Imagine this: you’ve found your dream apartment and you want to close the deal. But instead of dealing with realtors, lawyers, and banks, you just enter a passcode, and you’re done.
“That’s just one example of how I think the blockchain will come to reinvent how business is done and consumer experiences,” Bryan Schreier, partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital, told Cheddar.
He says the technology could wipe out layers of inefficiencies and middlemen.
Schreier, who sits on the boards of Dropbox, Thumbtack, and Qualtrics, said he sees a dozen pitches from start-ups in the crypto space every week.
“It reminds us of the early days of the internet…[which] promised to reinvent companies across a number of different industries,” Schreier told Cheddar.
But he cautioned that the world he envisions is probably a decade out. “It’s still very early.”
Amid a backdrop of ongoing tariff uncertainty, more and more gamers are facing price hikes. Microsoft raised recommended retailer pricing for its Xbox consoles and controllers around the world this week. Its Xbox Series S, for example, now starts at $379.99 in the U.S. — up $80 from the $299.99 price tag that debuted in 2020. And its more powerful Xbox Series X will be $599.99 going forward, a $100 jump from its previous $499.99 listing. The tech giant didn’t mention tariffs specifically, but cited wider “market conditions and the rising cost of development.” Beyond the U.S., Microsoft also laid out Xbox price adjustments for Europe, the U.K. and Australia. The company said all other countries would also receive updates locally.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said Thursday that the majority of iPhones sold in the U.S. in the current fiscal quarter will be sourced from India, while iPads and other devices will come from Vietnam as the company works to avoid the impact of President Trump’s tariffs on its business. Apple’s earnings for the first three months of the year topped Wall Street’s expectations thanks to high demand for its iPhones, and the company said tariffs had a limited effect on the fiscal second quarter’s results. Cook added that for the current quarter, assuming things don’t change, Apple expects to see $900 million added to its costs as a result of the tariffs.
Visa is hoping to hand your credit card to an artificial intelligence “agent” that can find and buy clothes, groceries, airplane tickets and other items on your behalf.
Shares of Deliveroo, the food delivery service based in London, are hitting three-year highs on Monday after it received a $3.6 billion proposed takeover offer from DoorDash.
X, the social media platform owned by Trump adviser Elon Musk, is challenging the constitutionality of a Minnesota ban on using deepfakes to influence elections and harm candidates.
The State Bar of California has disclosed that some multiple-choice questions in a problem-plagued bar exam were developed with the aid of artificial intelligence.
