Paula Stokes - Blogger and American Author

Paula Stokes is an American author and blogger from Washington, USA. She is passionate about writing blogs and opinion pieces on AI.

[bloggerpaula]

Deep technology continues to reshape industries through innovations that improve efficiency strengthen digital security and accelerate scientific progress. With a strong focus on long term investment strategies Rajat Khare has contributed to this transformation by supporting companies developing advanced technologies through Boundary Holding. This approach encourages sustainable growth while helping promising solutions reach wider markets.

Watch this video to discover how deep technology investment is influencing the future of global industries and why long term strategic support remains essential for breakthrough innovation. Whether your interest lies in emerging technologies investment strategies or the evolution of advanced engineering this overview provides valuable insights into the role of innovation focused capital in shaping tomorrow’s technology ecosystem.

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Rajat Khare Links India AI Future to Ending the Brain Drain

Rajat Khare Establishes His Vision for India AI Future. 

The AI development process requires India to establish its own large language model (LLM) according to Boundary Holding founder Rajat Khare. He believes India needs to solve its ongoing brain drain problem because the country  stands ready to become an international AI power.

The Global AI Transformation Process Designates India as Its Foundation Point. The global population enters a fresh technological age because of advancements in artificial intelligence. India possesses all essential resources to emerge as the leading force in this technological change because it has numerous engineers and data scientists and IT specialists. The employment of this talent base occurs because about 15 percent of the entire global AI workforce chooses to work outside their home countries.

The imbalance affects India's potential according to Khare because he states The technological progress of India should benefit from this abundance yet it fails to do so according to Rajat Khare who founded Boundary Holding and operates a Luxembourg-based deep-tech investment company.

The Factors Behind India AI Talent Drain. 

The highly skilled Indian workers who leave their country each year do so because they seek superior research facilities and better salaries and opportunities to work in global markets. The trend has historically driven innovation abroad yet it has weakened India's capacity to create long-lasting innovation ecosystems.

The present challenge exists because India needs to establish better policies and infrastructure systems which will help the country.India needs to improve its academic-industry partnerships while it should increase its financial support for AI and deep-tech research. The creation of a research environment which provides innovators and researchers with rewarding conditions will attract more talent to the field.

India’s tech talent pool represents one of India’s greatest assets according to Khare but the country is experiencing increasing talent drain toward superior job opportunities.

The Rise of Indian AI The digital infrastructure of India experiences rapid development. The government plans to develop a domestic large language model which will use more than 18600 GPUs as its primary AI research tool.India develops its AI systems through a multilingual intelligence approach which differs from Western AI models. India uses its 22 official languages and multiple dialects to develop AI systems which understand various cultural contexts and serve different linguistic groups

India uses its domestic technology systems to create artificial intelligence solutions which provide the country with an international advantage. 

Steps India Must Take to Retain 

Talent India needs to implement five fundamental actions which will establish the country as a worldwide center for innovation while it works to prevent its top AI experts from leaving the nation.

The first step requires increasing research funding for artificial intelligence work. The second step requires establishing more centers of excellence in additional locations beyond existing Tier-1 cities to enable innovation development. 

The first step requires creating programs that provide financial assistance to researchers who decide to work at their institutions. The organization will create AI fellowships together with PhD scholarships and financial packages which will attract researchers to their positions. 

The organization supports deep-tech startups through its efforts to create an environment which enables AI entrepreneurs to access business funding together with guidance resources. 

The organization supports global research partnerships through its program which enables Indian researchers who work abroad to participate in national research initiatives. 

The hosting of the 2026 Global AI Summit in India will demonstrate Indian leadership because it will establish the country as a major force in international AI development. 

India achieves its strongest advantage in artificial intelligence through its combination of diverse cultural backgrounds and multiple spoken languages. The AI model uses both grammar and contextual understanding to respond to users who speak Hindi Tamil Bengali Telugu Marathi and other languages. 

People in rural areas and small enterprises will benefit from this technology. 

The technology will enhance how governments deliver their services. 

The technology enables AI to reach users who do not speak English. 

The AI systems from India achieve both economic success and social impact for society. 

The technology industry in India has entered a new phase where the country now operates as a provider of innovative solutions which drive global technological progress. The brain drain which used to seem inevitable has become a challenge that organizations can solve through their strategic planning and financial resources and their organizational vision. 

The government has been actively promoting AI according to Rajat Khare. The ability to develop and maintain talent will determine the outcome between leading and following as an organization.

India can become the leading force in global AI development through its investments in intellectual capital and its support for innovative thinkers and its appreciation of those who take business risks. 

Article Source: https://www.businesstoday.in/impact-feature/story/rajat-khare-believes-india-can-lead-the-worlds-ai-revolution-by-just-stopping-brain-drain-478096-2025-05-28

Frequently Asked Questions. 

