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FinFuse, Leawood, KS (2026)

07/22/2026

Power outage? Automakers want you to use your EV as a backup source: Winter Storm Uri, the multiday freeze that slammed Texas in February 2021 and pummeled the state’s power grid, has been on Kenneth Kovar’s mind ever since. Though the resident of New Braunfels, northeast of San Antonio, didn’t lose power at the time, he wasn’t able to run his septic tank—it is independent from local systems. He had to fill his toilets with water from his backyard pool.

So when Kovar, 64, bought a Ford F-150 last fall, his hope was to be better prepared for any new crisis.

“I was interested in trying to find some sort of power backup situation,” he said.

Now, Kovar has a setup from Ford that allows drivers of certain F-150 models to plug their vehicle directly into their electric meter to power parts of their home during an outage.

It is the latest example of automakers broadly adapting their electrification technologies to the home energy business, especially as demand on the grid increases and sales of electric vehicles slow. Car companies are looking to leverage their multibillion-dollar EV investments to tap into a promising market in vehicle, home and grid technology, both for backup power and for supporting electrical grid resiliency.

“They’re trying to look for other businesses that they might sell into,” said Parth Vaishnav, assistant professor of sustainable systems at the University of Michigan.

Ford’s latest connects F-150 drivers to their meter

Drivers of the F-150 PowerBoost hybrid and F-150 Lightning electric pickup trucks can now plug in a one-foot long adapter to a 240-volt outlet onboard. That adapter—which Ford made with company Global Power Products—makes the vehicle compatible to plug into a longer, separate cable. That cable connects to a transfer switch installed directly on one’s electric meter.

Through the adapter and cable series, homeowners can connect their vehicle essentially right to their home’s breaker box. The homeowner simply turns on and off which breaker switches they want for which devices they want powered.

“The way we think about it, especially for customers who already have a compatible vehicle is, you already own the power source, it’s in your driveway,” said Amanda Roraff, Ford’s grid and energy services business acceleration lead.

The Lightning might provide power for two to three days, depending on what home devices are being used, and the PowerBoost Hybrid, up to five days on a single tank of gas.

The automaker says its solution is a less expensive way to supply backup power. Conventional, diesel-powered portable generators and full-home standby setups require expensive installation, costing several thousands of dollars. This solution, which also requires professional installation at the meter, starts around $1,100.

The setup only applies to about 200,000 vehicles so far, and it is also exclusively for outages. Ford also offers its Home Integration System for bidirectionality, sending power both from the vehicle to the home and from the home to the vehicle, while also being able to feed the grid.

Other automakers are boosting their energy solutions

Over 630,000 U.S. vehicles already have this functionality, estimates say, and automakers are rapidly expanding their available options with the goal of full vehicle-to-grid support in the long run.

South Korean auto brand Kia and Wallbox, an EV charging company, have teamed up so that drivers of eligible compatible vehicles can have home power backup during outages or during periods of high demand, to cut their utility use. They can send power back to the grid.

Tesla’s technology is similar—allowing drivers of equipped vehicles to connect to their home using additional Tesla hardware. The Cybertruck provides full vehicle-to-home capability, where other Tesla models can only connect to and power specific devices or appliances.

General Motors is also in the energy space.

A recent partnership with WeaveGrid, for instance, allows homeowners who drive certain GM EVs—and have the automaker’s home system and a proper grid interconnection—to enroll in some grid reliability utility programs. Once an outage is detected, GM’s vehicle-to-home tech has the capability to disconnect one’s home from the grid and start supplying power from their GM EV.

“If you can imagine the future as we go forward, it’s having the ability—now that we have this single platform—that allows our customer to experience our system,” said Wade Sheffer, vice president of GM energy, “but also can have the full control of the energy.”

The capability is an important lifeline amid EV sales slowdown

Not only is this business critical amid growing grid demand and increasing power outages, experts say automakers need to pivot with the EV market less active under current U.S. federal policy. Pure EV sales in the U.S. year-over-year are down 23.8%, according to a July Cox Automotive report on the first half of 2026. This demonstrates what an asset that EV and hybrid ownership can be.

The tech is not without challenges.

On the industry side, these systems have to undergo third-party testing to ensure they meet safety standards, and the vehicle and the charger need to be programmed to communicate. It also requires the approval of the utility where the capability is being used. It could take years to get an interconnect agreement.

