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The Citizen
20-07-2025
- Automotive
- The Citizen
East London wreaks havoc with National Extreme Festival
Early morning wet weather resulted in changeable conditions that saw a series of accidents involving multiple red flags in the various categories. Julian van der Watt took his works Volkswagen Motorsport Golf GTI to victory in Saturday's opening South African Touring Car race. Photograph: Brandsponential. Adverse weather conditions played havoc with round five of the National Extreme Festival Presented By Coca-Cola at the East London Grand Prix circuit on Saturday. Programme rescheduled Rain overnight and into the early morning left the circuit sodden, with little rivers running over some of the fastest parts. Following no less than two massive accidents in early morning qualifying that requires tyre barriers to be rebuilt, racing only commenced in the early afternoon, forcing the organisers to cut the programme drastically. ALSO READ: National Extreme Festival gives the Zwartkops faithful their wish At the centre of this was the complete cancellation of both SunBet Kawasaki ZX10 Masters races, a reduction in lap count to eight for all the other classes, and a single 'long' race over 12 laps for the Toyota GR Cup. Eventually, with the weather cleared and the track repaired, the event got underway, producing some excellent racing. Touring Cars Premier billing went to the South African Touring Car category, with the day's opening race providing a one-two finish for the works Volkswagen Motorsport Golf GTI entries of Julian van der Watt and Jagger Robertson. Nathi Msimanga took the final podium place in a rather battered Toyota Gazoo Racing Corolla after a crash in practice, leading home Andrew Schofield (Safair BMW 128it), Michael van Rooyen (Toyota Gazoo Racing Corolla) and Saood Variawa (Toyota Gazoo Racing Corolla). Keegan Campos (Campos Transport BMW 128it) fought with the leaders until the pit straight of the final lap, where his car cut out. Campos heroically pushed it the last 200 metres to the flag, to clinch seventh place championship points. Starting from an inverted grid, van Rooyen led race two all the way, though behind, a mid-race clash between Msimanga and Robertson in the tight complex section prevented another Volkswagen 1-2 finish. Van der Watt was, therefore, second ahead of Schofield, Msimanga, Variawa and a less than pleased Robertson. Not taking the grid was the privateer Toyota Corolla of Siyabonga Mankonkwana after a monstrous accident in the complex in race one that completely destroyed the car, without any harm to the driver. SupaCup Jonathan Mogotsi (Volkswagen Genuine Parts SupaPolo) won the opening SupaCup category from Tate Bishop (ANGRI Volkswagen SupaPolo), Dylan Pragji (Styling Auto Volkswagen SupaPolo), Jason Loosemore (Volkswagen Genuine Parts SupaPolo) and Dawie van der Merwe (Toyota Gazoo Racing SupaStarlet). Jonathan Mogotsi (Volkswagen Genuine Parts SupaPolo) won both SupaCup races. Photograph: Brandsponential. Mogotsi took race two as well, leading home Bishop, Loosemore, Pragji and Nicolaos Vostanis (Campos Transport SupaPolo). Polo Cup Bradley Liebenberg returned to the Astron Energy Polo Cup arena in an unsponsored Polo, and won race one by a narrow margin from Mohammed Karodia (Fast 5). Bradley Liebenberg returned to the Astron Energy Polo Cup arena on Saturday, and won the race. Brandsponential. They were chased to the flag by Judd Bertholdt (Rookie Cup), Rory Atkinson (Industry Petroleum) and lady racer Tyler Robinson (AF Fans). Wayne Masters (Performance Masters) took the Masters category from John Kruger (Harbot Lubricants), Derek Smalberger (SABERTEK) and Mike Barbaglia (Pabar Polo). GR Cup The one and only GR Cup race, in the GR86 class, went to Jason Coetzee ahead of Kent Swartz and Kanya Ngwenya. Jason Coetzee (Toyota GR86) won the day's only Toyota Gazoo Racing Cup round overall. Photograph: Brandsponential. Runaway championship leader Nabil Abdool (SuperSport) took the GR Yaris media section win from Yaris Cup victory from Phuti Mpayne (TimesLive) and Kyle Kock (CAR Magazine). GR driving instructor Devon Scott won the GR Corolla leg from GR dealers Mario da Sousa and Werner Venter. MSA4 The opening heat for the Investchem MSA4 single-seaters saw numerous spins and off-track excursions, as the drivers of the new cars got to grips with the conditions. KC Ensor-Smith (Investchem MSA4) won both the races for Investchem MSA4 single-seaters. Photograph: Brandsponential. Eventually, the victory went to KC Ensor-Smith (Investchem), leading home Mikel Bezuidenhout, Shrien Naidoo and Karabo Malemela. Ensor-Smith won race two as well, chased to the flag by Naidoo, Bezuidenhout and Malemela. Ending on a low The race day