If you own an Anker PowerCore 10000 power bank, now’s the time to check your device. Anker issued a major recall after receiving 19 reports of fires and explosions, pulling more than 1 million units from the market. The recall, announced by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), highlights growing concerns about the risks tied to lithium-ion batteries. What Devices Are Being Recalled? Anker’s website states the recall covers PowerCore 10000 power banks (model A1263) sold between June 2016 and December 2022. These portable chargers were widely available online and in stores across the U.S. To check if your device is impacted: Find the serial number on the bottom of your charger. Enter it on Anker’s recall website to verify. Double-check letters and numbers carefully (common mix-ups like using “O” vs. “0” or “I” vs. “1” can lead to errors). If your serial number is missing or unreadable, Anker advises reaching out to its support team directly for guidance. This isn’t the...

Culina Health Founder Vanessa Rissetto is behind a personalized, virtual nutrition-care startup that has raised millions of dollars to provide dietary guidance to patients. Culina Health Established and bootstrapped in 2020 alongside co-founder Tamar Samuels, Culina Health recently secured over $7.9 million in Series A funding, bringing its total funding to more than $20 million, per Essence. The health tech company offers holistic and evidence-based nutrition care from registered dietitians, its website notes . Here’s how the platform works: Within 10 minutes, patients are matched with a registered dietitian to schedule their first 60-minute session. From there, they can discuss their health history, and follow-up 45-minute sessions help patients establish healthier habits and assess their progress. The platform has over 90 registered dietitians and has served over 10,000 patients across all 50 states. Culina Health’s superpower includes its ability to track patient data and...

Shaquille O’Neal has settled the FTX investor lawsuit. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, the former NBA player, who is now a serial entrepreneur, had been named alongside FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, Tom Brady, Stephen Curry, Naomi Osaka, and others, as defendants in an $11 billion class action lawsuit that was filed in Florida. The defendants had all been featured in FTX ads. For their involvement, they were being accused of promoting the cryptocurrency exchange, which ultimately filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections and went defunct. The suit stated the defendants endorsed a “fraudulent scheme” that was “designed to take advantage of unsophisticated investors from across the country, who utilize mobile apps to make their investments.” O’Neal had attempted to distance himself from FTX. “People know I’m very, very honest,” O’Neal explained, according to CNBC’s Make it. “I have nothing to hide. If I was heavily involved, I would be at the forefront saying, ‘Hey.’ But I was...

Meta Platforms Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is taking a highly personal approach to what could become the company’s boldest artificial intelligence (AI) play yet. Frustrated with Meta’s current progress in AI, Zuckerberg is forming a new elite unit internally dubbed a “superintelligence” team, Bloomberg reports . His goal is to achieve artificial general intelligence (AGI) AI systems that can perform human-level tasks across domains. In recent weeks, Zuckerberg has hosted top AI researchers and engineers at his California homes in Lake Tahoe and Palo Alto, according to the outlet, pitching them directly on his vision. Around 50 new hires will form a group that will closely operate under Zuckerberg’s supervision at Meta’s headquarters in Menlo Park, CA. Insiders told Bloomberg that the Meta chief is personally selecting talent and serving as the primary point of contact during outreach. A $10 Billion Investment And A Strategic Ally In Scale AI Meta is reportedly building its...

Meta Platforms Inc. is reportedly in negotiations to invest over $10 billion in Scale AI, a rapidly emerging player in the artificial intelligence (AI) ecosystem, known for its data labeling services and model training, according to Bloomberg. If completed, the multi-billion-dollar deal would rank among the largest funding rounds ever for a private company and would be Meta’s largest external AI investment to date, the outlet reports. The move reflects Meta’s growing ambition to control the AI market, where tech giants are competing for the best language models to develop and implement across platforms and products. What Does Scale AI Do? Under the direction of CEO Alexandr Wang, Scale AI provides high-quality labeled data essential for training advanced AI models for major players, including Microsoft and OpenAI. In 2024, the company brought in roughly $870 million in revenue and is on track to more than double that to $2 billion in 2025, Bloomberg previously reported. Much of...