On the customer side, homeowners need to understand their vehicles’ abilities and how to self-manage their system. It also just brings another generator of power into the home mix.

Still, experts see opportunity, especially with interest in EV sales high outside of the U.S.

“We already know during an outage, its impact, providing electricity to the home,” said Scott Samuelsen, engineering professor emeritus at the University of California, Irvine. “This is going to become very, very popular.”

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The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

—Alexa St. John, Associated Press

http://dlvr.it/TTftCK

07/21/2026

OpenAI’s ad strategy faces a major reality check: It wasn’t long ago that pundits predicted OpenAI’s advertising business could eventually overshadow those of Meta and Google. The company was similarly upbeat. But a new report on the early numbers suggests that optimism may be misplaced.

The study, from Emarketer, estimates that OpenAI’s U.S. ad revenue will fall 90% short of its five-year target. The firm did not forecast OpenAI’s global revenue.

OpenAI had projected ad revenue of $2.5 billion this year, with a goal of more than $100 billion by 2030. Emarketer’s research, however, estimates that the combined ad revenue of standalone chatbots, including ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot app, Google’s AI Mode, and Amazon’s Alexa for Shopping, will total less than $1 billion this year.

By 2030, Emarketer estimates that advertising across all chatbots, not just OpenAI’s, will generate only $5.41 billion.

It is the latest development in OpenAI’s complicated relationship with advertising.

Mixed messages

Most observers had long assumed that OpenAI would eventually enter the advertising market to increase its revenue. CEO and co-founder Sam Altman cast doubt on that thinking in 2024, however, when he said “I will disclose, just as a personal bias, that I hate ads” during a fireside chat at Harvard University.

Ads, he continued, “fundamentally misalign a user’s incentives with the company providing the service,” and the idea of mixing advertising with OpenAI’s products was “uniquely unsettling.”

A little more than a year and a half later, however, OpenAI began testing ads in the free version of ChatGPT, as well as in the lower-cost ChatGPT Go.

“The best ads are useful, entertaining, and help people discover new products and services,” the company wrote in a blog post at the time. “Given what AI can do, we’re excited to develop new experiences over time that people find more helpful and relevant than any other ads.”

Last month, four months after launching the trial, OpenAI was promoting advertising as a way to broaden access to its products. “The revenue that we make from the ads offering is going to subsidize and grow access to information,” OpenAI advertising chief David Dugan said at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

The $100 billion target has always been ambitious. Meta has been building its advertising business since 2007, and that figure represents roughly half of the Facebook and Instagram parent company’s current ad revenue. Reaching it would require advertisers to substantially alter their strategies, shifting money away from search engines and social media and into AI systems.

OpenAI would also have to persuade advertisers that its platform offered a better use of their budgets than Meta and Google, both of which have AI products of their own.

An IPO on the horizon

The projected shortfall comes as OpenAI moves closer to an expected initial public offering. The company confidentially filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission in early June, setting the stage for what could be one of the largest public-market debuts in history.

Although there was speculation that OpenAI might accelerate its IPO to beat Anthropic to market, the company has instead proceeded cautiously. It is now reportedly targeting a 2027 launch, which could give it more time to boost its valuation and allow the recent market volatility to subside.

A severe shortfall in advertising revenue could create another obstacle as OpenAI tries to build investor enthusiasm. That task may already be difficult given the company’s financial losses and the early performance of competitor SpaceX. Shares of that company have fallen below their IPO price and are down more than 40% from their post-IPO high.

http://dlvr.it/TTdzdT

07/20/2026

Major League Baseball cracks down on iPad use in dugouts. Here’s why: Major League Baseball is restricting iPad usage in dugouts to prevent the tablets from running artificial intelligence to help make strategy decisions, and former reliever Adam Ottavino said the New York Mets’ use of technology helped prompt the move.

The tablets have access to video and league-provided data, and also included a custom tab where teams could access other programs. MLB made the custom tabs inaccessible to teams starting Wednesday night, when the second half of the season started.

“In many cases, the custom tab had expanded the use of the dugout iPads beyond their originally intended purpose to include recommendations regarding substitutions, pitch calling, and other in-game decisions traditionally made by players and coaches,” MLB executive vice president of baseball operations Morgan Sword wrote in a June 11 memo to general managers, assistant GMs and video coordinators.

