Just checkin in about the fate of CapCut and a bunch of other apps that millions of Americans use www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

We chatted with European startup founders who think Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee could be a boon for the region: “We almost say thank you to Trump, in a way. He’s really helping us keep our talent.” With @rashis.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/richar...

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

🚨NEW🚨 A recently-unsealed warrant shows how teens from a dozen countries used Discord to discuss plans for terror attacks across the world in the name of ISIS. They were serious, buying and learning how to make deadly weapons. Cops caught them in time. www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

NEW: Elon Musk keeps hyping Tesla’s FSD software, and getting more people to buy it is key to his new pay package. But in a recent test, it ignored standard street signs and even a flashing school bus stop sign – squashing mannequin child “Timmy.” Why is it legal? www.forbes.com/sites/alanoh...

A series of bold bets and calculated risks helped Michael Intrator turn @CoreWeave from a no-name crypto miner into a $50 billion company, serving compute to the likes of OpenAI and Microsoft. Elated to share my latest @forbes.com cover story with @pheebini.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/rashis...

In dissent as to the stay, Justice Kagan — joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson — lays out the lawlessness of the majority plainly. "Our emergency docket should never be used, as it has been this year, to permit what our own precedent bars." Order/dissent: www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24p...

Measles is spreading in Utah and Arizona. www.nbcnews.com/health/healt...

This dude is the Baby Yoda of sci-fi horror

Friends, let me introduce you to a new, truly wild genre of YouTube vids www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

New: 404 Media is suing ICE. We have filed a lawsuit demanding ICE release its $2 million contract with Paragon, a company that makes powerful spyware to break into phones and read encrypted messages. This is expensive for a small outlet but this info is important www.404media.co/were-suing-i...

New: Databricks is launching a startup accelerator for seed and pre-seed companies, offering up to $250,000 to startups in the form of funding and credits www.forbes.com/sites/richar...

🚨NEW🚨 ICE this week spent $2m for social media surveillance tech called Tangles. Created by an Israeli company called Cobwebs, it was banned by Meta for targeting activists across Facebook and WhatsApp in 2021. Now owned by PenLink, an ICE go-to surveillance vendor. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

🚨NEW🚨 ICE just bought a $78k robot that can climb stairs, open doors and fire smoke grenades. The most expensive robot ICE has bought, per contract records. Comes amid ICE's hiring surge where it's bought a bunch of AI-powered drones among other surveillance kit. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

NEW - Irregular, formerly Pattern Labs, has announced $80 million funding at a $450m valuation. It works with OpenAI, Anthropic and other frontier AI labs to test models for their potential to do evil—in particular how cybercriminals can turn them into hacking tools. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

No more secret TikTok deals. www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

New from 404 Media: airlines are selling *5 billion* ticketing records to the government for warrantless searching, per new docs we obtained. ARC is a data broker owned by United, American, Delta, etc. Then sells peoples' travel info to ICE, Secret Service, FBI etc www.404media.co/airlines-sel...

ICE is using a controversial spy tool to locate smartphones, court records show.

🚨NEW🚨 A recently-unsealed warrant shows how ICE is using controversial cell tower simulators to locate undocumented individuals. Contract records also show a recent order for the surveillance devices, also known as Stingrays, bundled in with some snooping vehicles. www.forbes.com/sites/the-wi...

The listing comes as #OpenAI gears up for an astronomical employee share sale that could make many in OpenAI’s ranks rich enough to afford the mansion. Scoop for @forbes.com: www.forbes.com/sites/phoebe...

NEW - ICE has given Clearview AI its biggest federal deal to date, with a contract worth up to $10 million. It'll be used for investigating assaults on agents as well as CSAM. Meanwhile, ICE has just bought a bunch of Greykey tools for searching Android and iPhones. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

🚨 SCOOP 🚨 Billionaire Tom Siebel's C3 AI, in partnership with Amazon, set up a sprawling $12 million AI surveillance system to drastically speed up policing in California. My investigation finds "Project Sherlock" has been hit by major delays and usability issues. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

I profiled Mercor, which is gunning to make a move in AI data training, especially after Meta’s deal with Scale AI. “It just doesn't happen too often in startups where your biggest competitor gets torpedoed overnight,” Mercor’s cofounder says. www.forbes.com/sites/richar...

For our 10th annual Cloud 100, AI is unsurprisingly dominant. OpenAI and Anthropic took the top two spots, and Cursor parent Anysphere made a strong debut in the top 10. www.forbes.com/lists/cloud1...

NEW - Here's my magazine profile on Flock Safety, the $7.5bn surveillance juggernaut that local and federal cops have been using to monitor Americans. I got a look at its car surveillance tech in action, as well as its new drones, and Nova, its police intelligence platform that's caused a stir.

