Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley

Leadership is not a straight line or a standard model; there are countless paths to the top. From Silicon Valley builders like Reed Hastings to steady hands like Warren Buffett, who had already led Berkshire Hathaway for decades before Netflix mailed its first DVD, the common thread is not a blueprint, but an ability to draw the best out of people.

A year ago, Google faced the prospect of being dismantled. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) and a new court judgment has helped it avoid this fate. Part of the reason is that AI poses a grave threat to Google's advertising revenues. "Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment," according to the decision.

By August 1975, 5,000 copies of the Altair 8800 had been sold. It had been more than half a year since the machine had gone on sale, initially as a niche product. But it soon gained popularity among enthusiasts of computers, which had until that point been contained in massive metal closets. The first personal computer had arrived, and at a competitive price point. Its success created the perfect breeding ground for the birth of companies that would bring computing into the home.

Alef Aeronautics received approval to begin flying car tests at Half Moon Bay and Hollister airports this week, a step closer toward commercial production for what the San Mateo-based startup calls the world's first flying car. The company will start testing with its Model Zero Ultralight and later expand to other Model Zero prototypes and its $300,000 commercial Model A. Planned testing will include driving, vertical takeoff, forward flight, vertical landing and ground and air maneuvering.

"The changes we're making really are balancing a lot of competing interests for limited curb space, so where we've been able to help we've tried to do so," Baird said.

There are, as Meek Mill so aptly put it back in 2013, " levels to this" - seniority levels, that is. Microsoft's lowest-tier engineering positions are coded, as BI reported another recent story about the tech giant's salary ranges, at level 57. Those jobs start with an $83,000 base salary rate - life-changing money to the average American, but low on the spectrum tech workers grew to expect from hugely profitable corporations competing to hire the best talent.

After two years at SpaceX, I felt ready to take on new challenges and expand my skill set into a different high-performance environment.

"The last couple of years, more women are saying they're attracted to a nerd. They literally use the word nerd. So I think that's kind of a buzzword to describe these guys in a sexy way."

Archer Aviation has leased a 105,000-square-foot building at 10 West Tasman Dr., previously troubled with a loan failure, for its expansion efforts.

Lambda Inc., a cloud infrastructure firm, is negotiating a funding round that could value it at $4 billion to $5 billion ahead of a potential IPO.

The A-60, a smaller airship by LTA Research, is designed to train pilots as the main project, Pathfinder 1, undergoes testing.

Mark Zuckerberg has spent 14 years acquiring 11 properties in Palo Alto for over $110 million, forming a personal compound in Crescent Park with luxurious amenities.

"I don't think it was received super well... this isn't what we wanted."

Elad Gil has made early investments in companies like Perplexity and Character.AI, and his portfolio includes seed or Series A stakes in over 30 unicorns.