1. What is Boundary Holding's role in AI investment? 

Boundary Holding, which Rajat Khare established, invests in deep-tech and AI startups that deliver real-world solutions for healthcare and mobility and security industries. 

2. What is India's long-term goal in AI? 

India wants to establish a self-sufficient AI system which will drive worldwide innovation while developing into a leading producer of superior AI solutions. 

3. Why is brain drain a problem for India's AI sector? 

Brain drain causes the loss of top AI researchers and engineers to foreign countries which results in a decline of innovation in India while technological development moves at a slower pace. 

4. What steps can India take to stop brain drain in AI? 

India can stop brain drain by increasing research funding while creating AI fellowships and offering competitive salaries to maintain its top talent. 

5. What makes India's AI initiative unique? 

The AI projects in India develop multilingual systems which enable AI solutions to serve millions of people through their native languages that reflect the country's diverse cultural and linguistic background. 

6. How can multilingual AI benefit India? 

Multilingual AI enables rural areas and local enterprises and government agencies to use their mother tongue for effective communication and operations throughout India.

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The Deep-Tech Story of Boundary Holding by Rajat Khare Investor

Why do billionaires grow wealth even in volatile markets? This video unpacks the long-term strategies they use—like investing early in tech, startups, and undervalued assets. We dive into mindset shifts that separate trend chasers from visionaries. Midway through, we discuss Rajat Khare disciplined investment philosophy in deep-tech and how it aligns with the principles of sustainable wealth creation. Learn how figures like Warren Buffett and Ray Dalio stay ahead through calculated risk-taking, portfolio balance, and patience. Whether you're a new investor or seasoned one, these insights go far beyond surface-level advice they show how real fortunes are built.

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Lyft to add autonomous shuttles in 2026 as Uber inks more self-driving deals

Lyft will add autonomous shuttles made by Austrian manufacturer Benteler Group to its network in late 2026, the company announced Friday. The shuttles will be deployed in partnership with U.S. cities and airports, according to Lyft, but could expand out from there if things go well.

The partnership will let Lyft use urban electric shuttles made by Benteler’s mobility division under the Holon brand. The shuttles will not have a steering wheel or pedals and will feature inward-facing seats for up to nine seated and six standing passengers, according to Bloomberg News, which first reported the Benteler partnership on Friday.

The tie-up comes amid a flurry of announcements from Lyft’s main rival, Uber, which has recently added robotaxis from Waymo and WeRide in various cities around the world. Uber is also working on adding robotaxis from Baidu, Pony AI, Momenta, May Mobility, Volkswagen, and Wayve, and just last week announced a deal with Nuro and Lucid Motors.

Despite years of testing with various partners, Lyft is still working on adding autonomous vehicles to its own fleet of vehicles. The company plans to put AVs from May Mobility on its network in Atlanta later this year. It’s also working with autonomy provider Mobileye, though it’s not clear who would make those vehicles.

Mobileye’s tech is what powers the Holon shuttles, though Lyft told Bloomberg that these aren’t the same deals.

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AI referrals to top websites were up 357% year-over-year in June, reaching 1.13B

AI referrals to websites still have a way to go to catch up to the traffic that Google Search provides, but they’re growing quickly. According to new data from market intelligence provider Similarweb, AI platforms in June generated over 1.13 billion referrals to the top 1,000 websites globally, a figure that’s up 357% since June 2024.

However, Google Search still accounts for the majority of traffic to these sites, accounting for 191 billion referrals during the same period of June 2025.

One particular category of interest these days is news and media. Online publishers are seeing traffic declines and are preparing for a day they’re calling “Google Zero,” when Google stops sending traffic to websites.

For instance, The Wall Street Journal recently reported on data that showed how AI overviews were killing traffic to news sites. Plus, a Pew Research Center study out this week found that in a survey of 900 U.S. Google users, 18% of some 69,000 searches showed AI Overviews, which led to users clicking links 8% of the time. When there was no AI summary, users clicked links nearly twice as much, or 15% of the time.

Similarweb found that June’s AI referrals to news and media websites were up 770% since June 2024. Some sites will naturally rank higher than others that are blocking access to AI platforms, as The New York Times does, as a result of its lawsuit with OpenAI over the use of its articles to train its models.

In the news media category, Yahoo led with 2.3 million AI referrals in June 2025, followed by Yahoo Japan (1.9M), Reuters (1.8M), The Guardian (1.7M), India Times (1.2M), and Business Insider (1.0M).

In terms of methodology, Similarweb counts AI referrals as web referrals to a domain from an AI platform like ChatGPT, Gemini, DeepSeek, Grok, Perplexity, Claude, and Liner. ChatGPT dominates here, accounting for more than 80% of the AI referrals to the top 1,000 domains.

