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Gentle Monster has shared a teaser for its upcoming Intelligent Eyewear, giving a first look at the smart glasses ahead of their December launch. The clip shows the frames and hints at a translation feature, while setting up a campaign film due later this month. The collection is being developed with Samsung and Google and is expected to run on Android XR, with Gemini integration. Pre-orders are expected to open on November 12 through its official website for US buyers.
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After adding Muse Voice for agentic AI-assistant, Meta is back with another interesting feature called Spaces, which can be used in the Muse app. Spaces basically work like feeds, bringing you information from the sources that you choose and in the format that you would like to see it in. Spaces within the app can also be organised within the Muse AI app to suit the user's requirements depending on what they prioritise at the given moment. Meta claims that Spaces can be used to track a variety of things and can even generate small games.
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Meta recently launchedits Muse agents— a new generation of cuddly agentic helpers. Now, the company has launched Spaces, a new way to communicate and collaborate with them. As far as I can tell, Spaces are basically breakout conversations that revolve around a particular topic — although Meta refers to them as “custom experiences.” They live in the sidebar of the interface where you interact with your Muse agent. Clicking on the Space brings up the conversation, where Muse works toward a particular goal on your behalf. For instance, if you wanted to plan a vacation, you could open a new Space focused on that particular project, and whenever you want to work on it with Muse, you would click to open that particular tab. Or, if you’re focused on collecting recipes for an upcoming family event, you’d open a new Space for that particular project. Other examples Meta gives are a holiday gift tracker, a wedding planner, or a space for DIY projects. “Describe an idea in chat, and Muse builds a space for you, whether that’s a tracker, a planner or a project board,” Meta says. Spaces can also be easily integrated with third-party apps and information, Meta says. “Connect the apps you use, and your spaces keep themselves up to date in the background, so new concert dates, price changes, or savings progress show up without you having to ask,” the company says. On Friday, Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s founder and CEO,postedabout the new feature on X: “Playing around with spaces in Muse lately — tell Muse what you need and it builds it. I’ve made a BBQ game, an event tracker, and a home control dashboard. Excited to see what you build.” Muse agents — and the cuddly avatars that enclose them — have been greeted with a relatively warm reception over the past few months. During its earnings call in October,Zuckerberg said thatits agents had 10 million users in the U.S. and Canada — less than two months after the agents debuted. The company is obviously busy building out the user experience around the agents. Spaces is actually the second new Muse feature that Meta has debuted over the last week. On Thursday, the company alsoannounced Muse Voice, which allows users to video chat with their agent and give it commands verbally. The company is in competition with other cute and cuddly AI agents — includingOpenAI’s dotsand SpaceXAI’sGrokbot, which were debuted with similarly cartoonish personas.
Security researchers have discovered hundreds of copies of a Chinese-made AI hacking tool publicly exposed to the internet for anyone to access, potentially allowing outsiders to launch cyberattacks against unsuspecting targets. The hacking software, called Artex, is an open source autonomous penetration testing tool, meaning software that automatically probes computer systems for weaknesses, and it’s been linked to several cyberattacks since its public release in July. As open source software, it’s free for anyone to download and run on their own servers, making it a popular tool for those who cannot access Anthropic or OpenAI’smost advanced cybersecurity AI modelsfor discovering security vulnerabilities. Microsoft haspreviously describedArtex as a system of AI agents that can conduct cyberattacks “from reconnaissance through data exfiltration with little needed human interaction.” In ablog post, cybersecurity firm Censys, which scans the internet for exposed or vulnerable systems, said that it identified more than 800 distinct deployments of Artex that were accessible from the web without needing a password to log in. Silas Cutler, principal security researcher at Censys who wrote the blog post, said that not every instance of Artex is operated maliciously and many are used for authorized testers. But it’s unclear why hundreds of these Artex systems are exposed to the web, as the software does not require them to be accessible from the internet. The findings underscore how even powerful hacking tools can be misconfigured to be publicly accessible by anyone, increasing the chance that someone will find and misuse them. The publicly accessible systems also expose attack tools, such as implants (hidden malicious software) used to compromise and maintain persistent access to a victim’s network. Security companies have linked the use of Artex to several broad-scale cyberattacks, includingagainst the Korean finance industry in September. Cybersecurity giant CrowdStrike attributed the attacks to a Chinese-speaking hacker who used an Artex instance in the attacks, in part because the hacker had left an “open directory” hosting the system. Censys said that its data showed the Artex instance in question had been publicly exposed for months, and appeared to contain more attack data that extended “well beyond South Korean banks,” including payment and gaming companies. Artex was also used in an attack on IT support giant ConnectWiseearlier in October, which allowed Chinese-linked hackers to spy on thousands of organizations whose data and files are hosted in Microsoft’s cloud. Microsoft, which has visibility into the attack, said in a blog post that the hackers used Artex to break into customers’ cloud environments and steal their data at such speed that defenders had “little time to detect and respond.” Many of the attacks linked to Artex involved exploiting simple vulnerabilities, such as guessing weak or known passwords, and a lack of multi-factor authentication. The findings show that simple vulnerabilities, including misconfigurations, can expose both the attacker and their targets. Artex has since announced it would go closed-source, effectively limiting further releases for paid customers. There are still dozens of copies of Artex’s code available on code-sharing sites that can still be used in active attacks.