ended early when the second Astron Energy Polo Cup race was red-flagged after two laps. First Rory Atkinson lost his car through the ultra fast Potters Pass sweep and plowed into the tyre barrier. He was unhurt, but the Polo became a lot shorter. On the next lap, Tyler Robinson lost control of her car in the main straight after putting a wheel off into the muddy veld and rolled it at high speed. The young lady crawled from the wreck having escaped injury, but the tyre barrier was knocked down and the organisers were forced to end the meeting before daylight ran out. Staying at the coast The next round of the National Extreme Festival Presented By Coca-Cola will be at the Western Cape Killarney circuit on Saturday, September 13. ALSO READ: National Extreme Festival gives it its all at Aldo Scribante
Time Magazine
17-07-2025
- Business
- Time Magazine
Top AI Firms Fall Short on Safety, New Studies Find
The world's leading AI companies have 'unacceptable' levels of risk management, and a 'striking lack of commitment to many areas of safety,' according to two new studies published Thursday. The risks of even today's AI—by the admission of many top companies themselves—could include AI helping bad actors carry out cyberattacks or create bioweapons. Future AI models, top scientists worry, could escape human control altogether. The studies were carried out by the nonprofits SaferAI and the Future of Life Institute (FLI). Each was the second of its kind, in what the groups hope will be a running series that incentivizes top AI companies to improve their practices. 'We want to make it really easy for people to see who is not just talking the talk, but who is also walking the walk,' says Max Tegmark, president of the FLI. Read More: Some Top AI Labs Have 'Very Weak' Risk Management, Study Finds SaferAI assessed top AI companies' risk management protocols (also known as responsible scaling policies) to score each company on its approach to identifying and mitigating AI risks. No AI company scored better than 'weak' in SaferAI's assessment of their risk management maturity. The highest scorer was Anthropic (35%), followed by OpenAI (33%), Meta (22%), and Google DeepMind (20%). Elon Musk's xAI scored 18%. Two companies, Anthropic and Google DeepMind, received lower scores than the first time the study was carried out, in October 2024. The result means that OpenAI has overtaken Google as second place in SaferAI's ratings. Siméon Campos, founder of SaferAI, said Google scored comparatively low despite doing some good safety research, because the company makes few solid commitments in its policies. The company also released a frontier model earlier this year, Gemini 2.5, without sharing safety information—in what Campos called an 'egregious failure.' A spokesperson for Google DeepMind told TIME: 'We are committed to developing AI safely and securely to benefit society. AI safety measures encompass a wide spectrum of potential mitigations. These recent reports don't take into account all of Google DeepMind's AI safety efforts, nor all of the industry benchmarks. Our comprehensive approach to AI safety and security extends well beyond what's captured.' Anthropic's score also declined since SaferAI's last survey in October. This was due in part to changes the company made to its responsible scaling policy days before the release of Claude 4 models, which saw Anthropic remove its commitments to tackle insider threats by the time it released models of that caliber. 'That's very bad process,' Campos says. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The study's authors also said that its methodology had become more detailed since last October, which accounts for some of the differences in scoring. The companies that improved their scores the most were xAI, which scored 18% compared to 0% in October; and Meta, which scored 22% compared to its previous score of 14%. The FLI's study was broader—looking not only at risk management practices, but also companies' approaches to current harms, existential safety, governance, and information sharing. A panel of six independent experts scored each company based on a review of publicly available material such as policies, research papers, and news reports, together with additional nonpublic data that companies were given the opportunity to provide. The highest grade was scored by Anthropic (a C plus). OpenAI scored a C, and Google scored a C minus. (xAI and Meta both scored D.) However, in FLI's scores for each company's approach to 'existential safety,' every company scored D or below. 'They're all saying: we want to build superintelligent machines that can outsmart humans in every which way, and nonetheless, they don't have a plan for how they're going to control this stuff,' Tegmark says.
