwon, one of the owners of the TerraUSD and Luna coins, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for fraud after causing a loss of $40 billion (£29.9 billion). He also pleaded guilty to bank fraud and conspiracy charges. He admitted to negotiating with a trading firm to artificially inflate the coin's value through unnatural means.

SpaceX is now going public. The company's new target is a valuation of $1.5 trillion. If it achieves this goal, SpaceX could set a new record by raising over $30 billion in capital. The current record holder is Saudi Arabia's Aramco company with $29 billion.

Anysphere CEO Michael Truell told Fortune that Cursor, one of the company's most valuable products, now generates more code than any other LLM. AI code editors were unable to turn a profit due to high model costs. Cursor therefore switched to usage-based pricing in July, passing the bill on to users, which drew significant backlash. Cursor's goal appears to be to perform more complex functions and target corporate teams as its primary customer base rather than individual developers.

During the US-China tensions, US President Donald Trump banned the sale of chips from artificial intelligence chip giant Nvidia to Beijing. He later lifted this ban on one condition: that Nvidia pay 15% of its Chinese revenue to the US. Now, Trump has said that Nvidia can only sell its chips to commercial customers that have been reviewed and approved by the US Department of Commerce. This situation will also apply to other chip-producing companies like AMD.

AirPods Pro 3 are currently discounted by $20 on Amazon and are now selling for $230. Features included with the new AirPods Pro 3 include an almost endless battery life, improved sound quality, and live translation. Noise cancellation (ANC) is the feature that has helped AirPods become the best-selling product. Apple has used foam-infused ear tips in the new model to reduce noise. Additionally, AirPods Pro 3 comes with a heart rate monitoring feature.

Ballie is a ball-shaped robot that can move around the house and project things onto surfaces. It's been six months since Samsung announced its Ballie personal robot, but it's still nowhere to be seen. This situation is reminiscent of Samsung's Galaxy Home speaker fiasco, which it introduced and then completely forgot about. While Ballie doesn't seem to have been completely canceled, its constant delays are not reassuring.

Samsung introduced its first multi-folding smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy Z TriFold. Samsung's marketing chief Alex Lim believes the foldable phone market will continue to grow. Lim said this phone is not for everyone, but is designed specifically for those who want a foldable phone.

Skybound Game Studios has been sued by iam8bit. iam8bit entered into a partnership with Skybound in April 2021, where it discovered that Skybound was not preparing the correct financial reports it was required to prepare each month and was inflating expenses with millions of dollars in fake entries. Furthermore, Skybound disclosed iam8bit's trade secrets when releasing its own game. The lawsuit filed by iam8bit includes allegations of breach of contract and fraud. The company is seeking monetary damages, punitive damages, and reimbursement for legal fees.

Amazon is offering its new AI code editor Kiro to startups for free. Its goal is to stand out among Cursor Claude Code AI-powered VSCode derivatives like vibe-coding.

Google used artificial intelligence to generate the titles of some articles on Discover. This resulted in the content and the title being completely different. The title is entirely incorrect or misleading. Google explained itself as follows: “An interface experiment for a small portion of Discover users.” The explanation was not very convincing. Google is testing an integrated AI experience on a single screen by combining AI Mode with AI Overview.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has launched an investigation into online fast fashion retailer Shein. In this investigation, Paxton seeks to determine whether Shein uses hazardous materials, as well as its product safety, ethical sourcing, and other related matters. Shein had recently faced criticism for possessing illegal weapons and child-like sex toys.

The MacBook Air M4 runs on the new M4 chip with a 10-core GPU. The unibody design is still one of the thinnest and lightest in its class. The 13.6-inch Liquid Retina display supports the P3 wide color gamut.

A major data breach affecting 33.7 million customers occurred at Coupang. The company stated that the breach began in June and was discovered and reported on November 18. The leaked information included names, email addresses, phone numbers, and some order histories, while payment details and passwords were not compromised. As a result, the government launched an investigation. According to Yonhap, the suspect who stole this information is a former Chinese Coupang employee.

When Zoe Ilana Hill saw other influencers getting high engagement by integrating their animals into their photos using AI, she tried this method herself and got high engagement. Influencers have noticed the high engagement potential of artificial intelligence in the animal trend. Influencers now see AI-generated content as a tool rather than a threat and are using AI to support their posts.

The encrypted key was held by three people. Each key was meaningless on its own, but together they formed a meaningful key. The task of these three people was to upload their assigned encrypted material online. However, one of them failed to do so, and the election results could not be announced.