OpenAI has reportedly raised $11 billion so far in a new funding round that values the AI lab at $1.25 trillion. Bloombergreported onthe new funding on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The $11 billion is part of a larger funding round that hasn’t closed yet, according to the outlet. The round is expected to close in the coming weeks and could total about $20 billion, a source told Bloomberg. In late September, Bloombergreportedthat OpenAI was looking to raise $30 billion in the upcoming round. The current figures fall well short of that target. TechCrunch has reached out to OpenAI for comment and will update this story if it responds. The news comes only hours after Bloombergalso reportedthat potential buyers of shares in the IPO of OpenAI’s chief competitor, Anthropic, are eyeing a substantially lower valuation than Anthropic had targeted. Bloomberg writes that some potential buyers believe Anthropic’s valuation could be as low as $1.1 trillion, compared with the$2 trillionthat investors were said to be expecting roughly a month ago. OpenAI previously intimated that it would go public this year but subsequently delayed its plans. There are expectations that the companywill IPO next yearat some point. The market for AI hangs in a particularly precarious place. The Democratic landslide in the U.S. midterms — and overwhelmingly negative voter sentiment around data centers — hascaused jitters throughout the market, with many anticipating potential regulatory challenges in the future.
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Crusoe, an eight-year-old, Denver-based data center developer recently valued at$30.9 billion,confirmedFriday it has sold an unfinished data center project in southeastern Wyoming to Google. Google, which Crusoe had tried and failed to land as a customer for the project, is taking over the development after reportedly raising concerns about its cost and construction timeline under Crusoe’s management. Crusoe initially announced the project last year with Blackstone-backed infrastructure company Tallgrass, planning to eventually scale it to 10 gigawatts of power capacity. Google did not disclose how much it paid Crusoe for the unfinished project, but it announced plans toinvest $17 billionto develop the data center campus. The deal highlights how difficult it can be for independent data center developers to deliver massive projects on time and within budget, given the challenges of securing equipment and power. Growing opposition from local communities can further complicate development. Despite taking over the Wyoming facility, Google hasn’t walked away from working with Crusoe entirely. Crusoe is developinganother datacenter for Google near Amarillo, Texas. The deal to sell the site to Google was first reportedby Bloombergin June, but the Wyoming setback didn’t stop Crusoe from raising a$3.9 billion roundin September. Crusoe makes money by leasing data center space to customers that bring their own GPUs, by renting out its own GPUs, and by selling compute power used to run AI models, known as inference. Crusoe’s largest projects serve some of the biggest names in AI. Its campus in Abilene, Texas, is being built in phases for Oracle and OpenAI, and the company is also constructing a separate 900-megawatt campus next door for Microsoft, with its first building expected to come online in mid-2027. Meta is also a customer, and Bloomberg reported that the trading firm Jane Street signed a$13 billion, five-year cloud deal with Crusoe. Crusoe was founded by Chase Lochmiller, now its CEO, and Cully Cavness, who started it as a cryptocurrency-mining business powered by natural gas that would otherwise have been burned off. In September, alongside its $3.9 billion funding round, the company addedthree board members, including JB Straubel, the Redwood Materials founder and Tesla board member who invested in Crusoe in 2021. Crusoe later became the first customer of Straubel’s energy-storage business.