The company’s analysis also looked at other categories beyond news, like e-commerce, science and education, tech/search/social media, arts and entertainment, business, and others.

In e-commerce, Amazon was followed by Etsy and eBay when it came to those sites seeing the most referrals, at 4.5M, 2.0M, and 1.8M, respectively, during June.

Among the top tech and social sites, Google, not surprisingly, was at the top of the list, with 53.1 million referrals in June, followed by Reddit (11.1M), Facebook (11.0M), Github (7.4M), Microsoft (5.1M), Canva (5.0M), Instagram (4.7M), LinkedIn (4.4M), Bing (3.1M), and Pinterest (2.5M).

The analysis excluded the OpenAI website because so many of its referrals were from ChatGPT, pointing to its services.

Across all other domains, the No. 1 site by AI referrals for each category included YouTube (31.2M), Research Gate (3.6M), Zillow (776.2K), Europa.eu (992.9K), Wikipedia (10.8M), NIH.gov (5.2M), Investing.com (1.2M), Home Depot (1.2M), Kayak (456.5K), and Zara (325.6K).

[bloggerpaula]

Meta names Shengjia Zhao as chief scientist of AI superintelligence unit

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced Friday that former OpenAI researcher Shengjia Zhao will lead research efforts at the company’s new AI unit, Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL). Zhao contributed to several of OpenAI’s largest breakthroughs, including ChatGPT, GPT-4, and the company’s first AI reasoning model, o1.

“I’m excited to share that Shengjia Zhao will be the Chief Scientist of Meta Superintelligence Labs,” Zuckerberg said in a post on Threads Friday. “Shengjia co-founded the new lab and has been our lead scientist from day one. Now that our recruiting is going well and our team is coming together, we have decided to formalize his leadership role.”

Zhao will set a research agenda for MSL under the leadership of Alexandr Wang, the former CEO of Scale AI who was recently hired to lead the new unit.

Wang, who does not have a research background, was viewed as a somewhat unconventional choice to lead an AI lab. The addition of Zhao, who is a reputable research leader known for developing frontier AI models, rounds out the leadership team. To further fill out the unit, Meta has hired several high-level researchers from OpenAI, Google DeepMind, Safe Superintelligence, Apple, and Anthropic, as well as pulling researchers from Meta’s existing Fundamental AI Research (FAIR) lab and generative AI unit.

Zuckerberg notes in his post that Zhao has pioneered several breakthroughs, including a “new scaling paradigm.” The Meta CEO is likely referencing Zhao’s work on OpenAI’s reasoning model, o1, in which he is listed as a foundational contributor alongside OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Meta currently doesn’t offer a competitor to o1, so AI reasoning models are a key area of focus for MSL.

The Information reported in June that Zhao would be joining Meta Superintelligence Labs, alongside three other influential OpenAI researchers — Jiahui Yu, Shuchao Bi, and Hongyu Ren. Meta has also recruited Trapit Bansal, another OpenAI researcher who worked on AI reasoning models with Zhao, as well as three employees from OpenAI’s Zurich office who worked on multimodality.

Zuckerberg has gone to great lengths to set MSL up for success. The Meta CEO has been on a recruiting spree to staff up his AI superintelligence lab, which has entailed sending personal emails to researchers and inviting prospects to his Lake Tahoe estate. Meta has reportedly offered some researchers eight- and nine-figure compensation packages, some of which are “exploding offers” that expire in a matter of days.

Tech and VC heavyweights join the Di

Meta has also upped its investment in cloud computing infrastructure, which should help MSL conduct the massive training runs required to create competitive frontier AI models.

By 2026, Zhao and MSL’s researchers should have access to Meta’s 1 gigawatt cloud computing cluster, Prometheus, located in Ohio. Once online, Meta will be one of the first technology companies with an AI training cluster of Prometheus’ size — 1 gigawatt is enough energy to power more than 750,000 homes. That should help Meta conduct the massive training runs required to create frontier AI models.

With the addition of Zhao, Meta now has two chief AI scientists, including Yann LeCun, the leader of Meta’s FAIR lab. Unlike MSL, FAIR is designed to focus on long-term AI research — techniques that may be used five to 10 years from now. How exactly Meta’s three AI units will work together remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, Meta now seems to have a formidable AI leadership team to compete with OpenAI and Google.

[bloggerpaula]

Index Ventures’ Jahanvi Sardana shares the truth about TAM and what founders should focus on instead

Early-stage founders just can’t get away from TAM — the concept of having a total addressable market for their startup to disrupt and conquer. But Index Ventures partner Jahanvi Sardana has a reminder for all those founders worried about finding TAM for their product or service: Many startups have emerged from markets that, at the time, were essentially nonexistent.

