Marketplace Tech

SpaceX is targeting a $1.77 trillion valuation, but some analysts think it's worth half that. Plus, Florida sues OpenAI — the first state to take legal action against an AI company. But first, President Donald Trump signed an executive order this week, similar to the one he called off last month, asking AI companies to give the government a first look at advanced models that could have national se...

When a store offers different shoppers different prices depending on factors like the weather, the time of day, and what the store knows about each buyer, it’s called dynamic pricing. This spring, Maryland, became the first state to ban this practice in grocery stores. The state’s governor Wes Moore proposed the law. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Gov. Moore at the statehouse in Annapol...

If you have a debt, you may get a call, a letter or a text prodding you to pay it back. Now, that call could come from an AI agent. The AI debt collection market is expected to reach $16 billion by 2034, according to the Kaplan Group. Kate Nibbs of Wired has been reporting on this and said these bots are not as effective at getting people to pay back the money they owe.

There is growing demand for time with GPUs, the chips that power artificial intelligence. AI companies need those chips in order to keep their models up and running. And to do that, they can reserve time with a GPU. Now, there’s interest from Wall Street in creating a futures market for this AI compute time, essentially treating it like a commodity. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Liz Ho...

The price of oil has gone up significantly since late February, when the US invaded Iran. And when oil prices see a crazy rise, it makes other sources of energy look more attractive. But we’ve been here before - back in the 1970s, oil prices skyrocketed, and people started to turn to alternative or renewable energy sources. But, for a few reasons, it didn’t stick. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes ex...

This week, rideshare drivers in Massachusetts unionize; plus, Robinhood lets AI agents trade on behalf its customers. But first, there’ve been hints for a while that Anthropic, OpenAI and SpaceX are planning to go public in the near future. Last week, SpaceX filed its initial public offering prospectus, also known as an S1, which is meant to help investors understand the company’s business model,...

Like the name suggests, plug-in solar panels can be plugged into an electrical outlet just like you would your toaster. But instead of using electricity, they send power back to be used elsewhere in the home. In most of the country, plug-in solar is neither illegal nor legal. But energy policy consultant Bentham Polis, who's also a senior researcher with the Clean Energy States Alliance, says a gr...

Public backlash to content generated by artificial intelligence has pushed brands to reconsider how AI is used in their marketing. Some companies are swerving away from AI and finding ways to prove that their advertisements were made by humans. One of those humans is Ash Xu, a commercial director and online content creator. Brands hire her to make a commercial plus a behind-the-scenes video about...

Peptides are short chains of amino acids. GLP-1 weight loss drugs are peptides. Insulin is one, too. And there are thousands of others. Now, people are seeking out peptides in the hope of better muscles, better skin, better memory, better…everything. Many of the peptides people wanna try are available for research use only but the Food and Drug Administration might change this. In July, the agency...

The wildfire risk mitigation company Technosylva helps utilities, insurers and government agencies predict where and when a fire could spark. It uses historical weather data to make those predictions and suggest changes to help prevent or mitigate a fire. For example, maybe moving a tree branch that's close to a power line so it doesn't fall and start a fire. The company is nearly 30 years old, an...

On this week’s Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review, we take a look at how college graduates do not wanna hear about AI. Plus, what we all learned from the Musk v. Open AI case. But first, AI was unsurprisingly front and center at Google’s annual I/O developer conference. Among a suite of new AI products, Google said it updated its iconic search bar. Now, when searching in AI mode, the bar will...

Anthropic’s newest AI model, Mythos, is so good, the company says, at uncovering security vulnerabilities that it's too dangerous to release to the public. Anthropic shared a preview version with a select group to help patch the holes that Mythos finds. But the prospect of a super-hacker AI system is still sending some business leaders into a panic. Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino reports.

Earlier this month, a group called ShinyHunters took responsibility for a hack on the education platform Canvas, which is used for coursework at colleges. In a letter posted online , the group threatened to leak data it took from the platform, including billions of private messages between students and teachers. Canvas was also temporarily unavailable, disrupting students’ ability to do their work...

