Facebook has hired a former IBM executive to be its head of artificial intelligence as it aims to expand its efforts in that area. The personnel changes come as Amazon, Google and Microsoft also staff up in AI. Jérôme Pesenti, who led the development of the Watson platform at IBM after IBM acquired a company […]

CoinList CEO Andy Bromberg on CNBC Tuesday cautioned investors to be careful of fraud when buying into initial coin offerings. “The vast majority of ICOs are scams or people seeking to raise money easily,” said Bromberg, whose company is a platform that helps crypto start-ups find investors. ICOs are a crowdfunding way to raise funds […]

Disney announced Tuesday it will pay over 125,000 employees a one-time cash bonus of $1,000, as well as make a new $50 million investment into education program for employees. “We are directing approximately $125 million to our cast members and employees across the country and making higher education more accessible with the launch of this […]

The Xprize Foundation announced Tuesday its Google-sponsored race to win $20 million by landing on the moon will end with no victors. The foundation says it expected “a winner by now” but remaining fundraising, technical and regulatory hurdles mean the Lunar Xprize “will go unclaimed.” “We are extraordinarily grateful to Google for enabling this 10-year […]

Election interference has opened the door for the government to clamp down on social media companies. But while executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter have made multiple trips to testify in front of Congress, there’s been no clear movement towards enforcement. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff offered up an analogy: Treat social media like a health […]

UBS unveiled its favorite stock picks to its clients, predicting big gains for several stocks this year. The firm screened “for upside to price target, upside/downside skew, market cap, sector weightings and liquidity, we focused on stocks where we believe our analysts have a truly differentiated view vs. consensus,” UBS’ research team wrote Monday entitled […]

Billionaire and maverick entrepreneur Elon Musk is known for making what seem like wild predictions. The Tesla boss’s latest prophecy came Tuesday as part of the announcement of a new negotiated payment deal for the electric car company — Musk will be paid only if Tesla hits aggressive market capitalization and operations targets. Said Musk: […]

Late last week, Deadline reported that current CNN president Jeff Zucker was deep in talks with Disney’s Bob Iger about becoming the next president of ESPN, replacing John Skipper, who stepped down recently to deal with substance abuse issues. This report now appears to be in doubt, as the Sports Business Journal’s John Ourand said […]

Google’s Play Store is making a bigger push into selling audiobooks, the company announced Tuesday, putting it in more direct competition with Amazon-owned Audible. This move is particularly important as both Google and Amazon continue pushing their smart speaker lines, the Home and Echo respectively. Right now, there’s no integration between the Google Home and […]

Verizon says employees, other than top management, will receive 50 shares of restricted stock, the price of which will be set on February 1. About 155,000 employees will be affected, Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam told CNBC’s “Fast Money: Halftime Report” on Tuesday. The award could total over $400 million, based on Verizon’s current share price. […]