STARTUPS CENTRAL

Apple is expected to roll out a wide slate of hardware this week, with the company’s freshly appointed chief executive fronting a kickoff that could include a foldable iPhone, a smart home display, a refreshed Apple TV and upgraded headphones with health-tracking features. The event, billed by the company as “Surprise and Shine,” arrives at a moment of leadership change and could expand Apple’s reach into several categories at once. Reports indicate the phone lineup will grow

Many small-company owners celebrate bigger sales as proof of success. But mounting clients, staff and invoices can leave a founder working harder without a meaningful bump in personal income. Before you chase the next milestone, make sure growth is adding profit, not just extra work. The tension is common. In a recent survey, roughly three-quarters of small-business proprietors expected sales to climb the following year, while a little more than half cited rising costs as the

After years building systems at major tech firms, an executive who helped sharpen social platforms with machine learning is directing that same approach at independent restaurants — automating routine tasks, answering busy phone lines and harvesting orders that often slip through the cracks. Kerry Zhang, who held senior engineering roles at Yahoo, Tinder and Google before joining Meta, says she watched how algorithmic systems changed product behavior at massive scale. "I've s

AI has greatly lowered the barrier to creating custom software, but companies and small-business owners are now asking a tougher question: just because you can make an app, should you? Many who jump into in-house development don’t factor in the ongoing obligations that come with running and supporting a product customers depend on. Not long ago the choice between creating software in-house or buying it from a vendor was largely about whether a team had the technical chops. If

A growing share of America's private fortunes are rooted in neighborhood enterprises rather than tech startups or celebrity ventures. Americans who together control over $65 trillion in assets include many people you might pass on the sidewalk: the owner of the neighborhood repair shop, the veterinarian who expanded into several clinics, or the restaurateur behind the corner chain. Recent reporting by a national business journal found that the count of individuals worth more

Many entrepreneurs are now looking beyond public markets, but founder-investors need a different playbook: prioritize protection, pick managers carefully and be prepared to wait. More than 99 out of every 100 U.S. companies remain privately owned, and much of the value creation for transformative firms happens long before any stock ticker appears. That reality helps explain why business builders are shifting some attention — and capital — into privately held opportunities. Ye

Rapid customer and revenue gains are good problems to have, but they often reveal operational cracks. Here’s how owners can plan ahead so service, culture and quality don’t erode as the company expands. When a company moves from a handful of people to dozens, the day-to-day reality shifts fast. Owners often find themselves stretched thin as new orders pile up, customer wait times lengthen and routine processes fail under heavier use. The pattern is familiar to business adviso

Alvaro Gellings, a Spanish-born serial entrepreneur, says a single product drop that moved roughly €1.2 million — about $1.4 million — in its first 60 minutes changed how he builds companies. Speaking at a business retreat in Tuscany this summer, Gellings laid out how collaborations with online personalities and an unconventional approach to visibility powered rapid sales at his fashion label and later shaped a sportswear venture that rode an enormous wave of organic attentio

I attempted to pull the article from the link you provided, but the page didn’t include any editorial content. The response consisted mainly of cookie prompts, vendor consent listings and other privacy-related elements instead of a headline, byline, body copy or a featured image. Critical pieces of metadata were absent: there was no author name, no publication date, and no article body to work from. What showed up in the HTML appears to be form controls and vendor lists that

Visitors encountered only a consent banner and a roster of service providers when attempting to view a story that had suggested Travis Kalanick’s Atoms may be eyeing the robotaxi market. The item’s main text, byline, publication date and imagery were absent from the page, leaving the core reporting unavailable. What remained on the page was a consent-management prompt and an inventory of third-party vendors—no article paragraphs, no author credit and no featured photo. That m

The Exploration Company said Wednesday it has raised $450 million in fresh capital to speed up development of its reusable launch vehicles and expand its bid to compete with SpaceX for commercial and government launch business. Company leaders say the money will finance manufacturing growth, flight testing and customer acquisition as it moves from development toward regular launches. Investors in the round included venture and growth investors as well as strategic aerospace p

Meta’s new digital helper, Muse, promises conversational answers and personalized recommendations, but many users say they’re not yet comfortable with giving the company additional access to their information. Meta announced Muse this week as its latest consumer-facing artificial-intelligence assistant, positioned to offer everything from quick search-like replies to tailored shopping suggestions across its apps. The company frames Muse as a feature to simplify everyday tasks

A routine request to pull an online news story returned only a list of consent settings and tracker names, rather than the article itself — a problem that’s becoming more common as sites wrap pages in privacy tools. The requested page served only cookie permissions and third-party tracker metadata, leaving no headline, byline, body text or image to extract. Website operators increasingly rely on consent-management systems and external scripts that can prevent automated tools

Accenture will integrate and deploy Google’s AI tooling for corporate clients, aiming to help organizations move from pilot projects to large-scale use. Google Cloud announced a broad commercial collaboration with Accenture designed to accelerate companywide AI implementations for customers. The tie-up positions Accenture to package Google’s infrastructure and models into ready-to-run solutions and to supply migration, customization and managed services — moves meant to close

An NYU mathematician is publicly accusing OpenAI of tactics that, they say, unfairly influenced the resolution of a complex problem that can shape careers in pure mathematics. The claim centers on allegations that the company pushed its tools and personnel into a dispute over credit, a claim OpenAI has rejected as inaccurate and says it will look into. The dispute involves a single theorem-like question long viewed as a potential career milestone for early-career researchers.