In Brief How much equity in OpenAI will Microsoft get once the former becomes a for-profit company? That’s the multi-billion-dollar question — one the two parties are racing to answer ahead of a two-year deadline.The Wall Street Journal reports that both Microsoft and OpenAI have hired investment banks to negotiate Microsoft’s equity — which could be substantial. The tech giant is said to have sunk nearly $14 billion into OpenAI. As of October, OpenAI is the second-most valuable startup in the U.S. behind S ...

The top U.S. automotive safety regulator has opened a new investigation into Tesla’s so-called “Full Self-Driving (Supervised)” software after four reported crashes in low-visibility situations — including one where a pedestrian was killed.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) announced Friday that it is probing the driver assistance system to find out whether it can “detect and respond appropriately to reduced roadway visibility conditions,” such ...

Nebius, the company formerly known as Yandex that’s now focused on cloud infrastructure for AI uses (aka “AI compute”), is to begin trading on the public markets once again — more than two years after the Nasdaq halted trading due to economic sanctions imposed in the wake of Russia’s Ukraine invasion in 2022.The Netherlands-based company is vying to become one of Europe’s leading players in the burgeoning “GPU-as-a-service” space, and sits in a somewhat unique position — it is a startup in many ways as it’s ...

In Brief AWS CEO Matt Garman has harsh words for remote workers: return to the office or quit. The Amazon executive recently told employees who don’t like the new five-day in-person work policy that, “there are other companies around,” presumably companies they can work for remotely, Reuters reported on Thursday.Amazon’s top boss, Andy Jassy, told employees last month that there will be a full return-to-office starting in 2025, an increase from three days for roughly the last year. Garman is the latest tec ...

Core Insights - Microsoft experienced a logging outage for its cloud products during a two-week period in September, which may have created a security blind spot for customers [1][2] - The outage was attributed to a bug in Microsoft's internal monitoring agents, not a security incident, affecting the collection of log events [1][2] - Affected products include Microsoft Entra, Sentinel, Defender for Cloud, and Purview, potentially hindering customers' ability to analyze data and detect threats [2] Incident Background - The logging outage follows previous scrutiny from federal investigators regarding Microsoft's withholding of security logs from U.S. government departments, which could have expedited the identification of China-backed intrusions [3] - The intrusions, attributed to a group known as Storm-0558, involved the theft of a digital skeleton key that allowed access to U.S. government emails stored in Microsoft's cloud [3] - In response to past incidents, Microsoft announced it would start providing logs to lower-tier cloud accounts beginning September 2023 [4]

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Thursday that Prabhakar Raghavan, the executive in charge of the company’s search engine and ads products, is leaving his role. Longtime Google executive Nick Fox will replace Raghavan, who will now take on the role of chief technologist. “Prabhakar has decided it’s time to make a big leap in his own career,” Pichai said in the announcement post. “After 12 years leading teams across Google, he’ll return to his computer science roots and take on the role of Chief Technol ...

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility!Kirsten is still out doing Kirsten things, so I (Rebecca Bellan) will continue to pass along all the tech mobility news that’s fit to print. It’s been a week since Tesla’s flashy robotaxi reveal, and everyone seems to have differing opinions on what Elon Musk showcased and, crucially, what he left out. Obviously the big deal was the robotaxi or ...

For the next month, Bay Area riders of Waymo robotaxis can earn a $3 credit whenever they travel to and from certain public transit stations.Riders will be able to take advantage of the offer through November 15, and they can use the credits earned towards future robotaxi rides from now until December 31, the company said. The pilot program is the first of its kind among autonomous vehicle operators in the U.S. It comes after Waymo found in a recent survey that 36% of San Francisco riders have used Waymo’s ...

Group 1 - Meta confirmed layoffs affecting multiple teams, including Threads, recruiting, legal operations, and design, to reallocate resources [1] - A spokesperson stated that the changes align with long-term strategic goals and location strategy, involving role eliminations and relocations [1] - Affected employees received severance pay, with reports of over a dozen layoffs occurring via video calls [1] Group 2 - In recent years, Meta has significantly reduced its workforce after aggressive hiring during the pandemic, laying off approximately 13% of its workforce (11,000 employees) in 2022 [2] - In 2023, Meta laid off an additional 10,000 employees and withdrew 5,000 open roles [2]

In Brief Apple worked with a Chinese automaker for years to design a battery system for its now-canceled car project. That’s according to Bloomberg, which reports that Apple was collaborating with BYD Co., a Shenzhen-based car company, to develop batteries using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells. Apple contributed engineering expertise, specifically in areas like heat management and advanced battery packs, while BYD supplied its manufacturing resources and proprietary LFP technologies. The battery was in ...