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Lyft has crossed a major threshold in its autonomous vehicle strategy: Waymo robotaxis are now available to hail through the Lyft app in Nashville, marking the company's first commercial driverless ride-hailing service without a human operator behind the wheel.
The Federal Trade Commission has issued a five-year ban on General Motors selling customer data to consumer reporting agencies and third-party data brokers, marking one of the most aggressive federal actions yet against automakers' data collection practices.
Central bankers in the United States, Japan and the United Kingdom face a moment of truth this week as surging inflation raises the prospect of higher interest rates, with all three countries set to announce rate decisions against a backdrop of turbulent global bond markets and the ongoing Iran war.
Tesco has reported to City of London police after its brand was used without permission in advertisements for unlicensed casinos on Facebook and Instagram, becoming the latest in a string of high-profile companies and sports stars to fall victim to the scam.
Reform UK has been given a record £36 million ($49 million) donation by British cryptocurrency billionaire Ben Delo, the co-founder of the BitMEX exchange, marking the largest single donation ever made to a UK political party and making Delo the country's biggest political donor.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said the company will not go public in 2026, calling it an 'ill-advised moment' given the current state of AI safety. The remarks, made in a Fortune interview, come as the firm navigates fallout from the OpenAI-HuggingFace hack and broader industry debates about the pace of AI development.
French champagne producers have been granted permission to temporarily raise the alcohol content of bubbly to 15%, exceeding the usual 13% cap, following record heatwaves and drought that produced grapes with exceptionally high sugar levels, the Comite Champagne industry association announced.
The US Department of Justice has launched an antitrust probe into Nvidia's $20 billion licensing deal with AI accelerator startup Groq, according to reports. The deal, structured as a technology license and talent acquisition rather than a full merger, left Groq's core inference-as-a-service business intact but stripped it of key engineering staff, leading senators and regulators to question whether it was engineered to avoid regulatory scrutiny.
Victoria Police has conducted dozens of welfare checks after an Optus outage on Friday caused some callers to struggle to connect to the national Triple Zero emergency line, with 41 calls referred to police for follow-up.
The Federal Reserve appears increasingly likely to raise interest rates next week, as new data shows annual inflation remaining stubbornly high and a strong jobs report adding to pricing pressures. The combination has shifted market expectations toward a rate hike, even as President Trump pushes for lower rates amid the ongoing war with Iran.
Nscale, the UK-based AI data center startup, has appointed former OpenAI executive Fidji Simo to its board, joining a roster that already includes Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker and Nick Clegg. The appointment comes as the two-year-old company reportedly prepares for an IPO this fall and seeks up to $3.5 billion in pre-IPO financing.
Automattic has officially confirmed that Matt Mullenweg has returned as chairman and CEO, ending a chaotic 48-hour period during which the board had voted to place him on paid leave and install CFO Mark Davies as interim CEO. The confirmation, issued Saturday evening, states Mullenweg has "full support of the board," though the events of the past week have raised questions about the company's governance.
The UK economy grew by 0.4% in July, defying City forecasts of zero growth, as the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence services offset the economic fallout from the Iran war, according to official figures that offer a welcome boost to Chancellor John Healey ahead of next month’s budget.
The UK public spending watchdog, the National Audit Office (NAO), has warned that unless the government accelerates its £70bn programme to upgrade the electricity grid, consumers will face an additional £7.8bn in energy costs annually by 2030, while economic growth will also be held back.
LinkedIn has beat two proposed class-action lawsuits accusing the Microsoft subsidiary of scanning users' browser extensions, after a federal judge ruled the plaintiffs failed to establish legal standing. The decision, handed down Tuesday by Judge Vince Chhabria in US District Court for the Northern District of California, dismissed the cases but granted leave to amend — while expressing doubt the claims can ever succeed.
Mark Wahlberg, the Oscar-nominated actor and serial entrepreneur, is set to appear at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where he will discuss his business ventures rather than his Hollywood career. He will join Keebeck Wealth Management founder and CEO Bruce K. Lee for a main stage fireside chat at the conference.