A memo circulated earlier this year claimed that technology executive Alice Huang was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to spy on Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, according to multiple media reports. The New York Times, which had previously said Nvidia’s chief executive had been the target of Chinese intelligence, wasthe first to report on the memo.The Financial Times subsequently reportedthat the memo — supposedly based on U.S. intelligence — also claimed Jensen Huang had a romantic relationship with Alice Huang, an executive at a Singapore-based company called Megaspeed. An Nvidia spokesperson told the NYT that Jensen Huang’s interactions with Alice Huang were “not unusual,” and that the company does not share classified information with its customers. Aseparate NYT reportexamined New Matrix, a Chinese company authorized by the U.S. Commerce Department to buy advanced Nvidia chips. At the office address listed by New Matrix, reporters only found “a hollow gray shell,” raising concerns that it could be a front for a blacklisted private equity firm. The Nvidia spokesperson said the company sells “the first, best and most of our technology in America.”
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Democrats’ historic victory in this week’s midterm elections could also have a dramatic effect on the tech industry. In dozens of local ballot measures, votersrejected data centers. And even when they weren’t voting on the issue directly, they were electing politicians — like Texas’ new governor-elect Gina Hinojosa — who campaigned on the promise of restricting data centers. On the latest episode ofTechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Kirsten Korosec, Sean O’Kane, and I discussed what the midterms mean for the tech industry. Sean kicked it off by noting that Elon Musk “seems to have gotten basically nothing out of donating half a billion dollars” to Republicans, while his companies are now headquartered “in a state that has, remarkably, turned about as blue as it could possibly turn.” And Kirsten said that while data centers probably weren’t the main cause of the “blue wave,” they’ve become an “an increasingly grassroots issue, in part because of how hyperscalers and companies have gone about” getting their projects approved. And now, “we’re already seeing companies like OpenAI all of a sudden go, ‘Actually, we can change our policies.’” Keep reading for a preview ofour conversation, edited for length and clarity. Sean O’Kane:First off, let’s talk about the fact that one of the biggest data center builders was also the largest donor to the Republican Party. Elon Musk seems to have gotten basically nothing out of donating half a billion dollars — maybe even more, by the time we see the final count — and in fact is now sitting there with all of his businesses in a state that has, remarkably, turned about as blue as it could possibly turn for the first time in a very long time, if ever. That, I think, is the biggest thing hanging above a lot of this discussion. But, there were also a bunch of ballot measures up around the country that would have paved the way for data centers to get built faster. Almost all of them got shot down, or voted against. [Actually, many of the ballot measures would have imposed restrictions or moratoriums on data centers, and almost all of those measures passed.] With [Democrats] in power, there is a consensus view, at least in the tech world, that this is going to mean we have a lot of roadblocks ahead for data centers, especially in places like Texas, where [you have] folks like the governor-elect [Gina] Hinojosa, who has spoken pretty openly about this being a campaign promise and something that she wants to focus on once she takes power, now that she’s beaten Greg Abbott. It’s the thing that I think the tech world is maybe a littletoofocused on. I’m curious what you guys think about that. Anthony Ha:I don’t necessarily think that they’re too focused on it, but I understand why it would feel a little bit disproportionate — the data center ballot measures, certainly there were a number of them, but it wasn’t something that was on the ballot everywhere. And in different races, the dynamic might have been a bit different, but there was this undercurrent and sense that it seems to be an issue that reaches across the country, that is bipartisan in a lot of ways, but that the Democrats seem to have been more effective at harnessing that energy. And of course, there’s all kinds of reasons why the Democrats did so well on Tuesday, but it does seem like anti-AI and especially anti-data center sentiment was a big part of it. That seems like a pretty potent political force. The next two years, [and] potentially beyond that, are going to be more difficult for tech companies in general, and hyperscalers, data center companies in particular. I also imagine that they have to be a little bit worried about: Is this going to continue to be an issue, not just with the people who got elected this year, but potentially in 2028 and beyond? Kirsten Korosec:Absolutely. I don’t think that the data center issue is what brought everyone to the polls and led to the quote-unquote “blue wave.” However, I will say that data centers have been an increasingly