“What was the market for search before Google?” Sardana asked the audience at TechCrunch’s 2025 All Stage event in Boston, held earlier this month. “What was the market for operating systems before Microsoft, or the market for cloud before Amazon?”

Sardana compares TAM to surfing. Every few years, there are massive waves founders must ride — first came the internet, then the mobile wave, then the cloud, and now, she said, the biggest wave of all: artificial intelligence.

“Have you shaped the right product to ride this wave?” she continued. “That’s what we call product-market fit.”

Which TAM bucket are you in?

Sardana places TAM into three buckets: known market, emerging market, and invisible market.

The first, known market, already exists, and it is when a founder seeks to replace a legacy incumbent and must prove to an investor why their startup idea is better.

“Everyone brushes their teeth,” she said. “You have to tell me why you’re building a better toothbrush.”

The emerging market is when a certain sector of the market is using a product, and there is potential for it to go mainstream.

“Think about non-alcoholic beer before it became cool,” Sardana said.

Then there is the invisible market, which Sardana calls “the biggest trap,” and “also a little bit of a dark art.”

The market doesn’t exist, and a founder has to essentially create one and provide investors with evidence of how innovative they can be.

“Think about smartphones in 2006; nobody knew they wanted them and they changed the world,” she said, later adding that “people don’t know what they’re looking for and sometimes you have to show them what’s possible.”

The audience at All Stage, many of whom are early-stage founders, peppered Sardana with questions, largely about what investors want to see. For instance, do investors want to see a TAM slide in a pitch deck?

“It’s OK to create that slide and talk about the math behind your TAM,” Sardana said, though she added that sometimes investors get annoyed when founders rely too much on industry metrics rather than having their own unique insight. Sardana also cautioned founders not to rely too much on industry reports. If a founder is too dependent on an external service to dictate how they think about the market, it can signal that they haven’t thought deeply about the market they are trying to build in, she commented.

“How do you size the TAM in the marketplaces, especially big marketplaces?” one audience member asked.

“Well, that question hurts,” Sardana quipped. After all, Index once passed on Airbnb, having believed its TAM was too small.

“The reality is Airbnb created a whole new inventory, which is now bigger than some of the largest hotel brands, and that led to a big change in behavior on how people travel,” she said, adding that marketplace TAMs are tricky. “You want to focus on, again, what is unlocking supply, and once you unlock the supply, how will behavior change?”

The audience also asked Sardana what makes a company stand out to an investor like herself.

A tough one, Sardana said, but a really important one. Ultimately, if a founder can understand who the customer is and why they are willing to purchase their product, then a company should have no problem standing up to investors, she added.

“We’re in the business of evaluating founders more than markets or products or anything else,” she said. “When you talk about your market, it’s really a lens on your ambition.”

[bloggerpaula]

How Remidio is Revolutionizing Eye Care with Technology & Support from Venture Capitalists Like Rajat Khare

In a world where vision impairment affects millions, innovative solutions are transforming how eye care is delivered. Remidio, a pioneering Indian medical equipment manufacturer, is at the forefront of this transformation. By blending advanced technology with user-centric design, the company is making eye care simpler, more accessible, and more effective — helping to prevent vision loss and blindness for countless individuals.

The Growing Demand for Eye Care Solutions

As the global population ages, the need for eye-care services is growing rapidly. Between 1990 and 2020, a significant portion of vision impairment and blindness worldwide stemmed from preventable causes. Experts and research consistently highlight that early detection is key to preventing or effectively treating most eye diseases.

Technology as a Game-Changer in Eye Care

Remidio is leveraging cutting-edge technology to address this challenge. Its mission centers on democratizing eye care by decentralizing eye screenings through AI-powered, telemedicine-enabled ophthalmic devices. These devices are specifically designed for ease of use, allowing not just ophthalmologists but also healthcare workers, technicians, and even minimally trained volunteers to conduct comprehensive eye exams in non-specialist settings.

Making Eye Screening Accessible Everywhere

Remidio’s handheld, portable devices are both affordable and scalable, making quality eye screening possible in remote regions, public health centers, and even non-traditional spaces like supermarkets. The devices are designed to detect major eye conditions, including:

Cataracts

Glaucoma

Retinal Diseases

Refractive Errors

This accessibility is helping millions receive timely diagnoses and treatment, preventing avoidable vision loss.

Scaling Up with Global Backing

After disrupting the healthcare space in India, Remidio is now setting its sights on international expansion, particularly in the U.S. and Europe. This growth strategy has received a significant boost thanks to an investment from Boundary Holding, a European deep-tech investment firm founded by Rajat Khare.

