Jeff Benson

Disney just announced a licensing deal with OpenAI that will allow users of OpenAI’s Sora to generate short videos of its characters. Just in case you’ve forgotten what’s in Disney’s IP library, it’s way more than Mickey and Goofy. It spans Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and a bunch of other properties. Not everything is included in the deal, though. For example, you’ll get the illustrated Tony...

Bloomberg reported today that Meta (read: Facebook) is "considering potential budget cuts as high as 30% for the metaverse group next year." That's the same group behind the Quest VR headsets and the online VR game Horizon Worlds. During its annual budgeting sessions, CEO Mark Zuckerberg usually asks execs to identify 10% in cuts, but "the metaverse group was asked to cut deeper this year given...

For years, there’s been one place where big-name tech products could enjoy a second life, albeit without most or all of the people that got them there: Bending Spoons. The Italian company, which is valued at $11B and reports 300M+ monthly active users, acquired Eventbrite for $500M this week. If you’re unfamiliar, Bending Spoons has an M&A playbook: Identify a product with a fair amount of...

TikTok, you must stop? Chinese tech regulators won’t let ByteDance use Nvidia’s chips in its new data centers. The TikTok owner needs a lot of computing power to keep its 1 billion+ users watching lip-syncing videos. But Nvidia is a U.S. company, and China wants data centers made with homegrown chips. (Reuters) Just in time for Black Friday Days after OpenAI announced its AI shopping...

Magnum Opus Anthropic updated its AI model to Opus 4.5. The company says the latest Opus has improved problem-solving, can do wonders with spreadsheets, and scores over 80% on the SWE-Bench coding benchmark—a first for any AI model. What to expect? More of Anthropic’s Claude for Chrome and Claude for Excel. Those will be rolling out to Max and Max, Team, and Enterprise users, respectively....

Location, Location, Location Robotaxi company Waymo is expanding across California. Already active in SF, Silicon Valley, and LA, it now has a green light from California regulators to cruise into Napa, Sacramento, San Diego, and many of the bedroom communities surrounding those areas. It’s easy to see how Google Maps and Waze, both owned by Alphabet, will fit into the plans of a self-driving...

In most ways, Tijs Nieuwboer is just your standard entrepreneur and builder from Amsterdam. Except for one thing: He’s a bit crazy. That's a good thing. After a year of coding almost entirely by voice inside Cursor while using Wispr Flow to write and edit code, switch between files, and navigate projects hands-free, he had an idea: What if he built an app entirely by voice coding while running...

Earlier this week, Nika asked: Is dating through apps still a thing? And she wondered about the effect AI would have on our relationships. Well: Tinder, the dating app where singles swipe right to get to know someone, wants to know more about you. Match Group, the company behind Tinder (and Hinge…and OkCupid…and Match.com), spiced up its lackluster Tuesday earnings report by announcing an...

On Wednesday, Apple announced three new products that look very much like three existing products: the iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, and Vision Pro. The big difference is what’s inside: the company’s new M5 chip. There’s lots of fancy hardware talk — ”third-generation 3-nanometer technology,” “next-generation 10-core GPU architecture” — but the upshot (according to Apple) is that, in addition to...

SoundCloud went live 18 years ago as a launchpad for independent artists to share their music. Now, it’s adding more tools for listeners to share what they’re into. The music streaming app, which ranks above streaming stalwarts Pandora and Apple Music in terms of monthly average users, introduced new social features on Thursday, including: “Liked By Your Crew”: a daily playlist based on what...

Feeling like your chatbot companion/friend/lover is making it hard to say goodbye? You’re not imagining it. A working paper from researchers at Harvard Business School found that when people tried to say goodbye, the top companion chatbot apps responded with “emotional manipulation” techniques 37% of the time. They grouped that manipulation into six categories: Premature exit (e.g., “Why are...

Chipmaker Nvidia announced this week it will be investing up to $100 billion (with a B) in OpenAI to help it build out its computing power. This follows OpenAI’s move earlier this month to buy $300B in computer power from Oracle. Those are some pretty eye-popping sums. But that may not be a good thing. AI companies need unprecedented sums of money to increase their computing power. The question...