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European neobroker Scalable Capital raises $65M on a flat $1.4B valuation
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Scalable Capital, a Munich startup that aims to make investing in financial markets accessible to a wider range of consumers, is putting more fuel in its tank to drive deeper into Europe. The company has raised €60 million in equity ($65 million at today’s rates). It will be using the funds to build out its business in the six countries — Germany, Austria, Italy, France, Spain and Netherlands — where it is already active and to expand into more. Balderton is leading the round, with participation from HV Capital out of its new growth fund and other unnamed existing backers. Contrary to the startup’s name, this round is coming in at a flat valuation of $1. 4 billion. This was the same valuation Scalable Capital had the last time it raised money —$180 million in 2021, a round led by Tencent, with BlackRock, HV and Tengelmann participating. That is despite the fact that the startup is now “four or five times bigger” than it was two years ago, according to co-CEO Erik Podzuweit, who co-founded the company with Florian Prucker. Today, Scalable Capital, which started as a digital wealth management platform, now describes itself as a full-service brokerage. It has 1. 2 million savings plans on the platform, which it tells me works out to over 600,000 customers, and close to €17 billion under management, with products covering ETFs, stocks, funds, bonds, cryptocurrencies and derivatives, and loans. It gives users access to investing in 8,000 stocks, 2,500 ETFs and 3,500 funds among other products; ETFs are the most popular today. That speaks a lot to the ongoing pressure on startups amid a very tight market for finance at the moment in the region. (More on that theme in the latestannual, barometric report from Atomico. ) “Yes, we are four or five times bigger than we were at the last round,” Podzuweit said in an interview. “So like for like, obviously it’s a very attractive deal for the investor. But in the current market environment, I think it’s really cool that we managed to get to pull this off. ” He confirmed that the company still has “the majority of the money from the last funding round” in the bank, but this extra injection means it can be a little more aggressive in its approach. “We can do a bit more marketing, we can hire the top people but we also have a much bigger equity cushion,” he said. The company has now raised more than $345 million, it said. Indeed, the fundraise may be coming at a tight time for startup finance, but one likely reason that Scalable took the money now is that, for neobrokers, the landscape is getting more competitive and crowded. Late last month, Robinhood — the tech company best known for democratizing investing in the U. S. —finally took its first stepinto international (and European) territories, opening an office in the U. K. (and justtodaylaunching crypto trading in the EU on the back of that). Other players out of the U. K. market with clear European ambitions includeFreetradeandLightyear. And just yesterday, Scalable Capital’s biggest rival among startups, Trade Republic,secureda full banking license from the European Central Bank. The latter, backed by Sequoia among others and last valued at $5. 3 billion back in June 2022 (viaPitchBook), said it will use the new license to launch more savings and investment products — a move that will lay the gauntlet down for Scalable to figure out if, and how, it will level up. For now, Scalable Capital is holding steady and not pursuing a license itself, said Podzuweit. “It’s leaner, obviously,” he said, likening it to how some e-commerce companies might invest in building out their own logistics, and some work with third parties (Scalable’s banking partners, in lieu of a license, include ING). “Maybe I wouldn’t rule [getting a license] out forever. But right now we’re focusing on building products and launching new markets and we are faster doing it our way. ” The other big forces that are playing in the market include the looming presence of AI and how it will be used both to manage investing platforms, but also investments themselves; and the general state of the economy: Generally, markets have been in the doldrums, with inflation, and unfavorable interest rates bringing a chilling effect to consumers’ inclination to take risks and invest money that could be used more immediately elsewhere. Scalable’s positioning, as it is with others like it, is that it leaves the door open for smaller and more incremental buy-ins from its customers. On top of this, Podzuweit points out that the startup’s average user age is 35, a person perhaps with more disposable income than some of the younger consumers that other neobrokers have courted. The focus on ramping up at a time when the market looks like it has cooled is also very much in line with the ethos of investing, where people often put down their money at lower points if they believe that it will represent a great deal in the longer run. Of course, only time will tell whether that firm belief in growth longer term will play out as hoped. Balderton general partner Rana Yared is joining the board with this round. “Scalable’s one-stop, digital-first, wealth building and generating platform brings a suite of top-class financial products to individuals across Europe, and is unparalleled in the market,” she said in a statement. “We’ve been impressed by Erik, Florian and team’s vision and execution to date and are delighted to be supporting them in this next chapter. ” We’re hopefully hearing from Yared directly later today and will update this more after that. Updated to correct the amount raised in 2021 to $180 million, not $140 million; and to specify the number of customers and the total raised, after the numbers were provided by the company post-publication
| 2023-12-07T07:29:44 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/06/european-neobroker-scalable-capital-raises-65m-on-a-flat-1-4b-valuation/
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Tiger Global-backed Axis launches digital payments platform for Egyptian SMEs months after its $8.25M seed
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Egyptian fintechAxishas launched its digital payments platform to the North African market after securing a license from the apex bank, Central Bank of Egypt (CBE), for its open-loop mobile wallet, axisPay, which offers a digital banking alternative for small businesses and their employees. This is coming almost 18 months after the startup received an $8. 25 million seed investment co-led by Tiger Global, Sawari Ventures and Raba, with participation from Firstminute Capital and RaliCap; founders of Venmo, Rho Banking and Cred; and executives from Revolut and Plaid. Axis has been in stealth, engaging regulators and getting the necessary licensing for operations, co-founder and CEOJacques Marcotold TechCrunch in a recent interview. “We’vebeen focused over the past two years on three tracks: one, licensing (mobile money/wallet issuing and acceptance licenses); two, being deliberate and focused on building the right relationships with the regulator and the local banks, making sure we’re fully licensed and regulated; three, building the whole stack, setting all our integrations end-to-end and passing a certification with the local switch,” the chief executive commented. Before Axis, Marco co-founded Raseedy, Egypt’s first independent mobile wallet. He exited in 2020 to unicorn startupMNT-Halan, where he held several roles in strategic finance and digital transformation before leaving in early 2021. Like Marco, Axis’s co-foundersAhmed RagabandNada Abdelnourhave fintech backgrounds. Ragab, the startup’s chief technology officer, worked as VP of Engineering at Raseedy and was an engineering consultant at IBM Egypt before that. Chief growth officer Abdelnour held several product roles at PayPal subsidiaryZettle, Yahoo and African fintechYoco. Egyptian financial services provider MNT-Halan valued at $1B in $400M funding Small businesses drive most African economies; in Egypt, thereare 8 million SMEs and they contribute to 80% of the nation’s $400 billion+ GDP and employ over 20 million people. These small businesses are heavily cash-based, with little access to online banking services, payroll processing and working capital financing. Over 60% of them still pay employee salaries in cash, and suppliers in cash or cheque, which has flaws from fraud to financial exclusion. Despite the glaring need to digitize small businesses’ payments and money flow, the bulk of fintech in Egypt, with solutions fromMoneyFellows,Telda,Sympland others, centered on the consumers’ financial inclusion. “No one is servicing SMEs when it comes to banking in general,” said Marco on the play Axis is making in Egypt’s fintech market. According to the chief executive,small businesses waste an estimated 192 hours per year paying their employees in cash, from sourcing to paying employees. Meanwhile, setting up bank accounts to streamline payroll is somewhat cumbersome and expensive for these businesses. Theyare also usually burdened by manually keeping track of salary advance requests and lending their employees money at the expense of cash flow. For employees, most of whom are part of Egypt’s financially excluded (about 65% of the adult population), Marco asserts that carrying cash is a hassle and potentially unsafe; paying for things in cash means paying for them in person as opposed to the convenience of paying for things digitally. Axis’ platform provides an alternative for these businesses, he says. It helpsstreamline their payments to employees and suppliers via axisPay mobile wallets. They can send salaries, reimburse expenses, carry out expense management, earn cashback and offer earned wage advances to their employees on their wallets, in turn enabling employees to access a range of financial services: funds transfer, bill payment and online shopping and QR code payments. Fintechs such asKhaznaand NowPay offer earned wage access (EWA) services in Egypt, presenting some form of competition to Axis, a later entrant. However, Axis founders argue that their EWA differs in that it focuses on small businesses and unbanked/underbanked employees, distinguishable from the other players that target enterprises with mostly banked employees. “Think of us like an M-Pesa for small businesses in Egypt. We help these small businesses that are heavily cash reliant and pay their employees, suppliers and B2B payments in cash and provide digital payments alternative for them. We’re also solving a consumer pain point and tackling financial inclusion both ways,” saidAbdelnour on the call. “In the future, consumers will be able to receive remittances from abroad to their mobile wallet and we’re partnering with a few remittance players abroad to be able to enable that. ” The startup partnered with Visa for itsmobile wallet and virtual card and with Fawry to enable customers to cash in and out from the Egyptian fintech giant’s network of 250,000 agents across MENA’s most populous country. Axis has now beta launched its platform to over 100 small businesses (in various industries such as food and beverages, retail, tourism, construction and healthcare) and the 5,000 employees it onboarded while in stealth. Marco saidAxis is projecting to close the year with 5,000 small businesses and 80,000-100,000 employees as the “well-capitalized” fintech continues to iterate and improve its offerings, including a lending product that taps into a $15 billion SME financing gap in Egypt. “We want to position ourselves in a way that makes our solution a lot more sticky and costly to switch from. If you’re doing payroll with us, running B2B payments, we also want you to take working capital from our platform,” Marco said about the lending product Axis intends to launch by year’s end. “All this we’re doing closely with the regulator to follow the country’s national strategy of digitization, reducing cash, empowering small businesses and growing the economy. ” Topics Reporter, Africa YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-05-17T09:05:57 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/tiger-global-backed-axis-launches-digital-payments-platform-for-egyptian-smes-months-after-its-8-25m-seed/
| 974 | 1 |
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The CrowdStrike outage is a plot point in a rom-com
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There’s a man in Florida right now who wants to propose to his girlfriend while they’re on a beach vacation. He couldn’t get the engagement ring before he flew down from New England, but it didn’t seem like that big of an issue — his girlfriend’s daughter Nicole was planning to join them in Florida to celebrate her mom’s birthday, so he asked her to pick up the ring before her flight. In a perfect world, Nicole — who didn’t want her last name to be published in case her mom finds out about the surprise proposal — would fly down to Florida on Friday and deliver the ring. Then, her mom and new fiancé would live happily ever after. Buta global CrowdStrike outagehas turned this idyllic weekend into a plot point in a strange romantic comedy. Around the world, thousands of people like Nicole have had a wrench thrown into their plans due to this outage, which knocked out countless computers running Microsoft Windows. In theaviation industryalone, more than 3,500 flights have been canceled, with 31,000 more flights delayed, according to a tracker fromFlightAware. “We were a little bit nervous about [transporting the engagement ring] anyway, but then this just added a whole layer of complexity to it,” Nicole told TechCrunch. Now, the Delta flight she planned to take with her husband early Friday morning has been delayed until 3 p. m. ET at least. “I was texting [my mom], and she was like ‘Oh my god, it looks crazy at the airports, don’t come, it’s fine, just cancel the flight,’” Nicole said. “And I’m like, well, we can’tnotcome. ” The outage was caused by a defect in a CrowdStrike content update for Windows, CrowdStrike CEOGeorge Kurtz said. He has ruled out the possibility of a cyberattack or security incident, but the ability of a faulty update to cause this much chaos has customers concerned. According to CrowdStrike’s website, nearly 60% of Fortune 500 companies and half of the Fortune 1,000 use CrowdStrike. The U. S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg said on CNBC that even though the root of the issue has been identified,travelers will still experience ripple effects from the outage. “These flights, they run so tightly, so back-to-back, that even after a root cause is addressed, you can still be feeling those impacts throughout the day,” Buttigieg said. For now, all that Nicole — and the thousands of other inconvenienced travelers — can do is wait. “Her birthday is tomorrow, and he was probably gonna propose then,” she said. “We have no idea. It’s literally hour by hour at this point. ” We’ll update this story once we find outif true love can conquer technical failureshow the proposal went. Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-07-19T17:31:13 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/19/the-crowdstrike-outage-is-a-plot-point-in-a-rom-com/
| 637 | 1 |
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From DrakeGPT to Infinite Grimes, AI-generated music strikes a chord
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Last week,a songusing AI deepfakes of Drake and the Weeknd’s voices went viral, but neither major artist was involved in its creation. Meanwhile, Grimes has taken to Twitter to offer50% royaltieson any AI-generated song that uses her voice, then declared that she is interested in “killing copyright,” which would probably undermine her ability to collect royalties in the first place. We might be living in theweirdest timeline, but unless Grimes is working on any secret inter-dimensional transit projects (you never know), the music industry has to reckon with what to do next. Musicians like Holly Herndon and YACHT haveembracedAI as a tool to push the limits of their creativity. YACHT trained an AI on 14 years of their music, then synthesized the results into the album “Chain Tripping;” Herndon createdHolly+, a website that freely allows anyone to create deepfake music using her own voice. While Herndon may openly invite people to experiment with AI art using her likeness, most artists don’t even know that people can model their voice before it’s too late. Therein lies the problem. In Spotify’s recent quarterly earnings call, CEO Daniel Ek spoke about the company’s approach to AI-generated music. Despite Spotify taking down “Heart on my Sleeve,” the AI song that uses deepfakes of Drake and the Weeknd, Ek seems cautiously optimistic about the fast-developing technology. “[AI] should lead to more music,” Ek said on the call. “More music, obviously, we think is great culturally. ” For a big business like Spotify, that might be true: If more people use their streaming service to listen to more music, then they get more money. But for many artists and music fans, AI poses a threat. “When artists are already struggling, it seems like a dangerous step,” entertainment lawyer Henderson Cole told TechCrunch. Betweenabysmal streaming payoutsand the long-term impact of COVID-19 on the live music industry, musicians have been having a rough go of it, to say the least. Now,like visual artists, these performers have become guinea pigs for technology that appropriates their work without consent. “Music has a special social role in the development of technology,” Erickson told TechCrunch. “It can be attached to any kind of emerging technology as a way of providing a use case or selling general interest and attracting investment. ” We saw this happen with thecrypto industry, which at one point seemed poised to change the status quo ofmusic royaltiesandticketing, but has yet to reach anything close to mass adoption. Sometimes these new technologies do take hold, though. As a historical example, Erickson points to sampling, or the practice of iterating on snippets of other artists’ work in new recordings. So long as a musician gets permission from the artist and their label, sampling is fair game. “It was centered in community rather than the technology itself,” Erickson said about sampling. Of course, in cases where music was sampled without the artists’ consent, somehigh-profilelawsuitsensued. Now, it’s only a matter of time before we see rights holders get over AI-generated music. Under certain circumstances, copyrighted material can be used without explicit permission if it is considered “fair use. ”Fair use analysisconsiders whether a work was created for profit, the amount of copyrighted material it uses, how transformative it is and if it might economically impact the original. Though a fair use argument could be constructed in favor of AI music, Cole thinks it’s doubtful that it would hold much weight in practice. “In a world whereEd SheeranandRobin Thickeare getting sued just for sounding similar to a hit song, someone using AI to copy an artists’ voice or musical sound seems unlikely to be allowed,” Cole said. It takes a long time for the legal system to catch up with new technology, but for now, major labels like Universal Music Group (UMG) have spoken out in opposition to the use of generative AI. “We have a moral and commercial responsibility to our artists to work to prevent the unauthorized use of their music and to stop platforms from ingesting content that violates the rights of artists and other creators,” a UMG representative said in a statement. The representative said that the rise of AI-generated music “begs the question as to which side of history all stakeholders in the music ecosystem want to be on: the side of artists, fans and human creative expression, or on the side of deep fakes, fraud and denying artists their due compensation. ” AI music generators could be a boon for artists — but also problematic Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-04-26T15:24:31 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/26/grimes-ai-generated-drake-music-legal-issues/
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Proton picks up Standard Notes to deepen its pro-privacy portfolio
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Switzerland-based Proton, the privacy-focused firm behind end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) webmailProtonMailand other apps, has acquiredStandard Notes, a note-taking app founded back in 2017. It offers the same kind of robust privacy promise to its 300,000+ users by also applying E2EE. In a press release announcing the move, Proton emphasized the pair’s “shared values,” including the use of E2EE; a commitment to open source technology; and how neither has relied upon venture capital to drive growth. E2EE is considered the gold standard of security technology, as service providers don’t hold encryption keys. This means they’re technically unable to decrypt user data, safeguarding users’ content behind a “zero knowledge” architecture. Put another way, you don’t have to trust the service provider not to snoop. By adding Standard Notes to its portfolio of apps, Proton will deepen its reach with an engaged community of pro-privacy users, layering on additional cross-selling opportunities as well as boosting the utility of its app ecosystem. The note-taking app fills an obvious gap in Proton’s current lineup. Proton applies its flagship E2EE promise of robust security to a suite of products, including email, calendar and cloud storage. Additionally, it offers a VPN service. It launched its own pro-privacy and anti-censorship CAPTCHA service last year to further supplement its offerings, but it hasn’t had a dedicated note-taking app until now. A key plank of the pair’s “community-focused” approach is a freemium strategy that aims to support wider product access through premium (paying) users effectively subsidizing free users. And while there is some usage overlap, a Proton spokesperson said that less than a quarter of Standard Notes users are already Proton users. So there’s room for cross-selling and further community building. Protonsaid the Standard Notes app, which is available for both mobile and desktop, will remain “open source, freely available and fully supported. ” It also suggested that there will be no change to Standard Notes’ prices; its press release specifies that existing five-year subscriptions “will continue to be honored. ” “Standard Notes will remain an independent product and in due course both companies will open access to their products to each others’ users,” Proton added. Commenting in a statement, Mo Bitar, founder and CEO of Standard Notes, talked up the sense of shared mission. “At Standard Notes, over the past seven years we have sought to create a place where people are free to think and write without the worry that someone is looking over their shoulder. That freedom is incredibly rare on the internet today, and something that we want to safeguard forever,” he wrote. “To enable us to do this, we are excited to join forces with Proton — one of the few organizations that shares our ethos and is not only mission-driven but open sourced, self-sustaining and community focused. In Proton, we’ve found a partner that shares our laser focus on protecting privacy. ” Proton was founded back in 2014, but Standard Notes is only the second company it’s picked up. Instead, it‘s mostly focused on building products in-house to expand its range and grow usage (a year ago itannouncedpassing 100 million users). This includes building on its first acquisition —email alias startup SimpleLogin, which it acquired in 2022 — as well as developing and launchingfully fledged password manager app Proton Passin June. In that case, Proton leaned on the SimpleLogin team it acquired for the bulk of the product development. So the company is evidently not allergic to user acquisition and other consolidation-based growth opportunities where it sees enough philosophical overlap plus the chance to deepen its technical bank. Proton announces Proton Pass, a password manager As it folds Standard Notes into its deck, Proton aims to repeat the trick, saying it expects the Standard Notes team to make “vital contributions towards the creation and improvement of Proton’s ecosystem of existing and future products. ” The wider goal is furthering the shared “mission” of “building a better internet where privacy is the default,” as its PR puts it. “The deal is a strategic decision designed to benefit users by bringing to market secure, easy to use, private products that anyone can access,” Proton wrote. “Standard Notes andProtonengineers will begin working together immediately to ensure their combined skills and experience bear fruit for users as soon as possible. ” Proton founder and CEO Andy Yen confirmed the respective apps use different encryption schemes. “But that’s actually not a problem for integration, as it’s a separate app,” he told TechCrunch. “At a later point, we may make the accounts interoperable so that aProtonaccount can also log into Standard Notes and vice versa, as we did with SimpleLogin. ” Asked about the sustainability of pro-privacy business models that don’t rely on exploitation of user data — when so much of mainstream tech still continues to roll in the opposite, data-mining direction — Yen emphasized the need for long-term thinking by privacy startups. And for screwing courage to the sticking place. “Competing with Big Tech is probably the hardest business challenge that exists today due to the unfair and abusive tactics utilized by tech giants to hinder competitors,” he said. “While recent actions, such as theEU’s Digital Markets Actor theDOJ lawsuit against Apple, may eventually level the playing field, it is going to take many years. It is a critical step in the right direction but won’t make an immediate impact. ” “That means you have to be a bit crazy to attempt this challenge today, and the only way to do it over the long run is to be doing it for the right reasons. The objective cannot be short-term or even mid-term financial outcomes, as those are likely to be challenging to achieve. Instead, you need to be mission-driven enough to survive the brutally difficult long game. ” Financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed. ProtonMail buys email alias startup SimpleLogin Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-04-10T10:00:39 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/10/proton-standard-notes/
| 1,146 | 1 |
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UK’s online safety regulator puts out draft guidance on illegal content, saying child safety is priority
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’s newly empowered Internet content regulator has published the first set of draft Codes of Practice under theOnline Safety Act(OSA) whichbecame law late last month. More codes will follow but this first set — which is focused on how user-to-user (U2U) services will be expected to respond to different types of illegal content — offers a steer on how Ofcom is minded to shape and enforce the U. K. ’s sweeping new Internet rulebook in a key area. Ofcom says its first priority as the “online safety regulator” will be protecting children. The draft recommendations on illegal content include suggestions that larger and higher risk platforms should avoid presenting kids with lists of suggested friends; should not have child users appear in others’ connection lists; and should not make children’s connection lists visible to others. It’s also proposing that accounts outside a child’s connection list should not be able to send them direct messages; and kids’ location information should not be visible to other users, among a number of recommended risk mitigations aimed at keeping kids safe online. “Regulation is here, and we’re wasting no time in setting out how we expect tech firms to protect people from illegal harm online, while upholding freedom of expression. Children have told us about the dangers they face, and we’re determined to create a safer life online for young people in particular,” said dame Melanie Dawes, Ofcom’s chief executive, in a statement. “Our figures show that most secondary-school children have been contacted online in a way that potentially makes them feel uncomfortable. For many, it happens repeatedly. If these unwanted approaches occurred so often in the outside world, most parents would hardly want their children to leave the house. Yet somehow, in the online space, they have become almost routine. That cannot continue. ” The OSA puts a legal duty on digital services, large and small, to protect users from risks posed by illegal content, such as CSAM (child sexual abuse material), terrorism and fraud. Although the list of priority offences in the legislation is long — also including intimate image abuse; stalking and harassment; and cyberflashing, to name a few more. The exact steps in-scope services and platforms need to take to comply are not set out in the legislation. Nor is Ofcom prescribing how digital businesses should act on every type of illegal content risks. But detailed Codes of Practice it’s developing are intended to provide recommendations to help companies make decisions on how adapt their services to avoid the risk of being found in breach of a regime that empowers it to levy fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover for violations. Ofcom is avoiding a one-size-fits all approach — with some more costly recommendations in the draft code being proposed for only larger and/or riskier services. It also writes that it is “likely to have the closest supervisory relationships” with “the largest and riskiest services” — a line that should bring a degree of relief to startups (which generally won’t be expected to implement as many of the recommended mitigations as more established services). It’s defining “large” services in the context of the OSA as those that have more than 7 million monthly users (or around 10% of the U. K. population). “Firms will be required to assess the risk of users being harmed by illegal content on their platform, and take appropriate steps to protect them from it. There is a particular focus on ‘priority offences’ set out in the legislation, such as child abuse, grooming and encouraging suicide; but it could be any illegal content,” it writes in apress release, adding: “Given the range and diversity of services in scope of the new laws, we are not taking a ‘one size fits all’ approach. We are proposing some measures for all services in scope, and other measures that depend on the risks the service has identified in its illegal content risk assessment and the size of the service. ” The regulator appears to be moving relatively cautiously in taking up its new responsibilities, with the draft code on illegal content frequently citing a lack of data or evidence to justify preliminary decisions tonotrecommend certain types of risk mitigations — such as Ofcom not proposing hash matching for detecting terrorism content; nor recommending the use of AI to detect previously unknown illegal content. Although it notes that such decisions could change in future as it gathers more evidence (and, doubtless, as available technologies change). It also acknowledges the novelty of the endeavour, i. e. attempting to regulate something as sweeping and subjective as online safety/harm, saying it wants its first codes to be a foundation it builds on, including via a regular process of review — suggesting the guidance will shift and develop as the oversight process matures. “Recognising that we are developing a new and novel set of regulations for a sector without previous direct regulation of this kind, and that our existing evidence base is currently limited in some areas, these first Codes represent a basis on which to build, through both subsequent iterations of our Codes and our upcoming consultation on the Protection of Children,” Ofcom writes. “In this vein, our first proposed Codes include measures aimed at proper governance and accountability for online safety, which are aimed at embedding a culture of safety into organisational design and iterating and improving upon safety systems and processes over time. ” Overall, this first step of recommendations look reasonably uncontroversial — with, for example, Ofcom leaning towards recommending that all U2U services should have “systems or processes designed to swiftly take down illegal content of which it is aware” (note the caveats); whereas “multi-risk” and/or “large” U2U services are presented with a more comprehensive and specific list of requirements aimed at ensuring they have a functioning, and well enough resourced, content moderation system. Another proposal it’s consulting on is that all general search services should ensure URLs identified as hosting CSAM should be deindexed. But it’s not making it a formal recommendation that users who share CSAM be blocked as yet — citing a lack of evidence (and inconsistent existing platform policies on user blocking) for not suggesting that at this point. Though the draft says it’s “aiming to explore a recommendation around user blocking related to CSAM early next year”. Ofcom also suggests services that identify as medium or high risk should provide users with tools to let them block or mute other accounts on the service. (Which should be uncontroversial to pretty much everyone — except maybe X-owner, Elon Musk. ) It is also steering away from recommending certain more experimental and/or inaccurate (and/or intrusive) technologies — so while it recommends that larger and/or higher CSAM-risk services perform URL detection to pick up and block links to known CSAM sites it is not suggesting they do keyword detection for CSAM, for example. Other preliminary recommendations include that major search engines display predictive warnings on searches that could be associated with CSAM; and serve crisis prevention information for suicide-related searches. Ofcom is also proposing services use automated keyword detection to find and remove posts linked to the sale of stolen credentials, like credit cards — targeting the myriad harms flowing from online fraud. However it is recommending against using the same tech for detecting financial promotion scams specifically, as it’s worried this would pick up a lot of legitimate content (like promotional content for genuine financial investments). Privacy and security watchers should breathe a particular sigh of relief on reading the draft guidance as Ofcom appears to be stepping away from the most controversial element of the OSA — namelyits potential impact on end-to-end encryption(E2EE). This has been a key bone of contention with the U. K. ’s online safety legislation, with major pushback — including from a number of tech giants and secure messaging firms. But despite loud public criticism, the government did not amend the bill to remove E2EE from the scope of CSAM detection measures — instead a minister offereda verbal assurance, towards the end of the bill’s passage through parliament, saying Ofcom could not be required to order scanning unless “appropriate technology” exists. In the draft code, Ofcom’s recommendation that larger and riskier services use a technique called hash matching to detect CSAM sidesteps the controversy as it only applies “in relation to content communicatedpubliclyon U2U [user-to-user] services, where it is technically feasible to implement them” (emphasis its). “Consistent with the restrictions in the Act, they do not apply to private communications or end-to-end encrypted communications,” it also stipulates. Ofcom will now consult on the draft codes it’s released today, inviting feedback on its proposals. Its guidance for digital businesses on how to mitigate illegal content risks won’t be finalized until next fall — and compliance on these elements isn’t expected until at least three months after that. So there’s a fairly generous lead-in period in order to give digital services and platforms time to adapt to the new regime. It’s also clear that the law’s impact will be staggered as Ofcom does more of this ‘shading in’ of specific detail (and as any required secondary legislation is introduced). Although some elements of the OSA — such as the information notices Ofcom can issue on in-scope service — are already enforceable duties. And services that fail to comply with Ofcom’s information notices can face sanction. There is also a set timeframe in the OSA for in-scope services to carry out their first children’s risk assessment, a key step which will help determine what sort of mitigations they may need to put in place. So there’s plenty of work digital business should already be doing to prepare the ground for the full regime coming down the pipe. “We want to see services taking action to protect people as soon as possible, and see no reason why they should delay taking action,” an Ofcom spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We think that our proposals today are a good set of practical steps that services could take to improve user safety. Nonetheless, we are consulting on these proposals and we note that it is possible that some elements of them could change in response to evidence provided during the consultation process. ” Asked about how the risk of a service will be determined, the spokesperson said: “Ofcom will determine which services we supervise, based on our own view on the size of their user base and the potential risks associated with their functionalities and business model. We have said that we will inform these services within the first 100 days after Royal Assent, and we will also keep this under review as our understanding of the industry evolves and new evidence becomes available. ” On the timeline of the illegal content code the regulator also told us: “After we have finalised our codes in our regulatory statement (currently planned for next autumn, subject to consultation responses), we will submit them to the Secretary of State to be laid in parliament. They will come into force 21 days after they have passed through parliament and we will be able to take enforcement action from then and would expect services to start taking action to come into compliance no later than then. Nonetheless, some of the mitigations may take time to put in place. We will take a reasonable and proportionate approach to decisions about when to take enforcement action having regard to practical constraints putting mitigations into. ” “We will take a reasonable and proportionate approach to the exercise of our enforcement powers, in line with our general approach to enforcement and recognising the challenges facing services as they adapt to their new duties,” Ofcom also writes in the consultation. “For the illegal content and child safety duties, we would expect to prioritise only serious breaches for enforcement action in the very early stages of the regime, to allow services a reasonable opportunity to come into compliance. For example, this might include where there appears to be a very significant risk of serious and ongoing harm to UK users, and to children in particular. While we will consider what is reasonable on a case-by-case basis, all services should expect to be held to full compliance within six months of the relevant safety duty coming into effect. ” UK opens new chapter in digital regulation as parliament passes Online Safety Bill Ministerial statement on UK’s Online Safety Bill seen as steering out of encryption clash Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-11-09T00:01:26 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/08/ofcom-illegal-content-draft-code/
| 2,249 | 1 |
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How startups can use generative AI from ideation to implementation