grassroots issue, in part because of how hyperscalers and companies have gone about getting these data centers [approved] — very secretive, oftentimes requiring NDAs of a elected officials or appointed officials, not sharing information about the scale of a project in very environmentally sensitive areas, including in the Southwest, where there’s very much a water scarcity issue. So I think that a lot of folks — Republicans, independents, and Democrats — all saw this as wrong. They were motivated by it, but I don’t think it was a singular issue. Now, here’s the interesting thing. There was a lot of waving of hands about how [AI companies] can’t possibly operate under any other circumstances. And we’re already seeing companies like OpenAI all of a sudden go, “Actually, we can change our policies.” They just released what they calla compute campus policy blueprint. And guess what? They’re not going to require NDAs anymore. They’re going to share their plans and supposedly operate in less secrecy. I think what this shows is that when you put up either a regulatory certainty in the marketplace, or at least signals of going in that direction, then corporations will respond. If you don’t do that, they will not necessarily do the thing that we hope that they will do. Anthony:One thing I want to emphasize is that they’re calling it this [their] “compute campus policy.” And part of what that’s doing, beyond laying out these policy changes, is also an attempt to rebrand data centers, because they have become such a toxic phrase. So they’re not data centers anymore, they are compute campuses, and I’m curious whether either of you think that’ll take. Sean:I mean, this is ridiculous. Come on. It’s not going to change anything. It’s going to cause them more effort. For a company that likes to say that it’s no longer focused on side quests, OpenAI still loves to go in different directions a lot. And this is just the latest kind of thing where it’s just like: Why are you spending time on this at all? It doesn’t really seem like it’s going to move the needle. Kirsten:I have a great idea for OpenAI. Because in the spirit of making threatening things seem cute, they should 100% create a compute campuses avatar, [a] cutesy thing, and then just present that instead of a power-, energy-sucking, water-sucking data center. Anthony:And if these are just lovely compute campuses, they should just build their own offices there or work next door, see how that works out for them. Something else that I’m wondering about is, to what extent the election is maybe the second part of a one-two punch. [We’ve just seen] a big shift in how Wall Street is reacting to a lot of these hyperscalers and AI companies and this sense that [investors] are not excited about the idea that they should be spending all this money building new data centers, spending all this money on compute. And so there’s a financial incentive not to build all these data centers. I’m very curious how that’s going to play out. [From a regulatory standpoint,] it’s probably going to be harder to build data centers. Wall Street is probably not going to reward you for building data centers. But at the same time, to get to the scale that they want to get to, they are probably going to need to build data centers somewhere.
Nvidia’s board of directorsannouncedSunday that it’s launching an independent investigation following reports thatCEO Jensen Huang was targeted by a Chinese spy operation. Nvidia alsopublished a messagethat Huang sent to the company admitting that he had an affair with Alice Huang, a former executive at Singapore-based chip company Megaspeed (though he didn’t mention her by name). A memo circulating among U.S. policymakers earlier this yearclaimed that Alice Huang had been recruited by China’s Ministry of State Securityto spy on Nvidia’s CEO. “I owe my family and all of you an apology,” Jensen Huang wrote. “I was unfaithful to my wife. My actions hurt her and our children. There is no excuse for what I did. I am deeply sorry.” Huang added that he’d “fallen short” of his responsibility to the company. “To my colleagues at NVIDIA, including those I have worked alongside for decades, and to our board, partners, and shareholders around the world: you deserve better from me,” he said. Asthe AI race between the United States and China heats up, chips, especially Nvidia’s chips, have beena major focus. Huang also seems to havea close relationship with President Donald Trump, who’s been a cheerleader of the AI (or “superintelligence”) industry. In its announcement, Nvidia’s board said that it has “no reason to believe” that either national security or company secrets were compromised. It also said that Huang “fully supports the review and has committed to cooperating with it,” and that the board has “confidence in Jensen and his leadership team.” The investigation will be conducted by independent directors working with outside legal counsel. In response to earlier reports about the CEO’s relationship with Alice Huang, Nvidia had said that the pair’s interactions were “not unusual,” and that the company does not share classified information with customers. Other companies involved in the AI boom havewarned employees to be wary of possible spies, including those offering sex or romance.