The memo, first reported by The Athletic, was obtained by The Associated Press.

“I read the article and I was like, I can’t believe what I’m seeing. Teams are making decisions off of AI? Man, that’s just crazy,” Yankees captain Aaron Judge said.

Ottavino said on his YouTube livestream “Baseball & Coffee” that the Mets had been using AI and cited spending by team owner Steve Cohen on the software. Ottavino pitched for the Mets from 2022-24 and is now a broadcaster on the New York Yankees’ YES Network.

“The Mets were actually the team, the main team, that got cracked down on,” Ottavino said. “They had an AI program that was very expensive apparently and they were bragging about it a little bit early on in this — the year. Some of the coaches that I know were talking about it from around the league and they had basically an AI program helping them pick pitches and I think some other stuff.”

“But MLB got wind of it and nipped that right in the bud, so apparently they weren’t the only team, but I knew about it from the Mets angle,” he said. “They tried to throw some money at the situation. Steve ponied up for — I think this program from what I heard was several hundred thousand dollars to have.”

The Mets did not comment when asked whether they had a response.

A review by the competition committee found clubs had been compliant with the regulations.

“Instituting this prohibition beginning with the second half of the season is intended to provide clubs that have relied on the custom tab with appropriate lead-time to make any necessary adjustments,” Sword wrote.

Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider called it “a little weird to kind of see the whole report on it, where you can do things kind of in real time that can sway your decision one way or another.”

“I think the biggest thing is calling pitches and kind of seeing how that can evolve in real time via technology,” he said.

MLB started a pilot program allowing use of iPads in dugouts with restrictions late in the 2015 season and expanded their use in 2016 under a deal with Apple. Video was eliminated in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season following the Houston Astros’ sign-stealing scandal, then returned in 2021.

“It hasn’t impacted us at all but I know AI is entering our arena for sure,” Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said. “It’s entering everyone’s arena. You better get on it, or you’re going to get rolled over by it.”

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AP Baseball Writer David Brandt and AP freelance writer Ian Harrison contributed to this report.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

—Ronald Blum, AP Baseball Writer

http://dlvr.it/TTd6bj

07/19/2026

Thinking Machines is coming for Anthropic’s intellectual vibe: In ads, influencer partnerships, and blog posts, Anthropic has continued to position itself as the intellectual, even creative, AI platform.

“There’s hope in hard questions,” explicates one ad. “Keep thinking with Claude,” suggests another.

Anthropic’s models, notably, are named after literary forms, while its CEO, Dario Amodei, has styled himself as a thought leader through a series of heady blog posts.

The company’s message is that AI should enhance human cognition rather than offload it.

Thinking Machines, the AI lab founded last year by former OpenAI leader Mira Murati, is now putting its own spin on that approach.

Earlier this week, the startup announced the release of its first AI model, Inkling, which it says can be fine-tuned via its Tinker platform (released last fall). The company says Inkling has 975 billion parameters, including 41 billion active parameters. It’s also an open-weights model, meaning that core aspects of the model are publicly available.

Thinking Machines concedes that Inkling is not the most powerful AI model on the market. Instead, the company aims to compete on customization. It also emphasizes that its goal is to enhance human intelligence rather than replace it.

The approach echoes some of Anthropic’s language and appears aimed at a more intellectual vision of AI.

“For artificial intelligence to benefit from distributed knowledge, it must itself be distributed. Every organization is powered by the expert knowledge of its people, gained and expressed through their work,” a recent company blog said.

“We believe in AI that helps the organization cultivate that unique knowledge, not AI that extracts a snapshot of it and replaces it with a standard offering,” the blog continued. “This cultivation is an ongoing process that requires AI to work with people, not in their stead.”

With Inkling, Thinking Machines says consumers and enterprises can shape the AI in their own image rather than use a system that reflects the average preferences of the broader population. Inkling’s terminal even includes an option to instruct the model to communicate and organize its responses according to the user’s preferences, such as writing in the style of a New Yorker article or communicating only in riddles.

The model also communicates extensively about how it’s processing prompts. Users can control how much reasoning effort and token capacity Inkling expends on a task.