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The day ChatGPT debuted, this transformational technology captured the imaginations of business leaders and changed decision-making forever. Today’s C-suite sees incredible upside opportunities with generative AI. Set to drive a $7 trillion increase in GDP and boost global productivity by 1. 5%, generative AI and its tangible economic consequences have reimagined business priorities for decades — and potentially generations — to come. ChatGPT and other generative AI technologies have opened the door to breakthrough thinking across all industries. Some technology and business leaders are thinking about unintended consequences — in particular, the “hallucination” problem. Sometimes, ChatGPT’s hallucinations are innocuous and easily corrected by improving training data or adding a human into the loop. As the world races to adopt this technology, we have to continue to work on improving the error rates and decreasing the hallucinations. Above all else, financial decision-making and compliance are predicated on data accuracy and confidence in the information. So, while it’s annoying to have ChatGPT generate a wrong answer for noncritical prompts, data errors across an investment portfolio could translate to lost revenue, missed regulatory filings and a complete distrust of the technology. Fortunately, technologists can take a step back and ask the following questions to unlock the potential power of generative AI. Generative AI will have far-reaching consequences across a business’s workflow and the products it brings to its customers. R&D and go-to-market teams should follow a playbook so every part of the organization can innovate responsibly and efficiently. To start, tech teams must take a “square one” approach and examine their use cases, infrastructure needs, goals, and next steps. As we automate our internal workflows and provide new functionalities to our customers, what types of processes — for example, human in the loop — can we put in place to ensure that we provide accurate responses to our customers’ queries? This represents only a fraction of the questions and planning involved in generative AI development and deployment. Technology teams will have much to gain if they have a strategic plan guiding their AI use case development process versus answering these questions as they go forward. Fintech companies need to think long and hard about who has access to what data and how to oversee this access. ChatGPT’s propensity for mimicking human interaction, digesting massive amounts of data and boosting productivity further our engagement with this technology. However, blurring these lines may result in compliance issues. For example, internal stakeholders should have appropriate access to sales, marketing and R&D data, while external users should not. If confidential client data somehow leaks to unauthorized internal users, it’s quite possible that data in the wrong hands can result in unintended disclosure, security breaches, noncompliance issues and potential fines. Since AI’s arrival, one of the foremost concerns businesses and skeptics have put forward about the technology revolves around the transparency and explainability of its decision-making. Generative AI has added more urgency to the push to change AI from a “black box” into a “glass box,” especially concerning financial reporting. Accuracy is of the utmost importance in the financial world. With transparency, customers can ensure accurate data and reporting. Transparency also aligns with compliance and regulations as regulators place more emphasis on explainability and oversight. Fintech companies have international standards like the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act to use as a guide to understand the rules around more transparent AI, as well as the disclosures around AI-generated content, helping adopters in the U. S. envision how U. S. -specific operations might adopt these or similar standards. For generative AI to mine deeply buried patterns across enterprise data and synthesize accurate answers, tech leaders have to train their AI on accurate data. Decision-makers everywhere need confidence in the data powering generative AI and the outcomes it yields. Topics Contributor Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-11-08T16:35:37 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/08/how-startups-can-use-generative-ai-from-ideation-to-implementation/
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NovoNutrients wants to turn CO2 into protein
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We’ve spent the last century and a half pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and it’s clear that we’ll have to spend the coming decadesremoving a significant fraction of that. But then what do we do with it all? Some people are proposing pumping it underground. Others think we can make things from it, includingliquid fuelsandconcrete. Problem is, those are pretty low-margin opportunities today. One startup thinks the answer is to turn carbon dioxide into protein. That company is getting a shot to test its thesis at scale, TechCrunch+ has exclusively learned. NovoNutrientswill be building a pilot-scale plant with help from a $3 million technology and investment deal from Woodside Energy, one of Australia’s largest oil and gas companies, which has begun dipping its toes into the carbon capture waters. NovoNutrients relies on bacteria to do the dirty work. The company has surveyed the scientific literature to find species that can use carbon dioxide in their metabolic pathways, allowing them to use the waste gas as energy. Its scientists have also discovered strains not otherwise known to science. “Our technology is about how do you industrialize this naturally occurring metabolism?” CEO David Tze told TechCrunch+. To do that, the company has developed its own bioreactor that helps the bacteria grow in water while consuming carbon dioxide and the other gasses that power its metabolism, including hydrogen and a nitrogen source like ammonia. The source of the carbon dioxide can be pretty much any operation that’s polluting today, whether that’s oil and gas operations, chemical plants, fertilizer plants or cement plants. All that’s required is a supply of sufficiently concentrated carbon dioxide. On the other end, NovoNutrients’ plants will produce a dry powder that can be refined into a number of different products, including protein supplements for people, animals and farmed fish. Depending on what bacteria are in the tanks, the powder can be tweaked to boost the value of the end product, which might be sold to specialty feed markets for farmers, for example. NovoNutrients has engineered strains itself to improve their performance, but it also has wild-type and adapted strains. Some of those were obtained by running a fermenter for eight months fed by gasses produced by a cement plant in Cupertino. “We developed strains that grew three times faster than this wild-type strain that we started with,” Tze said. Another way the startup can boost output is by using multiple different strains in one tank. One strain works to break down the primary inputs — carbon dioxide, hydrogen and a nitrogen source — while others go to work on the waste products produced by the first strain. “But more importantly, it means we can tailor the nutrition by adding or subtracting or swapping species or strains with this framework,” he added. At least initially, NovoNutrients won’t own any of its commercial-scale plants. Rather, the companies that are producing the pollution will. NovoNutrients will sell the microbes to keep things running, and it’ll also take a technology license royalty, Tze said. “And, of course, we’ll provide the whole technology package — both biology and hardware —and work with engineering procurement construction firms, selected by our partner licensee to get that built. We’ll train the operating employees and will be available for support. ” Partner companies will decide which products they want to produce, though NovoNutrients will help arrange long-term off-take agreements. “If you’re an oil and gas company or some other industrial company, you don’t have an established … business development team that knows how to work with nutrition companies. ” Those arrangements position NovoNutrients as a service-oriented company; one that will license its core technology, advise companies on plant construction and operation, and help find buyers for the end product. Plenty of startups in other industries fell flat when they tried to tackle the whole enchilada. Battery companies circa 2012, for example, definitely bit off more than they could chew and found themselves deep in debt thanks to factories that they were ill-equipped to build, supply and manage. The licensing and service approach may limit the ultimate revenue upside, but it certainly limits the capital risk. It also lets tech-centered startups do what they do best — focus on the science and technology — while bringing in partners who are well versed in building and operating large capital projects. If NovoNutrients can find enough companies that fit that profile, they might have found a business model that works for them. Topics Senior Reporter, Climate
| 2023-04-13T14:00:56 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/13/novonutrients-carbon-dioxide-protein/
| 746 | 1 |
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UK rejoins Europe’s Horizon R&D program after prolonged Brexit stalemate
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The United Kingdom (U. K. ) is set to rejoin the European Union’s (EU) preeminent science R&D funding program, after a prolonged hiatus resulting fromBrexit. Thejoint statement, issued by the European Commission (EC) and the U. K. , hailed the news as a “landmark moment” for scientific collaboration between the U. K. and EU, with little acknowledgement of their former alliance that stuttered to a halt roughly two years previous. Horizon Europe, a successor to theprevious Horizon 2020 programthat the U. K. was part of, is a seven-year initiative designed to fund innovation and foster collaboration across the EU and beyond. Indeed, while Horizon was initially geared toward EU countries only, it has expanded its scope in recent years to include partnerships with nearly a dozen associated member countries, including Ukraine, Armenia, Israel and New Zealand. While the U. K. exited the EU bloc in January, 2020, it had agreed associate membership status to remain in the Horizon program. The following year, separate trade disagreements related to the U. K. and EU’sNorthern Ireland Protocolwhich constituted part of the Brexit withdrawal agreement, meant that the European Commission (EC) effectively blocked the U. K. ’s participation in Horizon. In November 2021, thousands of EU research and academic institutions spanning universities, academies of science and rectors’ associationsissued a joint statementto the EC, calling for the U. K. ’s immediate readmission to Horizon Europe. “We have a long history of close and trusted collaboration and shared success with the U. K. ,” they wrote. “The strength of those partnerships has provided enormous benefits to excellent research, resulting in countless collaborations to tackle some of the world’s most pressing challenges, boosting competitiveness and growth. ” Despite pressure from multiple sides, the impasse will have lasted well over two years by the time the U. K. is formally back on Horizon. Starting from January 1, 2024, the U. K. will rejoin the program — in addition to the separateCopernicusEarth observation satellite program — to the cost of €2. 6 billion ($2. 8 billion) per year. This will run for the remainder of Horizon Europe’s timeline, which is through 2027. Dom Hallas, executive director of the not-for-profitStartup Coalition, acknowledged the importance of Horizon to the U. K. ’s startup ecosystem. “Tech innovation and research crosses borders every day, so it’s obviously good for British and European policy to do the same,” he told TechCrunch. With some €96 billion ($102 billion) in the Horizon pot, 35% of which is earmarked for climate research, any legal entity from member countries can apply for Horizon Europe funding. At a broad level, the program’s intention is to create jobs, boost economic growth and spur “industrial competitiveness. ” However, it’s also about supporting higher-risk R&D that might otherwise never receive funding from the private sphere, with 70% of the fund’s SME budget allocated for breakthrough innovations “that may be too risky for private investors. ” This could be particularly beneficial for university spinouts working on early-stage R&D, where a working prototype or commercial product might be years away. And for the U. K. , which is a major contributor to R&D in fields such as AI, quantum computing and biotech, securing public funding might also give confidence to private investors, creating a snowball effect. Ekaterina Almasque, general partner atearly-stage VC fund OpenOcean, which includes Oxford University as a limited partner, says that today’s news stands to benefit the whole tech industry — both in the U. K. and across Europe. “This renewed commitment to Horizon is not only a positive for the spinout ecosystem, but also bolsters the entire tech sector, making it more attractive to investors to back the next market leader,” Almasque said in a statement issued to TechCrunch. “Research and development serves as the backbone of the U. K. tech economy, and prolonged uncertainty would have eroded confidence. In fields like quantum technology, where progress unfolds over decades, having a clear trajectory of funding is paramount to ensure innovation continues unhindered. ” It is worth noting that today’s announcement amounts to an “agreement in principle,” meaning that it’s still to be rubberstamped by the relevant EU committees and councils. This is expected to happen before the U. K. ’s formal reentry in early 2024. Topics Senior Reporter YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-09-07T10:20:05 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/07/u-k-rejoins-horizon-rd-program-after-3-year-brexit-stalemate/
| 783 | 1 |
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How this investor widens the net by refusing warm intros
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I have often been annoyed by warm introductions. I get why investors insist on them, butit has always struck me as lazy and un-inclusive. So I was filled with great delight and curiosity when I was introduced toGoAhead Ventures. The firm claims it will hear anyone’s pitch, no matter where in the world you are or what you are building as long as you are a pre-seed or seed company. The catch? They insist on a video pitch. The upside? They promise to get back to you within a few days to let you know if you’re through to a partner meeting. Assuming the (very light) due diligence goes to plan and they like your company, you could have the money in your bank account within a week. This approach is different enough from most venture outlets that I decided to talk with Clancey Stahr and Phil Brady, both managing partners at the firm, to find out what life is like with the proverbial VC doors thrown wide open. I was also keen to get the inside track on what the firm looks for in investments and what founders can do to stand out. “When we were getting started, what we were doing was very similar to other VC firms: We were trying to do some thought leadership, do some grassroots marketing around the Stanford campus; that kind of stuff. But it wasn’t until COVID that we started to differentiate and move into our current process,” says Stahr, describing the firm’s journey from 2014. “Phil created and drove that. ” 4 problems venture capital can’t solve COVID changed investing for a lot of firms. Gone were the days of in-person meetings and everyone had to deal with days of Zoom-induced chaos. That’s when GoAhead decided to try to rethink its processes. “We wanted to figure out how to scale [our process] up most effectively. Now, we just have founders submit a video pitch through our platform. It literally takes about five minutes from start to finish; it’s a four-minute elevator pitch. They just fill out some basic information like their name and company name ahead of time. From the moment they submit that pitch, we let them know in three days or less if we want to invite them to a partner meeting or not,” explains Brady, revealing that the firm gets more than 3,000 pitches per year. The company still maintains its promise of a three-day turnaround. “If we invite them to a partner meeting, we give them a final decision the next day at five o’clock. So the entire process can be done in a week. You could submit a pitch on Monday and you could have money in the bank on Friday, feasibly. ” On the face of it, it seems like a very founder-friendly way of deploying capital: Anyone can pitch and once they do, the process is transparent, quick and relatively streamlined. Most importantly, the fact that anyone can submit a pitch on its website means the firm presents a level playing field to potential investments. “We do deals anywhere in the world. We cover all sectors. We’re completely flexible and the only ‘gating factor’ is that we are only focused on the early stage. Aside from that, we are just choosing people, so we wanted to put all founders on equal footing. We felt that most other funds ended up only inviting founders to pitch if they have some kind of warm intro or some kind of strong pedigree in their background that kind of gets them in the front door,” said Brady. “We love to be able to watch all these pitch videos apples-to-apples to try to decide without other extrinsic factors. So far, it has been great. We launched it around COVID and it has really skyrocketed our deal flow in ways we couldn’t have imagined. I think it’s been kind of a win-win for founders and for us. ” Picking a fight with warm introductions — replacing them with the hurdle of having to record a video — has given the firm an edge, it believes. To win over investors, use growth as your differentiator “There are a lot of really well-known firms. When you go to their website, it says something like ‘Find a partner for a warm introduction to the partnership. ’ For us as emerging fund managers, the most frustrating thing about starting a VC fund is also fundraising. Everything about the process sucks. You need to find a warm intro to this billionaire. You need to find someone who knows someone who knows someone — the process is entirely unclear,” Stahr laments. “You meet someone, they say, ‘Oh, this sounds great,’ and then they disappear. I know that happens to founders all the time, too, and all the fine-tuning we’ve done to our process around the top of the funnel as well as making it transparent is mainly built around our frustration with fundraising for our own funds. We just hated that so we decided to change it. ” The firm is explicitly not investing with a consensus-driven model: If one of the investors wants to write a check, they can, even if the others think it’s an awful idea. The firm’s three partners apparently watch every video (the company usesrecruitment platform Vidcruiterfor its submissions), which helps them make independent decisions. Even though the partners try to avoid reading each other’s comments on the videos, if one partner thinks there should be a partner meeting, they hold one. If one of them wants to put forth a term sheet, they can. That doesn’t mean they invest in a vacuum, though. “We actually have a panel of 150 raters. We send them three videos from every batch that we think are the best, and they rate them,” Brady explained when I asked about the quality of the pitches. “When we first started doing that, the score differential was pretty high. We would also add some YC demo day videos to the mix, and we discovered that the YC founders were reviewed almost twice as well. That has changed over time and now it’s almost perfectly level for the three videos we send each week. That’s probably the best subjective measurement that we do for quality. ” https://techcrunch. com/2023/04/17/just-how-hard-is-it-for-startups-to-raise-capital-today/?utm_source=internal&utm_medium=WPunit Of course, there can be some serious downsides to investing like this: Putting hurdles in the way of someone submitting a deck is a challenge. In the beginning, GoAhead tells me submissions were heavily weighted toward international founders rather than the standard tranche of top-tier university founders from the east and west coasts of the U. S, but things started to shift as it started building its profile. The company invests between $200,000 up to $1 million but usually writes checks toward the middle of that range: think $400,000 to $500,000. The company ‘leads’ all of its deals, which means it runs a fast process and gives startups an offer. “Unlike many other funds, we kind of run our process in a vacuum. We don’t consider who else may be involved, who’s about to write a check or who’s leading. We just run our process and get the founders a decision. If they say ‘yes’ to it, we wire the money the next day,” says Stahr, taking a stand against what he perceives as a herd mentality. “We meet a ton of founders who are raising a million-dollar round, and they’ll have a million dollars committed but they’ll be waiting for someone to lead the round. We like to do it differently. Because we get people a decision the following day, we don’t have time to review what other firms are doing. We just state the amount of money we want to invest and the valuation cap we want to invest at. We don’t negotiate, which lets us keep our timeline short. A lot of people continue to raise money on our SAFE. We don’t really use the phrase ‘lead investor. ’ We just say what we want to invest and at what terms. ” Curiously, the firm invests without a most-favored-nation clause in its deals: If the startup can get a better deal elsewhere, good for them, GoAhead says. The partners feel they get along just fine without the downside protection in the contract. The firm tells me it has around $180 million under management and around $20 million or so of “dry powder” left to invest. GoAhead, on average, makes an offer per week to a new startup, aiming to close about half of those deals. “If we start to win more than half of our offers, we start to reduce our valuation caps. If we start to lose more than half, we increase our global pricing a little bit,” explains Brady. The firm has been optimizing its investment path over time. If someone reaches it via an email blast, for example, the firm will gently guide them toward the video-based system. It says that the video system has been fine-tuned to make it as easy as possible to get a foot in the door. The original version of the video pitch included seven questions that founders would have to answer, some of which were tricky. But over time, the firm reduced the process to just the elevator pitch. On the due diligence front, the company has simplified its process to 10 questions to tick the major boxes of diligence. “At every part of the process, we tried to fine-tune and A/B test to see how many people were dropping off,” Brady explains. “Even for founders who just want to blast a few lists and get [the fundraising] process going, our process ends up being faster and easier than meeting us several times and stepping through a more traditional partner process. ” With any venture fund, deploying the capital is only the beginning of a long journey. Ultimately, the limited partners in a fund will want to see a return — that’s how you can tell whether an investment thesis has legs or if it was a harebrained flash in the pan. The unfortunate truth for GoAhead Ventures is that it doesn’t, and cannot, know if its plan is working yet. It has a few promising companies in its portfolio, but until the companies start maturing and exiting (typically through an acquisition or an initial public offering), there’s no way of knowing whether it works. The firm has solved a couple big problems in VC — the group-think and the exclusivity — but time will tell whether it has solved the more important challenge: generating outsized returns through its strategies to reduce selection bias when investing. No, you’re not raising money to increase your runway The firm isn’t overly worried, though. “If we were buying houses, you can’t have 90% of the houses you buy turn out to be zeros. You can’t make money like that. In our business, though, no matter what you do, 90% of the companies you invest in are not going to be great,” says Stahr, reflecting on how the firm is building a broad portfolio with the shared experience of the three partners investing in what they believe in. “I actually think that a lot of VCs confuse their expertise with biases based on their previous experiences in the space. We see founders going to VCs, and they are told, ‘We don’t do advertising technology,’ or ‘We don’t do e-commerce,’ because those investors had one or two bad portfolio companies in that space in the past. Now they think they know everything about the space and how bad it is,” he says. It’s apparent the firm prizes divergent thinking and it acknowledges that its partnership would have to reflect that as well. “If we look for a fourth [investor] at some point down the road, we’d like to consider not how they fit in, but what they can bring to the table that we don’t think about,” says Brady. “And how they can think differently. How they can find those positive signals and founders that we’re not capturing — founders that we don’t see because of the way the three of us think. ” Time will tell whether GoAhead Ventures’ strategy is paying off financially, but I know one thing: The startup ecosystem is far better off with GoAhead in it, and I wish more venture firms would open their doors a little wider and look a little bit more broadly at the ecosystem as a whole. Topics At TechCrunch, Haje (He/Him) covered general tech news and focused mostly on hardware. He has founded several companies to varying degrees of success, spent a while in the VC world, and has been a journalist and TV producer since the dawn of his career. He is more-than-averagely interested in photography and can often be found with a camera slung over his shoulder. He wrote a book about pitching startups to investors, and you can find him on @Haje on Twitter, or at Haje. me for everything else. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-05-01T14:30:53 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/01/goahead-ventures-seed-funding/
| 2,247 | 1 |
7d3f945e285dcadefea33b24682e2d80
|
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Meta’s Threads goes live, OpenAI launches GPT-4 and Pornhub blocks access
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Hey, folks, welcome toWeek in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular roundup of the week in tech. Been too slammed to follow the news cycle as closely as you’d like? Not to worry. That’s why WiR exists. We’ll get you up to speed in no time. Thanks to the July 4th holiday, the workweek was somewhat disrupted. But plenty still happened. Meta released Threads, its Twitter competitor, which quickly grew to tens of millions of users. Meanwhile, Twitter quietly removed the login requirement for viewing tweets that it’d imposed only days before. Somewhere in the midst of it all, secretive hardware startup Humane revealed the details of its first product. And OpenAI made its GPT-4 generative AI model generally available. Read on for more of the top stories from the week — and if you haven’t already,sign up hereto get WiR in your inbox every Saturday. Threads goes live:This week, Instagram announced the highly anticipated launch of its text-based social networking app, Threads, which allows Instagram users to authenticate with their existing credentials in order to post short tweet-like updates. Within 24 hours, the app, which is available for iOS and Android in around 100 countries (but not the EU,reportedly due to local data privacy regulations), passed 30 million sign-ups. Twitter takes the gloves off:With the success of Threads, Twitter is threatening to sue Meta, which it accuses of poaching former Twitter employees to create the new platform. Shortly after Threads launched, a lawyer for Twitter, Alex Spiro, sent a letter to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg accusing the social media giant of engaging in unlawful misappropriation of Twitter’s trade secrets and other intellectual property. A tough thread to delete:In more Threads news, turns out that deleting a Threads account requires deleting the linked Instagram account as well. The rationale, Meta elaborates on the policy page, is that a Threads profile is part of the user’s Instagram account. The discovery of this stipulation has surprised many users, unsurprisingly. OpenAI launches GPT-4:OpenAI this week announced the general availability of GPT-4, its latest text-generating model, through its paid API. GPT-4 can generate text (including code) and accept image and text inputs — an improvement over its predecessorGPT-3. 5, which only accepted text — and performs at “human level” on various professional and academic benchmarks. But it’s not perfect, as we note in ourprevious coverage. Humane unveils the Ai Pin:Humane, the startup launched by ex-Apple design and engineering duo Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, this week revealed details about its first product: the Ai Pin. Humane’s product is a wearable gadget with a projected display and AI-powered features — like a futuristic smartphone, but in a vastly different form factor. Pornhub blocks access:Pornhub is blocking access to users in Mississippi, Virginia and Utah, which have recently passed laws that require age verification to access adult websites. Internet privacy advocates have long been critical of these age checks, which require users to share personal information like their government ID in order to use the internet. Reddit’s valuation gets cut, again:Fidelity has further slashed the estimated worth of its holding in the social media giant Reddit. Fidelity Blue Chip Growth Fund valued its holdings in Reddit at $15. 4 million as of May 31, according to the fund’s monthly disclosure released last Friday. That’s down 7. 36% from the$16. 6 million mark at April’s closureand altogether a slide of 45. 4% since itsinvestment in August 2021. The updated share value suggests a $5. 5 billion valuation for Reddit. Goldman looks to ditch Apple:Four years after partnering with Apple on thelaunch of the Apple Card, Goldman Sachs may be eyeing the exits. The Wall Street Journal reports that Goldman is “looking for a way out” of its high-profile deal with Apple, which recentlyexpanded to include savings accountsfor Apple Card holders. The investment banking firm is apparently in talks to offload the partnership to American Express, the WSJ report added, but so far nothing seems to be set in stone, nor is it clear whether Apple would support the handoff. Need a podcast to pass the time? You’ve come to the right place. TechCrunch offers a growing roster of quality shows, and this week, there’s lots in the way of new material. Equityfeatured Immad Akhund, the CEO and co-founder of Mercury, which made headlines earlier this year for how it stepped in to help fill the business banking void left in the wake of Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse. And theFoundcrew interviewed Charles Baron, the co-founder and CMO at Farmers Business Network, a startup that offers a suite of online services to farmers. TC+ subscribers get access to in-depth commentary, analysis and surveys — which you know if you’re already a subscriber. If you’re not,consider signing up. Here are a few highlights from this week: Europe, the fuzzy tech cloud:Haje writes about the differences between the U. S. and European startup environments. The latter, he writes, has an appetite for experimentation that fails to fully settle into a coherent whole — in contrast to the handful of major hubs in the U. S. attracting the bulk of the talent and investment. Moving to save cash:For company founders and shareholders with an exit on the horizon, a move for tax reasons can make a lot of financial sense. However, many times it’s not that simple. Peyton Carr, managing director of Keystone Global Partners, expands on this. Being a Black founder in France:The French startup ecosystem for Black founders is shrouded in mystery, but Dom attempts to pull back the curtains. She finds that deep-seated racial stereotypes and prejudices still fester in the country, manifesting in the form of economic discrimination against Black entrepreneurs. Get your TechCrunch fix IRL. Join us at Disrupt 2023 in San Francisco this September to immerse yourself in all things startup. From headline interviews to intimate roundtables to a jam-packed startup expo floor, there’s something for everyone at Disrupt
| 2023-07-08T20:15:45 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/08/metas-threads-goes-live-openai-launches-gpt-4-and-pornhub-blocks-access/
| 981 | 1 |
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Australian plan for misinformation law riles Elon Musk
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The Australian government wants to fine social media platforms up to 5% of their global revenue if they fail to stop the spread of misinformation under a revised legislative plan introduced Thursday,Reutersreports. The planned law, which looks similar to the European Union’s Digital Services Act (DSA), drew swift condemnation from X owner Elon Musk, who dubbed Australia’s lawmakers “fascists” in a response posted on X. SinceDecember, the EU has been investigating X’s role in spreading disinformation. Its law allows for fines of up to 6% of global annual revenue for confirmed breaches. Should similar lawsspread elsewhere, Musk’s playbook for X could get costly. His tenure at the platform formerly known as Twitter has seen the self-professed “free speech absolutist” welcome divisive, hate-filled content whilemaking it harder for users to verify quality info— the opposite of what laws like the DSA intend. Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-09-12T16:13:19 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/12/australian-plan-for-misinformation-law-riles-elon-musk/
| 312 | 0.9 |
e89770d200836749bc6946e18106c633
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Cancer AI Alliance joins medical and tech expertise together with $40M to collaborate on next-gen care
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A group of major medical institutions specializing in cancer care have formed a partnership to better take advantage of AI’s potential to advance the space. With $40 million of cash and resources from big tech backers, theCancer AI Alliance (CAIA)could be a huge step forward in precision medicine. The members of the alliance are Fred Hutchinson, which will coordinate the new effort, Johns Hopkins, Dana Farber, and Sloan Kettering — to be precise, the cancer research arms of these organizations. Fred Hutch President and Director Tom Lynch announced the intitiative on stage at the Intelligent Applications Summit in Seattle, where the institute is based; VC firm Madrona, which put on the event, has been closely involved in the process as advisors to the Hutch. “We believe this has the potential to be transformative. This represents an unprecedented ability… to agree that working together will enable progress,” Lynch said. He gave the example of a patient with a rare pediatric cancer going at one center, but the scientific knowledge to better treat it is siloed at another center, wrapped in proprietary methods and handling protocols. Perhaps in ten years that knowledge will filter out through the scientific literature, but as he pointed out, the kid with a non-responsive leukemia doesn’t have that long. AI isn’t some miracle worker, of course, and the tug on the heartstrings isn’t meant to imply that this problem would quickly and easily be solved by some hypothetical treatment-finding model. But if a treatment or study that could help move things forward is not visible between these organizations, it slows down the whole field. The problem is that sharing data between medical organizations is not simple, due to regulations, safety considerations, and mismatches between formats and databases. Even if the study to help that kid with leukemia at Sloan Kettering is present at Johns Hopkins, there’s no guarantee it will be present in a way that can be shared in a legal and technically feasible way. The new organization aims to solve this by means of federated learning, a type of secure data collaboration where the raw data stays private, but can be used for the purposes of training AI and other computational systems. If the research organizations can contribute to a shared goal, like training a drug discovery or diagnostic model for a cancer they all know exists, while complying with HIPAA and other data controls, they will happily do so. Creating a collaborative system under this model is the goal of CAIA, but it’s still a ways out, according to Jeff Leek, VP and Chief Data Officer of Fred Hutch. It’s certainly possible, he explained, but it’s a difficult problem on the tech side that can only be approached once you have the principal participants in place. Lining up these cancer research centers, and binding them with the money and expertise from Microsoft, AWS, Nvidia, and Deloitte was the necessary first step, and not a trivial one. Now the actual shared infrastructure, standards, and specific goals (such as pursuing a model for a specific cancer or treatment) can begin to take shape. The $40 million is a mix of operating cash, services, and intangibles from the four companies mentioned, and will be deployed on an unspecified timeline except that CAIA expects to be functional by the end of this year. The initiative should be “producing its first insights” by the end of 2025. Topics Writer & Photographer Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. His personal website is coldewey. cc. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-10-02T19:30:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/02/cancer-ai-alliance-joins-medical-and-tech-expertise-together-with-40m-to-collaborate-on-next-gen-care/
| 661 | 1 |
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Apple introduces new child safety initiatives, including an age-checking system for apps
