Alibaba-Backed AI Startup Zhipu Targets IPO as Soon as 2025
The six-year-old firm and CICC have begun to prepare for the debut and could formally apply to list by October, according to IPO documents filed with the country's stock markets watchdog.
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3 hours ago
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Amazon may bring ads to Alexa+ in least surprising move ever
Up until now Amazon has mostly avoided stuffing Alexa with ads, but according to a report from Mashable, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy broached the idea of delivering ads in Alexa Plus during the company's recent earnings call. Alexa Plus is the company's premium AI assistant that is supposed to be more naturally conversational than the previous Alexa. Jassy reportedly said that there is a "significant financial opportunity" in delivering ads via Alexa Plus. "I think over time, there will be opportunities, you know, as people are engaging in more multi-turn conversations to have advertising play a role — to help people find discovery and also as a lever to drive revenue," Jassy said, as found in the earnings call transcript. The new Alexa, introduced in February, has "enhanced" conversational abilities that are meant to put it on other AI assistants like Google's Gemini or ChatGPT. With improved memory its supposed to remember your details and help with managing tasks like booking tables for date night or buying groceries. Currently, Amazon offers a $19.99 a month subscription for non-Prime members. Prime subscribers, which costs $14.99 a month or $139 annually, can get Alexa+ for free Many Amazon devices are Alexa+ capable, though not all. However, Alexa has largely been an ad-free experience for the last decade since it was introduced. Perhaps it's not too surprising that Amazon would consider adding some kind of revenue procuring element to its AI assistant. The company has struggled for years to upgrade Alexa as other AI assistants surpassed Amazon who introduced chatbot assistants to the market. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Largely, integrating ads is a revenue ploy to recoup some of the billions Amazon has burned in trying to turn its smart assistant around. Both Google and OpenAI have explored putting ads in Gemini and ChatGPT. OpenAI teased the idea in December of 2024 though the company stepped back from the idea in the same sentence. Amazon has not officially made moves to add commercials to Alexa+ conversations, but Jassy framed the idea as helpful. It would supposedly assist you in finding products that you might want to buy. With no set plans, it's worth keeping an eye on Alexa+ to see how or if Amazon actually follows through with Jassy's idea and how obtrusive they'll become. Hopefully they'll be skippable at the very least.
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3 hours ago
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Heartflow prices IPO, aiming to net about $180M
This story was originally published on MedTech Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily MedTech Dive newsletter. Dive Brief: Heartflow has priced its planned initial public offering, setting the terms for a Nasdaq listing that could net the heart software company around $180 million. The company, which set its IPO range on Friday, expects to offer 12.5 million shares for between $15 and $17 each. At the midpoint of the range, the IPO will net $180.5 million after fees. That figure could rise to $208.4 million if underwriters take up their options to buy additional shares, according to the securities filing. Heartflow's terms suggest the company will have around $130 million of IPO funding left after it has met a debt obligation. The company plans to use the cash for sales, marketing, and research and development. Dive Insight: Heartflow sells software for creating 3D heart models from coronary computed tomography angiography scans. The portfolio is led by Heartflow FFRCT Analysis, software that the company's clinical trial found was 78% more likely to identify patients in need of revascularization than the usual care pathway. The updated IPO paperwork provides details of how much Heartflow could raise to fund the platform. Other changes to the amended IPO include updated financial figures. Heartflow reported preliminary unaudited revenue of $42.9 million to $43.4 million for the three months ended June 30, up 38% to 40% year over year. The company attributed the increase to a rise in revenue case volume, which climbed 47% to 48,420. The company ended June with $80.2 million in cash and cash equivalents, down from $109.8 million at the end of March. Heartflow said the payment of annual bonuses, plus IPO costs and interest on debt, drove the decrease. Between filing and amending its IPO paperwork, Heartflow said UnitedHealthcare has decided to cover its plaque analysis software from Oct. 1. UnitedHealthcare will cover Heartflow Plaque Analysis across all lines of business, including its Commercial, Medicare Advantage and Community plans. Heartflow said the coverage decision makes UnitedHealthcare the first insurer to update its policies to cover the software and fully align with recent guidelines from radiology benefit manager EviCore. Last month, EviCore, which provides coverage guidelines to leading commercial health insurers, included the software in its cardiac imaging guidelines. The FDA cleared the software in 2022, and Heartflow began limited market education efforts in the second half of 2023. Heartflow plans to expand commercialization of the product to diversify beyond its software for analyzing fractional flow reserve, which represented 99% of the company's total revenues at the end of March. Recommended Reading Heartflow files for IPO Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Gizmodo
3 hours ago
- Gizmodo
Leaked ChatGPT Conversations Show People Asking the Bot to Do Some Dirty Work
This should go without saying, but ChatGPT is not a confidant. That has not stopped people from asking the chatbot deeply personal questions, giving it problematic prompts, and trying to outsource incredibly unethical business practices to it—some of which have been made public thanks to some poor design that resulted in chats being made indexed and searchable by search engines. Digital Digging, a Substack run by investigator Henk van Ess, reported last week that the 'Share' function in ChatGPT, designed to allow people to share part of a conversation with others, created a public page for the chat rather than a private one that is only accessible by those who receive the link. As a result, those public-facing pages got archived by search engines, making those conversations accessible to anyone who finds their way to the link. Obviously, many of those conversations should be private. OpenAI has since removed the ability to make chats publicly accessible (the company's Chief Information Security Officer, Dane Stuckey, said on Twitter that it was a 'short-lived experiment to help people discover useful conversations') and started to get the indexed results removed from search engines. But they are out there—including plenty that have been saved by the near-encyclopedic And they do not show the best that humanity has to offer. In one particularly jarring case that Digital Digging highlighted, an Italian user told the chatbot, 'I am the lawyer for a multinational group active in the energy sector that intends to displace a small Amazonian indigenous community from their territories in order to build a dam and a hydroelectric plant.' The user told the chatbot the indigenous people 'don't know the monetary value of land and have no idea how the market works' and asked 'How can we get the lowest possible price in negotiations with these indigenous people?' That's the type of transparently evil behavior you usually don't get without months' worth of discovery and lots of lawyer fees. One chat showed a person who identified themselves as working at an international think tank and proceeded to use ChatGPT to work through scenarios in which the United States government collapses, seeking preparedness strategies just in case. (Frankly, not a bad idea.) Another showed a lawyer, who was made to take over a coworker's case after a sudden accident, request that ChatGPT formulate their defense for them, before realizing they were representing the other side of the litigation. In many of these cases, the people offered identifiable information in the chats, from names to sensitive financial data. And while it's at least a little amusing if not at least a bit concerning that ostensible experts and professionals are tasking AI with doing their job, there is a much more troubling reality in some of these chats. Digital Digging found examples of domestic violence victims working through plans to escape their situation. Another chat revealed an Arabic-speaking user asking for help in crafting a critique of the Egyptian government, leaving them vulnerable to potential persecution by an authoritarian government that has jailed and killed dissidents in the past. The whole situation is a bit reminiscent of when voice assistants were new and it was revealed that recordings of people's conversations were being used to train voice recognition and transcription products. The difference is that chats feel more intimate and allow people to be much more verbose than short back-and-forths with Siri, leading them to reveal much more information about themselves and their situation—especially when they never expected anyone else to read it.