All of this suggests that AI companies don’t believe they’ll get far by selling consumers technology that replaces their thinking. Consumers appear to prefer something closer to an intellectual superpower.

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http://dlvr.it/TTcL17

07/18/2026

It’s Google Maps—but for pinball: If there’s one universally beloved form of nostalgia-inducing retro tech, it’s pinball.

The thing about pinball, though, is you can’t just play a particular table at home whenever you want—at least, not unless you’re willing to spend thousands of dollars to own and maintain it.

Unlike arcade games, most of which you can play at home on a console, pinball tables are machines. They have all kinds of mechanical parts, all of which sometimes need repair or replacement. You can’t play pinball on your computer, or in an emulator—not really. Real pinball can only be experienced in person.

But get this: These tables are all over the place, even in our AI-saturated era of 2026. There are arcades, sure, but pinball tables are also showing up in bars and restaurants.

So what if there’s a particular table you remember—from your childhood, perhaps, or from college—that you wish you could play? Or share with a friend? How are you supposed to know where you can play it?

Today’s Cool Tools treasure is exactly the answer—maybe one you never even knew you needed.

This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures!

Meet your personal pinball pinpointer

Pinball Map is the best way to find pinball tables near you, or to search for specific tables.

➜ It’s a map of every bar, restaurant, and museum near you with pinball tables. You can even search for specific tables within it.

⌚ You can start using it immediately, in seconds. Just head to the website or install the app and start searching.

✅ There are two ways to use Pinball Map:

* The first is to open it up and see which places near you have pinball tables.

* You can click any dot to get more information about nearby venues. There’s an address, phone number, and link to the website.

* There’s also a list of which tables they have.

Pinball Map makes it easy to find venues with tables near you.

The other way to use the site is to search for a specific table.

* Type the name of the table (you’ll see suggested names as you type).

* Then enter the city you’re searching in.

* You’ll see a list of all the places near you with that specific table.

You can look for locations based on specific table availability, too.

Now, how well this works might depend on how obscure your tastes are, and how robust your neighborhood’s pinball scene is. I’m blessed to be in Oregon, where there’s an excess of riches. Your mileage may vary.

The database is maintained entirely by volunteers, including around 100 administrators. You can tell, while using it, that this is a passion project for a lot of people. It’s exactly the kind of thing that can restore your faith in the internet.

More than that, though, it’s a good way to get out of the house. Take a break, buy yourself a snack and a beverage, and go play some pinball. You never know what kind of retro-tech memories you might resurface.

* Pinball Map is a website that also offers mobile apps for Android and iOS.

* It’s completely free, though donations are welcome. There’s also a small selection of merch for purchase as another way to give back, if you’re so inspired.

* The service doesn’t require accounts or have any ads or tracking. It also swears it doesn’t share any location info with anyone, and it’s open source, too, so anyone with the right know-how can peek under the hood to confirm.

Treat yourself to all sorts of geeky goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletter—starting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app that’ll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.

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http://dlvr.it/TTbn5c

07/17/2026

Musk’s SpaceX Starship launch suddenly aborted in what would have been it’s 13th flight: SpaceX’s mega Starship rocket came within a second or so from blasting off on a test flight Thursday, but some of the engines failed to ignite, triggering a launch abort amid billowing clouds of smoke and v***r.

Elon Musk, the company’s founder and CEO, said two engines will be replaced “to be confident of a good flight” before sending Starship from Texas on a space-skimming journey halfway around the world. It will be the 13th flight for Starship, which at 407 feet (124 meters) tall with 33 main engines is the world’s biggest and most powerful rocket.

SpaceX’s launch webcast showed the start of engine ignition three seconds before the planned liftoff, viewed from a drone high above the pad. Although the company did not elaborate, onscreen data showed four engines not firing, with the remaining 29 engines immediately shutting down and keeping the rocket anchored to the pad. It was the first time a full-scale Starship experienced a last-second abort like this.

The launch team immediately began draining the fuel from the rocket.

“Most probable launch timing is early next week,” Musk said via X.

Everything was going SpaceX’s way, even the weather, until the partial engine ignition. In the end, the rocket’s automatic launch system worked as planned by halting everything. Too few operating engines could have doomed the launch. Some earlier Starship flights ended in explosive fireballs.