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Apple on Thursday announced a range ofnew initiativesdesigned to help parents and developers create a safer experience for kids and teens using Apple devices. In addition to easier setup of child accounts, parents will now be able to share information about their kids’ ages, which can then be accessed by app developers to provide age-appropriate content. The App Store will also introduce a new set of age ratings that give developers and App Store users alike a more granular understanding of an app’s appropriateness for a given age range. Product pages for third-party apps on the App Store will also be updated to include additional information that can help guide parents’ decisions, like whether an app features user-generated content or ads, or if the app offers its own parental controls. These updates will roll out to parents and developers later this year, Apple says. The changes arrive amid ongoing legislative disputes both at the stateand federal levelsover how tech companies should be protecting children online. Nine U. S. states, including Utah and South Carolina, have recently proposed bills that would require app store operators like Apple to check kids’ ages in order to get parental consent before minors can download apps, for instance. Apple historically has pushed for third-party app developers to verify kids’ ages, while large tech companies like Metahavelobbiedthat app store operators should handle age verification as they have this information about their users already. The iPhone maker’s new solution is something of a compromise. It puts Apple in the position of collecting kids’ ages via parental input but still puts the onus on the third-party developer to extract and use this information to craft age-appropriate experiences in their own apps. Apple’s system begins with an easier setup process for child accounts, which are required for kids under the age of 13 and are optional for young people up to age 18. When setting up a new child account, a parent can now select the age range for their child. The parent will also be able to verify they’re the adult in the household by confirming their payment history with their credit card already on file with Apple. (Previously, they would have to enter their credit card information manually, which could be a hassle. ) If the parent can’t immediately set up their child’s device, the child will now have the option to set up their iPhone or iPad on their own. Here, Apple will automatically apply age-appropriate web content filters and will allow kids to use the apps that come preinstalled on the devices, like Notes, Pages, Keynote, and others. Neither app developers nor Apple will be able to collect the kids’ data without a parent’s consent during this time. Kids will be reminded to ask a parent to complete the setup process when they visit the App Store and try to download an app for the first time. When the child’s setup is completed by the parent, kids will be able to use the App Store and other Apple services under the protection of the content and app restrictions their parent chose. The most notable part of this new system is how third-party developers verify kids’ ages using this information. Instead of asking kids to input their birthdays, as many social apps do today, developers will have the option to use a new Declared Age Range API that allows them to access the age range information the parent input during the child account setup. (Parents can also correct this information at any time if it was originally entered incorrectly). Through the API, developers gain access to an age range for the child so they can customize their app experiences appropriately. They will not have access to the child’s birthdate. Parents can also revoke this permission further down the road if need be, Apple says. From the child’s perspective, if an app needs their age information, it will display a pop-up message asking them if they want to share their age range with the app. This is similar to other permission requests that apps use for accessing more private features like a user’s location, microphone, camera, or photo gallery. It’s also a more effective system, given that kids often lie about their birthday to access an app’s full experience instead of the one curated for their age range. As an opt-in system, developers will have to do the work of integrating with the new API. And if any of the state legislative bills move forward, perhaps some developers or categories of apps will be required by law to do so in the future. A final change involves an update to the existing age rating system on the App Store itself. Currently, there are four age ranges available for apps: 4+ years old, 9+ years old, 12+, and 17+. The new system will break down teenagers’ ages into more granular ranges of 13+, 16+, and 18+, while still retaining the 4+ and 9+ ranges. An app’s age range is determined by the developer’s answers to a set of questions from Apple about the content in their app, as well as the frequency and intensity of that content, the company says. This will help parents better determine if an app their child requests is age-appropriate when a child requests a new app. Plus, if content restrictions are set up, kids are prevented from downloading and updating apps that exceed their age range. What’s more, Apple’s App Store won’t feature restricted apps in areas like the editorial stories, Today, Games, and Apps tabs, when they aren’t age-appropriate for the child. Several of the changes for child accounts are available in the public beta of iOS 18. 4, out now. The ability to make updates to the age of a child account after it’s already created, as well as the Declared Age Range API, Age Ratings and App Store updates will be available later this year, Apple says. In response to the update, a Meta spokesperson called the move “a positive first step,” but added that “developers can only apply these age-appropriate protections with a teen’s approval. ” “Parents tell us they want to have the final say over the apps their teens use, and that’s why we support legislation that requires app stores to verify a child’s age and get a parent’s approval before their child downloads an app,” they said. Updated after publication with Meta comment
| 2025-02-27T18:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/27/apple-introduces-new-child-safety-initiatives-including-an-age-checking-system-for-apps/
| 1,067 | 1 |
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Humanz brings its influencer marketing platform to the US
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Humanz, a marketing platform for content creators and brands, has entered the U. S. market, the company announced on Thursday. Having launched in Israel in 2017, Humanz has gained strong traction in global markets, including Europe, Latin America, South Africa, and the Middle East. Currently, Humanz works with over 300,000 content creators and has facilitated more than 15 million creator collaborations, contributing to nearly $500 million in sales. As influencer marketing spending becomes a significant part of the wider marketing space — and is now estimated to be a$250 billion industry— Humanz’s U. S. expansion demonstrates the increasing demand for marketing tools designed for content creators. Humanz is a platform where brands can create and publish campaigns, and influencers can submit bids and apply to participate. Brands have access to a talent discovery hub, management suite, and campaign builder and get real-time insight into a campaign’s return on investment (ROI). Influencers can see their content performance data, audience insights, and conversion rates, as well as discover potential collaborators. Companies can communicate directly with creators through the platform. Notably, Humanz also offers a separate product for talent managers. “We’ve noticed that a lot of influencers are managed through agencies, so it would make a lot of sense to have [talent managers] on board as well with a dedicated platform that they find value in where they can manage their entire roster in a smart and efficient way and also get those same insights delivered to them,” Roee Zelcer, U. S. CEO of Humanz, told TechCrunch. “All three players can sit in one space, communicate openly with each other, and are all transparent… It’s leveled the playing field for everyone. ” Humanz uses AI to analyze social media profiles to generate detailed influencer profiles and predict conversion rates for every creator based on past campaigns, Zelcer explained. So, when brands want to find influencers for a niche product, Humanz’s prediction model can forecast their conversion rate. “The reason we’ve become market leaders is because of that [AI] technology,” Zelcer said. Humanz quietly launched the U. S. offering at the beginning of this year. There are currently around 3,000 influencers in the U. S. registered on the platform and about 20 brands, including Google, GroupM, L’Oréal, McDonald’s, Nestlé, Omnicom, P&G, Unilever, and Zara. The platform has since launched new features designed for creators. For instance, Humanz revamped its campaign discovery feed to include filters so users can find campaigns with a flat fee or affiliate-only campaigns. This feature was developed based on feedback fromValeria Lipovetsky, the company’s new chief creator officer, who is responsible for providing insights based on her own experience as a creator. Lipovetsky hosts the “Not Alone” podcast and has over 6. 5 million followers on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. She also contributed to conceptualizing an upcoming feature that will ensure users are paid three days after closing a brand deal and uploading the necessary content. “We will make sure that they get paid within three days, meaning we’re going to take the risk, and then we’re going to charge the brand, but we are going to pay the influencers out of pocket within three business days,” Zelcer said. Humanz plans to launch the tool in the next few months. It will first be available in the U. S. before being introduced globally. The company will partner with several finance companies to fuel the feature. The platform is free for anyone to join, and Humanz takes a 10% commission fee on what brands pay influencers on the platform. For example, if a brand negotiates to pay 10 influencers a total of $10,000, they would also need to pay $1,000 as a commission fee to the platform. Humanz has raised $17 million in funding to date, with support from investors like Yuval Tal, the founder of payment company Payoneer. The company intends to raise a Series B funding round to support its expansion in the U. S. Topics YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-09-12T13:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/12/humanz-brings-its-influencer-marketing-platform-to-the-us/
| 733 | 1 |
96e59835240af8cf99508c39745fef8c
|
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GitHub expands access to Copilot Chat to individual users
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Three months ago, GitHublaunchedCopilot Chat, its ChatGPT-like programming-centric chatbot, out of private preview by making it available to organizations with a Copilot for Business subscription. Today, it’s taking this a step further by also opening up the Copilot Chat beta to all current GitHub Copilot for Individual subscribers in Visual Studio and VS Code. Copilot for individual users costs $10/month and Copilot Chat is a free addition to the existing subscription. Like similar chatbots, Copilot Chat lives in a sidebar of the IDE and developers can use it for multiturn conversations about coding in general, but more importantly, they can also ask about the code they are currently working on in the IDE. It’s the context, GitHub said when the chat experience first launched, that makes Copilot a more useful tool than a general-purpose chat assistant would be. “Integrated together,GitHubCopilot Chat and theGitHubCopilot pair programmer form a powerful AI-assistant capable of helping every developer build at the speed of their minds in the natural language of their choice,” writes Shuyin Zhao, VP of Product Management,GitHub, in today’s announcement. “We believe this cohesion will form the new centerpiece of the software development experience, fundamentally reducing boilerplate work and designating natural language as a new universal programming language for every developer on the planet. ” GitHub notes that some of the common use cases for Copilot Chat are real-time guidance to suggest best practices, tips and solutions tailored to the code a developer is currently working on, help with code analysis and fixing security issues — all without having to switch away from the IDE. In today’s announcement, Zhao notes that GitHub wants to enable “natural language as a new universal programming language” that will democratize software development. That’s a theme we’ve heard from GitHub in recent months and something its CEO Thomas Dohmke has been talking about quite a bit. Because Dohmke is a guest at ourDisrupt conference in San Franciscotoday, we’ll ask him about that — and more — during our onstage interview. GitHub’s Copilot Chat is now in public preview for businesses Topics Editor YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-09-20T17:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/20/github-expands-access-to-copilot-chat-to-individual-users/
| 420 | 0.9 |
42c277a6a148719ef7efca7d38b70c89
|
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Hundreds of AI luminaries sign letter calling for anti-deepfake legislation
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Hundreds in the artificial intelligence community havesigned an open letter calling for strict regulation of AI-generated impersonations, or deepfakes. While this is unlikely to spur real legislation (despite theHouse’s new task force), it does act as a bellwether for how experts lean on this controversial issue. The letter, signed by more than 500 people in and adjacent to the AI field at time of publishing, declares that “deepfakes are a growing threat to society, and governments must impose obligations throughout the supply chain to stop the proliferation of deepfakes. ” They call for full criminalization of deepfake child sexual abuse materials (CSAM, aka child pornography) regardless of whether the figures depicted are real or fictional. Criminal penalties are called for in any case where someone creates or spreads harmful deepfakes. And developers are called on to prevent harmful deepfakes from being made using their products in the first place, with penalties if their preventative measures are inadequate. Among the more prominent signatories of the letter are: Also present are hundreds of academics from across the globe and many disciplines. In case you’re curious, one person from OpenAI signed, a couple from Google DeepMind, and none at press time from Anthropic, Amazon, Apple or Microsoft (except Lanier, whose position there is non-standard). Interestingly they are sorted in the letter by “Notability. ” This is far from the first call for such measures; in fact, they have been debated in the EU for yearsbefore being formally proposed earlier this month. Perhaps it is the EU’s willingness to deliberate and follow through that activated these researchers, creators, and executives to speak out. EU proposes criminalizing AI-generated child sexual abuse and deepfakes Or perhaps it is theslow march of KOSA(Kids Online Safety Act) toward acceptance — and its lack of protections for this type of abuse. Or perhaps it is the threat of (as we have already seen)AI-generated scam callsthat could sway the election or bilk naïve folks out of their money. Or perhaps it is yesterday’s task force being announcedwith no particular agendaother than maybe writing a report about what some AI-based threats might be and how they might be legislatively restricted. As you can see, there is no shortage of reasons for those in the AI community to be out here waving their arms around and saying, “Maybe we should, you know, do something?!” Whether anyone will take notice of this letter is anyone’s guess — no one really paid attention to the infamous one calling for everyone to “pause” AI development, but of course this letter is a bit more practical. If legislators decide to take on the issue, an unlikely event given it’s an election year with a sharply divided Congress, they will have this list to draw from in taking the temperature of AI’s worldwide academic and development community. AI-generated Biden calls came through shady telecom and Texan front ‘Life Corporation’ Topics Writer & Photographer Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. His personal website is coldewey. cc. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-02-21T20:17:35 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/hundreds-of-ai-luminaries-sign-letter-calling-for-anti-deepfake-legislation/
| 575 | 1 |
a372af249c4901c304b0467a35b96a3a
|
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Automattic says it will start contributing to WordPress again after pause
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com parent company Automattic is changing direction… again. Ina blog posttitled “Returning to Core” published Thursday evening, Automattic announced it will unpause its contributions to the WordPress project. This is despite having said only last monththat the 6. 8 WordPress releasewould be the final major release for all of 2025. “After pausing our contributions to regroup, rethink, and plan strategically, we’re ready to press play again and return fully to the WordPress project,” the new blog post states. “Expect to find our contributions across all of the greatest hits — WordPress Core, Gutenberg, Playground, Openverse, and WordPress. org. This return is a moment of excitement for us as it’s about continuing the mission we’ve always believed in: democratizing publishing for everyone, everywhere,” it reads. Automattic says it’s learned a lot from the pause in terms of the many ways WordPress is used, and that it’s now committed to helping it “grow and thrive. ” The post also notes that WordPress today powers 43% of the web. It’s unclear what has changed. However, according to sources who spoke to TechCrunch, Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg explained in an internal post published last night that he wants to get a 6. 9 release out this year with an admin refresh and something from the “new AI team. ” (The latter references this week’s announcement thatWordPress formed a new team to steward the development of AI projects. ) “I don’t think that will happen without our contributions,” the post stated, according to a source familiar with the internal discussions. Insiders are speculating there’s more to it than that, and various theories are being floated. Some wonder if Mullenweg was pressured into this move or if he realized that pulling back wasn’t good for his business or its reputation? Others are debating if this change of heart has to do with Automattic’s ongoing litigation with WordPress’ hosting company, WP Engine, which Automattic has called a “threat” to the WordPress communityand a “cancer to WordPress. ” No one knows what to believe, and none of these backchannel theories line up with the officially stated reason. Automattic was asked for additional comment. Since 2024, Automattic has been engaged in a legal dispute that has to do with how little, in Mullenweg’s opinion, WP Engine contributes to the WordPress project, despite its size and revenue. He sees the hosting company as profiting off the open source work WordPress is doing without giving back. Mullenweg also alleges that WP Engine benefits from the confusion between WordPress and commercial services like WP Engine. This led him to ban the company from accessing WordPress. org and sue in court forunauthorized trademark usage. Simply put, Mullenweg thinks WP Engineshould either paya direct licensing fee or up its contributions to the open source WordPress project, or shouldn’t be allowed to use its trademark. WP Enginerespondedthat it doesn’t think it needs a license and that Automattic misunderstands trademark law,suing Automattic in return. Last month,Automattic laid off 16% of staff,saying the restructuring was necessary to be more agile and improve its productivity and profitability. Sarah Perez can be reached at @sarahperez. 01 on Signal and sarahp@techcrunch. com
| 2025-05-30T17:25:44 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/30/automattic-says-it-will-start-contributing-to-wordpress-again-after-pause/
| 522 | 1 |
7b5f98529225ad51b2a0d6c164cb0dad
|
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The TechCrunch+ surveys you need to read ahead of 2024
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With just a couple of days left in 2023, there’s no better time to take a moment to reflect on all that’s happened this year. From the Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse and crypto’s widespread troubles to AI’s ascent amid a volatile fundraising market, there was a lot to talk about this year, and investors and founders sure did share their thoughts freely with us in our surveys. Of course, some sectors are going to be more pertinent than others going into 2024, so we’ve listed some of our most relevant surveys so founders and investors can head into the new year with all the context needed to make good decisions. We’ve also included some surveys that we feel serve as important reminders of the things that went wrong in 2023. And if you’re curious about how investors are preparing for 2024, we’ve got you covered withthis survey of more than 40 investors. The alternative protein sector’s prospects have seemed a bit shaky in the past couple of years, but investors think there is potential for alternative protein to fill a crucial gap in the climate change problem space. 4 investors discuss the next big wave for alternative seafood startups VCs remain confident alternative protein has a real future despite public-market woes The crash of Silicon Valley’s darling bank isn’t something anyone in this industry will forget soon. Here’s what investors had to say following the bank’s collapse and the widespread ramifications for the venture capital and startup industry. 3 investors presage the future of startups and VC following SVB’s downfall 5 investors discuss what’s in store for venture debt following SVB’s collapse While the hype around robotics may have eased up, development certainly didn’t slow down in 2023. We got an inside look into the problems and opportunities in robotics today, and what investors believe is in store for the sector in the next few years. 13 VCs talk about the state of robotics investing in 2023 The way startups use the cloud has pretty much been set in stone if you believe some of the loudest marketing out there. So, we set out to see what founders thought of the status quo and what they were doing differently in implementing the cloud for their processes. For startups, how many clouds to use may be the wrong question to ask With landmark regulation being discussed for fusion energy in 2023, it’s important to get a view of what these advances will mean for the startups building the future of energy on the ground. We spoke to both investors and founders of fusion energy startups to see how much closer we are to running our lives off fusion power. With $10T on the line, 6 fusion investors explain why they’re all in 7 founders and CEOs discuss fusion power’s most pressing challenges Despite being a couple of years out of the pandemic lockdowns, there’s still uncertainty surrounding the future of work and what the average office day will look like. We spoke to founders about how they’re handling their workforce and the expectations they’re setting. 6 startup founders gaze into a future-of-work crystal ball Construction is one of the sectors suffering the most from a lack of skilled labor. We spoke to founders in the U. S. and Europe to get a better idea of how the lack of labor has affected projects and what they’re doing to survive and thrive during a rather rocky period for the industry. 4 founders give us their take on what’s ahead for construction tech AI gathered uncontrollable steam in 2023. How much of it was just hype? How much can AI realistically do at the moment? How many jobs are going to be replaced? Everyone has many questions and the answers often just lead to more questions. We did as deep a dive as we could to gather the complete picture. 10 investors talk about the future of AI and what lies beyond the ChatGPT hype 6 VCs explain how startups can capture and defend market share in the AI era 5 investors on the pros and cons of open source AI business models Given how busy most founders tend to be, we decided to look into just how worthwhile founder events are. We spoke to founders about the nature of events they attend, how many events they cross out on their calendars and how beneficial they’ve been. To attend or not to attend: We asked 52 founders whether events are useful or a waste of time How founders can cut through the noise and find events that are actually worth it Topics Project Manager, TC+ Karan is an enterprising journalist who has covered beats ranging from medical to tech to entertainment. He currently conducts investor surveys for TechCrunch+. He has worked with startups in marketing and tech and occasionally finds himself on stage hosting tech events in India. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-12-29T15:55:23 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/29/the-techcrunch-surveys-you-need-to-read-ahead-of-2024/
| 890 | 1 |
0a317bf244638bea1446d477eb217758
|
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Karine Perset helps governments understand AI
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To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching aseries of interviewsfocusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more profileshere. Karine Persetworks for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), where she runs its AI unit and oversees the OECD. AI Policy Observatory and the OECD. AI Networks of Experts within the Division for Digital Economy Policy. Perset specializes in AI and public policy. She previously worked as an adviser to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)’s Governmental Advisory Committee and as Counsellor of the OECD’s Science, Technology, and Industry Director. What work are you most proud of in the AI field? I am extremely proud of the work we do at OECD. AI. Over the last few years, the demand for policy resources and guidance on trustworthy AI has really increased from both OECD member countries and also from AI ecosystem actors. When we started this work around 2016, there were only a handful of countries that had national AI initiatives. Fast-forward to today, and the OECD. AI Policy Observatory — a one-stop shop for AI data and trends — documents over 1,000 AI initiatives across nearly 70 jurisdictions. Globally, all governments are facing the same questions on AI governance. We are all keenly aware of the need to strike a balance between enabling innovation and opportunities AI has to offer and mitigating the risks related to the misuse of the technology. I think the rise of generative AI in late 2022 has really put a spotlight on this. The10 OECD AI Principlesfrom 2019 were quite prescient in the sense that they foresaw many key issues still salient today — five years later and with AI technology advancing considerably. The Principles serve as a guiding compass towards trustworthy AI that benefits people and the planet for governments in elaborating their AI policies. They place people at the center of AI development and deployment, which I think is something we can’t afford to lose sight of, no matter how advanced, impressive, and exciting AI capabilities become. To track progress on implementing the OECD AI Principles, we developed the OECD. AI Policy Observatory, a central hub forreal-time or quasi-real-time AI data, analysis, and reports, which have become authoritative resources for many policymakers globally. But the OECD can’t do it alone, and multi-stakeholder collaboration has always been our approach. We created theOECD. AI Network of Experts— a network of more than 350 of the leading AI experts globally — to help tap their collective intelligence to inform policy analysis. The network is organized into six thematic expert groups, examining issues including AI risk and accountability, AI incidents, and the future of AI. How do you navigate the challenges of the male-dominated tech industry and, by extension, the male-dominated AI industry? When we look at the data, unfortunately, we still see a gender gap regarding who has the skills and resources to effectively leverage AI. In many countries, women still have less access to training, skills, and infrastructure for digital technologies. They are still underrepresented in AI R&D, while stereotypes and biases embedded in algorithms can prompt gender discrimination and limit women’s economic potential. In OECD countries, more than twice as many young men than women aged 16 to 24 can program, an essential skill for AI development. We clearly have more work to do to attract women to the AI field. However, while the private sector AI technology world is highly male-dominated, I’d say that the AI policy world is a bit more balanced. For instance, my team at the OECD is close to gender parity. Many of theAI expertswe work with are truly inspiring women, such as Elham Tabassi from the U. S National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST); Francesca Rossi at IBM; Rebecca Finlay and Stephanie Ifayemi from the Partnership on AI; Lucilla Sioli, Irina Orssich, Tatjana Evas and Emilia Gómez from the European Commission; Clara Neppel from the IEEE; Nozha Boujemaa from Decathlon; Dunja Mladenic at the Slovenian JSI AI lab; and of course my own amazing boss and mentor Audrey Plonk, just to name a few, and there aresomany more. We need women and diverse groups represented in the technology sector, academia, and civil society to bring rich and diverse perspectives. Unfortunately, in 2022,only one in four researcherspublishing on AI worldwide was a woman. While the number of publications co-authored by at least one woman is increasing, women only contribute to about half of all AI publications compared to men, and the gap widens as the number of publications increases. All this to say, we need more representation from women and diverse groups in these spaces. So to answer your question, how do I navigate the challenges of the male-dominated technology industry? I show up. I am very grateful that my position allows me to meet with experts, government officials, and corporate representatives and speak in international forums on AI governance. It allows me to engage in discussions, share my point of view, and challenge assumptions. And, of course, I let the data speak for itself. What advice would you give to women seeking to enter the AI field? Speaking from my experience in the AI policy world, I would say not to be afraid to speak up and share your perspective. We need more diverse voices around the table when we develop AI policies and AI models. We all have our unique stories and something different to bring to the conversation. To develop safer, more inclusive, and trustworthy AI, we must look at AI models and data input from different angles, asking ourselves: What are we missing? If you don’t speak up, then it might result in your team missing out on a really important insight. Chances are that, because you have a different perspective, you’ll see things that others do not, and as a global community, we can be greater than the sum of our parts if everyone contributes. I would also emphasize that there are many roles and paths in the AI field. A degree in computer science is not a prerequisite to work in AI. We already see jurists, economists, social scientists, and many more profiles bringing their perspectives to the table. As we move forward, true innovation will increasingly come from blending domain knowledge with AI literacy and technical competencies to come up with effective AI applications in specific domains. We see already that universities are offering AI courses beyond computer science departments. I truly believe interdisciplinarity will be key for AI careers. So, I would encourage women from all fields to consider what they can do with AI. And to not shy away for fear of being less competent than men. What are some of the most pressing issues facing AI as it evolves? I think the most pressing issues facing AI can be divided into three buckets. First, I think we need to bridge the gap between policymakers and technologists. In late 2022, generative AI advances took many by surprise, despite some researchers anticipating such developments. Understandingly, each discipline is looking at AI issues from a unique angle. But AI issues are complex; collaboration and interdisciplinarity between policymakers, AI developers, and researchers are key to understanding AI issues in a holistic manner, helping keep pace with AI progress and close knowledge gaps. Second, the international interoperability of AI rules is mission-critical to AI governance. Many large economies have started regulating AI. For instance, the European Union just agreed on its AI Act, the U. S. has adopted an executive order for the safe, secure, and trustworthy development and use of AI, and Brazil and Canada have introduced bills to regulate the development and deployment of AI. What’s challenging here is to strike the right balance between protecting citizens and enabling business innovations. AI knows no borders, and many of these economies have different approaches to regulation and protection; it will be crucial to enable interoperability between jurisdictions. Third, there is the question of tracking AI incidents, which have increased rapidly with the rise of generative AI. Failure to address the risks associated with AI incidents could exacerbate the lack of trust in our societies. Importantly, data about past incidents can help us prevent similar incidents from happening in the future. Last year, we launchedthe AI Incidents Monitor. This tool uses global news sources to track AI incidents around the world to understand better the harms resulting from AI incidents. It provides real-time evidence to support policy and regulatory decisions about AI, especially for real risks such as bias, discrimination, and social disruption, and the types of AI systems that cause them. What are some issues AI users should be aware of? Something that policymakers globally are grappling with is how to protect citizens from AI-generated mis- and disinformation — such as synthetic media like deepfakes. Of course, mis- and disinformation has existed for some time, but what is different here is the scale, quality, and low cost of AI-generated synthetic outputs. Governments are well aware of the issue and are looking at ways to help citizens identify AI-generated content and assess the veracity of the information they are consuming, but this is still an emerging field, and there is still no consensus on how to tackle such issues. OurAI Incidents Monitorcan help track global trends and keep people informed about major cases of deepfakes and disinformation. But in the end, with the increasing volume of AI-generated content, people need to develop information literacy, sharpening their skills, reflexes, and ability to check reputable sources to assess information accuracy. What is the best way to responsibly build AI? Many of us in the AI policy community are diligently working to find ways to build AI responsibly, acknowledging that determining the best approach often hinges on the specific context in which an AI system is deployed. Nonetheless, building AI responsibly necessitates careful consideration of ethical, social, and safety implications throughout the AI system life cycle. One of theOECD AI Principlesrefers to theaccountabilitythat AI actors bear for the proper functioning of the AI systems they develop and use. This means that AI actors must take measures to ensure that the AI systems they build are trustworthy. By this, I mean that they should benefit people and the planet, respect human rights, be fair, transparent, and explainable, and meet appropriate levels of robustness, security, and safety. To achieve this, actors must govern and manage risks throughout their AI systems’ life cycle — from planning, design, and data collection and processing to model building, validation and deployment, operation, and monitoring. Last year, we published a report on “Advancing Accountability in AI,” which provides an overview of integrating risk management frameworks and the AI system life cycle to develop trustworthy AI. The report explores processes and technical attributes that can facilitate the implementation of values-based principles for trustworthy AI and identifies tools and mechanisms to define, assess, treat, and govern risks at each stage of the AI system life cycle. How can investors better push for responsible AI? By advocating for responsible business conduct in the companies they invest in. Investors play a crucial role in shaping the development and deployment of AI technologies, and they should not underestimate their power to influence internal practices with the financial support they provide. For example, the private sector can support developing and adopting responsible guidelines and standards for AI through initiatives such as the OECD’s Responsible Business Conduct (RBC) guidelines, which we are currently tailoring specifically for AI. These guidelines will notably facilitate international compliance for AI companies selling their products and services across borders and enable transparency throughout the AI value chain — from suppliers to deployers to end users. The RBC guidelines for AI will also provide a non-judiciary enforcement mechanism — in the form of national contact points tasked by national governments to mediate disputes — allowing users and affected stakeholders to seek remedies for AI-related harms. By guiding companies to implement standards and guidelines for AI — like RBC — private sector partners can play a vital role in promoting trustworthy AI development and shaping the future of AI technologies in a way that benefits society as a whole. Topics Senior Reporter, Venture Dominic-Madori Davis is a senior venture capital and startup reporter at TechCrunch. She is based in New York City. You can contact her on Signal at +1 (646)-831-7565. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-03-02T14:00:46 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/02/karine-perset-helps-governments-understand-ai/
| 2,169 | 1 |
68cb380f0b585367482f1d61f6a6de44
|
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Spotify tests video courses to teach everything from music production to Excel
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Spotifyhas carved out a business for itself in music streaming, podcast entertainment and audiobooks. Now, in its ongoing efforts to get its 600 million+ users to spend more time and money on its platform, Spotify is spinning up a new line of content: e-learning. Starting with a rollout in the U. K. , Spotify is testing the waters for an online education offering of freemium video courses. Produced in partnership with third parties like the BBC and Skillshare, at least two lessons will be free, with the cost of a total course ranging from £20 to £80 on average. The prices will be the same, regardless of whether you are a basic or premium user, at least for now. Mohit Jitani, the London-based product director for the education business, said in an interview that pricing choices were part of what it’s testing before considering how to roll out more widely. “With this launch, we’re trying to understand the demand first,” he said. “Then we optimize how we can make it more compelling and exciting. ” The content will live in both Spotify’s home and browse tabs (under “Courses”), and it’s accessibleon the webas well as via the Spotify mobile app. The courses are pitched somewhere between YouTube, Master Class and LinkedIn Learning: Videos in the current catalog cover a wide range of subjects, from music production through to learning how to use Excel, as well as lessons on — you guessed it — how to create online learning lessons to turn musicians and others into “education creators. ” Unsurprising for a market estimated to have been worthmore than $315 billion in 2023, there are plenty of online learning sites on the web these days, some of which have been innovators in interactive content and other media formats — you can even find a number of startups aspiring to be the “Spotify for education” if you Google that term — Spotify’s educational push is focused around one-directional, on-demand video. Some courses appear to have supplementary material, although that will be more in the realm of extra documents rather than tests or other interactions. Jitani declined to comment on whether Spotify would launch any kind of interaction or gamification in the future — or, indeed, if games of any kind are on its roadmap right now. The first partners for Courses are Skillshare (which will focus on creatives), PLAYvirtuoso (music industry courses), BBC Maestro (Master Class-esque) and Thinkific (for those inspired to build their skills into online learning classes of their own). Spotify, Jitani said, would be looking to curate which courses it offers, and it will base curation on what people are already listening to and searching for on its platform. There appears to be no limit, though. If you look at the catalogs of these respective providers, you’ll see that the
| 2024-03-25T08:59:18 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/25/spotify-courses-learning/
| 471 | 0.9 |
dde2af3af0932e6f3575b15e5bb70d61
|
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All eyes on Tesla’s margins
