Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Techpresso.
In today's Techpresso:
✂️ xAI lays off hundreds of data annotation team staffers
🇺🇸 Tether launches new USAT stablecoin
🤖 Cursor looks into selling your data for AI training
👋 Apple loses top AI manager Robby Walker
🌱 OpenAI offers mentorship to new tech founders
🎁 + 12 other news you might like
🔮 + 5 handpicked research papers and tools
✂️ xAI lays off hundreds of data annotation team staffers LINK
xAI has downsized its largest data annotation team by at least 500 general AI tutors, who were responsible for categorizing raw information used to train the company's Grok model.
Instead, xAI posted a call on X for a "Specialist AI tutor" group, which it plans to surge by 10x for gathering high-quality inputs like audio recordings and video sessions.
These layoffs occurred after several high-profile departures, including the chief financial officer, and just two months following the July launch of its newest Grok 4 AI model.
🇺🇸 Tether launches new USAT stablecoin LINK
Tether is launching a US-specific stablecoin called USAT, which is designed from top-to-bottom to comply with the new legal framework for stablecoins established by the GENIUS Act.
The new token project will be led by CEO Bo Hines, a former White House digital assets official, and will be issued by Anchorage Digital with a launch expected by year's end.
This move represents a major push into the United States for the company, which has previously avoided a US presence and will headquarter the USAT project in Charlotte, North Carolina.
🤖 Cursor looks into selling your data for AI training LINK
Anysphere is considering selling or licensing data on how engineers use its Cursor coding assistant to AI model makers, including potential competitors like OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic for training.
This potential data sale is being explored despite Cursor's privacy policy, which states the company will not train on user data without receiving explicit consent from its customers first.
Such an arrangement could help Anysphere offset the cost of running AI models, a major financial concern for the company which currently has what are described as dismal unit economics.
👋 Apple loses top AI manager Robby Walker LINK
Robby Walker, the former senior director for the delayed Apple Intelligence-powered Siri, is leaving the company at the end of October after being moved to a new AI search team.
Walker recently led an internal AI search initiative called Answers, which remains on track for a 2026 release even though his number of deputies was dramatically reduced after the move.
His departure follows an infamous pep talk where he compared the unfinished Siri to a record-setting swim that failed to reach Hawaii before he was taken off that specific assignment.
🌱 OpenAI offers mentorship to new tech founders LINK
OpenAI introduced a new program called Grove for about 15 tech founders in the nascent phases of company development, from the pre-idea to pre-seed stage.
For five weeks, participants receive mentoring from technical leaders, get early access to new tools and models, and can attend in-person workshops at the San Francisco headquarters.
After the session concludes, members will be able to continue working internally with the ChatGPT maker, which provides an opportunity for a much longer-term relationship with the firm.
Other news you might like
- FTC investigating ad sale practices at Google and AmazonLINK
- Opendoor’s new chairman wants to slash 85% of ‘bloated’ workforce: ‘I don’t know what most of them do’LINK
- Tencent poaches OpenAI researcher Yao Shunyu with reported $14M deal amid AI talent warLINK
- Encyclopedia Britannica and Merriam-Webster sue Perplexity for copying their definitionsLINK
- Exxon Says It Invented a New Graphite That Could Boost EV BatteriesLINK
- Apple breaks records in China with high iPhone 17 preordersLINK
- Micro1, a competitor to Scale AI, raises funds at $500M valuationLINK
- Education report calling for ethical AI use contains over 15 fake sourcesLINK
- The unlikely success story of tech-giant ASML, the biggest backer of France's Mistral AILINK
- GPT-5 dominated 210 Werewolf games with superior manipulation and strategic thinkingLINK
- Larry Ellison Is More Interesting Than Ever at 81LINK
- Chinese tech giants Alibaba, Baidu move away from Nvidia chips: ReportLINK
Latest research and tools
Meow: a modal editing mode for the Emacs text editor designed to integrate smoothly with existing key-bindings, reducing conflicts and the need for complex configuration.LINK
Chatbox: an AI chat app that has been restored to the U.S. App Store after its developer won a trademark dispute in federal court.LINK
Mago: a fast PHP toolchain, written in Rust, that helps developers write better code through automated linting, static analysis, and formatting.LINK
Design decisions in Clojure: a curated list of answers from creator Rich Hickey explaining the rationale behind the language's key features and common questions about its design.LINK
RL's Razor: Why Online Reinforcement Learning Forgets Less: this paper proposes that online reinforcement learning agents forget less because the data they train on changes more slowly and naturally over time.LINK
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