Elon Musk’s company had newest, most advanced Starlinks aboard

Twenty of SpaceX’s newest and most advanced Starlinks were on board Starship for release during the planned hourlong flight from Starbase, the company’s hub near the Texas-Mexico border. The internet satellites were going to try communicating with Starlinks already in orbit while taking photos of Starship’s heat shield.

Neither the first-stage booster nor spacecraft were meant to be recovered, with both ending up in the sea.

The rocket’s automatic launch system worked as planned by halting everything. Too few operating engines could have resulted in a failed launch. Some earlier Starship flights, for example, ended in explosive fireballs.

World’s biggest rocket is key to putting astronauts back on the moon

NASA is counting on Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in the next few years. The space agency has hired SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build and fly the lunar landers that will return humanity to the surface of the moon after an absence of more than half a century.

Both companies need to have their landers — Starship and Blue Moon — ready to fly by next year so that the newly named Artemis III crew can practice docking their capsule with them in orbit around Earth. The mission after that — Artemis IV planned for no earlier than 2028 — would use one of those landers to take two astronauts to the moon’s south polar region.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

—Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace Writer

http://dlvr.it/TTb6rT

07/16/2026

This Meta study shows AI chatbots could be spreading restrictions on free expression: Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of President Donald Trump or Britain’s King Charles III, and Anthropic’s chatbot would oblige. Prompted to do the same for Thailand’s king, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince or China’s leader, and the artificial intelligence model declined.

It is a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday, showing that major AI systems, including those built in the U.S., are more likely to refuse to criticize restrictive leaders or governments. It raises concerns that the large language models powering chatbots and AI agents could be regurgitating and spreading government influence over online speech as the technology is increasingly adopted worldwide.

“There is a real risk that, if model developers do not undertake human rights due diligence and implement mitigation measures, they will build AI infrastructure that, intentionally or not, has the effect of extending illegitimate restrictions on freedom of expression globally,” according to the report from the quasi-independent body.

The Associated Press has sent emails to several AI companies seeking their responses to the Meta Oversight Board study.

The findings come as countries are determining how to put up guardrails around AI without impeding their ability to compete in the rapidly developing field. That includes a Trump administration oversight effort related to the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems.

AI models extend state influence beyond borders

The oversight board, which has been working on state influence on tech companies and the impact on freedom of expression, came up with seven questions related to political criticism to pose to chatbots about both restrictive and permissive governments.

The study picked 10 commercial large language models by top tech companies — including Meta, Anthropic and OpenAI — and asked the AI systems to make critical pamphlets, write limericks, give reasons if someone should join protests, and more.

“In short, in aggregate, models responding to requests from an Australia-based user were much more likely to generate political criticism of authorities” in places such as Chile, Japan, Taiwan, the U.K. and the U.S. “compared to where criticism of authorities is legally restricted and penalized,” such as in Cambodia, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand and Turkey, the report said.

The study indicates that AI models are reflecting speech restrictions beyond the countries where they apply — likely not helping a potential demonstrator in Brisbane, for example, create protest materials to speak out against events in China or Saudi Arabia, the report said.

“Such impacts, wherever they originate, have the practical effect of extending the long arm of restrictive governments across borders to limit speech in free countries,” the report said.

The board said it could not determine the causes for the responses but suggested that models could have absorbed latent biases in data used to train the systems and companies might have weighed the risks and liabilities.

Other researchers warn about a growing problem in AI results in non-English languages

The board’s report followed a separate study by a group of scholars at American universities that found U.S.-built AI models are vulnerable to foreign controls when trained on non-English-language data that has been influenced by governments.

While the oversight board posed questions in English, the university researchers queried chatbots in different languages. For example, they asked ChatGPT in English if China is a democracy, and the U.S.-developed chatbot said it’s not generally considered one. Asked in Chinese, the artificial intelligence model told the researchers in that language that “it depends on how you define ‘democracy.'”

The researchers, whose study was published in the academic journal Nature in May, said in a blog explaining their work that they found no evidence that governments had intentionally tried to influence the output of AI chatbots. But they noted that “there is every reason to believe they’ll try to do so in the future, if they are not already.”

“People often talk about AI as if it learns from the internet in some neutral way. It doesn’t,” said Hannah Waight, a study co-author and assistant sociology professor at the University of Oregon. “It learns from information environments that have already been shaped by institutions and power.”