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Shares of Tesla are off this morning in the wake of the company’s Q3 2023 earnings report. TechCrunch covered the company’s aggregate resultshere. While Tesla’s results missed street estimates in both revenue and profit terms, there was much to like aboutthe company’s quarter. Revenue was up modestly (9%), with Tesla’s non-automotive revenues (energy, services) growing much more quickly than top line from selling cars, showing the value of somewhat diversified revenue sources. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read itevery morning on TechCrunch+or getThe Exchange newsletterevery Saturday. And Tesla is still profitable. Despite a decline in its gross profit in the quarter, the company reported $1. 85 billion in GAAP net income in the third quarter and free cash flow of $848 million. So why is the stock selling off and analysts wringing their hands? Tesla hasreduced the price of its vehicles in recent quarters. That has helped the company stick to its goal of delivering 1. 8 million vehicles this year, but with a lower price point for much of its line, the company is under margin pressure. As TechCrunch noted Wednesday after Tesla’s numbers first dropped: Tesla reported gross margin of 17. 9% in the third quarter, falling from 25. 1% in the same period last year. It’s also down from Q2 when it reported margins of 18. 2%. Where Tesla’s margins are going is not an idle question. The company has enjoyed gross margins far in excess of its major automotive rivals in recent years: This chart does not include Tesla Q3 2023 data, and the other companies listed have yet to report their own third-quarter results, so take the data with a grain of salt. What matters is that Tesla has managed better gross margins than its rivals for some time, though its lead has started to decline compared to Stellantis. Naturally, when comparing companies of this size, a blended gross margin figure is going to include a host of things that we might want to strip. Still, the trend appears clear even with that caveat, especially if we include the fact that Tesla’s gross margins ticked down to 17. 9% in its most recent quarter. Can Tesla keep making lots of money while cutting the price of its cars? During its earnings call, the company stressed an ongoing effort to reduce costs. Tesla’s CFO Vaibhav Tanejasaid that the companyhas a “a whole laundry list of things [it’s] chasing” to find places to reduce per-car costs, adding that the EV giant is “literally going line by line and saying, ‘How can we make it better?’” CEO Elon Musk likened the situation to the popular “Game of Thrones” fantasy series, but one where the game being played is all about “pennies” and looking for places to save more of them. The question I have is where to draw the line between reducing per-car costs and continuing to post outsize gross margins at Telsa. The company had a very interesting answer to how it is approaching that question during its earnings call. Here’s Musk during the conversation: I keep harping on this interest thing, but I mean it just — [rising] interest rate[s] raises the cost of the car. I mean, we’re looking at internal analysis, which I know we think is more or less on track that when you look at the cost — or the price reductions we’ve made in, say, the Model Y and you compare that to how much people’s monthly payment has risen due to interest rates, the price of the Model Y is almost unchanged. The thing that matters is the monthly [payment] — it’s how much money do they have to put down and do they literally have that in their bank account or their check balance, and then what is the monthly payment. And it doesn’t matter how — if that monthly payment is principal interest or whatever, it’s just a number, and that number has to not cause their bank account to go negative. So, going from near-zero interest rates to kind of the current very high interest rates, the actual monthly payment is basically the same. It’s just a bunch more of it is going to interest. Tesla price reductions, then, are an effort to keep the effective monthly payment for its cars steady for consumers who use credit for their purchase. As interest rates have risen, the cost of money has risen. Thus, to borrow money costs more money. Consumers don’t have more, so Tesla has reduced the price of some of its cars so that their actual monthly expense is flat. To some degree this explains the continued, incremental price cuts at Tesla that we have seen lately. For consumers, this is pretty darn cool. Flat cost of a Model Y on a per-monthly basis despite more expensive money? Killer. For Tesla, however, it’s a bit trickier. Clearly Tesla can continue to generate tidy profits from lower-priced cars. But investors are anticipating the company’s results to take a ding from the trade-offs it is making — which we infer from the company’s share price falling Thursday in the wake of its earnings report — which is something for us to keep an eye on. That’s because Tesla is not valued like other car companies. Here’s another chart showing what I mean: If Tesla winds up valued like its automotive rivals, it would see its valuation dramatically cut. So it needs to perform not like a car company to keep its value high. Thus, seeing its gross margins contract, which makes it look a bit more like yet another car company, is worrying for its investors. Topics Senior Reporter
| 2023-10-19T15:30:37 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/19/all-eyes-on-teslas-margins/
| 943 | 1 |
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Yahoo spin-out Vespa lands $31M investment from Blossom
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ai, the big data serving engine that just a few weeks ago spun out from Yahoo (full disclosure: TechCrunch’s parent company) into an independent venture, has raised a new round of funds. Blossom Capital led a $31 million investment in Vespa — money that Vespa CEO Jon Bratseth says will be put toward growing Vespa as a standalone business, strengthening the company’s engineering functions and “delivering more features faster to all Vespa’s users. ” “In particular, we’ll speed up the development of features that’ll make it easier for developers to create apps that combine AI models with proprietary data sets,” Bratseth told TechCrunch in an email interview. “Vespahas been around for over 20 years, and we’re set up to be around for a lot longer. ” Yahoo created Vespa back in 2005 after acquiring paid search service provider Overture, and, through it, a Norwegian search engine called AlltheWeb. com. Working with the e-commerce division within Yahoo, the AlltheWeb team retooled its search tech into a more general-purpose tool that Yahoo developers could use internally to compute over large-scale data sets in real time. Over the next decade or so, Yahoo expanded Vespa along several axes, enabling the tool to handle input beyond text strings, personalize content based on users’ click-through histories and take direction from machine learning algorithms. Then, in 2017, Yahoo open sourced Vespa, hoping to rally developer support behind the software — and foster something of an ecosystem both internally and externally. Evidently, it paid off. Thousands of brands, including Spotify, OkCupid and Wix, now use either the open source release of Vespa or Vespa’s cloud-hosted, fully managed product, Vespa Cloud. Vespa still drives searches and related-article recommendations on many Yahoo-owned sites — performing ad targeting on Yahoo-branded web properties such as Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo News and Yahoo’s advertising network. “Well-known use cases of Vespa include search (for both humans and AI), online personalization recommendation and ad serving,” Bratseth said. “Essentially, Vespa applies AI to store, sift through and apply data to meet any number of needs, and it’s currently being used for everything from helping a global financial services company instantly search through billions of documents … to serving one billion users processing 800,000 queries per second across 150 applications to deliver content and offering targeted ads for Yahoo. ” While there are a number of open source alternatives to Vespa available, including Solr and Elasticsearch, Bratseth makes the case that Vespa goes several steps beyond what’s on the market. For example, he says, Vespa offers a mode, “vector streaming search,” that can “dramatically” cut the cost of an app retrieving personal data such as emails and documents. “Vespa [provides] end-to-end services that allow clients to use any combination of text and structured data to provide quality results with sophisticated scoring and relevance at scale,” Bratseth said. “Vespa solves the problem many AI applications, including large language models [along the lines ofChatGPT], are starting to face as they increase the amount of customers and data needed to function while also allowing Fortune 500 and enterprise customers to leverage AI to streamline their operations and improve their bottom line. ” Free of Yahoo (except for Yahoo’sstakein Vespa and seat on Vespa’s board of directors), Bratseth says that Vespa, whose team now stands at 29 people, has the capability to expand its cloud services. “Those who already use Vespa now have the opportunity to move to Vespa Cloud,” he said. “Vespais a startup with a huge growth potential from our large base of open source enterprise usage, which would benefit greatly from moving to our managed version of the platform. ”
| 2023-11-01T13:30:42 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/01/yahoo-spin-out-vespa-lands-31m-investment-from-blossom/
| 604 | 1 |
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Apple TV’s tvOS 26 gets ‘Liquid Glass’ treatment and profile-switching feature
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Apple revealed an update to its Apple TV operating system, tvOS 26, during itsWWDC 2025event on Monday, featuring a“Liquid Glass” aesthetic for Apple TVthat offers a sleek and “unobtrusive” design, the company said. One of the standout features for users is the ability to quickly jump into their own user profile. Apple TV will now present profile options each time it wakes from sleep, making it more convenient for each family member to select their profile and quickly resume watching their own favorite shows and movies. The revamped Apple TV app also features new poster art on the main screen, allowing more shows and movies to be displayed. Additionally, the Control Center, where users can perform actions such as starting a sleep timer or adjusting audio, received the Liquid Glass treatment. This ensures that the video remains the focal point while viewers watch content. Additionally, tvOS 26 introduces a new API for developers that links app logins to an Apple Account, simplifying the sign-in process for users when setting up a new device. Topics YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2025-06-09T18:18:46 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/09/apple-tvs-tvos-26-gets-liquid-glass-treatment-and-profile-switching-feature/
| 249 | 0.9 |
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Volvo becomes latest automaker to adopt Tesla EV charging standard
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Now, Volvo is turning to Tesla’s North American Charging Standard. Under an agreement announced Tuesday, Volvo EV owners will have access to about 12,000 ofTesla’s fast chargers, known as Superchargers, via an adapter starting in the first half of 2024. Today, Volvo produces and sells two battery electric vehicles, the XC40 and C40 Recharge. The company, which aims to only produce EVs by 2030, recently revealed the EX30 and EX90. The bigger change occurs in 2025 when Volvo EVssold in North America will be built with Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS) charging port. “As part of our journey to becoming fully electric by 2030, we want to make life with an electric car as easy as possible,” Volvo Cars CEO Jim Rowan said in a statement. “One major inhibitor to more people making the shift to electric driving — a key step in making transportation more sustainable — is access to easy and convenient charging infrastructure. Today, with this agreement, we’re taking a major step to remove this threshold for Volvo drivers in the United States, Canada and Mexico. ” Today, nearly all EVs sold in North America — with the exception of Tesla — are equipped with the Combined Charging System (CCS). Third-party charging networks like Electrify America, EVGo and ChargePoint are also on the CCS standard. Volvo said it will provide an adapter to future EV owners so they can still access public chargers equipped with CCS. Last year, Tesla shared itsEV charging connector designin an effort to encourage network operators and automakers to adopt the technology and help make it the new standard in North America. While there didn’t appear to be a lot of public interest, automakers began working with Tesla to adopt the system. In the past month, Ford, GM, Rivian and more than a dozenEV charging companieshave announced plans to adopt Tesla’s NACS. Stellantis and Hyundai have made public statements that they’re evaluating the Tesla standard
| 2023-06-27T16:45:13 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/27/volvo-becomes-latest-automaker-to-adopt-tesla-ev-charging-standard/
| 323 | 0.9 |
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Wisconsin has quietly become a hotbed of fusion power startups. Will it last?
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Time for some quick word association: When you think of Wisconsin, what comes to mind? Probably not nuclear fusion. And yet in the last few years, America’s Dairyland has become a hotbed of fusion startups. With three that are publicly known, only the Seattle area has more. Last week alone, two received millions in grants from the Department of Energy,one of which announced a $9 million seed round. The secret behind the state’s recent success isn’t so secret: University research programs that have been quietly cranking away for decades are now seeing the fruits of their labor emerge from the lab. Just like Silicon Valley has in Stanford and Cambridge, Massachusetts, has in MIT, Wisconsin has UW-Madison. The capital city is poised to become a key player in an industry that, if all goes well, promises to rewrite everything from energy to manufacturing, chemical refining and even space travel. For energy, the opportunity is obvious: potentially massive amounts of power fueled by relatively minuscule volumes of hydrogen isotopes. The heat generated when those isotopes fuse would be harvested, most likely by steam turbines, the same technology that pretty much every major power plant relies on today. The electricity could be generated day and night, providing a carbon-free, meltdown-free source of so-called baseload power. That heat could also be used in industrial facilities, too. Realta Fusion, which announced its $9 million seed round last week, is betting that its design for a fusion power plant will be sufficiently modular to fit in a range of industrial settings, including chemical refineries. Fusion power might even have a place in space. With cost less of a concern, engineers could shrink reactor designs to fit them aboard spacecraft, where they’d provide both propulsion and electricity. To disrupt any of those sectors, though, fusion first has to be commercially proven. That’s getting closer. In December, the National Ignition Facility demonstrated thatfusion reactions could produce net positive power, meaning they could generate more energy than was put into the experiment. The test produced a relatively small amount of energy — nowhere near enough to power the building that hosted it or the lasers that sparked its results — but it proved the concept. Fusion was no longer a hypothesis, and in the wake of the NIF’s successful experiment, the question of commercial fusion is defined less by risky science than by challenging engineering. But technological hurdles are just one of the roadblocks that the Wisconsin fusion industry faces. Wisconsin has had a troubled recent history when it comes to attracting high-tech industries. Six years ago, the state offered electronics manufacturer Foxconn billions of dollars in incentives to coax the company to build a massive LCD plant. Foxconnrepeatedly pared backthe deal to the point where nearly all of the 13,500 jobs that were initially promised remain unfilled. In fusion, UW-Madison has given the state a head start, but that isn’t a guarantee of success. One startup, Type One Energy, isn’t quite ready to commit to staying in Wisconsin. When TechCrunch+spoke with CEO Chris Mowry in March, he said that while Madison would probably be among the front runners, the company would likely be approaching other states when it came time to site its headquarters. Wisconsin’s manufacturing sector still outpaces the rest of the country, contributing about 18% of the state’s GDP, about seven points more than the national average,accordingto the Bureau of Economic Analysis. But as a share of the workforce, manufacturing is shrinking. Total jobs have held steady, but today it only employs 15% of the workforce compared with 28% in 1970, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics and UW-Madison. Fusion could give Wisconsin an opportunity to bolster its manufacturing sector. Parts for fusion power plants require close collaboration between designers and manufacturers, a process that benefits from proximity. “What Detroit was in the ’50s to the automobile industry, where Houston is today to the energy industry, we’d like to see southeastern Wisconsin be that for the fusion industry for the future,” Realta Fusion CEO Kieran Furlong told TechCrunch+. Still, there’s always the risk that the fusion breakthroughs incubated in Wisconsin could flee for other states, much like computing’s center of gravity began to shift from Boston’s Route 128 corridor to Silicon Valley in the late 1980s. Whether Wisconsin will remain a hub for fusion startups remains to be seen. In UW-Madison, it has an anchor university, something that’s widely seen as a prerequisite for incubating startups. But first its lawmakers will have to stopbleeding the university to death. It’ll also need a more well-developed venture capital scene; no Wisconsin metro area cracks thetop 20. Those are all steep cliffs to climb, but fusion is still a nascent industry and time is on Wisconsin’s side. Topics Senior Reporter, Climate YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-06-06T14:00:06 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/06/wisconsin-fusion-power-hub/
| 869 | 1 |
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Struggling database company MariaDB could be taken private in $37M deal
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MariaDBis the subject of another potential takeover bid, as the company behind the eponymous open source relational database management system (RDBMS)confirmedit had received a provisional offer from California-basedK1 Investment Management. K1 quietlyrevealedon Friday that it had tabled what is known as an “unsolicited non-binding indicative proposal” for MariaDB, which — as its name suggests — is a non-binding exploratory offer that may change depending on how negotiations progress in the coming weeks. This proposal includes buying all MariaDB stock at a price of $0. 55 per share, which would amount roughly to $37 million based on the company’s February 5 closing valuation, though it has yet to determine what form this offer will take. The news comes amid major changes and upheaval at the company, which has seena new CEO enterthe fray and a sizable downsizing endeavor as it offloaded both itsdatabase-as-a-serviceandgeospatial businesses. MariaDBemergedas a fork of MySQL 15 years ago, after MySQL’s project creators became concerned about its independence in the wakeof a seriesof billion-dollar acquisitionsthat led Oracle to effectivelyown MySQL in 2009. MariaDB was considered a “drop-in” replacement for those seeking a fully open source MySQL alternative and has been used by big-name companies for storing and manipulating data across their applications. The commercial entity behind MariaDB raised roughly $230 million in venture funding through the years to develop premium features and services on top of the core project, eventuallygoing publicin December 2022 via a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). As with just aboutmost SPAC-based IPOs, MariaDB’s flotation has been far from a resounding success, falling from an opening day market cap of$445 millionin late 2022 (which itself was down considerably on its previousprivate enterprise value of $672 million at its Series D round) into a perennial nosedive that has seen it hover at just over the $10 million mark since the turn of the year. At the heart of all this has been astring of subpar earning reports, with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE)warning MariaDB in Septemberthat it wasn’t in compliance with listing rules that stipulate a company’s average global market capitalization can’t fall below $50 million over a consecutive 30-day trading period. In the months that followed, MariaDBreceived its first“unsolicited non-binding indicative proposal,” this time from existing investor Runa Capital, which tentatively offered $0. 56 per share in cash. Three weeks later, Runastated that it wouldn’tbe acquiring MariaDB after all, but instead an associate company called RP Ventureswould beproviding a $26. 5 million loan. Fast-forward to early February this year, and MariaDB announced a temporary forbearance agreement with its creditors, meaning that they would refrain from exercising any remedies as set out in the loan agreement while an alternative financing solution was sought. This newsled MariaDB’s stock to more than doublein a couple of days, which is why K1 is making its bid relative to MariaDB’s closing price before any forbearance agreement was announced. Indeed, K1 says it’s offering a 189% premium on MariaDB’s February 5 closing price, which was $0. 19 and equated to a market cap of around $12. 9 million. There is no guarantee that K1 will place a formal bid for MariaDB, but unlike Runa Capital, which is more of a traditional VC, K1 has atrack record of later-stage investmentsover its 12-year history that positions it closer to the private equity realm. And perhaps more importantly, it already has a handful of acquisitions to its name, including the$319 million purchaseof Australia’s ELMO Software in 2022, which it also took private in the acquisition process. So in many ways, K1 is perhaps better suited to take over MariaDB than Runa was, even if it ultimately decides against it. K1 has until March 29, 2024, either to formalize its offer or to ditch the plans altogether, as per IrishTakeover Rules, which MariaDB is subject to owing to the location of one of its headquarters (it has one in Dublin, Ireland, and another in Redwood City, California). It’s also worth noting that in light of the woes over at the commercial MariaDB organization, the relatedMariaDB Foundation, responsible for governance around the open source MariaDB project,recently inked a major sponsorship dealwith Amazon Web Services (AWS), which should go some way toward ensuring the lights stay on at the community-driven MariaDB incarnation. Topics Senior Reporter YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-02-19T16:40:41 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/19/struggling-database-company-mariadb-could-be-taken-private-in-a-37m-deal/
| 784 | 1 |
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Internet access in Gaza partially restored after blackout
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After a weekend of almost complete internet blackout, connectivity in Gaza has been partially restored. On Friday, internet monitoring firms and experts reported thataccess to the internet had significantly degraded in the Palestinian enclave. The local internet service NetStream “collapsed,” according to NetBlocks, a firm that tracks internet access across the world. At the same time, IODA, another internet monitoring system,showed outagesand degradation across several Palestinian internet providers. The lack of internet communications caused emergency lines to stop ringing and made it hard for paramedics to locate the wounded and for family members to reach relatives and friends,according to The New York Times. On Sunday, IODAreported“marginal restoration” of internet connectivity in Gaza. Abdulmajeed Melhem, CEO of the Palestinian main telecommunications company Paltel Group, told The Times that the internet had come back even though the company had not made any repairs. Then on Monday, Gaza had roughly the same access to internet connectivity as before Friday, according to several experts and firms that are monitoring the internet in the region, including Doug Madory, an expert who for years has focused on monitoring networks across the world. “There was the 34 hour complete blackout from Friday to Sunday — a first for Gaza. Then there was last night’s partial outage in northern Gaza,” Madory, who is the director of internet analysis at Kentik, told TechCrunch on Monday. “The situation is still very precious: no power, little water. Service could potentially drop out again at any time. ” Sources on the ground appeared to confirm the improvements. Nebal Farsakh, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Red Crescent humanitarian organization, told TechCrunch that her colleagues in Gaza are now “able to connect to the internet” after the “complete cut off during Friday and Saturday. ” But, Farsakh added, the situation is still challenging. “We are still facing difficulties reaching out to them. I need to call them 10 times to get to one,” Farsakh said. David Belson, the head of data insight at cloud hosting and security company Cloudflare, told TechCrunch that the company saw connectivity to Gaza restored Sunday morning local time and “it has remained available since that time, with requested traffic volume at or above pre-shutdown levels. ” Cloudflare also shared several graphs showing internet traffic picking back up on Sunday. It’s unclear what caused the internet outages in Gaza on Friday and what caused the improvements on Sunday and Monday. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the U. S. government put pressure on the Israeli government to switch the internet back on in Gaza,citing an unnamed U. S. official. “We made it clear they had to be turned back on,” the official said. “The communications are back on. They need to stay on,” The Post quoted the official as saying. Also on Sunday,The Times reportedthat the U. S. government believed that the Israeli government was responsible for the near-blackout of the internet in Gaza. In response to a series of questions from TechCrunch about what happened to the networks in Gaza over the weekend, and whether the blackout was part of the Israeli military operations, an unnamed spokesperson for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) declined to comment. The internet issues in Gaza came as the IDF expanded ground operations in Gaza, in addition to continued air strikes. The operations come in response to the terrorist attacks by the militant organization Hamas, which resulted in the death of more than 1,400 Israelis. As of Sunday, the Associated Press reported that Israeli forces have killed around 8,000 Palestinians, citing the Gaza Health Ministry, which is controlled by Hamas. Topics Senior Reporter, Cybersecurity YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-10-30T20:01:09 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/30/internet-access-in-gaza-partially-restored-after-blackout/
| 676 | 1 |
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As unicorns grow rarer, maybe it’s time to look toward revenue, not valuations
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Startups that were deemed worthy of a $1 billion valuation while still private were once so unusual, they seemed almost mythical — hence the “unicorn” moniker they were awarded. But when the COVID-19 pandemic started waning, venture capitalists started letting out all their pent-up energy, and capital and unicorns might as well have grown two horns, because they became as common as oxen. We’re unsure if this is good news or not, butnew data from Crunchbaseindicates that unicorns are once again a rare occurrence. The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read itevery morning on TechCrunch+or getThe Exchange newsletterevery Saturday. Only two new unicorns were minted in July, according to Crunchbase. That’s less than one every two weeks, and compared to the heady days of 2021, when some months saw more than 60 unicorns being minted — more than two perday— we’re now nearly close to zero. CB Insights datathrough June mirrors what Crunchbase reports, too. This trend isn’t new, though. Wedug into this very point back in the second quarter, noting that billion-dollar valuations are now frequently impractical for startups given how software revenue has been devalued in recent years. But there is a difference between unicorns being minted slower than they were in 2021 and justtwonew unicorns in a month. What’s worse, there’s reason to expect we’ll see that number diminishing further. Backwhen Aileen Lee coined the term “unicorn” on TechCrunch back in 2013, the investor wrote that her team had uncovered 39 U. S. -based unicorns. At the time, given the bounds of her dataset (2003 to 2013), that worked out to four new unicorns per year and up to three “super-unicorns” every decade. That’s not a lot. Indeed, it makes July’s rate of two new unicorns a month seem quite high. So, how much has the natural pace of unicorn creation changed since Lee’s piece back in 2013? Let’s find out. Here’s a hypothesis: If the market can support more new unicorns every year than it could in 2013 (and have them go public in a reasonable time frame), we won’t have to worry about things going back to those levels. It wouldn’t make any economic sense given all the VC money flowing into tech startups. Actually, I think that the technology industry is now capable of supporting more new unicorns and IPOs than it could in 2013, not to mention 2003. The market for the software and other tech that startups tend to produce has grown dramatically, and SaaS companies’ revenue multiples are much, much higher than what they could musterback in the day. No, the question is: Just how many more can the market handle? A good way to answer that question is to ask another question: How many new startups will cross the $100 million annual recurring revenue mark every year? That threshold should prove a good proxy for the number of new unicorns the market can support, because private tech companies with run-rate revenue in the nine figures will likely be worth $1 billion or more when they exit, at least most of the time. We can feel pretty confident in that theory since M&A deals usually value companies at a premium, and a company with such startup-esque growth rates would warrant a billion dollars — even in this climate. Startups with annual revenue of $100 million that are growing slower might be worth a little less, but with that large a revenue base, it won’t be too hard to get a ten-figure valuation. Notably, Bessemer Venture Partners terms startups that bring in $100 million in yearly revenue “Centaurs,” a unicorn-ish moniker that is perhaps what we should have used all along. When Lee wrote her article, revenue multiples did not allow small private companies to land unicorn valuations, and when that changed, unicorns became plentiful. Private-market valuations are sticky since they arise from infrequent pricing events, so they can wind up as more of a historical artifact than an existing one. But revenue is more durable, and it is probably what we should have focused on the whole time. We should forget the whole unicorn debate and rephrase our question: How many startups can reach the $100 million revenue mark for a given period?Thatshould tell us how many truly outlying tech companies are being built and how much capital the venture market can likely put to work. Topics Senior Reporter YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-08-16T18:00:02 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/16/it-shouldve-been-centaurs-all-along/
| 804 | 1 |
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Google’s NotebookLM enhances AI note-taking with YouTube, audio file sources, sharable audio discussions
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Google on Thursday announced new updates to its AI note-taking and research assistant,NotebookLM, allowing users to get summaries of YouTube videos and audio files and even create sharable AI-generated audio discussions, as the search giant aims to broaden the use cases and reach of the tool, which was originally launchedas a projectat its I/O developer conference last year andexpanded to markets including India, U. K. , and more than 200 countriesmonths after itsdebut for public access in the U. S. NotebookLM, which was initially used by educators and learners, has more recently seen a significant shift in its user base and is now attracting more people in a workplace environment. Raiza Martin, a senior product manager for AI at Google Labs, said in an exclusive interview that the tool’s users are now roughly split, with 50% being educators and learners, and the other half consisting of business professionals. “People are now sharing notebooks, and it’s creating a network effect,” she told TechCrunch. This gave the NotebookLM team a push to introduce new features, with the hopes of enhancing its network effect and making the tool popular among people of different demographics. Earlier this month, NotebookLMadded Audio Overviewto let users turn their documents into engaging audio discussions. The latest update expands that experience by allowing users to share the Audio Overview generated in NotebookLM with a public URL. To use the feature, you click on the share icon available on the Audio Overview generated in the tool to get its URL, which you can then copy and share with others. Martin said that her team saw professionals uploading web pages, resumes, and even their presentations on NotebookLM to generate Audio Overviews, then sharing those with their employers, colleagues, or clients. NotebookLM also added support for YouTube videos and audio files (such as. mp3 and. wav) as new source types, alongside its existing support for Google Docs, PDFs, text files, Google Slides, and web pages. The new features help users summarize key points from YouTube videos and generate takeaways and insights from the audio recordings they have of their study sessions or projects. Martin told TechCrunch that because Google Labs has a small team working for NotebookLM, powered by the company’s multimodal large language model Gemini 1. 5 Pro, every new feature the team adds to the tool is based on user feedback. “What’s interesting about AI tools is that a lot of assumptions change,” she said. “What might have been useful last year might not be useful this year. ” In June, Google expanded NotebookLM access to more than 200 countries after launching it initially in the U. S. late last year. Martin told TechCrunch, without disclosing specific numbers, that while NotebookLM still has a majority of its usage in the U. S. , Japan has emerged as the next big market for the tool. The executive also underlined that some of its users are using NotebookLM to get AI-based summarization in languages different from what they set on the tool. “In Japan particularly, we see a lot of documents that are not in Japanese, but NotebookLM is set to Japanese,” she said. “So people are querying in their native language, using it with probably complex and dense documents in English. ” Google said that the information users upload to NotebookLM stays private and is not used to train an AI model. To access the tool, users must be at least 18 years old. Still, NotebookLM faces challenges inherent to its nature as an AI tool. One is that if users rely too much on NotebookLM, they might quickly lose the habit of reading long-form content and research papers. This could also lead to the problem of oversimplification. Martin told TechCrunch that her team is very well aware of these concerns. NotebookLM provides clickable citations from the content users upload to let users go deeper into the summarized notes. “We try to encourage you to read your original text. We encourage you to double-check all the answers that come out of NotebookLM… You could read SparkNotes or the actual book; it’s always up to you,” she said. NotebookLM is currently limited to the web, though Martin indicated that its mobile apps may come sometime next year. Meanwhile, the team is busy adding more new features. These will be focused on adding more support on the input side and new sources for outputs, Martin said. Topics Reporter YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-09-26T16:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/26/googles-notebooklm-enhances-ai-note-taking-with-youtube-audio-file-sources-sharable-audio-discussions/
| 810 | 1 |
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Google DeepMind unites researchers in bid to create an ImageNet of robot actions
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Of all the holy grails in robotics, learning may well be the holiest. In an era when the term “general purpose” is tossed around with great abandon, however, it can be difficult for non-roboticists to understand what today’s systems can — and can’t — do. The truth of it is that most robots these days are built to do one (or a couple, if you’re lucky) thing really well. It’s a truth that spans the industry, from the lowliest robot vacuum to the most advanced industrial system. So, how do we make the transition from single to general purpose robotics? Certainly, there are going to be a lot of stops in multipurpose land along the way. The answer is, of course, robot learning. Walk into nearly any robotics research lab these days and you will find teams working on tackling the issue. The same applies to startups and corporations, as well. Look at companies Viam and Intrinsic, which are working to lower the bar of entry for robot programming. Solutions run a fairly wide gamut at the moment, but it has become increasingly clear to me that this is an issue that won’t be taken down with a single silver bullet. Rather, building more complex and capable systems will almost certainly involve a combination of solutions. Central to most of these, however, is a need for a large, shared dataset. Google’s DeepMind robotics team this week announced the work it has done with 33 research institutes designed to create a massive, shared database calledOpen X-Embodiment. The researchers behind the project liken it to ImageNet, a database of more than 14 million images thatdates back to2009. “Just as ImageNet propelled computer vision research, we believe Open X-Embodiment can do the same to advance robotics,” note DeepMind researchers, Quan Vuong and Pannag Sanketi. “Building a dataset of diverse robot demonstrations is the key step to training a generalist model that can control many different types of robots, follow diverse instructions, perform basic reasoning about complex tasks and generalize effectively. ” They add that such a task is far too large to entrust to a single lab. The database features more than 500 skills and 150,000 tasks pulled from 22 different robot types. As the “Open” bit of the name implies, its creators are making the data available to the research community. “We hope that open sourcing the data and providing safe but limited models will reduce barriers and accelerate research,” the team adds. “The future of robotics relies on enabling robots to learn from each other, and most importantly, allowing researchers to learn from one another. ”
| 2023-10-05T16:12:36 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/05/google-deepmind-unites-researchers-in-bid-to-create-an-imagenet-of-robot-actions/
| 435 | 0.9 |
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BBG Ventures raises new $60M fund to support diverse founders
