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More than 1 million people have lost their jobs already in 2025. Many people are out of a job this year, and this includes more than 300,000 Black women, according to The Root. This also comes at a time when diversity is under attack — with federal dollars being used as bait — and Americans are feeling the effects of a government shutdown. In Big Tech alone, there has been a string of layoffs this year at media companies, including Paramount, VIBE, and Teen Vogue, as a result of mergers, as well as other companies that include Meta, Microsoft, Starbucks, Oracle, American Airlines, and, most recently, Amazon. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Amazon will lay off 14,000 corporate workers, and AI is partly to blame. “This generation of AI is the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet,” Beth Galetti, Amazon’s senior vice president of people experience and technology, said in a memo. “We’re convicted that we need to be organized more leanly, with fewer layers and...
Mustafa Suleyman has high hopes for the future of superintelligence and its impact on humanity. During a conversation at AFROTECH™ Conference 2025, he joked that he grew up playing “Snake” on a Nokia phone, which was supposedly a “phenomenon” when it launched in the late ’90s. Suleyman’s fascination with technological advancements never wavered, and his enthusiasm remains strong as the CEO of Microsoft AI. He shared his thoughts on superintelligence, stating early on that it “must always work in service of humanity.” He also offered his predictions for it by 2040. He expressed optimism about its potential to benefit humankind, believing that if developed successfully, it would align with human interests and improve the standard of living. Suleyman explained that it is already capable of world-class medical diagnostics and continues to advance in emotional intelligence and autonomous action. “It’s going to learn to use APIs, send emails, make phone calls, interact with us,” he...
This Black-owned design and operations firm is expanding its technology footprint. ContinuumX.ai Space Continuum, led by President Joshua Johnson, has launched ContinuumX.ai , its technology division, which will focus on robotics, AI integration, and enterprise deployment and will target healthcare, education, hospitality, and manufacturing industries, according to a press release shared with AFROTECH™. Humanoid and cognitive robots are in the works to be deployed in the U.S. Its efforts are in collaboration with strategic technology partner NEURA Robotics. Partnering with NEURA Robotics was a natural fit, since the company focuses on serving humanity and views robotics as a tool to collaborate with humans rather than replace them, Johnson told AFROTECH™. “A lot of robots will replace certain jobs. That’s based on the company saying that’s actually requiring what their vision is. That can be for different reasons. But we also need to identify where there’s a labor shortage in some...
The AI Edge Virtual Summit returns to empower professionals to move from experimenting with AI to building with it. Fresh off the success of AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 — which brought together more than 40,000 attendees to the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, TX, from Oct. 27-31 — the summit will expand on the AI track that engaged founders, venture capitalists, students, professionals, and government leaders. Carrying forward the conference’s theme, “Building What’s Next,” the AI Edge Virtual Summit — powered by AFROTECH™ and which drew more than 4,000 participants in August — will guide attendees on building, automating, and scaling with AI to drive innovation and impact across their careers and industries. During the August summit, Blavity Inc. founder and CEO Morgan DeBaun shared her vision for how professionals can approach AI. “I’m sure you’ve also seen the news that says, ‘AI is taking people’s jobs,’ and the CEOs who are saying, ‘We’re going to replace 30%, 40%...
OpenAI’s Sora 2 is once again being misused. The feature has led to users creating AI-generate d videos through its model, which the company claims is “accurate, realistic, and more controllable than prior systems,” as AFROTECH™ previously told you. The feature was called out by Dr. Bernice A. King, the daughter of the late Martin Luther King Jr., which prompted OpenAI, founded by Sam Altman, to stop users from creating deepfake videos of the Civil Rights activist. “The Estate of Martin Luther King, Jr., Inc. (King, Inc.) and OpenAI have worked together to address how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s likeness is represented in Sora generations. Some users generated disrespectful depictions of Dr. King’s image. So at King, Inc.’s request, OpenAI has paused generations depicting Dr. King as it strengthens guardrails for historical figures,” OpenAI said on X. Futurism reports that in the latest controversy surrounding Sora 2, it was use d to depict a Black woman selling $2,500 a month in...
