OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati resigned on Wednesday, saying she wants “the time and space to do my own exploration.” Murati had been among the three executives at the very top of the company behind ChatGPT, and she was briefly its leader last year while board members wrestled with …
Read More »Big Tech’s New Adversaries in Europe
If the past five years of EU tech rules could take human form, they would embody Thierry Breton. The bombastic commissioner, with his swoop of white hair, became the public face of Brussels’ irritation with American tech giants, touring Silicon Valley last summer to personally remind the industry of looming …
Read More »Want to Get Into Founder Mode? You Should Be So Lucky
Fledgling founders entering a three-month residency at Y Combinator often start their term with a bang: Brian Chesky, the cofounder and CEO of Airbnb, fires off an inspirational speech. His company, of course, started with three nobodies going through the program. This year, Chesky topped himself. Y Combinator cofounder and …
Read More »Trump’s New Silicon Valley Supporters Really Want You to Forget He Called Nazis ‘Fine People’
Some of Donald Trump's biggest and newest supporters from finance and Silicon Valley, including Elon Musk and Bill Ackman, have spent the past several weeks trying to whitewash comments the former president and current Republican presidential nominee made in relation to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017. …
Read More »Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Dies at 56
The unassuming house on Santa Margarita Avenue in Menlo Park, California, had been empty for only a couple of years when I visited in 2008, but the ghosts were still there. This was where Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google a decade previous. Here was the garage once packed …
Read More »What Project 2025 Means for Big Tech … and Everyone Else
Anyone who has spent even 15 minutes on TikTok over the past two months will have stumbled across more than one creator talking about Project 2025, a nearly thousand-page policy blueprint from the Heritage Foundation that outlines a radical overhaul of the government under a second Trump administration. Some of …
Read More »Steve Jobs Knew the Moment the Future Had Arrived. It's Calling Again
Steve Jobs is 28 years old, and seems a little nervous as he starts his speech to a group of designers gathered under a large tent in Aspen, Colorado. He fiddles with his bow tie and soon removes his suit jacket, dropping it to the floor when he finds no …
Read More »Silicon Valley Is Coconuts for Kamala Harris
Today on WIRED Politics Lab, how Democratic megadonors in Silicon Valley are showing their support for Vice President Kamala Harris now that President Joe Biden has dropped out of the race. Plus, why posts from the far-right and Republican lawmakers calling Biden’s exit a “coup” have exploded online. Leah Feiger …
Read More »For the Director of Wicked, There’s No Place Like Silicon Valley
When Jon M. Chu enters the restaurant, I barely notice him. He looks like a regular customer here for an early lunch. He doesn’t project the air of a Hollywood big shot, though by any measure he is one. Chu directed the 2018 hit Crazy Rich Asians, and he’s currently …
Read More »Silicon Valley Donors Bailed on Biden. Kamala Harris Is Winning Them Back
Hours after President Joe Biden announced that he would be dropping out of the 2024 presidential race, Democratic megadonors in Silicon Valley were already lining up to support Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of their party’s ticket. “This is what’s right for our country—and our democratic future,” wrote …
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