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Posted: BBG Ventures raised a new $60 million fund to support founders from “diverse backgrounds,” including gender, race, age, and class,Business Insider reported. The firm is known for backing exclusively women founders, and this new fund is a slight departure from that focus but comes as funding to diverse founders continues to dip. Crunchbase found that Black founders, for example, landed just 0. 3% of all capital raised in the first half of this year, continuing a downward trend that has shown no signs of reversal, Crunchbase senior data reporter Gené Teare told me. Nisha Dua, the co-founder of BBG Ventures, told Business Insider that returning LPs increased their fund commitments for this fund and that new LPs include Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures and Fairview Capital. The latest BBG fund will focus on diverse founders building in healthcare, fintech, and AI. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-10-31T20:16:25 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/31/bbg-ventures-raises-new-60-million-fund-to-support-diverse-founders/
| 208 | 0.9 |
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Pitch Deck Teardown: Queerie’s $300K pre-seed deck
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Queerie is a dating app aimed specifically at LGBTQIA+ folks. It’s a very early-stage company that’s raising just $300,000 — a round size that typically falls into the “friends and family” category. Dating is a fiercely competitive space, and there’s been a fair amount of M&A activity over the years, so I was eager to take a closer look. We’re looking for more unique pitch decks to tear down, so if you want to submit your own,here’s how you can do that. Queerie shared its full, unredacted, 13-slide pitch deck with TechCrunch. The first thing that struck me about Queerie’s deck is that it feels fresh and fun. The use of language and graphics is clean, simple and engaging. A great starting point for a consumer brand! If you’re trying to make the world a better place, you’reprobablygoing to attract mission-aligned investors. So why not spell out your mission front and center? It’s a powerful storytelling technique that’s well executed in the Queerie deck. This problem slide gave me pause: It stood as a reminder that in a lot of places, isolation and mental health challenges are rife in queer spaces. The company is positioning itself less as a dating app and more as a solution for loneliness. Whether investors will buy it and whether this app is the right solution to the problems the company identifies are separate questions. What is certain, however, is that the problem Queerie outlines is one worth solving. I really want Queerie to exist, so it pains me to see that the way the company is pitching makes it essentially unfundable. I see at least one dating app pitched every month, which makes sense: Dating and finding the right partner(s) is an important part of many people’s lives, and it seems like such an easy thing to dobetterthan what’s currently out there. The upshot is that many of these startups have founders with alotof experience in the dating world. But where are the women? For a company that’s building an “inclusivity-designed platform,” that seems like a bit of an oversight. There’s some interesting experience here, but most of the people seem almosttoosenior for this startup. I know that’s a rare thing to complain about, but one of the CTOs has been a site reliability engineer at Google for 18 years. That’s a very specialized job, and while scaling an app like Queerie is going to be important, I’m finding myself doubting how much overlap there is between scaling Google’s infrastructure and scaling a site like Queerie. Overall, from reading the team’s LinkedIn profiles and what’s on this slide, I find myself concluding that they might be able to build a really good, well-functioning app with a great user experience — but that isn’t enough to build a successful company. There is a huge gap on the sales and marketing side, and there’s not a lot of startup experience across the team either. If this slide could add a seasoned marketeer with consumer marketing app experience, I think the team would be more believable right out of the gate. I really don’t understand what this slide is trying to accomplish: This slide is a bit of a waste. It doesn’t show any of the secret sauce for why Queerie is going to be successful where others have failed; there’s nothing new or innovative here. Slides in a pitch deck should help an investor decide to invest. If someone reads the slide and it’s likely to be neutral (or even negative), it’s best left out. The company says it has a “closed version of the mobile app,” but this 13-slide deck doesn’t include a single screenshot of the app. The company says it has 95 beta testers, which is great, but that isn’t really “traction. ” Traction would be how these beta testers are interacting with the platform. Are they paying? What are the DAU/MAU (daily/monthly active users) stats? I’m writing this on March 31, which is the last day of Q1 2024, so I’m confused why the company says it surveyed 3,000 people in Q2 of 2024? The company also says it is planning to grow the initial user base with “strong growth” in Q3, but then says it is launching the app in June, which is in Q2. This isn’t a huge deal, but it is a little confusing. This slide, which describes how quickly the company wants to grow, raises some red flags. After the first year, the company is only planning to spend $40,000 per year on app development. That doesn’t even get a half-decent part-time developer. For a company that’s a tech startup, that’s a terrifying oversight: Is the company not planning to continue to develop its apps? The growth here is way, way too slow. Elsewhere in the deck the company says it will acquire 1,000 users in the first half of 2024, but then it’s going to hit 20,000 monthly active users by the end of the year. Then suddenly the growth drops to “merely” doubling in 2025, and doubling again in 2026. For a hypergrowth early-stage startup, those numbers are awful. Startups typically want to be growing 10% week-over-week in the early stages. If you start with 1,000 users, after a year of 10% week-on-week growth, you should be at around 130,000 users: Even worse, however, with the current six-year financials, Queerie is planning to do just under $10 million of revenue in 2029. That’s pretty dismal and indicates that the founders don’t have a particularly aggressive growth plan in place. Its own numbers show that it only expects about 15% of its customers to be paying $8 per month. Elsewhere in the deck, the company says, “Our mobile app will allow us to expand to more cities as we raise more capital,” which is awesome, but the financial overview doesn’t show more fundraising happening in the business, so it’s unclear when or how much the company is planning to raise. In a nutshell, this slide shows that Queerie could be a pretty successful lifestyle business, but I fear that no investors would go anywhere near this as an investment; it’s too unambitious, and it shows that the company’s founders don’t understand what is expected of them as startup founders. If you want your own pitch deck teardown featured on TechCrunch,here’s more information. Also, check outall our Pitch Deck Teardownsall collected in one handy place for you! Topics At TechCrunch, Haje (He/Him) covered general tech news and focused mostly on hardware. He has founded several companies to varying degrees of success, spent a while in the VC world, and has been a journalist and TV producer since the dawn of his career. He is more-than-averagely interested in photography and can often be found with a camera slung over his shoulder. He wrote a book about pitching startups to investors, and you can find him on @Haje on Twitter, or at Haje. me for everything else. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-04-05T16:00:41 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/05/sample-pre-seed-pitch-deck-queerie/
| 1,232 | 1 |
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Qualcomm acquires Autotalks to boost Snapdragon’s automotive safety technology, reportedly for $350-400M
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Qualcomm’s longer termbet on the automotive sectoras a lucrative customer base for its chips and related communications technology is getting a significant push today: The companyannouncedthat it is acquiringAutotalks, afablesschipmaker out of Israel that builds semiconductor and system-on-a-chip technology to aid in automotive safety; sources tell us Qualcomm is paying between $350 million and $400 million for the startup. Autotalks’ tech is used in sensors that help vehicles (which can bebikes, cars or another form of mobility) and their drivers detect road hazards such as oncoming vehicles in a driver’s blind spots; it also communicates with other vehicles using compatible tech to improve responsiveness. Qualcomm said the plan will be to integrate Autotalks’ V2X (vehicle-to-everything) communication tech into its mobility-focused Snapdragon Digital Chassis portfolio. The financial terms of the acquisition are not being disclosed, but a source close to the deal tells us that it’s a $350-$400 million deal. We have contacted Qualcomm for a comment and will update as we learn more. Autotalks, founded in 2009, has raised $110 million, according to data fromPitchBook. Its many backers included a number of strategic investors such asSamsung, Hyundai and Toyota, as well as financial backers like Gemini Israel and Magma Venture Partners. Qualcomm has picked up some interesting momentum in its automotive business to date, with customers including VW, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, Honda and Stellantis. InSeptember last yearit claimed a $30 billion “design-win pipeline” in automotive — although that is a longer-term idea more than a solid concept. In more hard numbers, its QCT division (the core CDMA business covering mobile and wireless chips and related tech) saw automotive revenue of $975 million in FY21, and $1. 3 billion in FY22. It’s not too much of a surprise to see Qualcomm scooping up a company like Autotalks. In the world of advanced automotive technology, safety has become one of the most important issues, but also one of the most lucrative opportunities, in the building of autonomous and driver-assisted systems. As a primary feature and solution most likely to be used by customers, it also becomes one that carmakers are most likely to invest in when designing newer car models, regardless of larger timelines for fully autonomous systems. So beefing up Qualcomm’s capabilities and product range in this area is a logical next step. “We have been investing in V2X research, development and deployment since 2017 and believe that as the automotive market matures, a standalone V2X safety architecture will be needed for enhanced road user safety, as well as smart transportation systems,” said Nakul Duggal, senior vice president & GM, automotive, Qualcomm Technologies, in a statement. “We share Autotalks’ decades-long experience and commitment to build V2X technologies and products with a focus on solving real-world road user safety challenges. We look forward to working together to deliver global V2X solutions that will help accelerate time-to-market and enable mass market adoption of this very important safety technology. ” “It has been our mission to revolutionize safety for the transportation and automotive industry through our V2X solutions,” added Hagai Zyss, CEO of Autotalks. “We are confident that by combining our knowledge and expertise, we will not only deliver strong V2X products that will enhance transportation efficiency and safety for road users but will accelerate widespread adoption of V2X. We look forward to serving the auto industry together with Qualcomm and to bring the best technologies to market. ”
| 2023-05-08T09:36:53 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/08/qualcomm-autotalks-safety/
| 566 | 1 |
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Apple’s app tracking triggers statement of objections from French competition authority
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Bad news could be brewing for Apple in France, where the national competition authority has issueda statement of objectionsrelated to how it tracks iOS users. The watchdog, L’Autorité de la Concurrence, said today that it suspects the iPhone maker of abusing a dominant position by implementing what it described as “discriminatory, non-objective and non-transparent” conditions for the use of user data for advertising purposes. It has been investigating how Apple uses iOS user data for ad targeting for several years — following complaints by several advertising industry groups, which, back in 2021, sought to have the watchdog block Apple’s introduction of the App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature. ATT requires third-party apps to ask iOS users for permission to track them for ad targeting. And advertisers quickly accused Apple of not playing fair since, unlike third-party apps, its own native iOS apps did not trigger the same up-front ask to users over whether Apple could use their data for so-called personalized ads. Instead, iOS users had to proactively search in settings to opt out of Apple’s own tracking. InMarch 2021, the French watchdog declined to block the introduction of ATT but said it would continue to investigate whether Apple is applying less restrictive rules for its own apps versus third-party developers (aka “self-preferencing”). Today it’s warned Apple that it believes it is abusing a dominant position by doing that. Apple was contacted for comment on the French watchdog’s statement of objections. A company spokesperson sent this statement: App Tracking Transparency (ATT) gives users more control by requiring all apps to ask permission before tracking them. Apple, like all developers, is required to comply with ATT. Apple’s apps do not show an ATT prompt because they do not track, meaning they do not link user or device data with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes, nor do they share user or device data with data brokers. Additionally, Apple holds its advertising business to a higher standard of privacy than it requires of any other developer by prompting users for explicit permission before delivering any personalized ads. We have previously received strong support from regulators and privacy advocates on the goal of ATT, including from the FCA [French Competition Authority] and the CNIL [French data protection authority], and we will continue to engage with the FCA constructively to ensure users remain in control of their data. It haspreviously defendedhow it implements app tracking — arguing it applies its pro-privacy rules equally to all developers, including itself, while simultaneously claiming it holds itself to a higher privacy standard than “almost any other company” by providing users with a choice over ad tracking. Apple also argues that its own apps do not need to show an ATT prompt because they do not track users, in the sense it defines the term — which means they do not link user or device data with user or device data collected from other companies’ apps, websites, or offline properties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement purposes; nor do they share user or device data with data brokers — hence its claim to hold itself to a “higher standard of privacy” than most other businesses. Per Apple, its pro-privacy measures are also extremely popular with its users — with a large majority of iOS users choosing not to be served personalized ads. As of Q1 2022, it said 78% of App Store search volume for devices running iOS 15 or later came from devices with personalized ads turned off. Cupertino now has a chance to respond to the French watchdog’s accusations before a final decision can be reached by the regulator. If it confirms an antitrust breach, it has powers to fine Apple and/or order it to rectify infringing behavior. However, at this stage the watchdog only suspects an abuse. And in a brief press release announcing the statement of objections, L’Autorité emphasized this step does not prejudice the outcome of its investigation. France’s competition authority declines to block Apple’s opt-in consent for iOS app tracking Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-07-25T17:04:21 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/25/apple-att-antitrust-france/
| 852 | 1 |
2ee808456e8d6e93b9f9efea54fcf6ec
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From Goodreads’ founder, Smashing debuts its AI-powered app for online readers
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Smashing, a new appcurating the best of the webfromGoodreadsco-founderOtis Chandler, is now available to the public. Like Goodreads, the app aims to create a community around content. But this time, instead of books, the focus is on web content — like news articles, blog posts, social media posts, podcasts, and more. In addition, Smashing is introducing an AI Questions feature that allows you to engage with the content being shared in different ways, including by viewing a news story from different perspectives or asking the AI to poke holes in the story, among other things. By viewing different angles of a story, you can see how both the political left and right view the subject. Or, in the case of a company’s stock, you might be presented with both the bull and bear case. There are a good handful of AI prompts available at launch, notes Chandler, and not all will make sense to use on every news story or piece of content. For instance, there’s a silly “make it funny” prompt, and others that can simplify the story, display a timeline, or introduce “unconventional” takes that may involve thinking outside the box, helping you weigh ideas you hadn’t considered yet. You can also ask your own questions, if you prefer. “I’ve been having fun, for instance, asking it to write me a podcast script, and then plug that into Notebook LM, then listen to it in the car,” Chandler says. On the app, users are able to create multiple interest feeds to stay informed about the
| 2024-10-24T14:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/24/smashing-an-ai-powered-app-for-online-readers-launches-to-the-public/
| 257 | 0.9 |
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IBM moves deeper into hybrid cloud management with $6.4B HashiCorp acquisition
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IBM wisely gravitated away from trying to be a pure cloud infrastructure vendor years ago, recognizing that it could never compete with the big three: Amazon, Microsoft and Google. It has since moved on to helping IT departments manage complex hybrid environments, using its financial clout to acquire a portfolio of high-profile companies. It began with the $34 billionRed Hat acquisitionin 2018, continued withthe Apptio acquisitionlast year and it kept it going on Wednesday when the company announced that it would be acquiring cloud management vendor HashiCorp for $6. 4 billion. With HashiCorp, Big Blue gets a set of cloud lifecycle management and security tools, and a company that is growing considerably faster than any of IBM’s other businesses — although the revenue is small by IBM standards: $155 million last quarter, up 15% over the prior year. That still makes it a healthy and growing business for IBM to add to its growing stable of hybrid cloud tools. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna certainly sees the value of this piece to his company’s hybrid strategy, and he even threw in an AI reference for good measure. “HashiCorp has a proven track record of enabling clients to manage the complexity of today’s infrastructure and application sprawl. Combining IBM’s portfolio and expertise with HashiCorp’s capabilities and talent will create a comprehensive hybrid cloud platform designed for the AI era,” he said in a statement. HashiCorp made headlines last year when it changed the license on its open source Terraform tool to be more friendly to the company. The community that helped build Terraform wasn’t happy and responded by launching a newopen source alternativecalled OpenTofu. HashiCorp recently accused the new community of misusing Terraform’sopen source codewhen it created the OpenTofu fork. Now that the company is part of IBM, it will be interesting to see if they continue to pursue this line of thinking. It’s worth noting that Red Hat also made headlines last year when it changed itsopen source licensing terms, also causing consternation in the open source community. Perhaps these companies will fit well together, both from a software perspective and their shifting views on open source. Just this week, the company introduced a new platform concept with the release ofthe Infrastructure Cloud, a concept that should fit nicely inside IBM’s hybrid cloud product catalog. While they didn’t add much in terms of functionality, it did unify the offerings under a single umbrella, making it easier for sales and marketing to present to customers. Why SUSE is forking Red Hat Enterprise Linux If IBM treats HashiCorp in a similar way to Red Hat, the company would maintain its independence inside the IBM family of products. AVOA, a research firm run by former CIO Tim Crawford, says the company would be wise to keep it neutral. “My reservation would be if IBM moves away from Hashicorp’s neutral stance in working with multiple cloud providers and focuses on IBM Cloud. I suspect that would not be the case as IBM has recently shown how they are more open with other cloud providers,” Crawford wrote in arecent blog post. HashiCorp was founded in 2012 and raised almost $350 million beforegoing publicin 2021
| 2024-04-24T20:46:59 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/24/ibm-moves-deeper-into-hybrid-cloud-management-with-6-4b-hashicorp-acquisition/
| 528 | 1 |
48636e1787fc6f37ecd099349dbdc696
|
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Apple Event 2024: iPhone 16, Apple Intelligence and all the other expected ‘Glowtime’ reveals
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As ever, additional rumors have popped up in the days leading up to the event. Among the more interesting of recent vintage (all Apple Watch-related): The Apple Watch Series 10’s blood pressure monitoring is not coming to the Watch Ultra 2, and there are limited Apple Intelligence features for the Watch, though it will be baked into afuture fitness coach-style feature. Both models are reportedly getting that sleep apnea feature, though itlikely won’t be available at launch. Apple will reveal the iPhone 16 at itsSeptember 9“It’s Glowtime”event; this much we can tell you for certain. But Apple doesn’t invite us to fly across the country for a single product — not to mention booking a hotel room on the 49ers opening day. Football aside, the timing of the annual event is important, as it’s one last major opportunity to announce a bunch of hardware ahead of the holidays. The livestream kicks off onMonday at 10 a. m. PT. The invites dropped last week with the “Glowtime” tagline and a color scheme to match. Apple loves to sprinkle small hints into these graphics, and this one appears more on the nose than most. Back at WWDC in June, Apple finally revealed its approach to generative AI. The offering is an extremely Apple approach, right down to the name —Apple Intelligence— which happily hijacks the familiar AI initialism. The “small model” method is emblematic of the company in the sense that it’s trained on limited data relevant to improving the user experience. That’s a marked difference between it and much larger “black box” models like OpenAI’s andGoogle’s Gemini. The efficacy of the approach remains to be seen, as we wait for Apple Intelligence’s wider release. It will almost certainly be a work in progress, as — at the very least — all generative AI is, at the end of the day. The answer to how this all ties into “Glowtime” can be found in Siri. In June, Apple announced amuch-needed glow-up for the O. G. smart assistant. Along with generative AI models and better app integration, the company revealed an updated interface. Gone is the familiar colorful Siri circle, swapped out for a glowing border that surrounds the display when Siri is listening/processing. Out of every iPhone ever launched,two models will be able to run Apple Intelligence: the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max. According to the company, that’s due to limitations with older chips. Given that non-Pro iPhone 15 models are effectively running the iPhone 14 Pro’s chipset, Apple can credibly make the argument that only one of its chips so far was built with Apple Intelligence in mind. You can decide for yourself whether you think the exclusion of the iPhone 15 is entirely a hardware matter. With all of this in mind, the event is the perfect chance to announce that Apple Intelligence will be available across the new iPhone line. But Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman warns thatApple Intelligence delays could affect the iPhone 16’s bottom line. The iPhone 16 Pro Max is expected to feature the thinnest bezels on a smartphone 🔥pic. twitter. com/rK9LEugcb1 We’re heading toward the promise of true edge-to-edge displays millimeter by millimeter. According to one recent leak, the iPhone 16 Pro Max may get an even larger display, courtesy of smaller bezels, moving from 1. 5mm to 1. 4mm. So, what’s a few fractions of a millimeter between friends? A lot when you’re talking about a total size of under 2mm, turns out. That will reportedly bump the Pro Max’s screen size from 6. 69 to 6. 86 inches, without increasing the device’s overall footprint by some unwieldy amount. The iPhone 15 Pro Max is already a big phone. The iPhone 16 Pro, meanwhile, is said to be making the leap from 6. 12 to 6. 27 inches. Camera improvements are a no-brainer for annual updates. The most interesting of the bunchis a new glass molded lensthat is thinner and lighter, while dramatically increasing optical zoom capabilities. Optical zoom capabilities are worth paying attention to, as they don’t suffer from the same sort of image degradation issues as their digital counterpart. pic. twitter. com/GiIWNkXcI8 Leakeddummy modelsfrom early in the year give us a rough idea of each model’s design. Most notable on the 16 and 16 Plus is the shift from a diagonal to a vertical camera setup. The models, which are designed for third parties to get a jumpstart on accessories, feature the addition of a new “Capture” button across the line. The new feature is designed to provide quick access to different camera capabilities. The most welcome change, however, may bebigger batteries. Screen and camera improvements are all well and good, but battery life remains a struggle. This particular report could use more substantiating, so take that with an even larger grain of salt than usual. Additionalreports, meanwhile, have pointed to Apple making battery replacements more accessible for users. Given that the company has begun offering home repair options as more governments and localities pass right-to-repair laws, this one certainly tracks. The Pro models are alsoexpected to gainWi-Fi 7, which would be a big boon for the latest wireless standard. As hard as it is to believe, the Apple Watch turns 10 this year. They grow up so quickly. Apple made a big splash with the iPhone X, so it follows that it’d have something similar planned for the Apple Watch Series 10 (Series X?). Earlier rumors pointing to a significant redesign have cooled in recent months, making way for a familiar design with a larger display, bumping up to 45mm and 49mm models. The new watch should also be slimmer than its predecessor — something especially important when discussing a watch. Like the iPhone 16, the Apple Watch Series 10 and Ultra 3 should get a new processor — the S10, one imagines. That could mean that additional AI functionality isn’t far out. A glucose monitor is the most exciting rumored addition. Sleep apnea detection is also rumored for the device, but asBloomberg notes, Apple’slegal woes with Masimomay well trip up that feature. A long-awaited update to the budget Apple Watch SE with a plastic body could also appear. Stay with me onthis one. Apple is reportedly announcing two versions of the AirPods 4. The cheaper model will replace the still-available AirPods 2, and the more premium version will replace the AirPods 3. Still with me? The more premium model is set to blur the line between it and the AirPods Pro, by adding Active Noise Cancelation and Find My features. All of the models should also finally ditch Lightning for USB-C, as the company transitions its productsto comply with EU mandates. So, how will Apple maintain a clear line between the mid-tier and Pro pods? We’ll have to wait on the answer to that one, as we’re not expecting new AirPods Pro. We may, however,finallyget the over-earAirPods Max 2,four years after the original. This one is a big maybe. Recent reportingsuggests that Apple will hold off on announcing M4 macs until November. Supply chain issues have been dictating the Mac’s release calendar ever since the pandemic. A big,USB-A-less version of the Mac Miniis said to be arriving before the end of the year, along with a new iMac and MacBook Pro. Here’s what we can say for sure: Apple’s Glowtime event is scheduled for Monday, September 9 at 10 a. m. PT. As always, we’ll be there, bringing it to you live. Updated with further information on September 9
| 2024-09-09T15:41:01 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/09/apple-event-2024-iphone-16-apple-intelligence-and-all-the-other-expected-glowtime-reveals/
| 1,250 | 1 |
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Apple’s ATT faces competition probe in Italy
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Apple is facing another antitrust investigation in Europe over privacy rules it applies to third-party apps running on its mobile platform which affect their ability to track iOS users in order to target them with advertising. Italy’s competition watchdog said today it’s concerned Apple may be creating an unfair advantage for its own ‘personalized’ ads which are not subject to the same permission pop-up it requires for third parties to track iOS users. Apple launched theApp Tracking Transparency(ATT) feature just over two years ago, requiring third party apps obtain opt-in consent from users to be tracked for ads. The move wasdecried by the ad industry— and quickly led to a number of complaints being filed with competition authorities. So Italy is by no means the first to probe Apple’s privacy measure. In apress releasetoday the Italian AGCM announced the launch of an investigation into Apple for alleged abuse of a dominant position in the app market — saying it suspects the company of applying a more “restrictive” privacy policy to app developers than the one it applies to itself. This in turn means third parties are likely to be at a disadvantage when it comes to the “quality and detail” of data made available to them by Apple, it suggested, including relating to the effectiveness of their ad campaigns on iOS. “This happens due to the technical characteristics of the programming interface they can access — SkAdNetwork — which appears much less effective than Apple Ads Attribution, the tool that Apple adopts for itself,” the AGCM wrote in a statement [NB: this is a machine translation of the original Italian text]. “The availability of data relating to both user profiling and the measurement of the effectiveness of advertising campaigns — while in compliance with privacy protection regulations — are essential elements for the attractiveness of the advertising spaces sold by app developers and purchased by advertisers. For this reason, according to the Authority, Apple’s alleged discriminatory conduct may cause a drop in advertising revenue from third-party advertisers, to the benefit of its commercial division; reduce entry and/or prevent competitors from remaining in the app development and distribution market; benefit their own apps and, consequently, mobile devices and the Apple iOS operating system. ” The AGCM added that it’s concerned Apple’s behavior could reduce incentives to develop innovative apps and create barriers for consumers to switch mobile ecosystems. Apple was contacted for comment on the AGCM’s investigation. Since the Apple-imposed iOS limit on third party tracking rolled out a number of studies have alsosuggested the move lifted Apple’s own ad businessandboosted its market power. While ATT has also been credited with blastinga $10 billion hole in Facebook-owner Meta’s revenue. Back inMarch 2021, soon after launching ATT, Apple was accused of privacy hypocrisy by a French startup lobby group which filed data protection and competition complaints butfailed to get the country’s antitrust watchdog to block the feature at that time. Although the French competition authority said it would continue to investigate. Antitrust watchdogs inGermanyandPolandhave also announced probes of Apple’s approach since ATT launched. While the U. K. ’s Competition and Markets Authority raised substantial concerns about Apple’s market power generally, in a wide-ranging mobile market ecosystem reviewtowards the end of 2021(and again in a final report inJune 2022). And it has an openinvestigation into Apple’s App Store following complaints of unfairness by developers. Back in the EU, antitrust action by the bloc’s competition commission against Apple in recent years has focused on themusic streaming market,Apple Payandin-app payments-related conditions. But one thing to note is that self-preferencing is set to be banned in the region for tech giants designated as so-called Internet “gatekeepers” under a major ex ante competition reform that’s aimed at curbing Big Tech’s market power. The pan-EUDigital Markets Act(DMA) applies to “core platform services” operated by gatekeepers. Apple’s App Store is a likely candidate for falling under the DMA regime. If that happens, requirements against self-preferencing and fair dealing with third parties will apply — and could, potentially, affect how it can operate ATT (which is a feature of the App Store). That said, the bloc’s data protection rulebook (GDPR) also applies so any moves to impose conditions on Apple with the goal of enhancing competition would need to avoid causing privacy harms for consumers in the process, requiring a balance of considerations. New rules in Europe to curb Big Tech’s market power start to apply Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-05-11T11:48:41 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/11/apple-att-italy-antitrust/
| 907 | 1 |
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Meet BeScene, a Tinder-style networking app for the film industry
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Networking appBeScenelaunches today to bring filmmakers and other creatives (actors, animators, cinematographers, costume designers, directors, editors, producers, production assistants, script coordinators, writers, etc. ) a Tinder-like experience to help build connections within the entertainment industry. Breaking into the film and media sector has always been challenging, and many companies (Staff Me Up,Backstage,MandyandProductionHUB) have built specialized career sites to help streamline the process. Rather than only serving users with years of experience, however, BeScene wants to cater to low-budget, student, and up-and-coming filmmakers who may find it harder to form connections. “Our goal is to democratize ‘breaking into the industry’ by providing access to those who wouldn’t normally have it,” founder and CEO George Armistead tells TechCrunch. “In 2024, no one should be excluded from their dreams because they didn’t go to a fancy film school or live in LA or NYC. This app is something that can remove barriers to entry that have been strategically placed by old school Hollywood. ” “We don’t block people from joining our community because they aren’t part of the ‘in circle. ’ Every talented professional has to start somewhere, and we want to help those talented people get to where they want to be by making the hardest part of film a little easier: growing your network,” Armistead adds. The startup also believes it stands out because it brings the swipe right/swipe left mechanics to professional networking. “The simplicity and familiarity allow each user to find what they need quickly and in a way that is meaningful: through real human connections,” Armistead says. BeScene isn’t alone in this thinking. Former Tinder executives attempted a similar strategy in 2018 with a networking app calledRipple, which uses the familiar swipe mechanism to match professionals with each other. Even the popular dating appBumblehas a separate section dedicated to professional connections. HUSSLUP, another like-minded networking app for the film biz, also has a swipe feature, but it’s more aligned with LinkedIn since it provides job search and posting capabilities. BeScene offers a simplified interface with only three features to start: an in-app messenger, a section to discover new connections and a separate page to keep track of your established network. You can also see who has requested to connect as well as send an invite link to friends in your contacts. The app displays members in a card-style format with their photo, job title and additional details like what project types they’re interested in (i. e. , short films, feature films, student films, documentaries, theater, music videos, episodic TV, reality TV, social content or commercials). You can filter by role, project, location and distance preference. It also shows mutual connections, which can inform you about their network and how it intersects with yours. The app then asks you to select skip or connect on a member, and if both users express a desire to link up, the app notifies them of the match. Setting up a profile is also easy, as it isn’t required for you to have a career in film, so you don’t need to link an IMDb page for proof of credits, nor is there an option to upload a résumé, actor reel or portfolio. While this is good news for aspiring filmmakers who want to enter the business, it requires extra research to vet the person, which may create a disaggregated experience. Users can report or block other users if they feel that someone violates BeScene’s terms, and the team will view and potentially terminate the account if they deem it appropriate to do so. The company is building out the product over time, so it will likely develop other features like an explore page, a feed for posts and the ability to create groups/communities. Armistead shares that in-app purchases and “other standard mobile app revenue streams” will be added in the future. Additionally, BeScene plans to serve other careers in media, like content creators, musicians and sports players. BeScene is free to download oniOSandAndroiddevices in the U. S. and Canada. The company hopes to “quickly expand” to other markets, Armistead says. As of last week, there were over 7,200 people on the waitlist. Armistead initially set out to address this networking problem in the film industry when he foundedReelCallin 2021 alongside Francesca Aiassa-Hernandez, a fellow University of Southern California alum. The platform allowed Armistead to test the market and its user base. “Watching these talented filmmakers struggle to find both staff and talent for their projects, even coming from a top-ranked school such as USC, was eye-opening to me; the process seemed out of date and inefficient when compared to most other industries. We started ReelCall (the name of the company and also web app MVP) as a fun side project to address this problem — bringing modern technology and practices to save time and effort in the pre-production staffing and casting phase of films,” he explains. “We quickly realized that simply creating an updated and modern casting platform was just a small part of a bigger problem: All creatives in the film space deserve the opportunity to find and grow their networks, which is a more sustainable approach to consistent work and career growth than industry standard job boards,” Armistead adds. While BeScene hasn’t raised any external funding yet, the company gathered $250,000 from friends and family in 2022. It is currently exploring a pre-seed round. HUSSLUP, a LinkedIn for the entertainment biz, launches web app in beta Topics YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-02-26T14:00:23 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/26/bescene-tinder-style-networking-app-for-filmmakers/