Axios
29-06-2025
- Business
- Axios
Exclusive: Spinwheel raises $30M to streamline debt management
Spinwheel, a fintech startup focused on consumer debt management, raised $30 million in Series A funding, CEO Tomás Campos tells Axios exclusively. Why it matters: Debt management solutions remain fragmented and difficult for users to manage effectively. How it works: Spinwheel helps fintech platforms and banks authenticate users, automate data retrieval and facilitate payments, reducing the friction of managing consumer debt. With a person's phone number and date of birth, the company can find and connect to all of an end user's liability accounts and make payments on their behalf. "We decided we're not going to depend on the user and password because the friction is too high and it doesn't prove it's actually the user," Campos says. The big picture: Consumer fintechs face challenges in getting users to authenticate and connect all of their various financial accounts. High friction from login requirements often leads to user drop-off and incomplete financial pictures. Between the lines: The company's unique feature is combining data aggregation capabilities, like those of Plaid, with payment processing functionality similar to Stripe's. "We're not just aggregating data. We're actually a payment network that can automate real transactions for consumers," Campos says. Flashback: Spinwheel initially focused on student loan repayment but pivoted to a broader approach to managing various types of consumer debt. Customers now include PFM platforms like Monarch Money, marketplaces like NerdWallet or Credit Karma, and lenders. By the numbers: Spinwheel has connected over $1.5 trillion in consumer liabilities across 165 million accounts since its founding. It has processed over 50 million AI-powered payment transactions, leading to revenue increasing 760% over the past 18 months. Zoom in: F-Prime Capital led the round, which included participation from QED Investors, Foundation Capital and Fika Ventures.
Yahoo
26-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Spinwheel raises $30M in series A to boost agentic AI platform
This story was originally published on Banking Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Banking Dive newsletter. Consumer debt management fintech Spinwheel has raised $30 million in Series A funding to unlock and accelerate the innovation of its agentic AI platform while doubling down on its market reach through strategic hiring, the firm's CEO and co-founder, Tomás Campos, said Monday. The fintech is currently prioritizing growth over short-term gains as it plans to reinvest capital into developing its product stack and building its product and marketing teams. Spinwheel's core solution, Campos said, provides access to unique data and capabilities that are difficult to obtain in the current market, such as finding and connecting all of an end user's liability accounts and making payments on their behalf by using only the person's phone number and date of birth. The fintech has been seeking to enhance its products and services based on market and client feedback. Spinwheel counts lenders, marketplaces, personal financial management platforms, and other financial companies as its clients, providing them with consumer credit data to facilitate payment processing. With the new capital, it can now deliver many of those capabilities in four months instead of the previous 12-18 months timeline, he said. With the ability to hire additional engineering and product team members, for example, Campos said he'll be able to fast-track the development of enhanced mortgage and property data solutions for lenders. The fundraising was primarily a founder-led sales business, in which Campos considered himself a "bottleneck" for sales and marketing functions. Spinwheel touts itself as the platform that can find and connect all of an end user's liability accounts and make payments on their behalf by using only the person's phone number and date of birth. Campos notes that Spinwheel is creating a market rather than being part of an established one. Its technology in the consumer debt management space would lead it down a path of profitability, as it can sell products with healthy margins where customers pay more than the production costs. Consumer debt has reached $19.5 trillion — up from $13.3 trillion around a decade ago. An average American holds between 10 and 14 credit accounts, trying to manage the rising costs and inflation. Being a consumer debt management platform, Spinwheel has seen the implications of rising interest rates, according to Campos. 