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Nvidia’s board announced Sunday that it’s launching anindependent investigationafter CEO Jensen Huang told staff he was unfaithful to his wife. But this isn’t a case of just another CEO having an extramarital affair. The romantic interest is Megaspeed executive Alice Huang, whom U.S. officials believe is a Chinese spy who was feeding information back to Beijing. In short, the stakes reach well beyond Nvidia, given how many tech and financial partners depend on its place at the center of the AI economy. “I’m responsible for anentire industry,” Huang recently told Bloomberg in a sit-down. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington dismissed the allegations in late October as “groundless smears and slanders,” and no one has been charged. But U.S. intelligence officials reportedly briefed President Donald Trump about their concerns a year ago, and unnamed senior officials inside the Trump administration told the Times that they doubt Huang could haveremained unawareall that time of Alice Huang’s intelligence-gathering role for China. When Trump was first briefed, the Times reported, officials didn’t believe Huang knew, and it isn’t clear whether their assessment has changed. The board, meanwhile, says it sees no sign that national security or company secrets were compromised. The question is whether Huang can survive this. To think through what could come next, this editor spoke Sunday with famed professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, senior associate dean for leadership studies at the Yale School of Management and founder of the Chief Executive Leadership Institute, which has hosted Huang at its CEO summits. Sonnenfeld likes Huang, he said, and he called Huang’s career salvageable but put the odds at “about a 50-50.” He also had a lot more food for thought. First, the damage. Until now, Huang has been “revered and trusted by everybody in technology,” Sonnenfeld noted. But he called this episode “remarkably poor judgment.” Even if Huang was merely naive, he said, “any employee in Nvidia other than him would be fired over this,” and the recklessness alone would mean “an irretrievable loss of confidence.” Sonnenfeld suggested that Huang’s saving grace could be what social psychologists callidiosyncrasy credits, if he can prove he was being duped. The term comes from Edwin Hollander, a social psychologist who proposed in a 1958 paper that people earn latitude in a group by showing competence and following its rules. Huang has been earning latitude since he co-founded Nvidia in 1993. But all that goodwill can run out when a screw-up looks self-serving or touches the group’s core norms. Here that group includes Nvidia’s board, its roughly 42,000 employees who are bound by security rules, and, in a looser sense, the U.S. government, given it restricts its exports. We also talked about precedents, except, as it turns out, there really are none for what’s unfolding right now. Executives who survive personal scandals sometimes pick up where they left off at another company, Sonnenfeld observed. Former HP CEO Mark Hurd is one example. Between 2005 and 2010, he drove HP to the top of the tech industry by revenue, then was pressured to resign after he filed inaccurate expense reports that hid a personal relationship with a contractor. Oracle hired him about a month later. Huang has no equivalent because Nvidia is his company As for the bench at Nvidia, that doesn’t really exist either. While there is typically a hierarchy inside companies of Nvidia’s scale and importance, Huang has kept things as flat as possible, with about 60 direct reports by his own account. That structure makes it hard to figure out who would succeed him (though his children, both of whom work at Nvidia, are sometimes the subject ofsuccession speculation). That won’t stop the worldwide guessing game that’s sure to follow. And boards in crisis often reach for a “messianic solution” from outside, Sonnenfeld said, floating former Google CEO Eric Schmidt as one idea. Nvidia’s role at the center of a massive and complex circular financing web is what makes this particular predicament so tricky and, undoubtedly, terrifying for a wide number of constituents. Nvidia isn’t just the biggest provider of chips driving the AI boom but also largely the bank behind the buildout. In addition to stakes in hundreds of smaller startups, Nvidia has invested in OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, CoreWeave and Nebius. In August, it also signed preliminary agreements with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR aimed at mobilizing more than $500 billion over time, and Huang has said Nvidia could backstop up to a quarter of it. The move was widely interpreted as a way to spread risk. Now, a leadership crisis at the center is how a stumble becomes a collapse. So what’s Nvidia’s board likely doing at this moment? Sonnenfeld noted that Huang’s constant, public advocacy for selling advanced chips to China had already made people anxious. Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, whose company Nvidia has backed, had a lot to say about selling chips to China at Davos back in January, likening it to “selling nuclear weapons to North Korea.” Now the board’sindependent members— meaning everyone but Huang — will have to establish what technology reached China if any, and by what routes, including by better understanding Nvidia’s relationship with Megaspeed. The Singapore cloud company, which grew out of a Chinese gaming business and became Nvidia’s largest buyer in Southeast Asia, bought roughly$2 billion of its chips, the New York Times reported in October 2025, raising broader questions about whether it was helping China circumvent U.S. export restrictions by re-exporting the chips to China or renting them to Chinese customers remotely. (An Nvidia spokesperson told The Hill after the Times report that the allegations were “thoroughly investigated