As of mid-2025, about a third of newly published websites were generated by artificial intelligence. That’s a massive increase from just three years before when the number hovered around zero. The AI written text provides fewer diverse viewpoints and is generally presented in a cheerful manner. That's all according to an early study out last month. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with one of...

Hydropower is one of the oldest forms of energy creation, and uses the flow of rushing water to create electricity. The province of Québec, Canada, has historically had an abundance of it and, later this spring, will start supplying hydropower to New York City. This is the second big hydropower line to link Québec and the Northeast U.S. this year, after a line to Massachusetts came on board this w...

This week, WhatsApp is offering private chats with its AI. Plus, Princeton will now hold supervised exams after a rise in AI-fueled cheating. But first, Google’s self-driving car division Waymo opted to do a voluntary recall of 3,800 of its robotaxis. This comes after a Waymo drove into a flooded road in San Antonio, Texas. The car was empty and no one was hurt, but Waymo is now updating its softw...

Voice cloning is the use of artificial intelligence to generate a clone of a real person’s voice, imitating the sound, when they pause and what words they typically emphasize. And it can be hard for people to identify voices as being AI-generated. Research last year from UC Berkeley professor Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics, found that people correctly identify a voice as AI-generated o...

In order to write her new book “I Am Not a Robot: My Year Using AI To Do ‘Almost’ Everything," journalist Joanna Stern decided to invite artificial intelligence into every aspect of her life — including her family life. She has a wife and two sons. On their spring break, she took them to Phoenix, where it's easy to hail a driverless car. They rode in a bunch of them, including one that totally fre...

Imagine if you invited robots - smart ones or “smart-ish,” at least - into every aspect of your life. Your emails and texts are all composed by an AI, the bots look at a photo of what’s in your fridge and figure out what you can make for dinner. They even become emotional support, providing advice and sometimes companionship. Journalist and founder of media company New Things, Joanna Stern, decide...

There's a new flex in Silicon Valley: how big is your AI agent swarm? They can work on your behalf, autonomously, 24/7, on whatever goal you give them. You might think having an army of AI minions could free up some time, maybe make work more chill. But, you’d be wrong, as Marketplace’s Meghan McCarty Carino reports.

On this week’s “Marketplace Tech Bytes: Week in Review,” we’ll discuss why Apple is paying a $250 million settlement over its Apple Intelligence tool and its capabilities. Plus, GameStop makes a surprising buyout offer for eBay. But first up: Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude, announced a new computing deal this week with SpaceX and its AI division, xAI. Anthropic will get access to SpaceX’s...

Back in 2015, Elon Musk and Sam Altman got the idea to start a nonprofit AI lab to develop artificial general intelligence that benefits all humanity. The lab would also make its technology open source, calling it OpenAI. All that is according to a complaint filed by Elon Musk, who has since parted ways with the organization. And now he is suing OpenAI, its CEO Sam Altman and its president Greg Br...

Technology has been transformative for how police officers do their jobs. Body cameras, speed detection technology and surveillance drones are some prominent examples. And now, law enforcement departments are trying to figure out if and how they want to add artificial intelligence to the mix. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Greg Barber, a science and technology journalist who recently wr...

The startup Winnie is a marketplace for childcare. It works like this: Parents type in the age of their kid and their zip code, then different childcare providers in the area will pop up. You can also filter by languages spoken, and whether you want a childcare center or home-based daycare or another option. It's free for parents to use. But the company was founded back in 2016, when AI search was...

The GUARD Act is a bipartisan bill that would prohibit companies from letting kids under 18 interact with what the legislation calls "AI companions,” which are chatbots designed to encourage the simulation of an interpersonal relationship. This comes after some harrowing stories of teenagers who developed relationships with chatbots and then harmed themselves or others. The bill just passed out of...