Editorial Note: Opinions and thoughts are the author’s own and not those of AFROTECH™. The New York Times inked a multi-year deal with Amazon last month to license its content to Amazon’s artificial intelligence models. Amazon will have access to The New York Times’ content, including NYT Cooking and its sports publication, The Athletic. Amazon’s AI services, such as Alexa, will produce real-time summaries and short excerpts. Similar to other news publishers, The New York Times views a licensing deal as a viable way to generate profits as AI companies attempt to siphon copyrighted content to train their chatbots. Attitudes towards AI use, especially regarding news organizations, can be polarizing. Other publishers such as The Washington Post, Associated Press, and Axios have also signed deals with AI companies to license their content. A few years ago, AI companies were using copyrighted material without permission. Media company Ziff Davis and The New York Times sued OpenAI and...

One of Africa’s most prominent tech founders is stepping back into the spotlight with a new artificial intelligence (AI) venture. Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, his co-founder of Tunisian fintech startup Expensya, have launched Thunder Code, a generative AI-powered software testing platform. TechCrunch reports that the France- and Tunisia-based startup has already raised $9 million in seed funding. The return to startup life comes nearly two years after the duo sold Expensya to Swedish software firm Medius in 2023, according to the outlet. Although the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch that they estimated it to be more than $120 million, marking one of the biggest African tech exits to date. From Promising Exit To New Beginnings Following the acquisition, Jouini assumed the role of chief product and technology officer at Medius. Neither he nor Othmani intended to return to entrepreneurship. However, Jouini’s exposure to the...

Ghana is set to become a leading force in Africa’s digital economy with the launch of a $1 billion innovation hub, funded entirely by the Ports, Customs and Free Zone Corp. (PCFC), a government-owned entity of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), reports People of Color in Tech (POCIT). The outlet shares that the project, scheduled to break ground next year, will be constructed on a 9.7-square-mile site in Ningo Prampram, situated in the Greater Accra Region. Construction is expected to wrap up by the end of 2027. A Major Step Toward Africa’s AI Future Sam George, Ghana’s minister of communication, digital technology, and innovation, stated that the initiative directly supports President John Mahama’s national vision of positioning the country as Africa’s next hub for artificial intelligence (AI) through the One Million Coders program. Launched in April 2025, the program aims to equip Ghanaian youth with software development skills to help close the country’s digital gap and prepare the...

Editorial Note: Opinions and thoughts are the author’s own and not those of AFROTECH™. Data centers have been in the news lately due to their connection to AI, but they have been around in some form or capacity for decades. Data centers originally were created to hold mainframe computers because they would tend to overheat, needing to be stored in climate-controlled rooms. This was at a time when more businesses began relying on computers for their day-to-day operations, and things needed to be moved from single rooms to larger dedicated facilities. What caused data centers to explode in popularity was the rise of personal computing. With more and more data needing to be stored, more facilities needed to be created in order to house all of this new data that was being generated every day, not just from businesses but from people living their lives as well due to the adoption of mobile devices. What exponentially increased the amount of data centers was when software started “eating...

A Georgia teenager has reached a huge academic milestone: Getting 53 college acceptance letters and receiving $1.8 million in scholarships, PEOPLE shared. High schooler Jada-Symone Batichon, 18, also thanks her mother and father for their inspiration as the first in their families to go to college. That motivated her to work harder toward her goals. “All of it paid off,” the Wheeler High School graduate told the magazine. Jada-Symone was an accomplished student, maintaining a 4.0 GPA in high school and having completed six high school courses in middle school. She was also involved in student government and the cheerleading team and was a member of the National Honor Society. Dual-enrolled at Kennesaw State University, she obtained a nursing assistant certification from Chattahoochee Technical College as well. Jada-Symone says her academic success would not have been possible without the help of her mother, Dr. Claudia Batichon, who is a technical and agricultural education teacher...