anddebunked last year.”) In the meantime, Huang will keep running the company, Nvidia said Sunday. That’ll be a tall order, even for a CEO who already spends much of his time traveling the world to promote Nvidia. For starters, three House chairmen want a closed-door briefing from Huang on November 18. Nvidia is also reporting its newest earnings on November 17. Sonnenfeld expects that even if Huang keeps the title, he’ll have to hand off some of the day-to-day decision-making. Only one thing is certain right now. Huang doesn’t own the kind of super-voting stock that would cement his power at Nvidia. Sonnenfeld often argues for dual-class structures that empower founders, and he says Huang’s success without one has been the best counterargument to that case. But if Huang had one, Sonnenfeld continued, removing him would be harder. This episode may be remembered as a pivotal moment for how the tech industry guards its secrets. Sonnenfeld argues tech has been “way too lax” compared with defense contractors that face clearance regimes. Thearrest last monthof an OpenAI engineer points to the same problem. He was accused of hiding a recording device behind a TV in an executive conference room, and while OpenAI has said it has no indication that model weights, source code, or customer data were accessed, the case highlights how exposed tech companies are to people who get close. Huang may well survive the investigation (Sonnenfeld hopes the board clears him of knowingly aiding anyone). The bigger test comes when Nvidia’s employees, customers and partners, and, indirectly, the millions of Americans with Nvidia in their 401(k) plans, have to decide whether an AI economy built largely on the judgment of Huang still makes sense.
WordPress has been a crucial technology and content management system for websites like TechCrunch. Now, WordPress.com owner Automattic is responding to the changing state of the web by debuting a new service called Spacefast, which will allow users to deploy vibe-coded websites and apps. Spacefastis designed to provide infrastructure for the vibe-coded apps, including databases, authentication, file uploads, emails, and analytics, to make them functional websites, apps, or services. The product competes with the likes of Lovable and Emergent, which offer both interface and rails for vibe-coded apps, but in a more open way. Users can connect Spacefast with other agents and chatbots like ChatGPT, Claude, Hermes, OpenClaw, Grokbot, Muse, Pi, Cursor, Opencode, and Amp. Alternatively, they can connect a Git repository to Spacefast to get started. The product is headed by Batuhan İçöz, who worked on working on it during one of the company’s hackathon sprints earlier in the year. At that time, he worked on the company’s cross-platform messaging app Beeper and said that he often got Vercel links from his non-technical friends while exploring vibe coding. “I thought there had to be a better way for everyone to set up and deploy their projects. Automattic already has good infrastructure, but we have been traditionally associated with just WordPress. I thought, why do I have to use Cloudflare when we have a CDN (Content Delivery Network) just as good? So I started working on what was called Stattic and now Spacefast,” he told TechCrunch over a call. İçöz eventually disseminated the solution to his friends and added more features to make the product more dynamic. Automattic soft-launched the product in September to get feedback before today’s launch.The company has seen varied use cases of their product, with people and organizations using it for internal mockups, slideshows, and offer-related websites. However, that’s not the only competition Spacefast has. Productivity and design software like Figma, Canva, and Notion have launched products that sit at the intersection of vibe coding, mockups, and presentations. İçöz thinks that, compared to something like Lovable, Spacefast has the advantage of giving users a choice of their agent and using the solution their way. The counter-argument might be that a certain kind of user wouldn’t want to choose and just have everything figured out for them. Spacefast said that it also has the advantage of being within Automattic to launch solutions like web analytics, WordPress integration, and e-commerce features (through WooCommerce) easily to compete better with the whole lot. “For enterprises, the problem right now is IT sprawl, as their marketing teams are churning out landing pages on services like Lovable, and they want to consolidate and work with a company that understands the enterprise needs. With our existing products, we have experience serving enterprise customers,” İçöz noted. A challenge for newly minted products in the AI world is to retain people post-launch. Users might get excited to try out a new product, and then move on to the new shiny thing within days or weeks. İçöz is cognizant of the fact and said that he expects people to churn, as they might not be interested in making apps at all. “I think what we need to do as a product is make sure that when you build something with SpaceFast, it is so easy, and the results are so much better than without Spacefast,” İçöz emphesized. Many websites and publishers are struggling with dwindling traffic due to AI chatbots and summaries, right now, to the point thatGoogle itself saw its ad revenue growth drop. İçöz acknowledged that people are making websites with ChatGPT or Claude now as compared to deploying something on WordPress, and he said some sites won’t need a content management system at all as the web expands. Spacefast comes amid turbulent months at Automattic. In an OpenAI-Sam Altman-style saga, the company’s board forcedCEO Matt Mullenweg out, but he wasback in control within days. The rebel board waseventually replaced, and the interim CFO left within weeks of appointment. In October, TechCrunch reported that thecompany had began layoffs across several propertiesand more cuts were expected.
