The fallout from HP’s Humane acquisition

Welcome back to week in review. This week we look at the internal chaos around HPs $ 116 million acquisition of AI Pin Maker Humane; The new AI company of Mira Murati is from Stealth; Duolingo kills his iconic owl mascot with a cyber truck; And more! Let’s go in.
The AI pin of Humane is dead. The hardware startup announced that most of its assets were taken over by HP for $ 116 million, less than half of the $ 240 million that it collected in VC financing. The startup will immediately terminate the sale of its AI pins of $ 499 and after 28 February the wearable will no longer connect to the Humane servers. After that, the devices are unable to call, messages, AI questions/answers or cloud access. Customers who have bought an AI -pin for the past 90 days are eligible for a refund, but everyone who bought a device before that is not.
Hours after the HP acquisition It was announced, various human employees received vacancies from HP with wage increases between 30% and 70%, Plus HP shares and bonus plans, according to internal documents that were seen WAN and two sources that asked for anonymity. In the meantime, other humane employees – especially those who worked closer to the AI -pin devices – were informed that they were out of a job.
Apple’s long-awaited iPhone SE-renewal has been unveiled, three years after the last important update of the budget -oriented smartphone. The 16th is part of an exclusive group of handsets that is able to perform Apple Intelligence due to the addition of an A18 processor. The iPhone 16th also closed the Touch ID start button in favor of Face ID and exchanged the lightning gate in favor of USB-C. The iPhone 6th starts at $ 599 and starts sending on 28 February.
This is the week in TechCrunch Review, where we summarize the biggest news of the week. Do you want this to be delivered as a newsletter for your inbox every Saturday? Register here.
News
Rip, duo: Duolingo ‘killed’ his iconic owl mascot with a cyber truck, and the marketing stunt goes surprisingly well. The company launched a campaign to save DUO – and encourages users to do more lessons – because the company says it is ‘duo or dies’. Read more
OpenAI “Uncensors” Chatgpt: OpenAI no longer wants Chatgpt to adopt an editorial attitude, even if some users find it ‘morally wrong or offensive’. That means that ChatGpt will now offer multiple perspectives on controversial topics in an attempt to be neutral. Read more
Uber vs. Dordash: Uber complains Doordash and accuses the delivery group of stifling competition by intimidating restaurant owners in exclusive deals. Uber claims that Doordash restaurants only work with them. Read more
The next move by Mira Murati: Former OpenAi CTO Mira Murati’s new AI startup, think of Machines Lab, came from Stealth. The startup, which co-founder of OpenAi includes, John Schulman and former OpenAi Chief Research Officer Barret Zoph, will focus on building cooperation systems “Multimodal”. Read more
Introduction of grok 3: Elon Musk’s Xai released his newest flagship AI model, Grok 3, and revealed new possibilities for the grok iOS and Web apps. Musk claims that the new family of models is a “maximum truth seeking AI” that is sometimes “at odds with what is politically correct”. Read more
Hackers on Steam: Valve removed a video game from Steam that was essentially designed to spread malware. Security researchers discovered that the person who planted it, adapted an existing video game in an attempt to mislead gamers to install an info-stealer called Vidar. Read more
Another dei-bend: The charity of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan will put an end to internal dei programs and stop providing “social advocacy” for racial stock and immigration reforms. The Switch comes only a few weeks after the organization had assured the staff that it would continue to support dei efforts. Read more
Amazon eliminates his Android App Store: Amazon will end his App Store for Android in August in an attempt to put more focus on the company’s own devices. The company told developers that they can no longer submit new apps to the store. Read more
Mark Zuckerberg’s rebrand has not paid off: A study by the Pew Research Center showed that the views of Americans about Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are more negative than positive. About 54% of American adults say they have an unfavorable picture of Musk, while no less than 67% feel negative towards Zuckerberg. Read more
Headphones with noise suppression can hurt your brain: A new BBC report is considering whether noise-suppressing technology may re-wander the brain of people who may re-wander to and can vote nasty background noise and can mean the brain forgetting how to filter self-sounds themselves. Read more
Analysis

An exhausting look at the Doge -Universe: The dozens of people who are under or advise, Elon Musk and Doge are a real illustration of Musk’s Weblike Reach in the Tech Industry. WAN has unveiled the most important players in the Doge universe, from the inner circle from Musk to senior figures, work bees and assistants – some of whom advise and recruit for Doge. We emphasize both the connections between them and how they entered Musk’s job. Read more