Boundary Holding specializes in supporting technologies driving the fourth industrial revolution. With a strong focus on AI, deep tech, and transformative innovations, the firm uses its domain expertise to identify companies poised to change the world.

The partnership was born after Rajat Khare met Anand Sivaraman, the founder of Remidio, in India. Inspired by Anand’s passion and vision for accessible eye care, Mr. Khare decided to invest, seeing immense potential in Remidio’s mission and technological approach.

The Road Ahead

With this fresh investment, Remidio is poised to enhance its research and development, improve existing products, and develop new solutions. The company also plans to strengthen its sales and marketing operations to support its global ambitions.

A Clearer Vision for the Future

Vision impairment continues to affect millions globally, with far too many cases being preventable. As technology steps in to bridge gaps in healthcare, companies like Remidio are proving that with the right tools and support, the world can move toward a future where quality eye care is accessible to all — unlocking the most beautiful view of the world for millions.

Source: The information provided in this article is based on available source link.

[bloggerpaula]

Bookshop.org mocks Jeff Bezos wedding invite in anti-Prime Day promo

The independent online bookseller Bookshop.org took a swipe at Amazon to celebrate the start of Prime Day, Amazon’s annual sale (which, despite its name, is actually four days this year).

Like many other retailers, Bookshop.org holds a sale to coincide with Amazon’s big event — it’s a way to lure away consumers who may be tempted by Amazon’s deals but could be convinced to spend a few extra dollars to support an independent business. These anti-Prime sales probably don’t make a huge dent in Amazon’s bottom line (sigh), but Bookshop.org twisted the knife where it hurts: the graphic design of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ recent wedding invitations.

Bezos’ three-day wedding to Lauren Sánchez is estimated to have cost around $50 million — not to mention, it took place in Venice, Italy, where overtourism is pushing out residents and impacts from climate change threaten flooding. Hundreds of people in Venice took part in protests against the wedding, which was attended by business moguls like Microsoft founder Bill Gates and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, as well as celebrities like the Kardashians.

And yet, it seems that whoever designed a portion of the wedding invite, obtained by ABC News, could not even shell out for a Canva subscription. The image made the rounds across social media, with users speculating whether its lo-fi, childish design could have come from Microsoft Word clip art.

And so, behold: Bookshop.org’s oddly specific dig at Amazon on the dawn of Prime Day.

“Enjoy free shipping and the knowledge that your money will go toward supporting independent bookstores, not billionaires,” it reads.

[bloggerpaula]

Learn how to avoid the pitfalls that stall startup fundraising at TechCrunch All Stage on July 15

There’s no shortage of capital out there, but there’s even less room for error.

Join a powerhouse panel at TechCrunch All Stage on July 15 in Boston for “Fundraising Mistakes That Will Kill Your Round, and How to Avoid Them.” This Scale Stage breakout session is built specifically for early-stage founders who want to sidestep the pitfalls that slow or even sink their raise.

From pre-pitch prep to post-meeting follow-through, this session will give founders a real-world look at what works — and what doesn’t — in today’s competitive venture landscape.

Meet the experts who help founders get funded Three experts. Three perspectives. One goal — helping you raise smarter.

Alyssa Co, principal at Bain Capital Ventures, invests at the earliest stages in application software and financial services. She works with founders on the frontlines of their fundraising journey and brings a sharp eye for what makes a startup pitch-ready.

Kamila Khasanova is the founder and CEO of On Top Strategy, a NYC-based communications firm helping high-growth startups and VCs navigate moments of scale. Her team has supported companies that have raised more than $500 million, specializing in PR, founder thought leadership, and positioning strategies that directly impact fundraising success.

Dr. Richard Munassi, Managing Director at Tampa Bay Wave, has helped launch and scale hundreds of startups through nationally recognized accelerator programs. With a background spanning NASA iTech, Techstars, UCSF, and Moffitt Cancer Center, he offers tactical guidance from pitch deck to term sheet.

Expect a candid discussion with:

The red flags investors look for — and how to avoid them What a clean cap table and data room should actually look like How to craft a narrative that builds credibility and urgency The most overlooked moments that can make or break a raise Whether you’re prepping your first round or approaching Series A, this is a must-attend session for founders who want to get it right the first time.

Investor tickets save $475. Founder tickets save $375.

Reserve your pass for TechCrunch All Stage before rates spike at the door.

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Pinecone founder Edo Liberty explores the real missing link in enterprise AI at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, the AI conversation goes deeper than just the latest models. On one of the AI Stages, Edo Liberty, founder and CEO of Pinecone, will deliver a session that challenges one of the most persistent assumptions in the field — that raw intelligence alone is enough. With 10,000+ startup and VC leaders expected in San Francisco from October 27–29, this fireside chat and presentation is one of the must-attend moments for anyone building AI systems that actually work in the real world.