The NAACP is calling on Memphis, TN, officials to shut down Colossus, the controversial supercomputer facility operated by Elon Musk’s xAI, TechCrunch reports. Located in South Memphis, the facility, according to the outlet, is under fire for allegedly operating dozens of gas turbines without proper permits and releasing hazardous pollutants into surrounding communities. In a letter sent via email to the Shelby County Health Department (SCHD) and Memphis Light, Gas and Water (MLGW), on May 29, 2025, NAACP leaders demanded an emergency order halting operations. If a full shutdown isn’t possible, they urged city officials to at least cite the company for violating clean air standards. The case, now known as the NAACP Colossus complaint, is gaining national attention and posing more profound queries regarding the relationship between environmental justice and high-tech development in Black communities. Pollution In A Historically Black Neighborhood Boxtown, a historically Black...

An Amazon-backed AI model threatened to blackmail engineers. In March 2024, Amazon announced a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, according to a news release. Anthropic is a company building frontier artificial intelligence (AI) systems that its leaders believe are safe and reliable, according to its website. One of its technologies is Claude, which is an AI model that has the capabilities of advanced reasoning, vision analysis, code generation, and multilingual processing. The company has been utilizing Amazon Web Services’ tools as its “primary cloud provider for mission critical workloads.” “We have a notable history with Anthropic, together helping organizations of all sizes around the world to deploy advanced generative artificial intelligence applications across their organizations,” Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of data and AI at AWS, said in the news release. “Anthropic’s visionary work with generative AI, most recently the introduction of its state-of-the art...

Monk Inyang is on a mission to make AI more practical for underserved communities. Within his career trajectory, Inyang has been of service to others. He has worked as an actor, investment salesperson, a researcher on Wall Street, and has also dedicated several years to executive coaching for mid-career Black and Latin professionals, which he shared on the “Black Tech Green Money” podcast hosted by AFROTECH™ Brand Manager Will Lucas. This experience has positioned him to be a more effective leader in his current role as CEO and founder of 1st Street Partnerships, an organization dedicated to providing artificial intelligence (AI) education and training to businesses and communities with a strong emphasis on inclusivity and cultural relevance, its LinkedIn mentions. “We help move people from AI anxiety to AI adoption. And that’s through really culturally resonant community-based education,” Inyang explained on the podcast. Partnering With Kevin Hart’s Coramino Fund 1st Street...

Twitch star Kai Cenat received calls from major networks due to the buzz around Streamer University. What Is Streamer University? As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Streamer University was a weekend-long program that provided educational opportunities for both small and larger creators at the University of Akron campus in Ohio. Among the instructors was Agent00, who taught the following classes: Monetization for Dummies and Pocket Watching 101. His contributions earned him the title of Professor of the Year during an award ceremony held on Sunday, May 25. Creators were also supported with the brand-new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, featuring a 200 MP wide-angle lens, and received a complimentary year of 5G service from T-Mobile. More than 1 million creators applied to be part of the experience, and nearly 150 were admitted to what became a breeding ground for content, garnering millions of views collectively. What Happened At Streamer University? Whether you are chronically online or...

Twitch superstar Kai Cenat is switching things up and partially taking his talents offline. This time, he’s not just live-streaming from a room filled with chaos and energy. He’s on a college campus, building something bigger. The question on everyone’s feed: What is Streamer University? According to Complex, Streamer University is a weekend-long program designed for content creators to level up their skills in real time. Already in full swing, it runs May 22–25, and is being held on the University of Akron campus in Ohio. In case you were wondering, this isn’t your average influencer linkup. It is a creator bootcamp, a networking hub, and a crash course on how to build a digital brand that lasts. What Is Streamer University, Really? Streamer University is a live, in-person creator academy. More than 150 up-and-coming streamers were selected from over a million applicants to attend. Travel, food, and lodging are completely covered, and the weekend will be packed with sessions that...