Proxima Fusion announced plans Wednesday to build a €140 million (US$162.6 million) factory to produce fusion-grade high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape, a critical component for its reactor design. The move is intended to reduce the startup's dependence on Asian suppliers, which currently dominate HTS tape production.
Woolworths increased the prices of at least four popular items — including a 33% mark-up on chicken fillets — within days of launching a three-month 'Price Freeze' promotion on 300 family staples, according to pricing data provided to Guardian Australia.
Defense tech startup Mach Industries has raised $600 million in a Series C extension, doubling its valuation to $3.7 billion in just three months, the company announced Thursday. The round follows a $300 million Series C in June that valued it at $1.8 billion, which itself represented a quadruple increase from a $470 million valuation in June 2025.
Google has agreed to buy 1 million carbon credits from Indian climate-tech startup Mitti Labs through 2030, in what the companies say is the largest publicly announced deal to date for credits generated from cutting methane emissions in rice farming.
Bending Spoons, the Italian serial acquirer of software companies, has agreed to buy workplace collaboration platform Miro for $1.36 billion in cash — a fraction of the $17.5 billion valuation the company commanded during the pandemic-era SaaS boom of 2021. The deal, announced Thursday, represents a 92% decline in value and follows the same pattern as Bending Spoons' purchase of Airtable for $1.28 billion last month.
John Healey, the UK Chancellor, is facing mounting pressure to reform the £100,000 childcare threshold—dubbed a ‘cliff edge’—that strips families of 30 hours of weekly state-funded care when a parent’s income exceeds that level, leading some to reduce their working hours or stop working entirely.
Google has announced plans to invest at least €13 billion ($15 billion) in digital infrastructure and supporting projects in Finland over the next two years, including new datacenters, a landmark nuclear power purchase agreement with Fortum, and additional onshore wind and battery storage capacity.
Massachusetts has become the third state in three months to tighten rules on data center development, with Governor Maura Healey signing an executive order requiring new facilities larger than 25 megawatts to supply their own clean power or pay into a ratepayer protection fund. The mandate, which also directs local communities to avoid nondisclosure agreements and pauses a sales tax exemption, reflects growing public opposition to the energy demands of the expanding industry.
Four former Amazon warehouse employees have filed a class-action lawsuit against the company, alleging that it discriminated against pregnant workers by refusing accommodations such as bathroom breaks and chairs, and then unlawfully terminated them for taking medically necessary absences.
Al Jazeera's business programme Counting the Cost has turned its attention to rising borrowing costs across the world, a trend affecting households, businesses and governments. The programme offers analysis of why interest rates and bond yields are climbing and what it means for the global economy.
John Ternus, Apple's new chief executive, helmed the company's annual product showcase on Wednesday, marking the first time the public has seen the executive lead a major event since succeeding Tim Cook. The $4.5tn tech giant is widely expected to unveil a folding iPhone, among other products.
Autonomy, the California vehicle-subscription startup that nearly collapsed after pledging to buy 23,000 electric vehicles in 2022, is adding internal combustion engine (ICE) cars to its fleet for the first time. The company said on Wednesday it will offer gas-powered Ford models including the Mustang, Ranger, F-150, Bronco Sport, Escape and Explorer, sourced from Los Angeles-based Galpin Motors, in a bid to attract customers who have so far resisted electric-only subscriptions.
Sequoia Capital is doubling down on Cymphony, a two-year-old startup that raises $30 million to help enterprises manage the security risks posed by AI agents that access sensitive corporate data. The Series A round, co-led by Sequoia and SMBC Fin Atlas Beyond Fund, values the New York- and Tel Aviv-based company at over $100 million.
A recent article from Al Jazeera bearing the headline 'The losers of the US-Canada trade war' did not include any textual reporting on the subject, instead containing only links to unrelated video content.
A report released Tuesday by the AFL-CIO Tech Institute warns that universal adoption of electronic shelf labels in US grocery stores could eliminate between 44,000 and 191,000 jobs and cost workers up to $6.9 billion in annual lost wages, while also potentially increasing grocery prices through surveillance pricing.
Battery installations in the US hit a new record in the second quarter of 2026, with 20.2 gigawatt-hours of new capacity coming online, according to a report from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and the Solar Energy Industries Association. The surge puts the country on track to add 71 gigawatt-hours of batteries this year, 20% more than in 2025.