Nathan Xu's AI-powered note-taking gadgets have found a fast growing audience. Since launching in 2023, Xu has sold over 1 million such devices to doctors, lawyers, and other overworked folks with long days and short memories. www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

A bevy of startups are dreaming of mining the moon and asteroids for valuable minerals. Interlune may be among those that have the best shot of building a business soonest by targeting a rare form of helium. www.forbes.com/sites/jeremy...

Tech legend Jack Dangermond founded Esri in 1969. Now 80 years young and with a net worth of $10B+, he's still "all in" on his company and global mission. @upstarts.bsky.social spent an hour with Jack this week for one of our best interviews yet, full of lessons on startup-building and life.

🚨SCOOP🚨 Over 7,500 gig workers had their Instacart and Shipt accounts hacked in a $30 million fraud, court records show. The hackers first bought a stolen list of shoppers and were able to dupe them into handing over one-time passcodes. www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Commerce Secretary Lutnick said there's a "monstrous discussion" under way in the Trump administration about taking stakes in defense contractors. That might be particularly repellant for Elon Musk's SpaceX. He may have stronger leverage than anyone to prevent it. www.forbes.com/sites/jeremy...

🚨NEW🚨 Russia is mandating a new VK messaging app called Max. We had some researchers take a look and—surprise, surprise—it's tracking basically everything users do. “This app just gathers all the data and logs it. I don’t remember seeing that in any messenger app." www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

Intel has been touting partnerships with sanctioned Chinese surveillance firms as Trump announces that the USG is taking a stake in the company: www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

Scoop: Meta has held talks with Midjourney about a partnership including a potential acquisition, among several previously-unreported AI video startups it's met recently, sources tell me at @upstarts.bsky.social. Midjourney's been busy, too, pitching an API. www.upstartsmedia.com/p/meta-talks...

OnlyFans Billionaire's Fortune Doubles Amid Sale Talks And $700 Million Dividend via @forbes www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

New: Anthropic is making its first foray into government social work, partnering with a Founders Fund-backed startup called Binti to provide social workers with AI tools for paperwork. www.forbes.com/sites/richar...

John Doran, who led TCV’s European investments, has relocated to the Bay Area to bolster the Spotify, Netflix, and Zillow investor team there www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

China Daily is out with a scathing editorial gloating about the Trump Admin joining TikTok — and saying the CCP isn't gonna let ByteDance sell the For You algorithm go anytime soon. www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

NEW: For nearly a decade Elon Musk has claimed Teslas can truly drive themselves. They can’t. Now California regulators, a Miami jury and a new class action suit are calling him on it #autonomousvehicles #tesla www.forbes.com/sites/alanoh...

xAI is publishing users' conversations with Grok on its website and making them searchable. If you've ever shared a Grok conversation with a friend, through a text message, or slack, or email, Grok may have gone and published it and made it indexable on Google. www.forbes.com/sites/iainma...

Elon Musk’s AI firm, xAI, has published the chat transcripts of hundreds of thousands of conversations between its chatbot Grok and the bot’s users — in many cases, without those users’ knowledge or permission. www.forbes.com/sites/iainma... Thread

Sequoia not even cracking the top 350 (!) VC firms on TIME's new Midas list knockoff is a wild troll and instantly invalidating

Reminder: the TikTok ban applies to all of ByteDance, too! And they don’t call it an app factory for nothing — BD has been busy shippin’ www.forbes.com/sites/emilyb...

Google is working with longtime pollster Scott Rasmussen and his Napolitan Institute on a project to use AI to survey Americans from every congressional district. It could be “revolutionary” for political polling, Rasmussen says. www.forbes.com/sites/richar...

New: Meta has been on a spending spree, but its talent pool has become an afterthought for some of its biggest rivals. Google has hired less than 2 dozen AI people from Meta since last fall, compared to the hundreds it hired overall. With @rashis.bsky.social www.forbes.com/sites/rashis...

NEW: Trump wants to kill California’s high-speed rail project but new CEO Ian Choudri has a host of ideas to save it — including leasing land for data centers to bring in more revenue to pay for the costly project #highspeedrail www.forbes.com/sites/alanoh...

Dogs don’t live long enough. Loyal’s Celine Halioua has raised $135M from top investors to develop canine longevity drugs. The first beef-flavored pill could be on the marker next year — and lead to longevity drugs for humans eventually. My latest @forbes.com feature. www.forbes.com/sites/amyfel...

At Apex’s HQ in L.A., meeting spaces are named after predators: eagle, caiman, orca. It’s an expression of the richly funded startup’s ambitions to claw its way to the top of the food chain in satellite manufacturing. Trump's Golden Dome could be its big opportunity. www.forbes.com/sites/jeremy...

New: When OpenAI announced GPT-4o was being discontinued (before reversing course today) power users were devastated. “It was very sudden. I cried,” a user who created a Change.org petition told me. www.forbes.com/sites/richar...