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Nvidia has reportedly acquired Gretel, a San Diego-based startup that’s developed a platform to generate synthetic AI training data. Terms of the acquisition are unknown. The price tag was said to be nine figures, exceeding Gretel’s most recent valuation of $320 million, according to Wired. Gretel and its team of roughly 80 employees will be folded into Nvidia, where its tech will be deployed as part of the former’s suite of generative AI services for developers, Wired reported. Gretel was founded in 2019 by Alex Watson, Laszlo Bock, John Myers, and Ali Golshan, who also serves as the company’s CEO. The…

Raj Aggarwal is leaving AWS after nearly three years as the company’s GM of generative AI and revenue acceleration, according to a LinkedIn post Aggarwal published Wednesday. “I’m proud of the pioneering work our team did in generative AI from its earliest days,” Aggarwal said in his post. “We built what might be the world’s first large-scale generative AI products — launched to tens of thousands of sellers, used hundreds of thousands of times, driving a 4.9% increase in pipeline generation.” Aggarwal played a notable role in AWS’ recent push into generative AI. In the LinkedIn post, he mentioned his…

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order Thursday calling for the shutdown of the U.S. Education Department, according to a White House official, advancing a campaign promise to eliminate an agency that’s been a longtime target of conservatives. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity before an announcement. Trump has derided the Department of Education as wasteful and polluted by liberal ideology. However, finalizing its dismantling is likely impossible without an act of Congress, which created the department in 1979.A White House fact sheet said the order would direct Secretary Linda McMahon “to take…

In a new report, a California-based policy group co-led by Fei-Fei Li, an AI pioneer, suggests that lawmakers should consider AI risks that “have not yet been observed in the world” when crafting AI regulatory policies. The 41-page interim report released on Tuesday comes from the Joint California Policy Working Group on Frontier AI Models, an effort organized by Governor Gavin Newsom following his veto of California’s controversial AI safety bill, SB 1047. While Newsom found that SB 1047 missed the mark, he acknowledged last year the need for a more extensive assessment of AI risks to inform legislators. In…

The US president renews his call for Iran to end support for the Yemeni group that has been targeting Israel over its war in Gaza.Washington, DC – Donald Trump has renewed his call for Iran to end its support for the Houthis, pledging that the Yemeni group will be defeated by the United States. The US president’s comments on Wednesday came a day after the Houthis claimed attacks targeting American warships in the Red Sea area, as well as a missile launch against Israel. Wednesday also marked yet another day of US strikes on Houthi strongholds in Yemen, including the…

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has added image generation capabilities to its API. Only one model is available in the API at the moment, “grok-2-image-1212.” Given a caption, the model can generate up to 10 images per request (limited to 5 requests per second) in JPG format, priced at $0.07 per image. For comparison, AI startup Black Forest Labs, with which xAI partnered last year to launch image generation on Musk’s social network X, charges around $0.05 per image. Another popular image model provider, Ideogram, charges $0.08 on the higher end. In its documentation, xAI notes that the API doesn’t…

Pierre Poilievre is trying to distance himself from Donald Trump as the US president’s threats against Canada fuel public anger.The leader of Canada’s Conservative Party has seized on Donald Trump’s remarks about the upcoming Canadian election to distance himself from the United States president amid slumping poll numbers. Trump said in an interview with Fox News this week that he didn’t care who wins the upcoming federal election in Canada but that he would “rather deal with a Liberal than a Conservative”. On Wednesday, Pierre Poilievre said the US president — whose tariffs and annexation threats against Canada have fuelled…

NVIDIA’s GTC conference kicked off with a series of announcements highlighting its role in advancing autonomous driving technology. The chipmaker provides automakers and autonomous vehicle companies with a handful of Nvidia-branded tools to help power self-driving cars and create digital twins of factories. On Tuesday, companies including Torc, Gatik, and even General Motors announced plans to use Nvidia products for vehicle production, robotics to automated driving.  To avoid any confusion among the slew of brand names Nvidia has bestowed upon its hardware and software tools, here’s a quick glossary of terms: Drive AGX: Nvidia’s in-vehicle supercomputer that processes real-time sensor…

Dataminr, a data analytics company that counts NATO and OpenAI among its customers, has raised $85 million in a combination of convertible financing and credit, the company announced on Wednesday. It’s chump change for Dataminr, which closed a $475 million round at a $4.1 billion valuation in 2021. But the company has seen its fair share of downs as well as ups. In November 2023, Dataminr laid off 20% of its staff as it raced to fend off economic headwinds and “doubled down” on AI. “The new capital will allow Dataminr to accelerate its growth trajectory, [and] provide investors with…

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — North Carolina Democratic Gov. Josh Stein on Wednesday urged Republicans in charge of the legislature to roll back upcoming income tax rate cuts and scale back private school vouchers that now can be received by families of all income levels.Stein, who took office in January after eight years as attorney general, made the comments while releasing his first two-year state government budget proposal. He wants to spend $33.65 billion in the year starting July 1 — about $2 billion more than planned for this fiscal year — then increase it by $700 million the following year.…