AI agents are powerful, but most ordinary people don’t yet use them. Town wants to change that. Led by CEO Jean-Denis Greze, playfully referred to as Town’s mayor, the company announced a $108 million Series B on October 19, co-led by Forerunner Ventures and Menlo Ventures, at a $1 billion valuation. Greze cofounded the San Francisco startup with Tony Vincent in late 2024 after serving as CTO of Plaid, where he built up the engineering team from about 20 people to 350. Town’s betting it can make AI more accessible and practical for small-business owners and mid-market firms still looking…
Author: Staff Writer
What do you do when you think your company’s technology may fundamentally alter the fabric of the economy—or rend it apart entirely? Anthropic, which is widely rumored to be approaching a record-setting IPO, apparently has an answer: Cut the public in on a piece of whatever comes next. Last week, the company announced that it would dedicate 5% of its shares to a company-owned public benefit trust. If Anthropic’s products are as lucrative as its sky-high valuation suggests, those shares could be worth billions on day one—and could grow to be worth hundreds of billions over time. By my calculations,…
Concerned about its workers losing brainpower as they outsource work to artificial intelligence, Dropbox is considering using cognitive training tools, like memory exercises and attention-span training, to keep them mentally sharp. The cloud storage pioneer has also experimented with “analog” offsites, where executives practice breathwork and put aside their electronic devices. “We’re incredibly optimistic about [AI’s] impact, but we also believe we have a responsibility to understand how it’s affecting the people who use it every day,” Melanie Rosenwasser, the cloud storage pioneer’s chief people officer, told Fast Company. “Brain rot” has emerged as a term to describe the…
A few years ago, one of our team members came down with a big health problem—a splitting headache that just wouldn’t let up. She visited several doctors, who recommended various treatments and medications to alleviate the pain, none of which worked. The pain was so intense that it made it difficult to carry out basic tasks, affecting both her personal and professional lives. After a few days of nonstop pain, she decided to try a different route and visit a chiropractor. The chiropractor listened, asked probing questions about her headache, then examined her from head to toe—leading to a surprising…
It’s 2 a.m. in the ER, and a physician is asking the hospital’s new AI assistant to summarize a patient’s chart. The cursor spins for minutes while the AI tool waits on the decades-old database underneath to answer, something it was never designed to do. The electronic health record (EHR) system is too old and was not built to keep up with AI’s demands. It’s like asking a 50-year-old runner to sprint with a 25-year-old; a pulled muscle or torn ligament is coming. Hospitals everywhere are operating this way as they onboard AI tools, not knowing whether their underlying systems…
QUESTION: Marty, your Civil Unrest models targeted 2026 coinciding with international war. We have seen the Middle East erupting as you warned and now France with Macron is like Nero playing the fiddle while Paris burns. He is sending in 70,000 troops to the street this weekend. That’s half the Ukrainian troops that have deserted. The waves of riots that have so convulsed France in recent weeks are in fact already rippling across Europe. I heard Greece is starting to have protests. Milan last weekend, where Meloni condemned “hooligans” trashing the city; in Brussels, protestors clashed with police, also inspired…
A biotech or SaaS company wants to be seen as an AI company. A health company wants to be seen as a tech company. Some have earned the label. Many are chasing a valuation multiple, knowing capital flows to whoever carries the tag. We’ve seen this script before. During the dot-com boom, adding “.com” to a corporate name could trigger a speculative surge. A decade later, companies rushed to rebrand around blockchain. I run a communications firm. Narrative can change how people see a business, but it can’t fix the fundamentals. STORY MATTERS—TO A POINT Investors, employees, and reporters invest…
The cost of building out the infrastructure needed to satisfy booming demand for artificial intelligence is changing the way major companies allocate resources. That can mean an end to some jobs once done by humans. Yet in many cases it means repurposing money once spent on workers so that more capital can be devoted to boosting AI capabilities. Just how much money is being spent on AI is a hot topic as fears of a bubble in the sector grow, but the potential impact on workers in some sectors is clear. Here’s a look at some of the companies that have announced layoffs or…
A breakthrough treatment for the deadliest form of skin cancer can cut a patient’s risk of recurrence or death nearly in half. The new scientific revelation is powered by an mRNA-based vaccine crafted with the technology behind both Pfizer and Moderna’s landmark COVID-19 shots. By using mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid), the vaccine can be customized for the genetic profile of an individual patient’s skin cancer, fighting tumors much more effectively than generic traditional methods. “For decades, cancer treatment has largely been defined by where a tumor originates in the body,” Melanoma Institute Australia professor Georgina Long, the study’s principal author,…
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Key Takeaways After a mistake, write the conditions that led to that mistake before you write the name of the person who made it. Leaders control more of the context than anyone else, so they own a share of the failure environment even when they did not make the last move. Upward accountability does not erase individual agency. Someone still made a choice, so you should still hold them accountable. The principle: The leader’s first job after failure is to make truth safe enough to surface. The first time a deadline slipped…