County Palo Alto Financial News

Rachel Wolfson has been covering the cryptocurrency, blockchain and Web3 sector since 2017. She has written for Forbes and Cointelegraph and is the host and founder of Web3 Deep Dive podcast.

U.S. stocks ticked lower and snapped an eight-day winning streak, the longest of the year

U.S. stocks are hanging near their record levels following their eight-day winning streak

Tech tycoon Mike Lynch, one of six people missing from a sunken yacht off Sicily, had been trying to move past a Silicon Valley debacle that had tarnished his legacy as an icon of British ingenuity

technology companies. Their leadership, spanning from Silicon Valley to other global tech hubs, is significantly influencing the digital landscape. Here are some of the remarkable Indian-origin leaders who have made notable contributions to the industry and are leaving a substantial impact on the tech world. Sundar Pichai, CEO, Alphabet

DevRev has raised $100.8 million in series A funding round from Khosla Ventures and others, as interest in firms utilizing artificial intelligence continues to grow. The latest funding round has brought the Palo Alto-based company's valuation to $1.15 billion, marking its entry into the unicorn club. The AI boom has reinvigorated venture capital funding, with investors making significant bets on AI startups in hopes of substantial returns from widespread AI adoption.

Billionaire Elon Musk says he’s moving the headquarters of SpaceX and social media company X to Texas from California

Due to a shock hazard, a California company is recalling nearly 1 million power adapters sold with sound machines marketed to help infants and young children sleep

Nikesh Arora, CEO and Chairman of Palo Alto Networks, is the only Indian-American to make it to the list of the top 10 highest-paid CEOs in the United States. According to a report from data analytics firm C-Suite Comp, Arora is ranked 10th on the list of highest-earning CEOs. The report featured two lists based on different metrics: «total compensation granted» in 2023 and «compensation actually paid.» Sundar Pichai of Google and Satya Nadella of Microsoft, despite their prominent positions and successful years, did not appear on either list. Nikesh Arora’s Earnings in 2023

Sundar Pichai and Microsoft’s Satya Nadella – did not make it to the list.On Monday, C-Suite Comp released two lists of the highest-paid CEOs based on two metrics: “total compensation granted" in 2023 and “compensation actually paid."Nikesh Arora, 56, was ranked number four on the list of “Highest earning CEOs in the US by total compensation granted in 2023" with earnings of $151.4 million and was on the 10th spot in the list of “Highest earning CEOs in the US by compensation actually paid in 2023" with an annual compensation of $266.4 million.Tesla CEO Elon Musk topped the list with a staggering earnings of $1.4 billion in 2023. 1- Tesla’s Elon Musk - $1.4 billion2- Palantir Technologies’ Alexander Karp - $1.1 billion3- Broadcom’s Hock Tan - $767.7 million4- Coinbase Global’s Brian Armstrong - $680.9 million5- Oracle’s Safra Catz - $304.1 million6- Airbnb’s Brian Chesky - $303.5 million7- TPG’s Jon Winkelried - $295.1 million8- Trade Desk’s Jeff Green - $291.7 million9- Applovin’s Adam Foroughi - $271.3 million10- Palo Alto Networks’ Nikesh Arora – $266.4 millionArora’s stellar career includes stints at Google and SoftBank Group.

OpenAI in May, revealed on Wednesday via social media that he has established Safe Superintelligence Inc. alongside co-founders Daniel Gross and Daniel Levy.

One of the founders of OpenAI who was involved in a failed effort to push out CEO Sam Altman says he’s starting a safety-focused artificial intelligence company

OpenAI's co-founder and former chief scientist Ilya Sutskever said on Wednesday that he was starting a new artificial intelligence company. The company is focused on creating a safe AI environment at a time when some of the biggest tech companies are looking to dominate the generative AI boom.

IIT alumni founded cybersecurity enterprise firm Rubrik, which went public in April, reported its maiden quarterly earnings on Wednesday after the listing. The company reported a 38% year-on-year jump in revenue to $187.3 million for the quarter ended April 30.

A panel of federal judges spent two hours on Tuesday wrestling with a series of legal issues raised in an attempt to overturn a fraud conviction that sent Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes to prison after a meteoric rise to Silicon Valley stardom

British tech magnate Mike Lynch has been cleared of charges alleging he orchestrated a fraud and conspiracy leading up to an $11 billion deal that turned into a costly albatross for Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett Packard

Stocks that traded heavily or had substantial price changes on Tuesday: Keysight Technologies, Nordson fall; Eli Lilly, Lam Research rise

Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak's space data startup, Privateer, has raised $56.5 million and also acquired the analytics firm Orbital Insight, a merger that will add mapping and intelligence services to Privateer's space data offerings, Privateer's CEO told Reuters. Privateer, founded in 2021 to help satellite operators navigate in Earth's increasingly crowded orbit, closed its Series A funding round in April, led by space-focused venture capital firm Aero X Ventures with other investors including Luxe Capital, Boca, Starburst, and the Winklevoss twins. The news is expected to be announced later on Monday.

Amazon is adding artificial intelligence visionary Andrew Ng (EE-ng) to its board of directors

(This story originally appeared in on Mar 27, 2024)

It’s almost impossible for an artificial intelligence (AI) startup to build anything as good as ChatGPT, but a company called Inflection was getting there. Last year the Palo Alto, California-based firm raised $1.3 billion in a single fund-raising round to turn its chatbot Pi into a personal assistant for everything. It built up a phenomenal cache of computing power, gaining access to thousands of coveted graphics-processing unit chips from Nvidia and was on track to surpass OpenAI’s free version of ChatGPT with a model it had built, remarkably, from scratch.