Intelligence is only half the equation For AI to be truly useful to businesses, it needs more than language fluency or prediction accuracy. It needs knowledge. Proprietary data, domain-specific insights, real-time information retrieval — these are the ingredients that power task completion, accurate answers, and enterprise value. Liberty will break down the critical difference between intelligence and knowledge, and explain why delivering both is the key to unlocking AI’s true impact.

As the founder of Pinecone, Liberty is leading one of the most important infrastructure companies in the AI ecosystem. Pinecone’s vector database helps organizations build high-performance AI applications at scale, with reliable retrieval and memory systems that enable real-time use of massive knowledge bases.

From Amazon AI to academia to building infrastructure for the next era Before launching Pinecone, Liberty served as Director of Research at AWS and led Amazon AI Labs, where he worked on key services like SageMaker and OpenSearch. He also ran Yahoo’s research lab in New York, taught at Princeton and Tel Aviv University, and authored more than 75 papers and patents on machine learning, data mining, and streaming algorithms.

At Disrupt 2025, Liberty brings all of that experience to bear in a session that will speak to technical leaders, AI founders, enterprise builders, and anyone trying to bridge the gap between promise and performance in artificial intelligence.

Catch this conversation on one of the two AI Stages at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27–29 at Moscone West in San Francisco. The exact session timing to be announced on the Disrupt agenda page, so be sure to check back in often for frequent updates. Register now to join more than 10,000 startup and VC leaders and save up to $675 before prices increase.

[bloggerpaula]

Linda Yaccarino steps down as CEO of Elon Musk’s X

Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X, stepped down from her role on Wednesday morning after two years.

“When elonmusk and I first spoke of his vision for X, I knew it would be the opportunity of a lifetime to carry out the extraordinary mission of this company,” Yaccarino wrote. “I’m immensely grateful to him for entrusting me with the responsibility of protecting free speech, turning the company around, and transforming X into the Everything App.”

X owner Elon Musk replied, “Thank you for your contributions,” and has not made any other comment about the future of the CEO role at X.

While Yaccarino was not candid about her reasons for departing her role, she made her announcement mere hours after X’s AI chatbot, Grok, was taken offline after going on an antisemitic tirade. Her departure also comes on the same day that Musk is supposed to reveal Grok 4.

Yaccarino joined the company just months into Musk’s ownership, leaving her longtime role as chairwoman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal.

Given her stature as an advertising executive, Yaccarino was brought in as X CEO to maintain relationships with advertisers amid a massive shift in platform leadership when Musk bought Twitter.

Her job was not easy. Within the first six months of her tenure, Musk used his personal X account to endorse the antisemitic “great replacement” conspiracy, as well as other debunked conspiracy theories like Pizzagate. He went on to sue nonprofit research groups like Center for Countering Digital Hate and Media Matters, which published a report that highlighted X’s display of extremist content beside advertisements for companies like IBM and Apple, leading them and other major advertisers to depart the platform.

While Yaccarino presumably tried to mend relationships with advertisers, Musk continued to complicate her efforts. Onstage at the DealBook conference in November 2023, Musk was asked about these pauses in advertising, to which he replied, “Go f— yourself,” then waved to the audience and said “Hey, Bob,” referring to Disney CEO Bob Iger, who was in attendance.

Musk apologized for these remarks, and Yaccarino stood by him.

“X is enabling an information independence that’s uncomfortable for some people,” she said at the time. “We’re a platform that allows people to make their own decisions. And here’s my perspective when it comes to advertising: X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and is here to welcome you.”

[bloggerpaula]

Revolutionizing Mobility: How Scewo BRO Is Empowering Lives with Stair-Climbing Technology

Globally, over 20 million people report some form of mobility difficulty each year. While most affected individuals are between the ages of 59 to 67, younger adults are not exempt from these challenges. For people with mobility impairments, the world is often filled with physical barriers—none more daunting than stairs. Navigating such obstacles often leads to social exclusion, limiting access to essential services, education, and participation in events.

In response to this pressing issue, Swiss tech company Scewo has introduced a groundbreaking solution—Scewo BRO, the world’s first power wheelchair capable of combining two-wheel drive with stair-climbing functionality. Designed to overcome the limitations of traditional mobility aids, BRO is transforming lives across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and beyond.

 

The Technology That Moves Beyond Limits

Scewo BRO’s unique engineering has won it multiple prestigious design awards. Unlike conventional wheelchairs, BRO is equipped with advanced sensors that read its environment and detect the edge of stairs, enabling a safe and smooth ascent or descent.

