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Andreessen Horowitz partner Marc Andreessen speaks during the Fortune Global Forum.

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Technologists and advocates are again set to visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to discuss with Senate leaders the perils and promises of artificial intelligence.

Venture capitalists Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, and John Doerr, chair of Kleiner Perkins, will be among the 21 attendees at the second AI Insights Forum hosted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., according to a spokesperson for his office.

The session is a continuation of the Majority Leader’s effort to get the chamber up to speed on AI to determine how best to approach AI regulation. It will likely include very different viewpoints on what the government’s role should be in regulating AI.

Andreessen recently shared his perspective on AI in what he called The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.

“We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives,” he wrote in the blog post. “Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder.”

While that idea may resonate with some lawmakers, especially when it comes to remaining competitive against China on AI, others present at Tuesday’s discussion will likely feel differently.

For example, Future of Life Institute President Max Tegmark is also set to attend. The Future of Life Institute spearheaded the letter signed by Tesla and Space X CEO Elon Musk and other tech leaders calling for a pause on AI development so that appropriate safety measures could be put in place.

Other tech leaders such as Micron Executive Vice President Manish Bhatia, Revolution CEO Steve Case, Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez will be in attendance. Academics and civil society leaders will also join the discussion, which will center on innovation and explore how the government can balance sustaining a leading position in AI while ensuring its safety, according to Schumer’s office.

Advocates slated to attend include NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson and AFL-CIO Technology Institute Director Amanda Ballantyne.

The first AI Innovation Forum in September, which was closed to the press, featured Musk, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says tariffs haven’t dented consumer spending

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says tariffs haven't dented consumer spending

Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, speaks during an unveiling event in New York on Feb. 26, 2025.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Wednesday that the company hasn’t seen any signs of consumers tightening their wallets in the face of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.

Jassy’s comments came during Amazon’s annual shareholder meeting, which was held virtually on Wednesday.

“We have not seen any attenuation of demand at this point,” Jassy said during a question-and-answer portion of the meeting. “We also haven’t yet seen any meaningful average selling price increases.”

Amazon and other retailers continue to digest the impact of Trump’s tariffs. Rival retailer Walmart warned last week that consumers could start seeing price hikes from tariffs later this month and in June. Within days, that sparked the ire of Trump, who urged the company to “EAT THE TARIFFS.”

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Target said Wednesday it will likely need to hike prices on some items, while Home Depot said it expects to maintain its current pricing levels.

Jassy said last month the company made some “strategic forward inventory buys” to stock up on goods and is “pretty maniacally focused” on keeping prices low for shoppers.

Some third-party sellers, which account for roughly 60% of products sold, have increased prices on certain items, while others have opted to keep prices steady, Jassy said on Wednesday.

“I think that the diversity and the size of our marketplace really helps customers have the best selection of the best prices,” Jassy said.

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OpenAI is buying iPhone designer Jony Ive’s AI devices startup for $6.4 billion

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OpenAI is buying iPhone designer Jony Ive's AI devices startup for .4 billion

OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman appears on screen during a talk with Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella at the Microsoft Build 2025, conference in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.

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OpenAI said on Wednesday that it’s buying Jony Ive’s AI devices startup io for about $6.4 billion in an all-equity deal that includes its current stake in the company.

Ive is taking on “deep creative and design responsibilities across OpenAI and io,” OpenAI said in a statement. The company said that io is merging with OpenAI, while Ive and his “creative collective” called LoveFrom will stay independent.

In a blog post on Wednesday from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Ive, the pair said that io was founded a year ago by Ive, along with Apple alumni Scott Cannon, Tang Tan and Evans Hankey, who briefly took over Ive’s role at Apple after he departed.

“The io team, focused on developing products that inspire, empower and enable, will now merge with OpenAI to work more intimately with the research, engineering and product teams in San Francisco,” the post said.

OpenAI said it’s paying $5 billion given that it already owns 23% of the company.

The purchase is by far OpenAI’s largest and comes weeks after the company agreed to buy AI-assisted coding tool Windsurf for $3 billion. Prior to that, OpenAI acquired analytics database company Rockset for an undisclosed sum in 2024.