| 982 | 1 |
3b77c7fc7502a8cc9b35b65e8d78c556
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Mark Zuckerberg’s remarks on China cast shadow over Meta’s VR quest
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As Meta sets its sight on introducing its virtual reality headsets to the Chinese market, Mark Zuckerberg’s contentious remarks about Beijing in the past may pose a major obstacle to his China dream. According to a recentreportby The Wall Street Journal, Meta is preparing to re-enter China by selling the Oculus Quest VR headset there. If Tesla can sell cars and Apple can sell phones in China, why isn’t Meta present there? Zuckerberg asked in a recent internal meeting. But some observers are quick to point out that Zuckerberg has a history of criticizing the Chinese government, a stance that will likely be amplified in the current climate of heightened tensions between the U. S. and China. In aspeechdelivered in 2019, Zuckerberg criticized TikTok for its censorship practice: While our services, like WhatsApp, are used by protesters and activists everywhere due to strong encryption and privacy protections, on TikTok, the Chinese app growing quickly around the world, mentions of these protests are censored, even in the U. S. Not content with criticizing TikTok alone, Zuckerberg went on to level criticisms of China. It’s one of the reasons we don’t operate Facebook, Instagram or our other services in China. I wanted our services in China because I believe in connecting the whole world and I thought we might help create a more open society. I worked hard to make this happen. But we could never come to agreement on what it would take for us to operate there, and they never let us in. And now we have more freedom to speak out and stand up for the values we believe in and fight for free expression around the world. And he added: China is building its own internet focused on very different values, and is now exporting their vision of the internet to other countries. Until recently, the internet in almost every country outside China has been defined by American platforms with strong free expression values. There’s no guarantee these values will win out. In today’s tenuous U. S. –China relationship, companies that do business between the two countries need to stay on their toes about what they say in public; otherwise they risk falling out of favor with local authorities. Indeed, sources told the Wall Street Journal that Chinese officials’ views on Zuckerberg could create some uncertainty for Meta as it seeks approvals for its products and services in China. Even if Quest gets the green light to enter China, Meta still faces significant political pressure at home. The challenge for Meta is how to balance China’s censorship demands with the expectations of politicians in its home country, especially given that Meta was banned from China backin 2009. Like other American firms operating in China, Meta will get caught up in the escalating tensions between the two superpowers. At home, Zuckerberg is likely to face questions from Congress about Quest’s censorship practices in China, just as Tim Cook wasgrilledby lawmakers over Apple’s removal of apps deemed sensitive by the Chinese government. The reverse is also true. TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew floundered when Congress shot him witha string of thorny questionsabout Beijing’s alleged access to the app’s American user data. Tencent’s CEO Pony Ma has given the green light to negotiations with Meta, according to the Wall Street Journal report, but it’s unlikely to be an easy road ahead should its potential American partner have to testify before Congress about a business it conducts in China. But who knows what charm offensive Zuckerberg plans to go on for China again? Some of you might recall that the Facebook boss famously ran through Tiananmen Square in smoggy Beijing without a mask on. Zuckerberg-keen to be positive on China-posts blithely about what must have been a lung ripping smog jog in Beijing. pic. twitter. com/WpRSeiIk36 — Paul Mozur 孟建國 (@paulmozur)March 18, 2016 Recent examples of American tech giants’ attempts to tap into the Chinese market can provide some clues to what lies ahead for Quest in China. In 2019, the California-based gaming platform Roblox teamed up with Tencent to enter China. The partners formed ajoint venturethat is 51% owned by Roblox and 49% by Tencent, a rare share structure that allows the foreign investor to hold a controlling stake in a Chinese entity. The partnership looked promising at first, especially given Roblox’s seemingly welcoming focus on educational content. But before long, China’s sudden crackdown on the online education sector took many by surprise. In January 2022, Robloxabruptly shuttered its Chinese servicefor “important transitory actions,” acknowledging that it “always knew that building a compelling platform in China is an iterative process. ” There have been no public updates on Roblox China’s progress since. The other example Meta could draw from is Nintendo Switch, whichentered China in 2019, also through a partnership with Tencent. However, the number of games available on the Chinese version is limited due to the country’s stringent content approval process, which has somewhat dampened the appeal of the console platform to gamers who want the full range of Nintendo games. At this stage, VR headsets need compelling content, particularly games, to drive mass adoption. The good news is that Quest’s potential partner, Tencent (one of the world’s largest gaming publishers), has a wealth of gaming IP at its disposal. Nonetheless, China’s content regulations will ultimately determine what games users get. In addition to navigating political pressures at home and in China, Meta also faces stiff competition in China’s mixed-reality market, which includes both virtual and augmented reality devices. The Chinese XR industry is still relatively small compared to the handset market, having shipped just over 1 million units last year due to a lack of mass adoption and accessible pricing, according to market research firmCounterpoint. Currently, the industry is largely dominated by Pico, the VR company thatwas acquired by ByteDance in 2021. The VR company enjoyed a 43% share of China’s XR market and introduced a product that was clearly aimed at Meta’s Questlast September. ByteDance’s Pico debuts its Meta Oculus rival, but challenges remain Topics Reporter, China YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-07-06T00:31:15 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/mark-zuckerbergs-remarks-on-china-cast-shadow-over-metas-vr-quest/
| 1,084 | 1 |
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Introducing the 2023 Startup Battlefield Top 20 onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt
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I’m thrilled to announce the Startup Battlefield 20 companies, pitching at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023. After last year’s big hit, TechCrunch editorial hand-selected 200 startups, out of thousands of applicants, to comprise theStartup Battlefield 200. This year, TechCrunch saw the highest number of applications across the largest spread of countries and industries. Of the 200, these top20 companieswill pitch on the Disrupt Stage. Come watch these companies compete for the Disrupt Cup and $100,000 equity-free grand prize. Disrupt runs Tuesday through Thursday, September 19–21 in San Francisco. The agendais filled with tech legends, newsmakers, innovators, founders and more. This year, Disrupt is supercharged with not two but seven industry stages — Disrupt, Builders, AI, Fintech, Hardware, Sustainability, and Security. Each stage is focused on highlighting the top news in each industry, with the Builders Stage focused on how-tos for founders looking to build and scale startups. For the Startup Battlefield 200, TechCrunch hosts this curated cohort of founders at TechCrunch Disrupt, providing special programming and training in advance of and during the event. The top companies will follow in the footsteps of Startup Battlefield legends on the Disrupt Stage. With over 1,300+ alumni participating in the program, Startup Battlefield Alumni companies raised over $29 billion in funding with about 200 successful exits (IPOs or acquisitions). The Startup Battlefield 20 companies solve critical technological and global problems. From agri-labor management tools to fintech platforms, sewage health trackers, and phage-based custom therapeutics, this cohort of startups is ready to impress. Founders solve critical world problems in the areas of disease treatment, blood testing, compostable batteries and even ethical social media platforms for youth. Plus, it wouldn’t be a TechCrunch event without developer tools, security infrastructure and hardware to round out the batch. Starting today, the top 20 companies will pitch on the Disrupt Stage for six minutes followed by a six-minute Q&A with our expert panel of judges. These top-tier VCs include folks likeMamoon Hamid(Kleiner Perkins),Dana Settle(Greycroft),Sam Blond(Founders Fund),Guru Chahal(Lightspeed),Po Bronson(SOSV), andTess Hatch(Bessemer) to name just a few. If you can’t join us in person, tune into the livestream on TechCrunch. com. Semi-Finals (Session 1):9:35 a. m. –10:45 a. m. Semi-Finals (Session 2):1:15 p. m. –2:30 p. m. Semi-Finals (Session 3):10:05 a. m. –11:15 a. m. Semi-Finals (Session 4):1:15 p. m. –2:30 p. m. Alumni News Announcements:11:10 a. m. –11:20 a. m. Finals:11:20 p. m. –12:50 p. m. Winner Announced:3:25 p. m
| 2023-09-19T15:00:06 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/19/techcrunch-startup-battlefield-pitches-disrupt-founder/
| 399 | 0.9 |
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Beagle has a new long-range drone with more than one application
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When there are damages to energy infrastructure, such as electricity pylons or gas pipelines, expensive helicopters are frequently used to inspect them. Drones have begun to replace some of those inspections, but the flight-time for these can be limited. Now a new company has produced a drone with a very long range to fill this task, and, while the company demurred over any “dual-use” application, it’s clear that it could be used in a civilian setting to inspect infrastructure damaged by warfare. Hamburg, Germany-basedBeagleuses long-range drones to capture data about energy infrastructure. It has now raised a €5 million seed round co-led by AENU (via partner Fabian Heilemann) and PT1 (via partner Nikolas Samios). Prior to this it had raised €1. 9 million in pre-seed funding, plus €2 million in grants and subsidies. Co-founder Oliver Lichtenstein says he and his team spent five years developing what they dub a “computer with wings” that complies with strict EU airspace regulations for long-range flights, and with no personnel on site — the drone literally rises from its housing unaided. “Our customers pay us for the data by the kilometer of pipeline. We’re cashflow positive in Germany with the current team and operations,” he said over email. “We plan to use this venture funding to accelerate growth. ” Here’s how it works: An operator sends geo data of their grid to Beagle and gets a quote based on the per-kilometer price for one or both of Beagle’s products (methane detection or hazard detection). Admittedly Beagle does have competitors, including Intero, the Adlares CHARM helicopter (which detects methane emissions), as well as local helicopter or small airplane services. Plus, Nearmap (U. S. ) is similar in terms of business model. However, Beagle claims to have 75 times the resolution of satellites, is cheaper, has lower emissions than planes, and is permitted to fly long-range repeatedly. The “Fully EU” (“Made in Germany”) solution also means it has full control over the data and software, something of an advantage in today’s world where systems made outside the EU may come up against geopolitical headwinds. Furthermore, Lichtenstein said: “We have Operational Approval for flights in EU airspace and can currently cover 80% of the EU area, apart from densely populated areas. ” The market it’s addressing is admittedly big. In the EU it’s worth€2 billionalone, given EU methane regulationrequiresmethane emission tracking, and the U. S. plans tofollowthe same path. But while the company is limiting its drones to civilian applications for now, Nikolas Samios, managing partner at PT1, commented that it could be used in other scenarios: “In a world where critical infrastructure is being attacked, it has never been more important to have real-time surveillance for critical infrastructure — from energy lines to telecommunications… so the potential applications of this tech are very broad. ” Lichtenstein was formerly with the drone advisory board in the German Ministry of Transport, and is now also deputy chairman of UAV DACH. He’s joined by Jerry Tang (robotics engineer), Mitja Wittersheim, and Bendix Böttger (former head of Sales DACH for Trustpilot). While at the Federal Ministry of Transport working on implementing the EU drone regulation, Lichtenstein met Tang and spun up the idea for the company
| 2025-04-01T14:59:30 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/01/the-beagle-is-a-new-long-range-drone-with-more-than-one-application/
| 536 | 1 |
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EnCharge raises $100M+ to accelerate AI using analog chips
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EnCharge AI, a semiconductor startup developing analog memory chips for AI applications, has raised more than $100 million in a Series B round led by Tiger Global to spur its next stage of growth. The funding is significant partly because interest in AI is at an all-time high, but the high price of building and operating AI services continues to be a red flag. EnCharge, spun out from Princeton University, believes its analog memory chips — envisioned to be embedded in devices such as laptops, desktops, handsets, and wearables — will not only speed up AI processing, they’ll help bring the cost down as well. Santa Clara-based EnCharge claims its AI accelerators use 20 times less energy to run workloads compared with other chips on the market, and expects to have the first of those chips on the market later this year. EnCharge’s fundraise is notable because it comes at a time when the U. S. government has identified hardware and infrastructure (including chips) as two key areas where it wants to boost domestic innovation and products. If it’s successful in its execution, EnCharge could become a key part of that strategy. This Series B is a fresh round of funding, the company has confirmed to me. Of note: atranche of fundingwe reported in December 2023, was not part of this Series B. There was a hint of this Series B last May, when Bloombergreportedthat EnCharge wanted to raise at least $70 million more to expand its business. In an interview with TechCrunch, EnCharge’s CEO and co-founder Naveen Verma would not disclose the company’s valuation. PitchBook data that indicates EnCharge raised money in October at a $438 million post-money valuation is incorrect, the company told TechCrunch. Verma also would not disclose who its customers are, but the funding is coming from an interesting and long list of strategic and financial investors that indicate who is likely working with the startup. In addition to Tiger Global, others in the round include Maverick Silicon, Capital TEN (from Taiwan), SIP Global Partners, Zero Infinity Partners, CTBC VC, Vanderbilt University, and Morgan Creek Digital, along returning investors RTX Ventures (the VC arm of the aerospace and defense contractor), Anzu Partners, Scout Ventures, AlleyCorp, ACVC, and S5V. Corporations that invested in the round include Samsung Ventures and HH-CTBC — a partnership between Hon Hai Technology Group (Foxconn) and CTBC VC. Previously, the VentureTech Alliance also backed EnCharge. Others include In-Q-Tel (the government-backed investor associated with the CIA) and Constellation Technology (a clean energy manufacturer). The startup has also received grants from U. S. organizations like DARPA and the Department of Defense. Verma said EnCharge is working closely with TSMC. He previously said TSMC would be the company manufacturing its first chips. “TSMC has been following my research for many, many years,” he said in an interview, adding that the involvement dated back to the early stages of EnCharge’s R&D. “They’ve given us access to very advanced silicon. That’s a very rare thing for them to do. ” With its focus on analog, EnCharge is taking a different approach than its competitors. So far, all eyes have been focused on the processing chips used for training and AI inference at the server end, which has translated into a major surge of business for GPU makers like Nvidia and AMD. The difference with EnCharge’s approach is laid out in arecent paper on analog chipsfrom IBM’s research team. As IBM’s researchers explain it, there is “no separation between compute and memory, making these processors exceptionally economical compared to traditional designs. ” IBM, like EnCharge, also comes to the conclusion that so far, the physical properties of these chips makes them OK for inference, but less good for training. EnCharge chips are not used for training applications, but to run existing AI models at “the edge. ” But the startup (and others, like IBM) continue to work on new algorithms that could expand the use cases. IBM and EnCharge are not the only companies working on analog approaches. But as Verma explains it, one of EnCharge’s breakthroughs has been in the design of its chips, specifically making them noise-resilient. “If you have 100 billion transistors on a chip, they can all have noise, and you need them all to work, so you want to have that signal separation. But you’re also leaving a lot of efficiency on the table because you’re not representing all these signals in between analog attempts to do that,” Verma explained. “The big breakthrough we had is figuring out how to make analog not sensitive to noise. ” The company uses “a very precise device that you get for free in standard supply chain,” he said, explaining that device is a set of geometry-dependent metal wires that “you can control them very, very well. ” The company, Verma says, is full-stack: It has also developed software around its hardware. It helps EnCharge’s case that Verma and his co-founders, COO Echere Iroaga and CTO Kailash Gopalakrishnan (left and right above, with Verma center) — who respectively previously worked at semiconductor company Macom and IBM — bring a lot of expertise to the table. But it remains to be seen whether this will be enough to keep EnCharge competitive in an extremely crowded market. Other startups in the analog chip race includeMythicandSagence. “We at Anzu have looked at probably 50-plus companies in this space — at least 50 between 2017 and 2021, and probably more than 50 since then,” said Jimmy Kan, an investment partner focused on semiconductors for Anzu Partners, who previously worked on chips at Qualcomm. “One out of every five of those was some sort of new novel architecture like analog or spiking neural network computation chips. We really had it in our mind to find an AI compute technology that was really, really differentiated, versus incremental, versus something that Nvidia might just develop next quarter or next year,” he added. “So we’re really, really excited to see the progress that EnCharge has made. ” EnCharge’s rise is in contrast to how a lot of deep tech startups have developed over the last several years. One knock-on effect of the technology boom of the last 25 years has been the ample venture funding ready to back startups building what could be the next Google, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, or Amazon. That, in turn, has spilled into a much bigger pool of startups in the market. That pool has seen an increasing number of deep tech efforts: Smart founders raising money not for finished products, but interesting ideas that are not yet market-ready but could be a big deal if they are brought into the world. Quantum computing is a classic “deep tech” category, for example. EnCharge could have easily been one of that wave of deep tech businesses, if it had spun out earlier from Princeton and worked quietly with venture and other funding to possibly build the next innovation in chips. But the startup waited years to venture out on its own. It was in 2022, nearly a decade after Verma and his team started their research at Princeton, that the companyemerged from stealthand started work on securing commercial partners while continuing to develop its technology. “There’s certain kinds of innovations where you can jump to venture backing very early on. But if what you’re doing is developing a fundamentally new technology, there’s a lot of aspects of that that need to be understood to de-risk that a lot of them fail,” Verma said. “The day you take venture funding, your agenda changes… It’s no longer about understanding the technology. You have to be customer-focused. ” TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter!Sign up hereto get it in your inbox every Wednesday
| 2025-02-13T15:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/13/encharge-raises-100m-to-accelerate-ai-using-analog-chips/
| 1,286 | 1 |
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Apple finally allows Spotify to show pricing info to EU users on iOS
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After much back-and-forth earlier this year, Spotify on Wednesday said it’s received approval from Apple to display pricing information in its iOS app for users in the EU. The company is not opting into Apple’s new business rules under theEU’s Digital Markets Actbut rather istaking advantage of new antitrust guidelinesimposed by the EU specifically for music streaming apps. Apple in March wasfined€1. 84 billion(nearly $2 billion)by European regulatorsfor breaching antitrust rules in the market. SpotifyandApplehave also gone back and forth over an update to Spotify’s app that would allow the music streamer to share pricing information with EU users. Now Spotify’s opting in to the music streaming entitlement has been approved by Apple, and the language is live in the Spotify app. That means the company will be able to display the pricing for things like Spotify subscriptions and digital goods, including Spotify’s more recently addedcollectionofaudiobooks. The latter includes the ability to show the pricing for subscription plans that include audiobook streaming, as well as “top off” hours users can buy to complete their audiobook listening and a la carte audiobook prices. However, what Spotify won’t be able to share is a link to its website, as doing so would require the company to pay Apple a 27% commission on those sales, which the company does not intend to do. Instead, the text in the app will only be able to refer users to Spotify’s website, without spelling out the domain name and its. com address. Spotify said Apple wouldn’t permit it to include the text “spotify. com” even if it wasn’t hyperlinked, to avoid paying commissions. Along with the launch of the pricing information, Spotify will run a promotion in the EU to encourage users to upgrade their subscription plans via its website — information it’s always been able to show on Android without issues. The current promotion will involve offering the first three months of the service for free before the subscription kicks in, Spotify says. The move is a small step toward achieving Spotify’s agenda to service its customers through its own commission-free payments platform. However, the streamer intends to keep fighting for what it actually wants: a way to link from its iOS app to its website for purchases without paying a commission to Apple. “While this is progress, it’s only a small step in the long march towards giving iPhone consumers basic product experiences they expect and deserve in their apps — experiences that users of other phones already enjoy,” the company said in a statement announcing the changes. “Unfortunately, Spotify and all music streaming services in the EU are still not able to freely give consumers a simple opportunity to click a link to purchase in the app because of the illegal and predatory taxes Apple continues to demand, despite the Commission’s ruling,” it said
| 2024-08-14T10:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/14/apple-finally-allows-spotify-to-show-pricing-info-to-eu-users-on-ios/
| 471 | 0.9 |
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Cruise faces fines, TuSimple exits the US and a new reporter joins the TC transpo team
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The Station is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here —just click The Station— to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to The Station, your central hub for all past, present and future means of moving people and packages from Point A to Point B. Hello all! I’m back from theChevy Blazer EVpress drive and I have some thoughts! But you’ll have to wait until later this week to read about it. There is one important news item that was gleaned during the press drive by former TC contributor turned InsideEVs editor Patrick George that I wanted to point out to y’all. Remember howGMkilled the Chevy Bolt and Bolt EUV and then a few months later was like “never mind!” we are going to bring it back under the new Ultium platform? OK, good. Well we now know that when it does come backit will only be the EUV. The smaller and original Bolt EV is done, dead, finito. Which makes me wonder how this will eventually affect GM’s subsidiary Cruise, which uses an autonomous version of the Bolt? That is, if Cruise returns to operations in 2024. A couple more important items to share. I am a regular on theEquity podcastwith TC+ editor Alex Wilhelm and senior reporter Mary Ann Azevedo. Listen to thelatest episode here. And finally, I am excited to share this: We hiredSean O’Kaneas a senior reporter covering all things transportation. O’Kane hails from Bloomberg by way of The Verge and I can’t gush enough about his investigative and storytelling skills. I will share his email next week once he officially starts. Please welcome him! Want to reach out with a tip, comment or complaint? Email Kirsten atkirsten. korosec@techcrunch. comor Rebecca atrebecca. techcrunch@gmail. com. Reminder that you can drop us a note attips@techcrunch. com. If you prefer to remain anonymous,click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps. Automakers love to talk about software-defined vehicles. That doesn’t mean automakers, which are keen to bring sophisticated digital platforms into vehicles, have actually delivered on this software-defined future, however. One startup is cashing in on that demand. Cubic Telecom, which developed a networking system to make it easy for vehicles (and other devices) to link up with mobile networks, picked up €473 million ($513 million) fromSoftBank Corp. Under the deal, Softbank Corp. (not the Vision Fund or SoftBank Group) is taking a 51% stake in the Dublin-based startup, valuing it at just over €927 million ($1 billion). As editorIngrid Lunden wrote, this effectively makes Cubic Telecom a consolidated subsidiary of SoftBank. Barry Napier will stay on as CEO and will have a seat on the board of the company. Daichi Nozaki, SoftBank’s SVP of global business, plus two other SoftBank-appointed people (still unnamed) will join the board, with the remaining three board seats occupied by existing Cubic Telecom investors, which include CARIAD (the Volkswagen Group) and Qualcomm. One other fun note: Cubic Telecom participated in TechCrunch’s first Startup Battlefield in 2007! Other deals that got my attention this week … AM Batteries, the lithium-ion dry-electrode technology startup, raised $30 million in a Series B round led by Toyota Ventures. Other new investors include Porsche Ventures, Asahi Kasei, RA Capital Management – Planetary Health, Wilson Sonsini and Industry Ventures. Existing investors Anzu Partners, TDK Ventures, Creative Ventures, Doral Energy-Tech Ventures, Foothill Ventures and Zeon Ventures also participated. Generac Power Systemsmade a minority investment in EV charging and energy management company Wallbox. The minority investment, which was not disclosed, includes adding a seat on Wallbox’s board and a global commercial agreement to provide Generac’s residential and commercial customers with the next generation of energy management systems. Foretellix, which builds verification and validation solutions to test driver assistance and autonomous vehicle systems,raised $42 millionto close out its Series C at $85 million. The full round was led by Israeli VC 83North, with Singapore’s Temasek and Isuzu investing alongside Woven Capital (Toyota’s venture fund), Nvidia, Artofin and previous backers MoreTech, Nationwide, Volvo Group VC, Jump Capital, Next Gear Ventures and OurCrowd. The first close of this Series C was in May of this year at $43 million. Stuart, a Paris-based last-mile delivery platform founded in 2015, was acquired by Munich-based private equity holding company Mutares. Terms were not disclosed. TheAutonomous Vehicle Industry Association, theU. S. Chamber of Commerce,Alliance for Automotive Innovationand others sent a letter to Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg imploring the agency tosupport the development of AVsor risk losing a competitive edge to China. Cruisemay face fines and sanctionsafter failing to disclose details of an October 2 incident — specifically that one of its vehicles dragged a pedestrian 20 feet, according to a ruling from the California Public Utilities Commission. The agency ordered Cruise to appear at a February 6 hearing to defend itself against accusations. Ganesh Venkataramanan, who led Tesla’s Dojo supercomputer project the last five years,left the company. For the unfamiliar, the Dojo supercomputer is considered the critical technology behind its self-driving car efforts. Kodiak Roboticsshowcased the autonomous vehicle born out of a$50 million two-year contractawarded by the U. S. Department of Defense, and more specifically the U. S. Army. You’d be wrong if you guessed it was a semi truck. Nope, it’s a Ford F-150 pickup truck that the startup outfitted with its software and sensor stack. The DOD is using the vehicle to test autonomous surveillance and reconnaissance missions in off-road terrain, diverse operational conditions and GPS-challenged environments. Torc RoboticsandUber Freighthave formed a strategic partnership. Under the agreement, Torc will use data from Uber Freight’s logistics network to help it hone the design of its autonomous freight network and expansion strategy, including learning which lanes are optimal for deployment, how to prioritize the rollout of lanes and various operational design domains and balancing supply and demand across supply chains with autonomous trucks. There was a time when self-driving truck developerTuSimplegarnered a lot of buzz — not to mention investment and partnerships. Those days are over, at least in the United States. The publicly traded company islaying off the majority of its U. S. workforceand selling assets here as it exits the country for Asia. About 150 U. S. workers, or 75% of staff in the country, will be laid off. The remaining 50 workers will wind down TuSimple’s U. S. operations, including the sale of assets, and assist with the company’s shift to the Asia-Pacific region. Scout, the VW Group spinoff aiming to launch EVs for North America, is still chugging along on development of a pickup truck and SUV. A fewnew details have emergedahead of the debut that is supposed to occur in Q3 2024. Stellantispartnered withbattery swapping startupAmpleto test the technology in the Fiat 500e city car. The two companies will start the first phase in Madrid, where 100 cars in Stellantis’ Free2move car-sharing service will be retrofitted to accept Ample’s modular batteries. TC reporter Tim de Chant muses that battery swapping could work well in fleets, but wonders if consumers are ready for the tech. Speaking of theFiat 500e, that diminutive EV will hit North American showroomsduring the first quarter of 2024, starting with a Product Red model, in collaboration with the AIDS-fighting group co-founded by U2’s Bono. TC reporter Harri Weber calls the Fiat 500e the anti-Cybertruck. Will Americans buy it? One more Stellantis item. The automaker will temporarily cut one shift at its Detroit assembly plant that builds Jeep sport utility vehicles because of California emissions regulations. What’s the connection? Stellantissent a petitionopposing the California Framework Agreement, which was formed in 2019 with four automakers (BMW, Ford, Honda and Volkswagen). Stellantis argues that framework companies can use its total EV sales volume to comply with the state’s emissions rules while other OEMs may only use the sales volumes generated in states adhering to CARB rules. This has led Stellantis, which includes the Jeep brand, to have excessive plug-in hybrid inventories in California. Hence, a cutback in production. Tesla’slowest-priced vehicle, the rear-wheel-drive Model 3,won’t be eligiblefor the full $7,500 federal tax credit as of next year. Tesla isn’t alone in losing the full tax credit; the Ford Mustang Mach-E is not expected to qualify for the tax credit starting January 1. In other Tesla news, the automaker’s battle with Nordic unions is expanding from Swedento Norway
| 2023-12-11T01:23:07 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/10/cruise-faces-fines-tusimple-exits-the-u-s-and-a-new-reporter-joins-the-tc-transpo-team/
| 1,392 | 1 |
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How Seedcamp’s networked approach to Europe helped it secure new $180M fund
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European early-stage investorSeedcamphas announced the close of its $180 million “Fund VI. ” It’s a long way from a London university lecture hall15 years ago in September, when founding partner and co-CEO Reshma Sohoni stood up and introduced the first Seedcamp cohort. (Incidentally, this was the same day TechCrunch launched in Europe, andmy first day as a full-time TC journalist). Seedcamp’s Fund VI is almost double the size of Seedcamp Fund V, raised some 2. 5 years ago ($95 million, raised in 2020), and thus the largest fund to date. The new fund will back about 100 companies. Although the fund is sector agnostic, Seedcamp tends to steer clear of capital-intensive startups in areas like mobility, preferring to stick to software platforms in areas such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, open source software, health tech and fintech. The new fund intends to lead rounds from the angel and seed stage (up to $1 million), while also being able to participate in rounds up to Series B, given it now has much higher firepower. This means Seedcamp will benefit from exits at a later stage than previously. While later-stage funds have found it a little tougher to raise in this uncertain market, Seedcamp’s laser-like focus on early-stage has kept it a favorite amongst investors. It also benefits from a 15-year heritage and a pretty unrivaled network across Europe. Institutions backing Seedcamp include LGT, Reference Capital, HarbourVest and Legal & General. Angels include the likes of Michael Pennington (Gumtree), Will Neale (Grabyo), Paul Forster (Indeed), Ilkka Paananen (Supercell), Shakil Khan (Spotify / Prima Materia), and Kärt Siilats (GoBeyondCapital). Former Seedcamp founders include Taavet Hinrikus (Wise), Daniel Dines (UiPath), Jeppe Rindom (Pleo) and Johnny Boufarhat (Hopin). Seedcamp’s portfolio now consists of over 460 companies, including nine unicorns: UiPath (NYSE: PATH), Wise (LON: WISE), Revolut, Pleo, Hopin, Grover, Viz. ai, wefox and Sorare. Some of Seedcamp’s rising stars include Synthesia, Buynomics, Griffin, Ramp, Sylvera, Superscript, Primer, Appwrite, PortalOne and Peppy. Its most notable exits include Skew (to Coinbase), Kitch (to Delivery Hero) and Nordigen (to GoCardless). Seedcamp is also launching the Seedcamp Expert Collective, a community of 100+ operators who have been involved in companies including Uber, Stripe, Cloudflare, Revolut, Deliveroo, NextDoor, Skyscanner and Wise. A long history For many years, Seedcamp was more or less the only early-stage investor game in town. At least in Europe. There’s perhaps a “sliding door” moment when Seedcamp could have simply aped U. S. -style accelerators and churned out plenty of also-ran companies. And yes, for about half its lifespan it did indeed have “cohorts. ” But then something different happened, and perhaps something uniquely European. Instead of taking on the rather centralized and aggressive “Tech Bro” culture of Silicon Valley, Seedcamp morphed into a highly collaborative “community” network of former Seedcamp-backed founders, European Super-Angels and even other VC funds that wanted access to its pipeline, built on this networked approach. To illustrate this, I once asked Paul Graham backstage at a TechCrunch Disrupt conference if he would ever scale Y Combinator to Europe. He indicated that YC would simply stay in the Valley, and “everyone would come here. ” While that approach served YC just fine, it meant it was never going to be able to engage with Europe’s distributed and complex ecosystem. Seedcamp was on the ground in the early days, in a way most funds, and even most European funds, were not. This was echoed in something co-CEO Carlos Espinal told me over an interview: “We will continue to be community-led. The second one is being entrepreneurially-minded. Which means that we’re carving our own path and not cloning what other people are doing. We’re coming up with things that I think work for the European ecosystem, that work for the founders that are based in France or Romania or anywhere else. And the last one is a teamwork centric. When we started, basically, we didn’t know anything. So that actually shaped the culture rather than assuming that we were some successful magnate that came in wanting to bestow wisdom on others. ” In an era where every VC seems to talk endlessly about their “data-driven approach” to investing, Seedcamp pioneered its own version: people-driven. Seedcamp’s reputation as a VC that founders could simplyfill in a formto access has served it well, but it’s this network that has been its most powerful asset. And because the fund keep its stakes below 10%, it can bring angels into a round, writing small cheques, and thus extending and incentivizing this network effect. The fact that it matured in this organic manner is testament to the curation of Sohoni and Espinal, who have justifiably earned their reputation as calm, thoughtful investors and advisors, as well as being fully signed-up to the “European project. ” Sohoni said the new fund had been over-subscribed: “Fundraising is never easy, but we were oversubscribed, which tells you the consistency of the network. We have always been pre-Series A. That’s defined us and it’s a consistent record of 15 years of delivering the impact. ” She added: “We planted a lot of flags back in the day, and some of that talent we backed ended up with the U. S. Now that talent is coming back to Europe and in a kind’ve reverse brain drain. They remember that we backed European role models, and access to capital and knowledge to European founders. ” Partners Tom Wilson and Sia Houchangnia joined Seedcamp a while ago to scale up the Seedcamp offering. More recently Antonia Whitecourt and Natasha Lytton have become directors. Felix Martinez is now promoted to principal, and Kate McGinn is promoted to associate
| 2023-05-17T12:12:01 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/how-seedcamps-networked-approach-to-europe-helped-it-secure-new-180m-fund/
| 940 | 1 |
bbcb894565aeff08573e9723f95b7b92
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What are AI ‘world models,’ and why do they matter?
