A disclaimer about this newsletter’s title: I didn’t quite watch 243 one-minute startup pitches myself during Y Combinator’s Demo Day last week. I think I probably set a personal record for pitch consumption, though. It was a rewarding experience, albeit an occasionally dizzying one.
When Y Combinator began holding Demo Days, a handful of budding tech comp
The ‘Gram is doing a lot of heavy lifting for Meta.
That’s one of the key takeaways from court documents filed by Meta last week, as the company attempts to get a federal antitrust lawsuit dismissed. Specifically, the documents say that Instagram generated advertising revenue totaling $32.4 billion in 2021, and $16.5 billion during the first half of 2022—up fr
ChatGPT was the tech story of 2023 because it put the power of language AI directly into the hands of consumers. And yet ChatGPT was just the outside wrapper, the user interface, sitting atop a stack of foundation models, server chips, and other enabling technologies all working in the background. And it’s from within the realm of these enabling technologies that some of 2023’s most meaningful advancem
Total solar eclipses are a mind-expanding demonstration of “the right place at the right time”—and for centuries, scientists and enthusiasts have voyaged to get there in the hopes that they might catch a glimpse of the sun’s corona, probe the solar wind, test theories like relativity, and simply experience the sublime wonder and dread that comes with being part of a rare cosmic alignment.
The most serious umbraphiles,
Simple economics have been pushing manufacturers to find less energy-intensive ways to make things, and companies that make the machinery to power a greener economy are benefiting too. “You go where the dollars go,” sums up Elfrun von Koeller, an analyst with Boston Consulting Group. “Trillions of dollars of value creation will move into renewable spaces.”
Take the oldest enterprise on Fast Company’s list of the most innovative companies in manufacturing,
Data science thrives when advanced computing power is brought to bear on troves of information. In 2024, that’s exactly what’s happening. Blue chip companies have gone all-in on data gathering. Now, they want AI-powered tools to help them make sense of it. Those on Fast Company’s list of Most Innovative Companies in data science are leading this boom, helping multibillion-dollar i
On February 2, in what was ostensibly supposed to be the most significant gadget launch of the year, if not the decade, the Apple Vision Pro went on sale to the public. In the run-up to the launch, there were countless think pieces on how Apple’s first new device in nearly 10 years could change the tech industry—and perhaps society. Heck, I even wrote a piece exploring whether snapping up a Vision Pro
Some of today’s hottest companies have remained untouchable for investors. Stripe, for instance, was valued at $65 billion in February. And SpaceX is estimated to be worth $175 billion. If accurate, that puts Stripe at a level higher than S
For 155 years, the Santa Barbara News-Press and its predecessors played a fundamental role in the California coastal city as its primary broadsheet newspaper. The paper’s historic legacy is messy, especially in the modern era.
But even a complicated legacy, marked by years of decline, deserves better than fears that it could live a second life as a “zombie website,” a type of news site infamous for replacing high-quality archives with low-quality or even AI-generated
Since late 2022, every major tech company has initiated mass layoffs—with the exception of Apple. But now that is finally about to change. According to information the iPhone maker filed with the State of California’s Employment Development Department, the company is preparing to let go more than 600 employees. Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s first mass layoff in recent years.