'With rising interest rates, we also had rising inflation, and so it was a double whammy for the consumer, where everything you're buying was costing more, but then to borrow money costs more as well,' Campos said. Spinwheel aims to help lenders and consumers navigate challenging times by improving efficiency in lending operations, reducing operational costs and offsetting the rising cost of capital. It also aims to address the consumer pain points by helping them manage and stay on top of debt, providing tools through personal financial management apps, like Monarch Money, offering debt prioritization guidance (which debts to pay first) and budgeting tools to identify areas to reduce spending while consolidating account management in one platform, Campos highlighted. He said the company aims to create a value proposition where 'all boats rise,' as business clients see tangible value and improved operations, while consumers benefit from better products, increased transparency and enhanced debt management tools. Spinwheel delayed fundraising for four years to establish strong traction and product-market fit, Campos noted. F-Prime led the recent Series A round with participation from QED Investors, Foundation Capital and Fika Ventures. He noted F-Prime's market research, which validated Spinwheel's vision and execution strategy. AI vs. human talent Spinwheel's artificial intelligence agent automates complex financial data workflows that previously required extensive human intervention. The agent orchestrates multiple backend data calls and tasks to retrieve financial data, enhance the data, support payment processing and execute necessary actions, Campos noted. Using vehicle loan payoff quotes as an example, Campos noted how Spinwheel's AI solution now connects all necessary data points through application programming interface-friendly methods, eliminates human intervention in the workflow and delivers the required results significantly faster. Since its founding in 2019, Spinwheel has connected over $1.5 trillion in consumer liabilities across 165 million accounts. It has processed over 50 million AI-powered payment transactions, seeing a 760% rise in revenue over the past 18 months. 'We can do these things today at scale and a price point and a performance that typically wasn't able to be done before,' Campos said. However, Campos was quick to point out that despite Spinwheel's advanced AI capabilities, humans play a vital role in building the underlying technology and identifying the problems that need to be resolved, which ultimately leads to the development of viable products. He views AI as an efficiency multiplier rather than a replacement for human talent, as engineers, product specialists and AI experts remain fundamental, while sales and marketing units still require human-driven strategy and problem-solving. 'If this was ten years ago, we probably would have to hire double or triple the number of people that we're doing now to be equivalent. But now we don't have to, because everything is more efficient with AI,' Campos said. 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Newsweek
24-06-2025
- Newsweek
Texas Parents Charged With Suffocating 4-Month-Old Baby in a Drawer
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. A Texas mother and father were charged with murder more than a year after their 4-month-old infant was found unresponsive inside a dresser drawer. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez announced the murder charges against Jeremy Fancher, 38, and Destiny Campos, 21, in a Facebook post on Saturday. Campos was taken into custody and booked into the Harris County jail on Friday, while Fancher was taken into custody and booked into the Tom Green County Jail on Saturday. Destiny Campos and Jeremy Fancher were charged with murder more than a year after their 4-month-old was found unresponsive inside a dresser drawer. Destiny Campos and Jeremy Fancher were charged with murder more than a year after their 4-month-old was found unresponsive inside a dresser drawer. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez Why It Matters Harris County sheriff's deputies responded to a child death at a motel in Houston in May 2024. Brookelynn Fancher was found unresponsive and pronounced dead. Gonzalez said the infant slept inside the dresser drawer where she was found. The Harris County medical examiner's office determined that the child was killed by suffocation, KHOU 11 reported. Lisa Farrell, the child's grandmother, called for justice for Brookelynn in comments to KHOU 11. "They were both wrong, they both did that baby dirty, they both should be in jail," Farrell said. "They all could've done something, but nobody did nothing." What To Know At Campos' probable cause hearing on Saturday, prosecutors alleged that she admitted to leaving the child in a closed drawer several times. Prosecutors said Campos and Fancher would stuff a towel around the edges to muffle the sound. It was also revealed at the hearing that Campos is seven months pregnant. Farrell said Fancher was her partner for seven years. She said he started dating Campos in 2019. Farrell said she no longer has contact with either of them. "Look at the facts. I know one's a complete mess-up, but they need to look at her because I've been dealing with her a long time, and something's broken in there," Farrell said. Fancher's current girlfriend, Marilyn Jennifer Mork, was also arrested and booked into the Tom Green County Jail on Saturday on a charge of hindering apprehension. What People Are Saying Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, in a Facebook post: "Horrific details. I'm glad our team has remained relentless and sought justice for this precious infant." Lisa Farrell, the child's grandmother, told KHOU 11: "I just want the baby to get her justice." What Happens Next Another hearing in Campos' case is scheduled for Wednesday. Fancher is expected to be brought to Harris County to face a murder charge. He is being held on $850,000 bond, while Campos is being held on $300,000 bond. Do you have a story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have any questions about this story? Contact LiveNews@
