Business

(Reuters) -Elon Musk’s brain technology startup Neuralink said on Monday it has received approval to launch a new feasibility study using its brain implant and an experimental robotic arm. Neuralink is conducting its PRIME study, aimed at evaluating the safety of its wireless brain-computer interface and surgical robot. It is assessing the initial effect of the implant in patients with quadriplegia, a form of paralysis, to control external devices with their thoughts. The company plans … Read more…

(Reuters) – Starbucks said the aftermath of a ransomware attack on a software supplier has been affecting its ability to pay baristas and manage their schedules, the company’s spokesperson said on Monday. The coffee giant said that an outage at a third-party vendor has disrupted a back-end Starbucks process that enables employee scheduling and time tracking. The outage is not impacting its customer service, and the company was working to ensure its employees were fully … Read more…

By Stephen Nellis (Reuters) – Nvidia on Monday showed a new artificial intelligence model for generating music and audio that can modify voices and generate novel sounds – technology aimed at the producers of music, films and video games. Nvidia, the world’s biggest supplier of chips and software used to create AI systems, said it does not have immediate plans to publicly release the technology, which it calls Fugatto, short for Foundational Generative Audio Transformer … Read more…

By Jessica DiNapoli NEW YORK (Reuters) – Procter & Gamble has been revamping its marketing and line-up of influencers on fast-growing Chinese shopping app Douyin in recent months, helping its Pantene shampoo lead growth in hair care on the platform, executives said Thursday at an investor day. The Cincinnati-based company’s investments in better packaging for Pantene in China, and improved marketing on how much to use, has led to share growth online, the company’s head … Read more…

By Arsheeya Bajwa (Reuters) -Amazon.com pumped in an additional $4 billion into artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, as the e-commerce giant goes up against Big Tech rivals in a race to capitalize on generative AI technology. This doubles Amazon’s investment in the firm known for its GenAI chatbot Claude, but it remains a minority investor, the startup said on Friday. Amazon will also be Anthropic’s main training partner for AI models. Amazon, which is Anthropic’s primary … Read more…

By Caroline Valetkevitch NEW YORK (Reuters) – Netflix shares were on track for a fifth consecutive gain on Friday and set for their biggest weekly percentage rise since January, after the streaming media company’s popular boxing match between Mike Tyson and Jake Paul. The stock was last up 0.2% at $899.06, off its intraday record high of $908 on Thursday. It has risen every session since the Nov. 15 fight, taking the stock up more … Read more…

GEORGETOWN (Reuters) – U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil has pulled out of negotiations with Guyana’s government on terms for exploring and developing a shallow-water block, the South American country’s vice president said on Thursday. Exxon, U.S.-based Hess Corp and China’s CNOOC won block S8 in a bidding round launched in late 2022. They had been engaged in negotiations for non-fiscal terms of the project. The company had wanted to use the offshore area for carbon … Read more…

By Deborah Mary Sophia, Akash Sriram and Kenrick Cai (Reuters) – Efforts by U.S. antitrust regulators to break up Alphabet by forcing a sale of its Google Chrome browser and other proposals to limit its search dominance are likely to run into legal challenges on grounds the remedies are extreme.  After a ruling in August that Google illegally monopolized the search market, U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors argued to a judge on Wednesday that the … Read more…

By Nell Mackenzie LONDON (Reuters) – Muddy Waters has taken a short position in cosmetics company Elf Beauty, the hedge fund’s chief executive Carson Block said at the Sohn conference in London on Wednesday. Shares in Elf were down 10% on the day after Block alleged at the event that Elf had overstated its revenue over the past three years, possibly by as much as $190 million. California-based Elf did not immediately respond to Reuters … Read more…