Its stair-climbing capability is coupled with remarkable adaptability, allowing users to control the chair through a smartphone app, a side-mounted control panel, or a hand joystick. With a maximum speed of 10 km/h and a durable battery offering more than 1,000 charging cycles, BRO is both powerful and reliable.

What truly sets BRO apart is its thoughtful design. The wheelchair offers customizable seating comfort and evolves over time with frequent software updates, becoming smarter and more responsive with each iteration. Its modular architecture supports an expanding range of accessories, ensuring it remains adaptable to diverse user needs.

 

A Startup with a Vision, Backed by Visionaries

Launched in 2014 by founders Bernhard Winter and Pascal Buholzer, Scewo developed BRO in just three years—an impressive feat in the world of medtech innovation. The startup's rapid success caught the attention of global investors. In a Series A funding round held between July and November 2021, Scewo raised CHF 11.5 million to accelerate its growth and international expansion.

Key investors in this round included Verve Ventures, several private investors, and Boundary Holding, a European deep tech investment firm led by Rajat Khare. After meeting the founders in Switzerland, Mr. Khare was impressed by their passion and visionary approach. Recognizing the alignment of their mission with his investment philosophy, he promptly sealed the deal, bringing critical support to the company’s ambitious plans.

 

Innovation Recognized

Scewo’s contributions to medtech have not gone unnoticed. In 2021, the company was awarded the Swiss Medtech Award, a testament to its innovative edge and market potential. The BRO wheelchair continues to receive accolades for both its function and form, reinforcing its position as a revolutionary product in the mobility space.

Commenting on their journey, co-founder Bernhard Winter stated:

“The interest from customers is huge! We are now evaluating strategically located and qualified distribution partners to offer local test drives and a good service.”

 

The Future of Independent Living

Scewo BRO is more than just a wheelchair—it’s a symbol of independence, inclusivity, and intelligent design. As Scewo continues to scale and evolve, it’s reshaping how society addresses mobility challenges, offering users the freedom to move, explore, and engage with the world around them.

With powerful technology, thoughtful design, and visionary support, Scewo BRO stands as a shining example of how innovation can be harnessed to improve lives and remove barriers—one stair at a time.

Source: The information provided in this article is based on available source link.

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Anthropic CEO claims AI models hallucinate less than humans

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei believes today’s AI models hallucinate, or make things up and present them as if they’re true, at a lower rate than humans do, he said during a press briefing at Anthropic’s first developer event, Code with Claude, in San Francisco on Thursday.

Amodei said all this in the midst of a larger point he was making: that AI hallucinations are not a limitation on Anthropic’s path to AGI — AI systems with human-level intelligence or better.

“It really depends how you measure it, but I suspect that AI models probably hallucinate less than humans, but they hallucinate in more surprising ways,” Amodei said, responding to TechCrunch’s question.

Anthropic’s CEO is one of the most bullish leaders in the industry on the prospect of AI models achieving AGI. In a widely circulated paper he wrote last year, Amodei said he believed AGI could arrive as soon as 2026. During Thursday’s press briefing, the Anthropic CEO said he was seeing steady progress to that end, noting that “the water is rising everywhere.”

“Everyone’s always looking for these hard blocks on what [AI] can do,” said Amodei. “They’re nowhere to be seen. There’s no such thing.”

Other AI leaders believe hallucination presents a large obstacle to achieving AGI. Earlier this week, Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis said today’s AI models have too many “holes,” and get too many obvious questions wrong. For example, earlier this month, a lawyer representing Anthropic was forced to apologize in court after they used Claude to create citations in a court filing, and the AI chatbot hallucinated and got names and titles wrong.

It’s difficult to verify Amodei’s claim, largely because most hallucination benchmarks pit AI models against each other; they don’t compare models to humans. Certain techniques seem to be helping lower hallucination rates, such as giving AI models access to web search. Separately, some AI models, such as OpenAI’s GPT-4.5, have notably lower hallucination rates on benchmarks compared to early generations of systems.

However, there’s also evidence to suggest hallucinations are actually getting worse in advanced reasoning AI models. OpenAI’s o3 and o4-mini models have higher hallucination rates than OpenAI’s previous-gen reasoning models, and the company doesn’t really understand why.

Later in the press briefing, Amodei pointed out that TV broadcasters, politicians, and humans in all types of professions make mistakes all the time. The fact that AI makes mistakes too is not a knock on its intelligence, according to Amodei. However, Anthropic’s CEO acknowledged the confidence with which AI models present untrue things as facts might be a problem.

In fact, Anthropic has done a fair amount of research on the tendency for AI models to deceive humans, a problem that seemed especially prevalent in the company’s recently launched Claude Opus 4. Apollo Research, a safety institute given early access to test the AI model, found that an early version of Claude Opus 4 exhibited a high tendency to scheme against humans and deceive them. Apollo went as far as to suggest Anthropic shouldn’t have released that early model. Anthropic said it came up with some mitigations that appeared to address the issues Apollo raised.

