Bob Lee verdict: Cash App creator's killer found guilty of second-degree murder

A San Francisco jury has found Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing of Bob Lee, the Cash App creator and former CTO of Block, according to NBC Bay Area on Tuesday. The jury found Momeni not guilty of first-degree murder, meaning jurors decided the murder of Lee …...Read More

Commonwealth Fusion Systems just picked its first commercial site partly because of its proximity to Washington, DC

Commonwealth Fusion Systems will build its first commercial-scale power plant just outside of Richmond, Virginia, the company announced Tuesday, with a goal of hooking it up to the grid in the early 2030s. Fusion power has long been derided as being decades away, but the new milestone assumes the possibility …...Read More

Bridgy Fed, a project to connect the open social web, is now becoming a nonprofit

Bridgy Fed, which is working to connect the social network Bluesky with the wider fediverse (i.e., the open social web), which includes sites like Mastodon and others, will be the first app incubated within a new nonprofit called A New Social. The organization, announced Tuesday, aims to bring together developers, …...Read More

This fintech processed $1B in payments through word-of-mouth

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re diving into: P.S. We’re taking time off for the holidays! TechCrunch Fintech scribe Mary Ann Azevedo will be back in your inbox on January 7. ❄️ The big story How stablecoin technology can power billions in cross-border transactions Juicyway is an African fintech …...Read More

Grammarly acquires productivity startup Coda, brings on new CEO

Grammarly is acquiring productivity startup Coda, the company announced on Tuesday. As part of the deal, Coda’s CEO and co-founder Shishir Mehrotra will become the new CEO of Grammarly. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will help turn Grammarly’s AI assistant into an “AI productivity …...Read More

OpenAI brings its o1 reasoning model to its API - for certain developers

OpenAI is bringing o1, its “reasoning” AI model, to its API — but only for certain developers to start. Starting today, o1 will begin rolling out to devs in OpenAI’s “tier 5” usage category, the company said. To qualify for tier 5, developers have to spend at least $1,000 with …...Read More

Stephen Curry's Penny Jar Capital files to raise a Fund II

Penny Jar Capital, the early-stage firm founded by Bryant Barr and Richard Scudellari and where basketball star Stephen Curry serves as a special advisor, has filed to raise a Fund II with no target amount, according to an SEC form filed in October. The firm also filed in October to …...Read More

Google joins $90M investment into Cassava to bolster Africa's digital infrastructure

With cloud spend continuing to surge, tech companies are scrambling to meet demand for the necessary infrastructure, with the growing need for AI compute only adding fuel to the fire. By way of example, Microsoft and BlackRock have created a $30 billion fund to support new data centers and energy …...Read More

Google says customers can use its AI in 'high-risk' domains, so long as there's human supervision

Google has changed its terms to clarify that customers can deploy its generative AI tools to make “automated decisions” in “high-risk” domains, like healthcare, so long as there’s a human in the loop. According to the company’s updated Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy, published on Tuesday, customers may use Google’s …...Read More

UK consults on opt-out model for training AIs on copyrighted content

The U.K. government is consulting on an opt-out copyright regime for AI training that would require rights holders to take active steps if they don’t want their intellectual property to become free AI training fodder. The rise of generative AI models that are trained on vast quantities of data has …...Read More