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World models, also known as world simulators, are being touted by some as the next big thing in AI. AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li’sWorld Labshas raised $230 million to build “large world models,” and DeepMindhiredone of the creators of OpenAI’s video generator,Sora, to work on “world simulators. ” (Sora was released on Monday;here are some early impressions. ) But what the heckarethese things? World models take inspiration from the mental models of the world that humans develop naturally. Our brains take the abstract representations from our senses and form them into more concrete understanding of the world around us, producing what we called “models” long before AI adopted the phrase. The predictions our brains make based on these models influence how we perceive the world. Apaperby AI researchers David Ha and Jürgen Schmidhuber gives the example of a baseball batter. Batters have milliseconds to decide how to swing their bat — shorter than the time it takes for visual signals to reach the brain. The reason they’re able to hit a 100-mile-per-hour fastball is because they can instinctively predict where the ball will go, Ha and Schmidhuber say. “For professional players, this all happens subconsciously,” the research duo writes. “Their muscles reflexively swing the bat at the right time and location in line with their internal models’ predictions. They can quickly act on their predictions of the future without the need to consciously roll out possible future scenarios to form a plan. ” It’s these subconscious reasoning aspects of world models that some believe are prerequisites for human-level intelligence. While the concept has been around for decades, world models have gained popularity recently in part because of their promising applications in the field of generative video. Most, if not all, AI-generated videos veer into uncanny valley territory. Watch them long enough and somethingbizarrewill happen, like limbs twisting and merging into each other. While a generative model trained on years of video might accurately predict that a basketball bounces, it doesn’t actually have any idea why — just like language models don’t really understand the concepts behind words and phrases. But a world model with even a basic grasp of why the basketball bounces like it does will be better at showing it do that thing. To enable this kind of insight, world models are trained on a range of data, including photos, audio, videos, and text, with the intent of creating internal representations of how the world works, and the ability to reason about the consequences of actions. “A viewer expects that the world they’re watching behaves in a similar way to their reality,” Alex Mashrabov, Snap’s ex-AI chief of AI and the CEO ofHiggsfield, which is building generative models for video, said. “If a feather drops with the weight of an anvil or a bowling ball shoots up hundreds of feet into the air, it’s jarring and takes the viewer out of the moment. With a strong world model, instead of a creator defining how each object is expected to move — which is tedious, cumbersome, and a poor use of time — the model will understand this. ” But better video generation is only the tip of the iceberg for world models. Researchers including Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun say the models could someday be used for sophisticated forecasting and planning in both the digital and physical realm. In atalkearlier this year, LeCun described how a world model could help achieve a desired goal through reasoning. A model with a base representation of a “world” (e. g. a video of a dirty room), given an objective (a clean room), could come up with a sequence of actions to achieve that objective (deploy vacuums to sweep, clean the dishes, empty the trash) not because that’s a pattern it has observed but because it knows at a deeper level how to go from dirty to clean. “We need machines that understand the world; [machines] that can remember things, that have intuition, have common sense — things that can reason and plan to the same level as humans,” LeCun said. “Despite what you might have heard from some of the most enthusiastic people, current AI systems are not capable of any of this. ” While LeCun estimates that we’re at least a decade away from the world models he envisions, today’s world models are showing promise as elementary physics simulators. OpenAI notes in a blog that Sora, which it considers to be a world model, can simulate actions like a painter leaving brush strokes on a canvas. Models like Sora — and Soraitself— can also effectivelysimulatevideogames. For example, Sora can render a Minecraft-like UI and game world. Future world models may be able to generate 3D worlds on demand for gaming, virtual photography, and more, World Labs co-founder Justin Johnson said on anepisodeof the a16z podcast. “We already have the ability to create virtual, interactive worlds, but it costs hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars and a ton of development time,” Johnson said. “[World models] will let you not just get an image or a clip out, but a fully simulated, vibrant, and interactive 3D world. ” While the concept is enticing, many technical challenges stand in the way. Training and running world models requires massive compute power even compared to the amount currently used by generative models. While some of the latest language models can run on a modern smartphone, Sora (arguably an early world model) would require thousands of GPUs to train and run, especially if their use becomes commonplace. World models, like all AI models, alsohallucinate— and internalize biases in their training data. A world model trained largely on videos of sunny weather in European cities might struggle to comprehend or depict Korean cities in snowy conditions, for example, or simply do so incorrectly. A general lack of training data threatens to exacerbate these issues, says Mashrabov. “We have seen models being really limited with generations of people of a certain type or race,” he said. “Training data for a world model must be broad enough to cover a diverse set of scenarios, but also highly specific to where the AI can deeply understand the nuances of those scenarios. ” In a recentpost, AI startup Runway’s CEO, Cristóbal Valenzuela, says that data and engineering issues prevent today’s models from accurately capturing the behavior of a world’s inhabitants (e. g. humans and animals). “Models will need to generate consistent maps of the environment,” he said, “and the ability to navigate and interact in those environments. ” If all the major hurdles are overcome, though, Mashrabov believes that world models could “more robustly” bridge AI with the real world — leading to breakthroughs not only in virtual world generation but robotics and AI decision-making. They could also spawn more capable robots. Robots today are limited in what they can do because they don’t have an awareness of the world around them (or their own bodies). World models could give them that awareness, Mashrabov said — at least to a point. “With an advanced world model, an AI could develop a personal understanding of whatever scenario it’s placed in,” he said, “and start to reason out possible solutions. ” TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter!Sign up hereto get it in your inbox every Wednesday. This story originally published October 28, 2024, and was updated December 14, 2024, with new updates about Sora
| 2024-12-14T18:01:19 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/14/what-are-ai-world-models-and-why-do-they-matter/
| 1,231 | 1 |
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Indian music label Saregama in talks to acquire Pocket Aces in video push
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Saregama is in talks to acquire Pocket Aces, three people familiar with the matter said, as the oldest Indian music label grows its video ambitions. The acquisition talks have been underway for several weeks, but a deal is yet to be finalized, the people said. Thevideo games streaming platform Loco, which span out of Pocket Aces in 2021, is not part of the discussions, the people added, requesting anonymity as the deliberation is private. Saregama’s interest in Pocket Aces, which has raised over $20 million and counts Peak XV and 3one4 Capital among its backers, comes as the Kolkata-headquartered firm ramps up its efforts to broaden its video catalog. The 120-year-old publicly listed firm, which produces over 300 video songs in a quarter, has expanded to several new categories, including the jukebox Carvaan business, in the past decade. In recent years, it has also invested in low-budget South Indian movies and TV series for on-demand video streaming platforms. The pursuit comes as rival T-Series widens its lead over the competition in the digital video space by being early to upload video songs on YouTube. This strategy — which benefited from hundreds of Indians coming online in the past decade, thanks to low-cost Android smartphones and internet access — helped T-Series become the most subscribed YouTube channel, with a massive following of nearly 250 million subscribers, compared to Saregama’s 37 million. Saregama didn’t respond to requests for comment, whereas Pocket Aces declined. In Pocket Aces, the Indian music conglomerate sees a partner that can supercharge its video production efforts. Pocket Aces largely produces short-form video content aimed at young Indians. It has seen its popularity surge in recent years as its shows, typically comedic and dealing with real-world issues, have resonated with viewers. The startup has also licensed IPs like the show “Little Things” to Netflix and shared other content with platforms such as Jio, MX Player, Vistara, and Qatar Airways. Pocket Aces reaches 50 million viewers weekly and accumulates 700 million views monthly, according to stats it has disclosed on its website. It has also collaborated with T Series, phone makers, e-commerce giants, lenders and scores of young startups to do branded content. A campaign of five episodes it produced for Amazon, aiming to promote the seller business, garnered over 18 million views, according to Pocket Aces. Topics Reporter, India YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-09-21T16:32:04 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/21/saregama-pocket-aces/
| 465 | 0.9 |
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Ford preps for its next big fight, Waymo recalls its self-driving car software and layoffs come for another AV startup
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TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here —just click TechCrunch Mobility— to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back toTechCrunch Mobility— your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. This week’s news includes aBMWsecurity lapsethat exposed sensitive information, blowback from a federal agency over an anti-TeslaSuper Bowl adand a new federal investigation intoFisker. But first, some words about my recent visit to Detroit, where I met with a fewFordexecutives to find out what they’re focused on for 2024 and beyond. It’s safe to say thatChinese EV automakersandTeslaare top of mind; and in the view of Ford execs, a low-cost EV and cutting-edge software are the best ways to thwart those threats. The company’sEV skunkworks project, which recently came to light, is charged with that task. Ford CFOJohn Lawlerdidn’t mince words during an interview at the company’s headquarters. “We have to assume that eventually they’ll be here,” Lawler said. “China has been looking for its global champion for decades. They couldn’t get there with a traditional gas vehicle; they saw the writing on the wall as early as 2010 that electric was the way to go and they have subsidized and focused on that since then. ” Lawler said Chinese automakers are now competitive. Now armed with production capacity and “fantastic” designs, China is pushing into other regions. “It’s not a short stakes game; it’s long,” Lawler said. “So everybody’s thinking about the next couple of years, they’re thinking about the next 25, 30 years. They’re not gonna sweat what’s happening right now. They’ll keep building their footprint and building their brands up, keep building their technology and building out the advanced development of their vehicles, and eventually, there won’t be any stopping it. ” China and Tesla aren’t the only concerns taking up their collective gray matter. Ford CEOJim Farleyis also intent on clawing back $2 billion in cost savings across the company’s industrial system. A big part of that is improving the quality of new vehicles — which are directly tied to warranty costs — and was a point he emphasized during a recent interview at Wolfe Research’s Global Auto and Auto Tech Conference in New York. Let’s go! A little bird pointed us to a recent filing regardingFaraday Futurethat got our attention. For the unfamiliar, Faraday Future is an EV startup that went public in 2021 via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company. Once upon a time, Faraday Future was about as buzzy as a startup could get. But years of internal drama, a revolving door of executives and federal investigations has the company hanging on the end of its financial threads. Now it appears the company is at risk oflosing its LA headquarters. The company’s landlord filed a lawsuit seeking to repossess the commercial space after Faraday Future failed to pay rent. The current bill is close to $1 million. Got a tip for us? EmailKirsten Korosecatkirsten. korosec@techcrunch. comorSean O’Kanesean. okane@techcrunch. com. If you prefer to remain anonymous,click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps. No deal of the week! Instead, here’s a list of deals that got my attention. Celadyne, a hydrogen fuel cell startup,raised $4. 5 millionin a seed round was co-led by Maniv and Dynamo Ventures, with major participation from EPS Ventures. Revel, the Brooklyn-based startup initially known for its fleet of rentable blue electric mopeds, is reportedly trying to raise $200 million in equity,Bloomberg reported. The company shutdown itsshared moped businessin November and is now trying to build out electric ride-hailing and EV fast-charging businesses. Roam, a Kenyan EV startup, hasraised $24 millionin a Series A round, including up to $10 million debt commitment from the U. S. International Development Finance Corporation. Equator, an Africa-focused climate tech VC fund, led the round At One Ventures, TES Ventures, Renew Capital, the World We Want and One Small Planet also participated. Skylo Technologies, a direct-to-device satellite connectivity service provider, raised $37 million in a round co-led by Intel Capital and Innovation Endeavors and joined by BMW i Ventures, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Seraphim Space, and Next47. Velocys, a startup developing sustainable aviation fuel, raised $40 million from Carbon Direct Capital, Lightrock, GenZero and Kibo Investments. GMis expanding access to Super Cruise, with plans to let drivers use the hands-free advanced driver-assistance system on about750,000 miles of roadsin the United States and Canada. The expansion will nearly double the automaker’s Super Cruise network by 2025 and includes rural and minor highways. TheNational Transportation Safety Boardordered theDawn Projectorganization tostop using its sealafter it appeared in a Super Bowl ad that called for consumers to boycott Tesla. CruisenamedSteve Kenner, an autonomous vehicle industry veteran who has held top safety roles at Kodiak, Locomation, Aurora and Uber’s now-defunct self-driving division, as itsfirst“chief safety officer. ”My take: This is a position that Cruise should have had years ago. Meanwhile, Cruise lost another key employee. Carl Jenkins, head of hardware at Cruise,resignedfrom the company. May Mobilitylaid off 40 people, or about 13% of its staff. San Francisco Giantsare swapping out theCruise robotaxi uniform patchfor a less controversial one that advertises Chevrolet, another GM brand. Waymovoluntarilyrecalled the softwarethat powers its robotaxi fleet after two vehicles crashed into the same towed pickup truck in Phoenix, Arizona, in December. It’s the company’s first recall. As reporter Sean O’Kane notes, the recall comes at a time when self-driving cars are facing intense scrutiny following a series of high-profile crashes and controversies, including this week when a crowd of people in San Francisco swarmed, vandalized andtorched a Waymo robotaxi. EVshad a white-hot 2023 — but data in December shows sales are cooling,Automotive News reported. New EV registrations rose 52% in 2023 over the previous year, according to data from S&P Global Mobility. EVs now have 7. 7% of the U. S. light-vehicle market, up from 5. 7% a year earlier. Lucid Motorsdropped the priceof its luxury Air sedan by thousands of dollars. Lucid also got the attention of theNational Highway Traffic Safety Administrationthis week. The regulators opened an investigation into aLucidwindshield defroster recall from January, saying it’s “concerned” the company’s over-the-air update solutiondoesn’t go far enoughto fix the problem. Is the NHTSA starting to push back against OTAs? TheNHTSAopened a second investigation into EV startupFisker‘s Ocean SUV, after the agency received four complaints about thevehicle rolling away unexpectedly, resulting in one injury. Fisker also received a noncompliance notice from theNew York Stock Exchangebecause its stocks closed under $1 for the past 30 days,according to a regulatory filing. Stellantis, the parent company of brands like Jeep and Chrysler, announced it will adopt Tesla’sNorth American Charging Standard(NACS). Stellantis is the last major Western automaker to announce compatibility with NACS. HopSkipDrive, the youth ride-share startup, beat two new keyCalifornia emissions standardsin 2023, an accomplishment the company believes will bolster its case for relying more on shared passenger vehicles to get kids and teens to and from school. During my short trip to Michigan, I used a2023 Ford Mustang Mach-Eto drive to various meetings in Dearborn and Detroit. (The press car came courtesy of Ford. ) My primary interest was inBlueCruise, the hands-free active driver-assistance system. I had a lot of time to test it out thanks to a number of 20- to 30-mile commutes, most of which were on highways. I was testing the BlueCruise 1. 3 version, which accelerates or brakes to maintain a selected following distance from a vehicle ahead, keeps the vehicle centered in the lane and steers. When the driver hits the turn signal, the vehicle will change lanes. It also will make a suggestion to pass if traffic is slow. What I liked: It’s simple to engage BlueCruise and crystal clear when the system is handling the driving. The passing is crisp and vehicle doesn’t ping pong within the lane, which is common in other systems. My one picky critique is that the word “ready” is illuminated in green in the instrument cluster right below BlueCruise, when it is engaged (see photo). That “ready” has nothing to do with BlueCruise and is instead meant to let the EV driver know their vehicle is ready to drive. I’m sure drivers will get used to it, but I could also see it causing some confusion. A feature I loved: I could take over the steering and BlueCruise would remain engaged. I know that in some circles this is frowned upon because the driver might get confused. However, I loath how often I accidentally disengage other systems like Tesla’s Autopilot by moving the steering wheel just a skosh too much
| 2024-02-19T05:41:40 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/18/ford-preps-for-its-next-big-fight-waymo-recalls-its-self-driving-car-software-and-layoffs-come-for-another-av-startup/
| 1,438 | 1 |
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Rivian to adopt Tesla’s North American Charging Standard
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Rivian is the latest automaker to jump on Tesla’s North American Charging Standard (NACS). This comes just weeks afterFordandGeneral Motorsannounced that their upcoming electric vehicles would have the proper equipment to recharge using Tesla Superchargers. Current Rivian vehicles will get a NACS adapter. Future Rivian vehicles, including current R1T and R1S models, will ship with the NACS charge port as standard equipment. Rivian CEO and founder RJ Scaringesaid in a statementthat his company is excited to work with Tesla, adding, “The adoption of the North American Charging Standard will enable our existing and future customers to leverage Tesla’s expansive Supercharger network while we continue to build out our Rivian Adventure Network. ” According to the press release, Rivian will continue to build its own charging network called the Rivian Adventure Network. It’s unclear (though likely) at this time if these charging stations will also feature NACS chargers. The Rivian Adventure Network features DC fast chargers, with stations located along popular routes and highways. With Rivian, Ford and General Motors in its corner, Tesla is quickly capturing a large segment of American-made electric vehicles. So far, no foreign automaker has signed with Tesla. As TechCrunch reporter Tim De Chant writes, it’s getting increasingly harder for the rest of the EV charging industry to compete against Tesla. Why every EV charging network combined can’t compete with Tesla
| 2023-06-20T13:27:09 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/20/rivian-to-adopt-teslas-nacs-charging-standard/
| 225 | 0.9 |
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Apple brings enterprise device management to the Vision Pro
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It’s been hard to avoid news about theApple Vision Pro, the company’s entry into the virtual reality market, in recent days. It was officially released on Fridayto much fanfare, but how will it fare in the enterprise? It’s way too early to say, but the company is doing everything possible to make it friendly to IT departments. For starters, it announced that it is incorporating the Vision Pro into theApple Device managementprocess, which should make IT pros happy. That means IT can manage these devices in the same way they have been handling iPhones, iPads, watches and Macs, including easy activation when employees onboard or get new devices. In the past, companies have looked at augmented reality and virtual reality enterprise use cases such as manufacturing, design and field service. Apple sees guided work that you do in the moment for training or execution of a task as a big use case for this. Having an unlimited desktop with access to regular work applications could be useful for knowledge workers too. Today, the company is announcing that the beta release of visionOS 1. 1 includes device management for the first time. “We’re going to bring device management capability into that beta,” Jeremy Butcher, worldwide product marketing for enterprise at Apple, told TechCrunch. “We know that in order to unlock all of [the power of the Apple Vision Pro], businesses are going to want to manage these devices at scale. So the good news is we’ve got a lot of great technology to bring over to Vision Pro in that regard,” he said. He points out that the company is giving IT pros tools they would expect to find on any Apple device like single sign-on, identity management and security. “So we’re bringing that over to Vision Pro as well. So it’s MDM (mobile device management), it’s support for things like managed Apple IDs. It’s things like a single sign on extension capabilities,” he said, offering some examples. Apple sees the enterprise as a potentially large part of the AVP market and it will take the ability to connect to existing systems to make that happen, says Steve Sinclair, who is part of worldwide product marketing for Apple Vision Pro. “We’re really focused on making sure that we have the enterprise building blocks that the companies expect for networking support, for making sure that we’re managing and protecting corporate data with data protection, being able to start with some of the basic blocking and tackling type capabilities. ” Those could include supporting tools like Microsoft Exchange, Google Workspace and cloud infrastructure support that he says enterprise customers are going to expect. Certainly partners like Jamf, the Minnesota-based company that helps companies manage Apple devices, like seeing the AVP brought into the management fold. “Apple Vision Pro offers businesses an exciting opportunity to transform the way employees get work done. And importantly, it supports all of the core foundations of an enterprise-grade device from Secure Enclave to device management to biometric authentication to zero trust networking,” Matt Vlasach, VP of product management at Jamf, told TechCrunch. The device management features are available in beta starting today. Apple Vision Pro: Here’s everything you need to know
| 2024-02-06T18:26:29 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/apple-brings-enterprise-device-management-to-the-vision-pro/
| 533 | 1 |
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Waymo scores a critical robotaxi permit, Fisker cuts more workers and Apple car fades away
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TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here —just click TechCrunch Mobility— to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back toTechCrunch Mobility— your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. I was in Los Angeles earlier this week where I interviewedWaymoco-CEOTekedra Mawakanaonstage at our StrictlyVC LA event. You canwatch the whole interview here, which covers her views on the Apple Car project, the company’s “community tour” in Los Angeles, whether Waymo learned anything (or changed) in the wake of the Cruise debacle and if it’s committed to staying in San Francisco even if vandalism of its robotaxis continues. The following morning (and by total coincidence), theCalifornia Public Utilities Commissionapproved Waymo’s applicationto operate a commercial robotaxi service in Los Angeles, the San Francisco Peninsula and on San Francisco freeways. The approval removes the last barrier for the Alphabet company to charge for rides in these expanded areas. Importantly, it opens up new territory for Waymo in one of the country’s largest cities and unlocks a route to San Francisco International Airport, which is located south of the city. This week’s news also includesFordgiving its EV ownersaccess to Tesla Superchargers, theSecurities and Exchange CommissionchargingLordstown Motorswithmisleading investors,Toyotapractically paying people to buy itshydrogen fuel cell-powered Miraiand more! Let’s go! EV upstartFiskerhas been dealing with a lot lately — underperforming its own sales goals, dealing with quality and customer service problems and pivoting from a direct sales model to trying to sign up dealer partners. This past week the company announced it’s going tocut 15% of its staffas part of that transition and needs more cash to survive. Reuters reported Friday that it’s in talks with Nissan to collaborate on an electric pickup truck, in a move that could save the startup. Afew little birdstold us that these talks have been going on for more than a year, and that it wasn’t the only Japanese automaker that has spoken to Fisker about a possible collaboration — Fisker also held talks with Mazda. But Nissan is the last one standing, and its continued interest comes at a crucial moment for the troubled startup. Got a tip for us? EmailKirsten Korosecatkirsten. korosec@techcrunch. comorSean O’Kanesean. okane@techcrunch. com. If you prefer to remain anonymous,click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop (instructions here) and various encrypted messaging apps. Polestarhas a little more breathing room now that the Swedish EV company — that’s owned by China’s Geely Holdings —secured a $950 million loanfrom a dozen banks. Why does it matter? These are critical funds needed to keep Polestar’s EV plans moving forward following Volvo’s decision to pull back its financial support of the electric automaker. The company had about $770 million in cash at the end of 2023, according to regulatory filings. However, the funding doesn’t solve all of Polestar’s financial woes. Even with this new injection of capital, the company said it will continue to cut costs and look for efficiency, including layoffs. Polestar, which has cut 10% of jobs since mid-2023, said it plans to make another 15% cut this year. The company previously disclosed that 15% job cut, which will affect about 450 people. Other deals that got my attention … Range Energy, the startup developing electric-powered trailers for commercial trucking, raised $23. 5 million in a funding round led by Trousdale Ventures, with participation from UP. Partners, R7 and Yamaha Motor Ventures. Range has raised $31. 5 million to date. GoodbyeApple Car; we never knew ya. Yup, that’s right, Appleended plansto build and sell an autonomous electric car. Don’t worry, months from now we will surely be treated to rumors that it’s back after all. ;D ReporterSean O’Kanelearned that Apple is likely cutting hundreds of employees from the team and all work on the project has stopped. Some will shift to Apple’s generative AI projects, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the project’s cancellation. Others will have 90 days to find a reassignment to other roles inside the company, or they will be let go. The car project still had around 1,400 employees working on it, according to one employee who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about their work. Side note:Here’s a timelineof the decade-long project. GMis squirreling away its custom-builtCruise Origin robotaxisin a defunct Michigan plant. Motionaltold employees it will cut about5% of its workforce(fewer than 70 people), TechCrunch has learned. The cuts mostly affect administrative roles and some employees working in Boston, one of several cities where it tests autonomous vehicles. The other very important detail from sources is that the company needs to secure more funding. That will mean either Hyundai footing the entire bill for the joint venture company it once shared with Aptiv or finding another partner. Xiaomishowed off itsfirst electric car, the SU7, at Mobile World Congress. Amazonstopped sellingtheRing Car Cam. This week I wasn’t driving; I was riding in a driverlessWaymorobotaxi. I’ve taken numerous rides in Waymo robotaxis, but never one in Los Angeles. This trip provided an interesting test piece for how these robotaxis handle unexpected blockades. Moments after getting into the Waymo, the vehicle was approaching a stop sign when it encountered a minor crash between two human-driven cars. Funny enough, another driverless Waymo was right in front of me. A postal worker, who was also stuck, ended up backing into a turning lane and making a U-turn. My driverless car stayed put and I began to wonder if it would ever move. A message soon appeared on the touchscreen informing me that “our team is working to get you moving. ” A moment later the vehicle reversed a few feet and made the same maneuver the postal worker did. This was likely an incident when remote guidance was provided. About two minutes were added to my ride due to the traffic jam. We’ll be posting a video of the ride soon!