There is no better time to engage with technology than now. Chris Lyons, the president of Web3 Media at a16z crypto, has taken the stage at the AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 in Houston, which is reaching students, founders, technologists, and creators from all walks of life. He encouraged attendees to embrace today’s advancements in tech. Drawing from his roots in the music industry, where he once worked as a sound engineer, he references Soulja Boy as a prime example of embracing technology. The rapper used music production software Fruity Loops, now known as FL Studio, to release his debut hit “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” which was created using the program’s stock sounds, notes VICE. “I grew up in Atlanta, and I remember hearing Soulja Boy first coming out for this. He was recording literally in his bathroom. And when I used to work in a studio, you literally had to go to a physical recording studio,” Lyons explained. “But by having the software and having the equipment makes things 10...
Jidenna has shared his thoughts on technology’s influence on the music industry. The artist, recognized for “Classic Man,” has personal ties to the tech sector, which traces to his father, Oliver Mobisson. During the AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 in Houston on Oct. 29, Jidenna referred to his father as “Nigeria’s Steve Jobs,” but he was underfunded . His father taught at Anambra State University of Science and Technology (Now, Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu University) and was a part of a group that created West Africa’s first commercially produced PC, CNN reports. “I didn’t come up as a billionaire trust fund baby because Nigeria was commissioning him, but didn’t necessarily see the full vision at the time for what PCs would become,” Jidenna said during a panel moderated by Senior Vice President of AFROTECH™ and Live Events at Blavity Inc. Simone Ashley Tyler. Photo Credit: Adrianna Hall Jidenna pursued studies at Stanford University, originally on track to earn an engineering degree, but...
Leveraging the best of the best AI tools can help you navigate the technology. Staying ahead of the curve will put you in a better position, according to Kapor Capital’s Head of Portfolio Marketing Cliff Worley. During the 2025 AFROTECH™ Conference 2025 in Houston, TX, he noted that while AI may not take your job, someone using it could. So, learning the technology will be fundamental, and there are more than 40,000 AI tools and counting that are already out there, he revealed. “AI is like a tool,” Worley told attendees during a panel on the top AI tools in 2025. “It’s useless without instructions, dangerous without supervision, and brilliant when guided well. As 66% of leaders said that they would not hire someone without AI skills … You’re going to have to learn this technology. We have marketing tools, customer support tools, and more and more of these are going to be developed,” he shared. Best AI Tools In 2025 View this post on Instagram A post shared by AFROTECH...
Abiodun Johnson is helping travelers connect to nearby experiences. When Johnson was two months old, he moved to Nigeria to live with his grandparents until he was 6 ½ years old. He returned to Memphis, TN, where he was born. Throughout his life, he has immersed himself in new communities, and told AFROTECH™ it was harder to feel like a local. He has lived in seven cities spanning three countries and two continents. For the last decade, he has lived in New York City and is splitting his time between Puerto Rico. Nearvana His experience living in multiple places sparked his latest tech venture, Nearvana, a local search platform he co-founded with Jay Jackson (CTO), to help people, particularly travelers, easily find nearby events, places, and experiences. “We really wanted to look at the possibilities of location data and how it could be used to shape more meaningful real-world experiences,” Johnson (CEO) said. “That’s when it really clicked for us that the physical world hasn’t...
The future of ridesharing is here. Digital Tasks To Get Paid Uber is piloting a new way for its drivers to earn money when they’re not on the road. In a blog post, the company said it is piloting digital tasks for select drivers and couriers. According to Newsweek, the initiative was first introduced during the “Only on Uber 2025” conference in Washington, D.C., and its AI Solutions group will power it. The feature is already being tested in India. The company gave several examples of tasks a driver can fulfill in just a few minutes, including uploading photos to train AI models, submitting documents in different languages, or recording yourself speaking in a language. “Uber connects you with companies that need real people to help improve their technology. By completing short digital tasks across different languages and topics, you’ll help make their products smarter — while earning extra through the Uber app,” the company said in the blog post. Drivers will be able to earn more...
