San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie wants binding Waymo robotaxi regulations after a July 4 fireworks crowd turned a sizeable stretch of the city into a hours-long car park. Nearly two weeks after dozens of Waymo vehicles ran out of power, stalled in heavy traffic, and blocked key streets near the Presidio, Lurie has written to California’s State Transportation Agency demanding that the state establish enforceable, statewide standards for autonomous vehicles operating during major events. The letter, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, singles out two incidents: a widespread power outage in December and the Golden Gate Bridge fireworks show…
Author: Funke Adeyemi
Funke Adeyemi
Funke Adeyemi spent a decade in corporate banking and fintech before moving to business journalism. She started in trade finance at a major UK bank, moved to a payments company scaling into African markets, and spent her last role leading partnerships at a cross-border remittance platform. She writes about business strategy, fintech, digital banking, and the corporate news that moves markets. She is interested in how companies actually make money rather than how they describe making money in investor presentations. Funke lives in South London. She reads earnings calls the way other people listen to podcasts, and finds them about as reliable.
Google Vids’ personal avatar feature, announced on Thursday, now lets users upload a selfie and a voice recording to generate a digital clone of themselves for use in workplace videos, a move that pushes the tool well beyond its origins as a presentation builder. The update is powered by Gemini Omni Flash, Google’s latest media generation model, which the company says delivers improved text rendering, physics, and realism compared to its predecessors. The model handles everything from generating video from a written prompt and reference images, to swapping out backgrounds, correcting lighting, and adding effects to footage recorded on a…
New research by SC Media and Mozilla has confirmed that Stardust period tracker data, including users’ birthdates, birth-control types, reproductive goals, and specific symptoms, was being transmitted to a third-party analytics company while the app’s own website carried the slogan: ‘Your data is private. Period.’The company in question is RudderStack, Inc., a US-incorporated analytics firm. Stardust tied each batch of health information to a unique identifier in place of the user’s name, a technique the company may have considered sufficiently protective. It is not.Why Unique Identifiers Are Not the Same as AnonymityThe Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has long held that…
The Aina AI interface funding of $5.5 million closes a seed round for a startup that wants to do something most of its rivals do not: give users physical hardware that controls AI agents rather than simply recording what happens around them.The round was led by Redstart Labs, the deeptech and SaaS-focused venture arm of Infoedge India, and 360 ONE, the alternative asset management business of financial services firm 360 ONE. MIXI Global Investments, Antler, and Blume Founders Fund also participated, as did angel investor Vaibhav Domkundwar of Better Capital. Individual backers include Kunal Shah, the CRED founder who has…
Syntetica nylon recycling funding of $30 million has drawn in Lululemon, Sri Lankan apparel manufacturer MAS Holdings, and a clutch of European public investors, as the French startup bets that cost-competitive chemistry can do what sustainability pledges alone have not: actually close the loop on one of fashion’s most persistent materials. A Patented Process That Solves Sorting The core problem Syntetica addresses is unglamorous but stubborn. Nylon 6 and Nylon 6,6 dominate the synthetic textiles market, but the two variants cannot easily be separated once they reach consumer waste streams. Most recycling infrastructure simply gives up at that point. WWD…
An Apple Maps ads policy published quietly this month draws a deliberate line between what Apple wants its mapping product to be and what Google’s rival service already is: an open marketplace for almost any business with a budget. The policy, part of Apple’s broader Apple Advertising Services Terms and Policies framework and effective as of 14 July 2026, sets the rules for businesses that want to appear in Apple Maps search results. Apple has not confirmed a launch date beyond saying ads will arrive ‘this summer’ in the US and Canada, but the publication of advertiser documentation suggests the…
At $60.50 a share, the Stripe and Advent PayPal bid lands at a 28% premium to PayPal’s closing price on 15 July 2026, according to CNBC. The joint offer, valued at roughly $53.4 billion in total, was submitted earlier this month by Stripe, the payments infrastructure company, and Advent International, the Boston-based private equity firm. Reuters first reported the approach. Under the proposal, Stripe and Advent would hold equal stakes in the acquired company. PayPal has not publicly responded to the offer. Inside the Stripe and Advent PayPal Bid The financing structure combines equity and bank debt. Stripe, Advent, and…
Oak’s $60m identity management funding has brought one of Israel’s larger cybersecurity seed rounds out of stealth, as the Tel Aviv and San Francisco-based startup argues that the tools companies use to control who, and what, can access their systems are fundamentally broken for an era of AI agents. The company, co-founded by Shai Morag and Tal Marom, emerged publicly this week with its platform generally available and already deployed by enterprise clients. It raised the $60m late last year from a syndicate co-led by Accel, CRV, and Greylock Partners, with AlphaDrive Ventures, Hetz Ventures, and angel investors also participating.…
Miles Wang, a researcher who joined OpenAI in 2024 after dropping out of Harvard, is in talks to launch an AI drug discovery startup at a $2 billion valuation, according to sources familiar with the discussions. Wang co-authored research at OpenAI exploring how AI models can automate and accelerate scientific discovery. His new venture, still in formation, may focus on finding new applications for existing drugs and compounds that previously failed in clinical trials, a couple of sources told TechCrunch. The logic behind that focus is commercially compelling. Repurposing drugs that have already cleared safety testing with the Food and…
A Google Gemini copyright lawsuit filed by some of publishing’s largest names accuses the company of training its artificial intelligence models on books it had no right to use, and of then deliberately scrubbing the evidence. The case, brought in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, names Hachette, Cengage, Elsevier, bestselling thriller writer Scott Turow, and advocacy group S.C.R.I.B.E. as plaintiffs. The Google Gemini Copyright Lawsuit and What It Alleges The complaint describes Google’s conduct as The Guardian characterised it: ‘one of the most prolific infringements of copyrighted materials in history.’ The plaintiffs argue that…
