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Anysphere, the company behind the popular AI coding assistant Cursor, is not considering an IPO anytime soon, co-founder and CEO Michael Tuell said on stage at Fortune’s AI Brainstorm conference on Monday. After reaching $1 billion in annual revenue in November and raising $2.3 billion last month at a valuation of $29.3 billion, Tuell said his company is instead focused on building more capabilities. For example, he noted that Cursor’s homegrown LLM is tailored to support specific products. Cursor acknowledged the existence of these models in a blog post in November, saying, “Our in-house models currently generate more code than…

Rivian has spent nearly two years developing its own AI assistant, an effort separate from its multibillion-dollar technology joint venture with Volkswagen, TechCrunch has learned. Rivian hasn’t said when it will put its AI assistant in the hands of consumers. However, in an interview earlier this year, Rivian’s head of software Wassym Bensaid told TechCrunch that the company is targeting the end of the year. The company may share more at its upcoming AI & Autonomy Day, which will be livestreamed on December 11th at 9am PT. Rivian’s plans reflect a time when the pace of development of foundational AI…

In 1987, a worker lights a cigarette next to a new well near the village of Bourakebugou in Mali.But at that moment, an explosion echoed inside the well. We now know this is due to a previously undetected cloud of flammable hydrogen wafting from a gas reservoir below the hole.The well was plugged and temporarily abandoned. Then, in 2011, oil and gas company Petroma (later Hydroma) lifted the plan to explore whether hydrogen could be extracted for profit. By 2012, the company had developed a well to provide electricity in Bourakebugou, and the village still relies on this hydrogen for…

Pew Research Center released research on Tuesday showing how young people are using both social media and AI chatbots. Internet safety for teens remains a hot topic globally, with Australia set to implement a social media ban for under-16s from Wednesday. The impact of social media on teens’ mental health has been widely debated, with some studies showing how online communities can improve mental health and others showing the negative effects of doom scrolling and spending too much time online. Last year, the US Surgeon General also called on social media platforms to put warning labels on their products. According…

OpenAI has hired Slack CEO Denise Dresser as its new chief revenue officer. The news was first reported by Wired and later confirmed by OpenAI in a blog post. Dresser’s new role comes after more than 14 years at Slack’s parent company, Salesforce. During his time at Slack, Dresser oversaw the introduction of several AI capabilities. OpenAI said Mr. Dresser will be responsible for the company’s revenue strategy for enterprise and customer success. This is a crucial role given the difficult road ahead if the company wants to turn a profit. “We are on the path to putting AI tools…

Aircraft startup Boom Supersonic announced Tuesday that it will start selling a stationary power plant version of its turbine engine, and its first customer will be data center startup Crusoe. Crusoe will buy 29 of Boom’s 42-megawatt turbines for $1.25 billion to generate 1.21 gigawatts for data centers. Mr. Boom said he would announce details of the turbine factory next year, with first deliveries in 2027. To commercialize the Superpower stationary turbine, Boom raised $300 million in a round led by Darsana Capital Partners with participation from Altimeter Capital, Ark Invest, Bessemer Venture Partners, Robinhood Ventures, and Y Combinator. Proceeds…

Scientists believe a very common childhood infection may be linked to bladder cancer, and are currently unraveling the chain reaction linking the two diseases.It is known that kidney transplant recipients are three times more likely to develop bladder cancer than the general population. Researchers hypothesize that because transplant patients are immunosuppressed, dormant viruses in their bodies may be given an opportunity to reactivate.These sleep pathogens include BK virus (BKV), also known as human polyomavirus type I; This is a cold virus that 95% of people contract as children. After infection, the virus becomes dormant in the kidneys. A question arises…

Dystopian or useful? Amazon’s Ring doorbell will now be able to identify visitors through a new AI-powered facial recognition feature, the company announced Tuesday. The controversial feature, called “Familiar Faces,” was announced in early September of this year and is now rolling out to Ring device owners in the United States. Amazon says the feature lets you identify regular visitors by creating a catalog of up to 50 faces. These may include family members, friends, neighbors, delivery drivers, domestic staff, etc. Label someone in the Ring app, and your device will recognize them when they approach your Ring camera. Then,…

Truecaller has launched household-level fraud prevention capabilities as the Swedish company expands its role beyond caller ID in response to an increase in scams targeting multiple members of a household. The new feature, called Family Protection, allows up to five people to join a family group, with one member acting as an admin and managing other members’ fraud blocking settings. Family Protection will initially be rolled out in a pilot to Android and iOS users in Sweden, Chile, Malaysia, and Kenya. Truecaller says the feature is designed to help the digitally confident person in the household handle fraud protection on…

North Korean-linked attackers may have become the latest to exploit a recently revealed critical security React2Shell flaw in React Server Components (RSC) to deliver a previously undocumented remote access Trojan called EtherRAT. “EtherRAT leverages Ethereum smart contracts for command-and-control (C2) resolution, deploys five independent Linux persistence mechanisms, and downloads its own Node.js runtime from nodejs.org,” Sysdig said in a report published Monday. The cloud security company said this activity shows significant overlap with a long-running campaign codenamed “Contagious Interview,” which has been observed leveraging EtherHiding technology to distribute malware since February 2025. Contagious Interview is the name given to a…