Chandler Malone is on a mission to help people launch, operate, and scale their businesses successfully. Malone has been the founder of several venture-backed companies and is deeply intertwined with technology. His initial exposure in the field can be traced back to his time playing in the AAU circuit in middle school, when the father of a teammate sold a company to AT&T for $2 billion, which allowed the team to travel on private jets, he told AFROTECH™ . When he played for Washington University in St. Louis, his teammate’s father was Joe Lacob, the owner of the Golden State Warriors, who has also made his wealth through investments in medical technology, the internet, and energy companies, according to Stanford Graduate School of Business. While playing basketball, seeing friends from different socioeconomic backgrounds inspired him to build technologies focused on education and the future of work. In 2020, he launched Bootup, an alternative education marketplace with over 130...
Meta will be making cuts on its team working on AI. Superintelligence Labs The New York Times reports that the tech company co-founded by billionaire Mark Zuckerberg was ramping up its effort to lead in AI, which caused it to take on more employees than needed, s ources close to the matter explained. Now, 600 workers in its AI division, Superintelligence Labs, have been laid off. Over the past three years, the company has been gearing up to compete with Google, OpenAI, and others, Axios reports. “For our superintelligence effort, I’m focused on building the most elite and talent-dense team in the industry,” Zuckerberg said on Threads on July 14. “We’re also going to invest hundreds of billions of dollars into compute to build superintelligence. We have the capital from our business to do this.” Meta Is Reportedly Laying Off 600 AI Workers Teams specifically said to be impacted will be those working in Meta’s FAIR AI research, product-related AI, and AI infrastructure units, which is...
Karima Williams is behind an AI-powered web platform that can be used for your biggest crash outs. The Howard University graduate from Prince George’s County, Maryland, started teaching people how to use technology while working for Obamacare. She later moved into IT after Trump was elected, and got into crypto through her work in the private sector, with a seven-year streak with startups until she was laid off. “I started off with me teaching crypto basics like safety, wallets, yields … Then it branched into me teaching about AI and AI agents because I was learning about them as I was teaching,” she told AFROTECH™. “And by the time I got let go from my company, I was more so full into the AI part of it, and I continued to teach AI and live stream,” Williams added. Williams went down a rabbit hole of AI tools, including Lovable, a no-code AI builder, and Claude, an AI-powered assistant that she began using heavily in October 2024. She calls Claude her “AI bestie,” and it served as a...
Dr. Setor Zilevu wants to be a champion for the underdogs. Born in Ghana and raised in Virginia as the youngest sibling, he recalls going against the grain. His brothers and father were engineers, and he initially sought to pursue a career in neuroscience, despite always having an interest in technology. However, after dissecting an animal, medicine did not feel like the right fit, and he pivoted career plans in his first year at Virginia Tech. “Maybe being a neurosurgeon might not be the best career path for me,” Zilevu told AFROTECH™. His brothers encouraged him to change his major to computer engineering, as they remembered how he built his own Sony PlayStation to play “Dragon Ball Z” as a kid, when his parents wouldn’t make the purchase. He earned his bachelor’s degree and went on to pursue a master’s at Virginia Tech as well, but then switched to computer science in 2017, with the support of a GEM Fellowship Program. He had originally also applied to the University of Southern...
Black women continue to plant their flags in technology. University of Michigan graduate Crystal Brown stumbled into technology after a friend introduced her to a CEO behind a life science startup, TechCrunch reports. She was already nose deep in the automotive manufacturing industry and aiming to become a C-suite automotive executive. The CEO that she had been introduced to was looking for a business manager, and Brown accepted a part-time role. Her friends encouraged her to leave her position in the automotive industry altogether. “I was like, no one’s gonna take me seriously. I’ve never studied biology. I studied poli sci and women’s studies,” she told TechCrunch. Brown stayed with the company and eventually moved up to director of operations. Then the startup went public. With a substantial payout, she decided to launch her own biotech startup, per the outlet. Though she made some rookie mistakes, like hiring too quickly, and the company ultimately closed due to funding, she had...