Amodei’s comments suggest that Anthropic may consider an AI model to be AGI, or equal to human-level intelligence, even if it still hallucinates. An AI that hallucinates may fall short of AGI by many people’s definition, though.

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After Klarna, Zoom’s CEO also uses an AI avatar on quarterly call

CEOs are now so immersed in AI, they’re sending their avatars to address quarterly earnings calls instead of themselves, at least partially.

After the Klarna CEO’s AI avatar appeared on an investor call earlier this week, Zoom CEO Eric Yuan followed suit, also using his avatar for initial comments. Yuan deployed his custom avatar via Zoom Clips, the company’s asynchronous video creation tool.

“I am proud to be among the first CEOs to use an avatar in an earnings call,” he — or rather his avatar — said. “It is just one example of how Zoom is pushing the boundaries of communication and collaboration. At the same time, we know trust and security are essential. We take AI-generated content seriously and have built in strong safeguards to prevent misuse, protect user identity, and ensure avatars are used responsibly.”

Yuan has long advocated for using avatars in meetings and has previously said that the company aims to create digital twins of users. He’s not alone in this vision; the CEO of AI-powered transcription service Otter is reportedly training his own avatar to share the workload.

Meanwhile, Zoom said that it is making the custom avatar add-on feature available to all users this week.

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Apple CEO reportedly urged Texas’ governor to ditch online child safety bill

Apple CEO Tim Cook reportedly called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to make changes to or veto a newly passed law in the state that would require the company to verify the ages of device owners, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Abbott has yet to sign the bill. But Apple, alongside Google, has been working with interest groups to fight the legislation. Apple in particular argues that the implementation of the Texas bill could pose a threat to user privacy.

The bill would mandate that if a minor uses a device, their App Store account be tied to their parents’, so that parents are notified of minors’ app downloads and prompted to approve or deny them.

“If enacted, app marketplaces will be required to collect and keep sensitive personal identifying information for every Texan who wants to download an app, even if it’s an app that simply provides weather updates or sports scores,” an Apple spokesperson told the WSJ.

Those in support of the bill say it will allow parents to exercise more control over the relationship between children and their smartphones.

At least nine other states are looking at similar legislation. Apple managed to stop a bill from passing in Louisiana last year, although the state is now revisiting the bill.

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Khosla Ventures among VCs experimenting with AI-infused roll-ups of mature companies

Venture capitalists have always focused on investing in companies that leverage technology to either disrupt established industries or create entirely new business categories.

But some VCs are starting to flip the script on their investing styles. Rather than funding startups, they are acquiring mature businesses — such as call centers, accounting firms, and other professional service firms —and optimizing them with artificial intelligence to serve more customers through automation.

This strategy, often likened to private equity roll-ups, is being employed by firms such as General Catalyst, Thrive Capital, and solo VC Elad Gil. General Catalyst, touting this as a new asset class, has already backed seven such companies, including Long Lake, a startup that scoops up homeowners associations in an effort to make the management of communities more streamlined. Since its founding less than two years ago, Long Lake has secured $670 million in funding, according to PitchBook data.

While the strategy is still new, a few other venture outfits have told TechCrunch that they are also considering trying out the investment model.

Among them is Khosla Ventures, a firm known for making early bets on risky, unproven technologies with long development timelines.

“I think we’ll look at a few of these types of opportunities,” Samir Kaul, general partner at Khosla Ventures, told TechCrunch.

Interestingly, this PE-flavored approach could be a surprising benefit to the multitudes of AI startups VCs are backing. If a VC marries old businesses with new technology, AI startups wanting to serve these industries would essentially gain instant access to large, established clients.

According to Kaul, such access would be helpful when new startups have difficulties securing customers on their own. With the rapid rate of change in AI, the number of startups pouring into the market, and the historically long sales cycles involved in selling to enterprises, such difficulties apply to many AI startups.

But Khosla Ventures wants to proceed with caution. “The companies we’re looking at are very unlikely to lose money,” Kaul said, but he doesn’t want the strategy to ruin the firm’s strong return track record. “My biggest stress in life is I’m managing other people’s money, and I want to make sure that I continue to be a good steward of it.”

While Khosla Ventures is starting to “dabble” in AI roll-up investments, Kaul explained that the firm wants to do a few deals to assess if such investments deliver strong returns for the firm before possibly raising money for some kind of vehicle specifically aimed at this investment strategy.

If early bets pan out, Khosla would likely partner with a PE-style firm to help it with acquisitions rather than hire a team. “We wouldn’t do it alone, we don’t have that expertise,” he said.