Online publishing platform Medium on Mondaylaunched a new app, called TK,which aims to bring AI technology deeper into the writing process. The idea behind TK is to make it easier to turn ideas into written words by incorporating an AI assistant into the editor itself, allowing users to ask for help by typing “@TK” followed by their request or prompt. In publishing and journalism, the term “TK” serves as a placeholder used to mark where missing information can be added later. The “TK” stands for “to come,” but uses a “K” instead of “C” as there are few English words where the “tk” letter combination exists, making it stand out more easily in written text where it could be caught by proofreaders. InMedium’s app, TK takes on a new role as it tries to help users fill in the blanks. The company suggests the AI assistant could help answer questions that you might normally have to switch to another tab to quickly look up, like how many days are in a particular month. The app could also pull in bits of writing you had previously saved to the app when you were still fleshing out your ideas. In addition, Medium saysTKwill ship with particular skills for editorial feedback, headline feedback, and others that could match your draft to the style guide for Medium publications. Medium’s move to embrace AI in the early stages of writing could prove controversial at a time when the publishing and literary worlds have been reckoning with the role that artificial intelligence has played in the creation of new long-form prose.Multipleauthorshavelost book dealsover suspicions that they used AI technology to help them write, while other literary awards havecome under scrutinyafter winners weresuspected of writing with AI assistance. While writers have long used automated tools for proofreading and light grammatical edits, there is growing concern across the publishing industry that an AI assistant’s editorial “suggestions” can become the writing itself, instead of being reflective of the thoughts in the writer’s own mind. But because AI models were trained on human writing, there are alsoquestions around the reliability of AI detection toolsin terms of their ability to properly determine when something was written with AI, rather than with its assistance, versus not at all. TK leans into this debate, taking the side that these nuances will ultimately no longer matter in the end. Instead, the company celebrates what AI can bring to the world of writing, saying that “artificial intelligence makes writing more important, not less,” and proclaiming that “AI is a technology that has the power to amplify human intelligence and it uses the written word as a foundation.” Still, Medium concedes that AI does raise the possibility of low-quality content and blurring the line between what’s human-written versus AI-written. To address these concerns, TK allows authors to publish notes that transparently explain how AI was used in their writing. “This is a start of what we believe is required to publish in the AI era, which is to make the provenance of writing clear, transparent, and inspectable, right down to the prompting and source material,” Medium explained ina blog post about the launch. In addition to writing assistance, TK will help users remember and organize what they had previously written and suggest writing prompts. The app can also optionally connect to your own AI agent through TK’s MCP server or Claude skill, so the app can better understand your projects, your positions, and other ideas that could be stored in your agent’s memory. Meanwhile, the new app incorporates human feedback in a social layer, the company says, allowing writers to share their early drafts with others and get feedback. At launch, TK is available on the web, but a desktop app is on the roadmap, Medium says. The app can import and export Markdown, but it’s not a Markdown app itself. The writing in TK is also not encrypted, as the app is designed for collaboration, but users will be able to set access control permissions on their work. Medium, which is profitable, says TK will be a free tool for those with a Medium account.
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