Ive announced in 2019 that he was leaving Apple, where he was the longtime chief design officer, to start LoveFrom. Airbnb said in 2020 that Ive was consulting with the company on hiring and future products. The New York Times reported last year that LoveFrom’s clients pay the firm up to $200 million a year and that its designers at the time were working on projects for Christie’s, Airbnb and Ferrarri.

LoveFrom says on its website that it was founded by Ive and designer Marc Newson, but the doesn’t say anything about what the company does or include any mention of io.

Apple chief design officer Jony Ive (L) and Apple CEO Tim Cook inspect the new iPhone XR during an Apple special event at the Steve Jobs Theatre on September 12, 2018 in Cupertino, California.

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Ive is responsible for designing Apple‘s most iconic products, including the iPod, iPhone, iPad and MacBook Air. He also helped design Apple’s new Cupertino headquarters, called Apple Park, a project that began in 2004 with the campus officially opening in 2019.

News of the acquisition comes as OpenAI, which was recently valued at $300 billion in a funding round led by SoftBank, is rushing to stay ahead in the generative AI race, where competitors including Google, Anthropic and Elon Musk’s xAI are investing heavily and regularly rolling out new products. Part of staying ahead in that race includes shoring up its hardware operations.

To further its hardware ambitions, OpenAI hired the former head of Meta’s Orion augmented reality glasses initiative in November to lead its robotics and consumer hardware efforts. Caitlin “CK” Kalinowski wrote in an announcement at the time that the role would “initially focus on OpenAI’s robotics work and partnerships to help bring AI into the physical world and unlock its benefits for humanity.”

Also late last year, OpenAI invested in Physical Intelligence, a robot startup based in San Francisco, which raised $400 million at a $2.4 billion valuation. Other investors included Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The startup focuses on “bringing general-purpose AI into the physical world,” according to its website, by developing large-scale AI models and algorithms to power robots. 

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Microsoft says 394,000 Windows computers infected by Lumma malware globally

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Microsoft says 394,000 Windows computers infected by Lumma malware globally

Windows 11 operating system logo is displayed on a laptop screen for illustration photo.

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Microsoft said Wednesday that it broke down the Lumma Stealer malware project with the help of law enforcement officials across the globe.

The tech giant said in a blog post that its digital crimes unit discovered over 394,000 Windows computers were infected by the Lumma malware worldwide between March 16 through May 16.

The Lumma malware was a favorite hacking tool used by bad actors, Microsoft said in the post. Hackers used the malware to steal passwords, credit cards, bank accounts and cryptocurrency wallets.

Microsoft said its digital crimes unit was able to dismantle the web domains underpinning Lumma’s infrastructure with the help of a court order from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

The U.S. Department of Justice then took control of Lumma’s “central command structure” and squashed the online marketplaces where bad actors purchased the malware.

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The cybercrime control center of Japan “facilitated the suspension of locally based Lumma infrastructure,” the blog post said.

“Working with law enforcement and industry partners, we have severed communications between the malicious tool and victims,” Microsoft said in the post. “Moreover, more than 1,300 domains seized by or transferred to Microsoft, including 300 domains actioned by law enforcement with the support of Europol, will be redirected to Microsoft sinkholes.”

Microsoft said that other tech companies like Cloudflare, Bitsight and Lumen also helped break down the Lumma malware ecosystem.

Hackers have been buying the Lumma malware via underground online forums since at least 2022, all while developers were “continually improving its capabilities,” the blog post said.

The malware has become the “go-to tool for cybercriminals and online threat actors” because it’s easy to spread and break through some security defenses with the right programming, the company said.

In one example of how criminals used Lumma, Microsoft pointed to a March 2025 phishing campaign in which bad actors misled people into believing they were part of the Booking.com online travel service.

These cyber criminals used the Lumma malware to carry out their financial crimes in this scheme, the company said.

Additionally, Microsoft said that hackers have used the Lumma to attack online gaming communities and education systems, while other cybersecurity companies have noted that the malware has been used in cyber attacks targeting manufacturing, logistics, healthcare and other related critical infrastructure.

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