No easy solution to how data is being fed to AI models

Carlos Carrasco-Farré, who specializes in machine learning, AI, misinformation, social media and human-machine interactions at Esade Business School in Barcelona, said that “AI systems inherit not only biases contained within individual documents but also inequalities in who has the power to produce and suppress information at scale.”

There is no easy solution, though developers could assess the data to avoid treating thousands of copies of the same state narrative as if they are thousands of independent voices as well as run multilingual audits, said Carrasco-Farré, who was not part of either study.

Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI responded to requests for comment on the researchers’ study published in May.

—Didi Tang, Associated Press

http://dlvr.it/TTZF4Q

07/15/2026

OpenAI’s fight with Apple is really about Silicon Valley’s war for talent: OpenAI, for the second time in the past few months, is facing a legal battle that could alter the company’s trajectory. This time, it is squaring off against Apple in a fight whose origins can, in some ways, be traced to a time long before the AI giant existed.

Apple’s case against OpenAI centers on accusations that the company stole Apple’s intellectual property. The iPhone maker alleges that OpenAI asked former Apple employees and prospective recruits to bring information about unreleased products with them. OpenAI denies that claim, saying in a statement that it has “no interest in other companies’ trade secrets” and would “remain focused on building innovative technology.”

The unspoken part of the feud, however, concerns OpenAI’s pilfering of Apple’s workforce. To date, more than 400 former Apple employees have jumped ship, lured by steep compensation packages. Apple has recently begun offering larger-than-normal retention bonuses to prevent further defections.

Poaching was once relatively uncommon in Silicon Valley. But as a new generation of tech giants becomes established, the rules may be changing.

Job hopping barriers

Silicon Valley’s questionable anti-poaching history reaches back at least to 2007, when Steve Jobs emailed then-Google CEO Eric Schmidt about Google’s attempt to recruit an Apple engineer.

“I would be very pleased if your recruiting department would stop doing this,” Jobs wrote.

Schmidt forwarded the email to unknown parties, adding “Can you get this stopped and let me know why this is happening?”

That same year, Palm’s CEO wrote to Jobs that an anti-poaching agreement would be “likely illegal.” Intel chief executive Paul Otellini also composed an email disclosing an agreement with Google. “We have a handshake ‘no recruit’ between eric and myself. I would not like this broadly known,” he wrote.

All of these emails came to light following a 2010 antitrust action brought by the Department of Justice against Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Intuit, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and eBay. The civil suit alleged that the companies had colluded not to recruit one another’s employees, violating the Sherman Act, a federal law prohibiting anticompetitive business practices. The Justice Department said the agreements reduced workers’ wages and stock bonuses.

The companies settled the case. Months later, workers filed a civil class-action lawsuit over the practice, seeking $3 billion. Within three years, all of the tech companies had reached settlements without admitting guilt. Ultimately, more than 64,000 workers received an average payment of $5,770 each.

Today, there is no formal agreement among tech firms restricting them from recruiting one another’s workers. The practice nevertheless remains relatively rare.

A new breed

Up-and-coming tech firms, however, do not appear inclined to follow that norm. In the 2000s, Meta lured hundreds of employees away from Google, enraging executives who demanded that Sheryl Sandberg stop the practice. She refused. More recently, Meta has actively recruited from AI rivals, hiring key employees from Apple, OpenAI, and other startups.

OpenAI, which was founded in 2015, now appears to be following the same recruitment playbook. High-profile Apple employees who have joined Sam Altman’s company include Tang Tan, Apple’s former vice president of product design; Paul Meade, who oversaw the Vision Pro headset and smart-glasses projects; and Chang Liu, who worked on the iPhone for more than eight years. Jony Ive, who left Apple years ago to start his own company, is also now with OpenAI after it acquired his io startup last year.

There have been no reports of other emerging tech giants poaching workers from Silicon Valley’s established companies, but that does not mean the practice is not happening. Anthropic has filed paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an IPO and will face pressure to keep investors happy. High-profile hires could help. Elon Musk, who runs SpaceX, also has a long history of disregarding industry conventions.

A different generation of tech companies is threatening to become Silicon Valley’s new ruling class. Should they succeed, the question is whether they will discourage job hopping as their predecessors did—or turn the competition for top talent into a free-for-all.

http://dlvr.it/TTYK5x

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