A South Korean court has ordered Kwon Hyuk-bin, founder of video game company Smilegate, to pay his ex-wife Lee Hwa-jin a record 2.55 trillion won ($1.87 billion) in assets, the largest divorce settlement ever awarded in South Korea.
Microsoft's Edge team has become the second group inside the company to admit it is struggling to keep up with a surge of code generated by AI tools, revealing that the rapid adoption of AI-assisted coding has led to a flood of browser extension submissions that its review process is struggling to handle.
The boss of National Air Traffic Services (Nats), Martin Rolfe, has apologised to passengers and ruled out a cyber-attack as the cause of widespread flight disruption that has entered its second day, with more than 1,300 flights cancelled to and from UK airports.
Fusionality, a Lausanne-based startup founded by former Google DeepMind researchers Federico Felici and Jonas Buchli, has raised $3.7 million (CHF 3 million) in a pre-seed round led by Founderful and Playfair. The company plans to develop standardised control systems and simulation environments for magnetic confinement fusion reactors, addressing what it says is a common need across the industry.
UK-based manufacturing software startup CloudNC announced a $20 million Series B extension on Wednesday, bringing its lifetime total raised to $128 million and signaling continued investor appetite for AI tools that automate CNC machining workflows.
A new report by the US-based Tech Transparency Project (TTP) has found that Meta ran hundreds of paid advertisements featuring AI-generated child sexual abuse imagery on Facebook and Instagram over the past 10 months, with more than a dozen ads appearing after the watchdog alerted the company. The findings come two months after the Indian government ordered Meta to remove all CSAM content from Instagram, yet 78 of the 84 ads detected in India ran after that order.
LIV Golf has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States, a move that frees all its contracted players from their deals and sets the stage for a restructured, majority player-owned league after Saudi Arabia withdrew its multibillion-dollar funding.
Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, faces an expanded class action lawsuit filed today by subscribers who say the company deceptively advertised the limits of its Max subscription tier, according to The Verge. The suit was brought by two former Federal Trade Commission attorneys.
Google has implemented changes to its search results in Europe to comply with the European Union's Digital Markets Act, but the company warns the adjustments significantly degrade search quality for travel and shopping queries, following a €460 million fine in July for favouring its own services.
The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a $1.9 billion loan to NextEra Energy to refurbish the Duane Arnold Energy Center in Iowa, a nuclear plant that Google plans to use to power its AI data centers. The loan is the second of its kind under the Trump administration, signaling a push to revive nuclear power for the tech industry.
Flights across the UK face significant delays and disruption after an air traffic control issue hit airports including Heathrow and Gatwick, with departures from London airports worst affected since the fault was reported early Tuesday afternoon.
Poseidon Aerospace has closed a $60 million Series A funding round led by TQ Ventures as the startup prepares for the first test flight of its uncrewed cargo aircraft, Egret, expected by the end of this year. The company, founded by David Zagaynov and Parker Tenney, is taking a deliberately unglamorous approach to air cargo—opting for fixed-wing combustion-engine planes rather than the vertical takeoff or electric powertrains favored by many advanced air mobility startups.
Suppliers to Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) have expressed alarm following the carmaker’s announcement that it will cut 4,000 jobs over two years, with one major parts manufacturer warning that the outlook is increasingly difficult.
Thailand has requested that operators of 49 data centers currently under construction pause their buildouts while the government develops a unified regulatory framework. The National Economic and Social Development Council (NESDC) is leading a week-long information-gathering effort, with a draft law expected within a month. However, the request is voluntary — NESDC secretary-general Danucha Pichayanan acknowledged the government lacks the power to suspend construction, and any future legislation will apply retroactively to ongoing projects.
United States data centers are facing increased scrutiny over wastewater pollution, with a recent incident at a Meta facility in Cheyenne, Wyoming, drawing attention after tests detected a rare and potentially hazardous bacterium in 801,000 gallons of discharged water.
An investigation by YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, in collaboration with Level1Techs and independent security researchers, has found that LG smart TVs are almost constantly logging and uploading data about owners and their homes, even when the TVs are offline or in standby mode.