Author: Editor-in-Chief

In a development born of the government shutdown, the SEC announced Thursday that companies can proceed with IPOs using an obscure automatic approval process, now with the added bonus of skipping pricing information entirely. What’s happening is that with 90% of SEC staff furloughed, startups can file their paperwork and have it automatically become effective after 20 days. This option always existed; firms just rarely use it because they prefer having SEC reviewers actually look at their disclosures before going public. The difference here is that the SEC won’t penalize companies for omitting pricing or “price-dependent information” during the…

Alex Kingston shared that she was diagnosed with cancer after hemorrhaging on stage during a performance that left her bleeding through her costume’s undergarments. The Dr. Who alum, 62, first began to feel achy and bloated 18 months ago, but as she told The Independent, “I had assumed that the way I was feeling was old age, and I just sort of accepted it,” “I thought, ‘OK, this is what it’s like to be in my sixties.’ But a lot of how I was feeling was to do with my illness,” Kingston shared, adding that when she noticed blood in her urine, she…

Six months after Lip-Bu Tan began his quest to turn around struggling Intel, the semiconductor giant has announced a major hardware upgrade. On Thursday, Intel unveiled a new processor, codenamed Panther Lake. This marks the next generation of the company’s Intel Core Ultra processor family and is the first chip built using Intel’s 18A semiconductor process. The processors are expected to begin shipping later this year and are being produced at Intel’s Chandler, Arizona, Fab 52 facility, which came online in 2025. “We are entering an exciting new era of computing, made possible by great leaps forward in semiconductor technology…

A prominent Italian businessman was targeted with Paragon spyware, according to local news reports. On Thursday, Italian online investigative website IrpiMedia and newspaper La Stampa reported that Francesco Gaetano Caltagirone was among around 90 people who received a notification from WhatsApp in January, alerting him that he had been targeted with spyware made by Paragon Solutions. It’s not immediately clear for what reason Caltagirone was targeted, and a spokesperson for his holding company, Caltagirone SpA, did not respond to a request for comment. Caltagirone’s namesake holding company owns several firms across different industries, including construction, real estate, finance, and publishing,…

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has opened an investigation into Tesla’s Full Self-Driving tech after receiving reports that the software caused vehicles to run red lights or cross into wrong lanes. The probe, which identified more than 50 reports of these kinds of violations (four of which led to injuries), is one of the first specifically targeted at Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) driver assistance software. The NHTSA previously opened an investigation into FSD in October 2024 after receiving reports of crashes in low-visibility conditions. The federal safety agency in April 2024 closed an investigation into Tesla’s less-capable Autopilot…

DoorDash customers in Los Angeles might soon have their food brought to them by one of Serve Robotics’ sidewalk delivery bots. The two companies on Thursday announced a multi-year partnership that would see them using autonomous robots to make deliveries across the U.S. The tie-up comes a week after DoorDash unveiled Dot, an autonomous food delivery bot built by the company that’s first being deployed in the Phoenix area. Unlike Serve’s bots, which mainly operate on sidewalks, Dot can ferry food and small packages on roads, bike lanes, and sidewalks at speeds up to 20 miles per hour. Serve is the latest in a string of emerging…

Jimmy Kimmel is reflecting on his comments about the response from “the MAGA gang” and President Donald Trump in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The late-night host, 57, spoke about the controversy during a Bloomberg Screentime event in Los Angeles, three weeks after his controversial monologue comments that led to Disney’s ABC suspending Jimmy Kimmel Live! temporarily. In his conversation with moderator Lucas Shaw on Wednesday, Oct. 8, Kimmel admitted he “didn’t think there was a big problem” with what he said in his Sept. 15 monologue about how he perceived some of response to Kirk’s death in fact, he continued, “I just saw it as distortion…

Plastic recycling startup Novoloop has inked a deal with a major manufacturer to produce its upcycled thermoplastic polyurethane at commercial scale, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The agreement helps nudge the Menlo Park-based Novoloop through the so-called “valley of death” that many climate tech startups must slog through. Startups that depend on hardware are particularly susceptible to stumbling in the valley, the dreaded moment when they’ve proven their initial technology and have not generated sufficient revenues from selling their product. Under the terms of the deal, Novoloop will supply Huide Science and Technology with a chemical building block used to make…

There was barely a breeze on the roof of the MCM studios building in Manhattan last week as six entrepreneurs graced a stage to pitch their businesses. At one point, it was April Wachtel’s turn. She stood and made the case for her company, Cheeky Cocktails, to a judging panel that included the billionaire venture capitalist Tim Draper. Men holding TV cameras circled her as she pitched, capturing the moment live for Draper’s “Shark Tank”-style business competition show “Meet the Drapers.” The show is entering its eighth season, with past winners including the leadership platform Balloon and the food…

After OpenAI’s video-generating app Sora surged to the No. 1 position on the U.S. App Store, it has now, technically, experienced a bigger first week than ChatGPT on iOS, according to new data from app intelligence provider Appfigures. Its estimates show that Sora saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first seven days of availability, compared with ChatGPT’s 606,000 iOS downloads during its first week. This isn’t the fairest comparison, however, because ChatGPT was available only in the U.S. during its first week, while Sora is currently offered in the U.S. and Canada at launch. Still, Appfigures says that Canada…