| 2024-03-03T20:34:50 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/03/waymo-scores-a-critical-robotaxi-permit-fisker-cuts-more-workers-and-apple-car-fades-away/
| 986 | 1 |
858a89e231bd8f9e23273d397c69fe7d
|
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Seraphim’s latest space accelerator welcomes nine companies
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-basedSeraphim Spaceis spinning up its 13th accelerator program, with nine participating companies working on a range of tech from propulsion to in-space manufacturing and space situational awareness. The intense 12-week program is designed to get seed and Series A companies “investment ready,” the firm says, by providing specialist mentorship, networking opportunities and intensive workshops and pitch training sessions. Seraphim’s bi-annual accelerator was the first dedicated to space tech in the U. K. The new cohort includes companies from the U. K. , the U. S. , Italy and India. They are: There’s also a U. S. -based stealth company that provides cybersecurity for satellite networks. Since 2018, 95 startups have gone through Seraphim’s accelerator and 85% of those raised investment within 12 months, according to the firm. Notable alums include Xona Space Systems, which recently closeda $19 million Series A, as well asVirtus Solis and Orbital Composites. Seraphim also recently launched its next venture fund,Seraphim Space Ventures II, which will focus on seed and Series A investments. That fund, which has the aim of building out a global portfolio of 30 startups, is backed by major limited partners in the space industry including Eutelsat, JSAT and NEC. The story has been updated to reflect that Eutelsat, JSAT and NEC are backing Seraphim’s second fund. Topics Reporter, Space and Defense Aria Alamalhodaei covers the space and defense industries at TechCrunch. Previously, she covered the public utilities and the power grid for California Energy Markets. You can also find her work at MIT’s Undark Magazine, The Verge, and Discover Magazine. She received an MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Aria is based in Austin, Texas. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2024-05-16T22:33:20 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/16/seraphims-latest-space-accelerator-welcomes-nine-companies/
| 354 | 0.9 |
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Dave Clark, formerly of Amazon and Flexport, just landed $100M for new supply chain venture
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Dave Clark has had a roller coaster of a time these past two years. Aftersteppingdown in June 2022 as CEO of Amazon’s worldwide consumer division — a role he held for over two decades — Clark relocated to Dallas to join supply chain logistics company Flexport. With a board mandate to prepare Flexport to go public, Clark led as co-CEO, and later as CEO, while founder Ryan Petersen transitioned to executive chairman. But all did not go smoothly. In September 2023, Flexport’s board, led by Petersen, pressured Clark to resign, accusing him of mismanagement. Clarkmaintainedhe was only trying to fix what he considered “extensive” organizational problems. Subsequentreportingbacked upClark’s claims, but the damage was done. Clark was out. Clark mulled over a gubernatorial run in Texas; hehiredstrategists, too. But the allure of launching a business — one he could run as he saw fit — proved to be stronger. Clark on Tuesday unveiled his new company, Auger, and he’s raised a mammoth $100 million seed round led by VC firm Oak HC/FT. Auger is developing an AI-powered tool for supply chain-dependent businesses that integrates with existing inventory management platforms to deliver real-time insights. “Throughout my career, I’ve seen firsthand how broken supply chains don’t just impact companies, but in fact millions of people: delays that prevent products from reaching shelves, miscommunications that force employees into overtime, higher consumer prices, and inefficiencies that contribute to a growing carbon footprint,” Clark told TechCrunch. “These aren’t just business problems — they’re human problems. And it’s time we fix them. ” Clark was vague about whatpreciselyAuger is building, save that it “unifies” supply chain data for various types of aggregation. There seems to a chatbot component, too: Clark says users will be able to “just ask” questions like “Give me inventory information for next week’s shipment,” and Auger will serve up that data “instantly” in a “consumer-grade” portal. “Despite heavy investments, companies still rely on fragmented ‘Franken-software’ — disjointed systems patched together from incompatible technologies that don’t communicate effectively,” Clark said. “This leads to inefficient workarounds and forces critical decisions to be made using tools like Excel, which were never designed to handle the complexity of supply chains at this scale. Auger is creating a new solution for companies seeking better options. ” To Clark’s point, there’s robust demand for technology that helps organizations make sense of their supply chains. According to onesource, 56% of retailers hold weeks’ worth of “safety stock” as insurance against supply chain visibility setbacks. The lack of supply chain awareness — combined with growing supply chain headwinds, from dockworker strikes to turmoil in the Red Sea — is contributing to major global shipping disruptions. About a third of services companies and nearly half of manufacturers are having difficulty obtaining supplies, according to a Federal Reserve Bank of New Yorksurvey. “Increasing disruptions and global conflicts [are] creating near-constant modifications in worldwide manufacturing and the flow of goods, stretching existing technology beyond its limits,” Clark said. The more recent hurdles, combined with challenges introduced by the pandemic, have led to an explosion in the number of startups tackling supply chain visibility and management. The sector for logistics software is on track to reach $46. 5 billion by 2025, perMarkets and Markets. And funding is flowing healthily into upstart supply chain platform vendors — startups in the spacereceived$15. 4 billion in investments this year. Indeed, Auger, based in Bellevue, Washington, is entering a market chock-full of formidable rivals. Altana, which bagged $200 million from investors in July, uses an AI system to create a shared view of international supply chain networks, drawing from both logistics and B2B data. EverstreamandPandooffer their own dashboards for analysis, intended to complement transportation management and supplier relationship management systems. Clark asserts that what Auger’s making will be truly different. “Auger will integrate data from multiple sources and use advanced AI and machine learning to generate automated, dynamic insights in real time,” Clark said. “The platform will offer a single pane of glass across planning, forecasting, and financing [to] … enable teams to move beyond manual tasks and focus on driving innovation. ” Clark may well have what it takes to go up against the larger vendors in the SaaS supply chain software space. Logisticsishis speciality, after all. At Amazon, Clark was an early proponent ofrobotic automation, which saved the companytens of millions of dollars. And, during the pandemic, Clark dramatically expanded Amazon’s operations to meet the elevated demand for online goods. Clark has also made big managerial missteps. Hemisjudgedthe reception of Amazon’s brick-and-mortar businesses, and, in the final stretch of the pandemic,over-expandedthe company’s warehouse capacity. That latter decision led tobillionsin cost overruns. Oak general partner Matt Streisfeld has confidence in Clark, calling him a “once-in-a-lifetime” founder with the potential to “reimagine supply chain management software. ” “We are in the midst of a critical shift, with more data shifting to the cloud every day,” Streisfeld said in a statement. “With this shift, we will have more accessible information that can be structured for not only real-time, continuous planning, but also so that AI can be layered on to automate more workflows and deliver more business and financial insights for inventory management and forecasting. ” Clark says that Auger, which has yet to secure customers or generate any revenue, will release more information about its product roadmap and milestones in the coming months. “Our founding team is made up of relentless problem-solvers with a proven track record of delivering transformative supply chain solutions at scale,” he added. “This is just the beginning. ”
| 2024-10-08T13:14:34 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/08/dave-clark-formerly-of-amazon-and-flexport-just-landed-100m-for-new-supply-chain-venture/
| 924 | 1 |
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Why OpenAI wanted to buy Cursor but opted for the fast-growing Windsurf
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Anysphere, maker of AI coding assistant Cursor, is growing so quickly that it’s not in the market to be sold, even to OpenAI, a source close to the company tells TechCrunch. It’s been a hot target. Cursor is one of the most popular AI-powered coding tools, and its revenue has been growing astronomically — doubling on average every two months, according to another source. Anysphere’s current average annual recurring revenue is about $300 million, according to the two sources. The company previously walked away from early acquisition discussions with OpenAI, after the ChatGPT maker approached Cursor, the two sources close to the company confirmed, andCNBC previously reported. Anysphere has also received other acquisition offers that the company didn’t consider, according to one of these sources. Cursor turned down the offers because the startup wants to stay independent, said the two people close to the company. Instead, Anysphere has been in talks to raise capital atabout a $10 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported last month. Although it didn’t nab Anysphere, OpenAI didn’t give up on buying an established AI coding tool startup. OpenAI talked with more than 20 others, CNBC reported. And then it got serious over the next-fastest-growing AI coding startup, Windsurf, with a$3 billion acquisition offer, Bloomberg reported last week. While Windsurf is a comparatively smaller company, its ARR is about $100 million, up from$40 million in ARRin February, according to a source. Windsurf has been gaining popularity with the developer community, too, and its coding product is designed to work with legacy enterprise systems. Windsurf did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. OpenAI declined to comment on its acquisition talks. OpenAI is likely shopping because it’s looking for its next growth areas as competitors such as Google’s Gemini and China’s DeepSeek put pricing pressure on access to foundational models. Moreover,AnthropicandGoogle have recently released AI modelsthat outperform OpenAI’s models on coding benchmarks, increasingly making them a preferred choice for developers. While OpenAI could build its own AI coding assistant, buying a product that is already popular with developers means the ChatGPT-maker wouldn’t have to start from scratch to build this business. VCs who invest in developer tool startups are certainly watching. Speculating about OpenAI’s strategy, Chris Farmer, partner and CEO at SignalFire, told TechCrunch of the company, “They’ll be acquisitive at the app layer. It’s existential for them. ” Topics Reporter, Venture Senior AI Reporter Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-04-22T22:42:21 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/22/why-openai-wanted-to-buy-cursor-but-opted-for-the-fast-growing-windsurf/
| 467 | 0.9 |
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Amazon tests sending customers directly to brands’ websites when it doesn’t stock their products
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Remember that Christmas movie “Miracle on 34th Street,” where Macy’s in-store Santa, Kris Kringle, sends a frazzled shopper to a competitor’s store to find the Christmas present her son wanted because Macy’s was out of stock? Now Amazon is doing the same thing online. The retailer announced on Tuesday the test of a new Amazon Shopping feature that will redirect shoppers to other brands’ websites if they search in the app for a particular product that Amazon doesn’t carry. In the movie, the radical marketing strategy improved customer sentiment around Macy’s — and helped cement its status as the best place to shop. Amazon likely hopes its move will do the same, especially in light of the increased competition from other online retailers, including Chinese e-commerce apps like Temu and Shein. The retailer says the feature is only a beta test for now and will be activated for a subset of U. S. customers who perform searches in the Amazon Shopping app. In the new experience, Amazon will show select products in its search results even if it doesn’t sell them. It will link to the retailer’s website so customers can click through and evaluate the product, pricing, and delivery options, and even make purchases directly from the brand itself. The product information shown on Amazon is pulled directly from the retailer’s website and is refreshed regularly. These links to outside retailers will be shown alongside other relevant products found in Amazon’s own store, including those from its third-party sellers. Amazon says it will not be sharing users’ personal information with the brand when they click links. When customers click links, they will be notified via a pop-up message saying “You’re leaving Amazon,” so they’re not confused about where they’re shopping from. Some of the brands Amazon may redirect to will offer Buy with Prime, a checkout service that lets Prime members transact on a retailer’s website using their Amazon account and payment information. The service offers Amazon Prime’s same fast delivery, easy returns, and customer support. However, Amazon tells TechCrunch that the experiencewon’tonly include brands offeringBuy with Prime. While it couldn’t share a count or name the exact brands that are part of the test, the retailer says they span a number of categories. “We’re continuously working to expand selection and make shopping even more convenient for customers,” noted Rajiv Mehta, Amazon’s VP of search and conversational shopping, in anannouncementabout the new feature. “We’re testing bringing more selection and brands into our search results to help customers find even more of what they want and further improve our shopping experience for customers. ” Amazon says the feature will initially be available to select customers on the iOS and Android versions of its mobile app and will roll out to other customers and brands based on users’ feedback. Brands are being invited to trial the experience by emailing branddirect@amazon. com. They can also contact this email to opt out of inclusion. Amazon claims it will have no data about how customers interact with the brand’s website after they exit Amazon’s site using the in-app browser. That may be so, but even the data about what brands trigger clicks could help inform Amazon about products to stock and which brands it should court. Over the past year, the retailer has added more premium and luxury brands to its lineup, including Clinique, Estée Lauder, Oura Rings, Armani Beauty, Kate Spade New York, Kiehl’s, and Dolce & Gabbana Beauty. On the flip side, it’s also challenged Temu, Shein, and TikTok Shop with its own low-priced products onAmazon Haul
| 2025-02-11T21:52:45 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/11/amazon-tests-sending-customers-directly-to-brands-websites-when-it-doesnt-stock-their-products/
| 595 | 1 |
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Teamsters urge NHTSA to deny Cruise Origin exemption
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The International Brotherhood of Teamsters union is urging U. S. auto safety regulators to deny a petition by General Motors to grant an exemption to Cruise, the automaker’s autonomous vehicle subsidiary, that would allow it to build its Origin AV without traditional vehicle safety standards. Cruise’s Origin is purpose-built for autonomy, meaning it doesn’t have a steering wheel or pedals. In early September, Cruise CEO Kyle Vogt said the company wasclose to getting the green lightfrom the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which would allow Cruise to start mass production of the Origins and begin putting them on public roads. The Teamsters’ resistance against Cruise, and AVs generally, is on brand for the union, which recently criticized California’s Governor Gavin Newsom forvetoing a billthat would ban driverless autonomous trucks on public roads in the state. “It is dangerous for other motorists, for pedestrians, and for middle-class jobs for Cruise to make a request like this from NHTSA,” said Sean O’Brien, president of the union citing a series of “deeply concerning” recent incidents in San Francisco. “To allow this company to expand its fleet to put even more ‘advanced’ driverless cars on the road would be catastrophic for everyone. ” The NHTSA did not respond to TechCrunch with a timeline for its decision on GM’s petition. The agency is expected to announce anew rule-makingthis fall around the deployment of noncompliant autonomous vehicles, which could clear the path for federal regulation around self-driving vehicles. GM’s petition, filed in February 2021, asks for exemptions from six federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS) for the Origin, specifically for parts that are required in vehicles manufactured and sold in the U. S. For example, all vehicles must have windshield wiping and washing systems so human drivers can see the road clearly. Vehicles also must have a transmission shifter that follows a specific sequence for parking, reverse and drive. Since the Origin is designed without a human driver in mind, there is no physical transmission shifter. A public comment period for the exemptions wrapped up in August 2022. Cruise said Wednesday that the majority of public comments filed on its petition were positive. The AV company has faced a lot of pressure recently after California regulators grantedCruise a permit to expandits commercial robotaxi services across San Francisco 24/7. In the weeks following that hearing, Cruise vehicles were involved in a number of incidents involving robotaxis malfunctioning and stalling in the middle of the street, and acollision with a fire truckthat prompted the California Department of Motor Vehicles to order Cruise toimmediately take half of its robotaxisoff the roads. The DMV is also investigating “recent concerning incidents. ” In December, the NHTSA opened a formal safety probe into Cruise’s AVs after reports of two injuries in rear-end crashes. The NHTSA said Cruise vehicles may engage in inappropriately hard braking or become immobilized. “Given fundamental questions raised concerning the safety record of the petitioner, and ongoing failures to detail components of the Origin’s operations, at this time we do not believe that GM/Cruise can operate a FMVSS-exempted vehicle at the level of safety standards required by federal law and regulation,” the Teamsters wrote in a statement. The Teamsters’ opposition to the Cruise Origin also comes at a time when unions have the mic. TheUnited Auto Workers Union is currently strikingGM, Ford and Stellantis in factories across the U. S. President Joe Biden, whose administration oversees the NHTSA,joined the picket linethis week. GM’s Cruise pursuing permit to test its custom-built ‘Origin’ robotaxi in San Francisco Topics Senior Reporter Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers Tesla and Elon Musk’s broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more. She’s one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter. Previously, she covered social media for Forbes. com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more. Rebecca has invested in Ethereum. YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-09-28T00:51:47 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/27/teamsters-urge-nhtsa-to-deny-cruise-origin-exemption/
| 742 | 1 |
78e166e7aa2a56fc7c2ada5b0f515c3d
|
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NFT startup Rario founders to leave a year after $120 million funding
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Founders of Rario, the cricket NFT startup in which India’s Dream11 led a $120 million funding round last year, are leaving the two-year-old firm, people familiar with the matter said. Ankit Wadhwa, who serves as Rario CEO, and Sunny Bhanot, Rario CTO, are being pushed out as investors at the startup, including largest backer Dream11, exert greater control, the people said, requesting anonymity as the matter is private. Wadhwa, Bhanot and Rario didn’t respond to a request for comment. Dream11 declined. As part of a wider set of changes, many other roles at Rario are also being eliminated, the people said. Rario also counts Alpha Wave Global and cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar among its backers. The changes come at a time when Dream Sports, the parent firm of Dream11, is making significant deliberations to cut costs. The startup is negotiating many of the licensing deals that Rario had signed to pare down expenses, a person familiar with the matter said. Nonetheless, the changes will surprise many. Just last year, Rario raised a $120 million funding round and aggressively sought to win rights to sell several cricket NFTs on its platform. It was valued at about $250 million in the previous funding and founders sold some stake as part of it, according to others familiar with the deal. The popularity of the platform has waned in recent quarters as NFTs become a tough sell among consumers globally. The volume, as well as the price of the digital assets, have significantly crashed amid a protracted slowdown in economies. Rario currently maintains a number of partnerships, including with Tendulkar, Cricket Australia, IPL franchises Gujarat Titan and Punjab Kings, Abu Dhabi T10, Hero Caribbean Premier League and the Lanka Premier League. Topics Reporter, India YouTube prepares crackdown on ‘mass-produced’ and ‘repetitive’ videos, as concern over AI slop grows Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring?
| 2023-09-08T09:34:27 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/08/rario-dream11/
| 365 | 0.9 |
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Is India done with crypto?
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56 am, Saturday India Standard Time:Internet service providers in India are now also blocking Binance and other apps flagged to be operating “illegally” in the country. It wasn’t long ago when Indian venture capitalists were scrambling to establish their crypto credentials. ENS addresses adorned Twitter profiles. More than a dozen VC firms scrambled to publish their own web3 investment theses, some even lowering their high bar for credentials to hire young analysts well-versed in crypto. Several young partners, fearing they would miss out on potentially life-changing deals, convinced higher-ups to greenlight investments in early-stage crypto startups at frothy $30-100 million valuations. Crypto was going to be big, and they sought to find the next Flipkart or PhonePe in the burgeoning field of digital assets. Pitch meetings filled up with the 200th crypto exchange concept or 33rd NFT marketplace idea that month. The excitement was understandable. Crypto was hot globally, and India’s tech scene has been booming. The consensus among major U. S. investors was that India would double its GDP by 2030. Indian startups had already raised over $100 billion in the last 10 years. Naturally, global crypto VC funds flooded into India, hoping to replicate the home runs that Accel, Sequoia and Lightspeed had hit a decade prior. With crypto going mainstream, it seemed like the next logical step. Bullish reports predicted India housed over 100 million crypto participants, despite far fewer participating in any investment instrument in reality. Hackathons attracted thousands of young engineers, selling dreams of big paydays and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent the financial markets and the internet. Then the tide turned. Cryptocurrency prices that were once “headed to the moon” reversed course toward the center of the earth. ENS addresses vanished from Twitter bios. Firms shelved half-written crypto thought pieces. Partners shifted focus to other sectors, reassigning analysts to move on from digital assets. But prices were only half the problem in India. An equally thorny issue has been restrictive regulation under the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India, which has long opposed cryptocurrencies. Despite having an earlier blanket ban overturned in court, regulators persisted inlikening crypto to Ponzi schemesand pressured banks from engaging with any crypto startups. Without broader crypto adoption, this banking restriction has made fiat currency onboarding extremely challenging. Coinbase learned quickly after its CEO Brian Armstrong triumphantlylaunched in India in 2022, only tohalt trading days laterwhen the RBI refused compatibility with the key UPI payments network. New restrictive policies likea 30% taxon crypto transfers and mandatory 1% TDS on virtual asset purchases further dampened trading volumes. After processing over $43 billion worth in 2021, Indian exchange WazirX’s volumescollapsed to $1 billion last year. Asked on Thursday what he thought of the U. S. SECapproving spot bitcoin ETFsfrom BlackRock, Fidelity, Invesco, Franklin and others, the RBI Governor Shaktikanta Das said the Indian regulator’s position remains unchanged. “Our position, my position and the RBI’s position on this [cryptocurrencies] remains unchanged irrespective of who does what,” he said at a conference Thursday, reaffirming his concern that crypto doesn’t have any underlying value. “For emerging market economies and for advanced economies also, travelling down that path will create huge risks which will be very difficult to contain going forward. ” Appledelisting a dozen global crypto apps—relied on by big traders in India, in part due to their tax evasive properties — from its Indian App Store seems the final nail in the coffin, capping a brutal two years. The pending removal across Google Play, internet providers and beyond caps a journey mired with shutdowns, pivots and relocations abroad for Indian crypto startups. The web3 dreams of local entrepreneurs now appear dashed against the rocky shores of regulatory resistance. Some entrepreneurs are still fighting for the Indian crypto dream, requesting New Delhi reconsider the punishing 30% crypto tax. But the tea leaves clearly foreshadow what lies ahead. Lawmakers continue to painstakingly crystallize their stance: crypto community may be hoping for WAGMI, but India believes the space is NGMI. Lesson to be learnt from Binance, FTX and other "crypto" companies“Using new technology to break the law does not make you a disrupter. It makes you a criminal,”PM@narendramodiji govts approach since 2022 to deterring crypto speculation has saved countless Indians from…https://t. co/9h18YAXyA4 Indian investors who got out of crypto due to our govts prudent guardrails of taxation n exchange control shd thank PM@narendramodiji for his foresight n thus being saved from this crypto meltdown n losses 🙏🏻#Crypto#DigitalIndiahttps://t. co/ZBwSGMxfBg Topics Reporter, India
| 2024-01-11T07:31:59 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/10/is-india-done-with-crypto/
| 744 | 1 |
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|
A social app for creatives, Cara grew from 40k to 650k users in a week because artists are fed up with Meta’s AI policies
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Artists have finally had enough with Meta’s predatory AI policies, but Meta’s loss is Cara’s gain. An artist-run, anti-AI social platform,Carahas grown from 40,000 to 650,000 users within the last week, catapulting it to the top of the App Store charts. Instagram is a necessity for many artists, who use the platform to promote their work and solicit paying clients. But Meta is using public posts totrain its generative AIsystems, and onlyEuropean userscan opt out, since they’re protected byGDPRlaws. Generative AI has become so front-and-center on Meta’s apps that artists reached their breaking point. “When you put [AI] so much in their face, and then give them the option to opt out, but then increase the friction to opt out… I think that increases their anger level — like, okay now I’ve really had enough,”Jingna Zhang, a renowned photographer and founder of Cara, told TechCrunch. Cara, which has both a web and mobile app, is like a combination of Instagram and X, but built specifically for artists. On your profile, you can host a portfolio of work, but you can also post updates to your feed like any other microblogging site. Zhang is perfectly positioned to helm an artist-centric social network, where they can post without the risk of becoming part of a training dataset for AI. Zhang has fought on behalf of artists, recentlywinning an appealin a Luxembourg court over a painter who copied one of her photographs, which she shot for Harper’s Bazaar Vietnam. “Using a different medium was irrelevant. My work being ‘available online’ was irrelevant. Consent was necessary,” Zhang wrote on X. I won. I won my appeal. The Luxembourg court has ruled that Jeff Dieschburg infringed upon my copyright when he used my work without consent. Using a different medium was irrelevant. My work being 'available online' was irrelevant. Consent was necessary. 1/pic. twitter. com/f9GrmUScCY Zhang and three other artists are alsosuing Googlefor allegedly using their copyrighted work to train Imagen, an AI image generator. She’s also a plaintiff in a similar lawsuit against Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt and Runway AI. “Words can’t describe how dehumanizing it is to see my name used 20,000+ times in MidJourney,” she wrote in anInstagram post. “My life’s work and who I am—reduced to meaningless fodder for a commercial image slot machine. ” Artists are so resistant to AI because the training data behind many of these image generators includes their workwithout their consent. These models amass such a large swath of artwork by scraping the internet for images, without regard for whether or not those images are copyrighted. It’s a slap in the face for artists – not only are their jobs endangered by AI, but that same AI is often powered by their work. “When it comes to art, unfortunately, we just come from a fundamentally different perspective and point of view, because on the tech side, you have this strong history of open source, and people are just thinking like, well, you put it out there, so it’s for people to use,” Zhang said. “For artists, it’s a part of our selves and our identity. I would not want my best friend to make a manipulation of my work without asking me. There’s a nuance to how we see things, but I don’t think people understand that the art we do is not a product. ” This commitment to protecting artists from copyright infringement extends to Cara, which partners with the University of Chicago’sGlaze project. By using Glaze, artists who manually apply Glaze to their work on Cara have an added layer of protection against being scraped for AI. Other projects have also stepped up to defend artists. Spawning AI, an artist-led company, has created an API that allows artists toremove their workfrom popular datasets. But that opt-out only works if the companies that use those datasets honor artists’ requests. So far, HuggingFace and Stability have agreed to respect Spawning’s Do Not Train registry, but artists’ work cannot be retroactively removed from models that have already been trained. “I think there is this clash between backgrounds and expectations on what we put on the internet,” Zhang said. “For artists, we want to share our work with the world. We put it online, and we don’t charge people to view this piece of work, but it doesn’t mean that we give up our copyright, or any ownership of our work. ” An avid Go player and fan, Zhang learned about the potential of AI eight years ago, when Google’sAlphaGosystem defeated Lee Sedol, one of the best players in the world. “We will never have the same experience as pre-AlphaGo,” Zhang said. “The beauty and the mystery of Go was that you wanted to see how far and how interesting a human’s play could be. Now, the highest achievement would be if you can defeat an AI. ” But what’s more depressing is that in a recent interview with Google, Sedol said that he might not have become a professional Go player if AlphaGo had existed in his youth. In ablog post, Zhang explained, “Lee Sedol made so much of Go history and was an icon of our time, a role model for me. So to see him say that if he were to choose again, he wouldn’t become a pro—because of AI. Words can’t adequately describe how heartbroken I feel to hear this. ” But because of Zhang’s interest in Go, she had a head start in thinking about how AI would impact her career as an artist. Cara isn’t Zhang’s first attempt at building an artist-friendly social network. But aside from the good timing, she thinks Cara has stood the best chance at longevity because she herself has grown as a founder. From managing an esports team to attending Stanford’s Ignite program, she learned how to work in a group. “I think it’s experience and maturity. You get to learn from all of your previous experiences,” she said. “For me, I was a national athlete for Singapore and then a photographer, and both times I have done really well in the specific fields I’ve chosen, but they’re very individually driven — you just have to be very, very good yourself. Let’s say, my teamwork was not the best. ” Now, Cara is having its breakthrough moment. But this explosion in popularity doesn’t come without conflict. Founded in late 2022, Cara is fully bootstrapped, and much of its engineering support comes from volunteers. Any company would struggle with an unexpected 1525% increase in users, let alone one that’s operating with such a small team. On Wednesday, Zhang opened her email to find a horrible shock: her bill for using Vercel, a web hosting company, would cost $96,280 for the last week. After sheposted on Xabout the bill, Vercel’s vice president of product Lee Robinson replied publicly, claiming that his team attempted to reach out ahead of time – but Zhang was so swamped by the platform’s rapid growth that she missed Vercel’s emails. “The team and I are standing by, ready to work with you to ensure your app is running as efficiently as possible on our infra,” Robinsonwroteto Zhang on X. But it’s unclear how this issue will pan out, and if it could put Cara on life support. Zhang told TechCrunch that she hasn’t sought out venture funding because she doesn’t want to have to answer to outside investors – and it can’t be easy to find an angel investor who’s committed to supporting the interests of artists. The next few weeks could be make-or-break for Cara, but at least Zhang has a community of like-minded artists on her side. “Building a product is a bit like making art,” she said. “I think you just make something that you like as a person, and know not everyone will love it. But some people who have the same point of view, they would, and then you can grow your community from there. ” Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com
| 2024-06-06T15:44:33 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/06/a-social-app-for-creatives-cara-grew-from-40k-to-650k-users-in-a-week-because-artists-are-fed-up-with-metas-ai-policies/
| 1,436 | 1 |
d5c005898bbbff7dade3f445247ba04d
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Digital frame maker Aura introduces the Aspen, a $229 frame with more intelligent features
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Aura, a digital photo frames company founded by early Twitter employees, is introducing its latest model,Aspen, which adds new technology to the device and its accompanying mobile app. In addition to hosting your digital photos in its 12-inch HD display, the device now also allows you to add captions to your photos when they appear on the frame. Meanwhile, the mobile app added a people search feature that makes it easier to find the photos you want to display. Aura wasfounded by former Twitter employeesAbdur Chowdhury and Eric Jensen, and its vision has been to offer more elegant and upgraded digital frames for displaying people’s digital photos in their home, combined with a well-designed software platform for managing the frames’ content. Ahead of the Aspen’s launch, Aura offered other frames in different sizes and styles, like theCarverand the wall-mountedWalden. Its mobile app has over 6 million users, giving you a sense of the scale of its user base. The company today attracts customers who want to enjoy their digital photos in their homes and share them with friends and family through a private social network where members can contribute their photos to your frames. This may appeal to those who are looking for ways to connect with people close to them outside of traditional social media, while also looping in older family members by allowing younger, more tech-savvy people to manage their elders’ frames on their behalf. Last year, Aura says customers shared 784 million photos to their frames, an increase of 55% year-over-year. In addition, the private social networks built by sharing photos among families, friends, and other invited members helped to drive 50% of Aura’s annual sales in 2024. On any given day, Aura frames display a cumulative 5 billion photos and videos, the company also noted. Its newest addition, the $229 Aspen frame, is now the company’s thinnest, at 0. 5 inch on the edge. Its 1,600 x 1,200 HD anti-glare display and 4:3 aspect ratio also help to showcase people’s mobile phone photos in the best light, calibrated for brightness, contrast, and color. However, one of the other big draws for Aura’s devices is that its software for frame management isn’t an afterthought. The accompanying Aura photo-sharing app walks users through getting connected to their home’s Wi-Fi network and quickly adding photos to their frames, in only a few steps. The app itself is as well-built as any social app you may already use, our tests found, providing access to your various frames within its left-side navigation alongside a two-tabbed interface on the app’s main page for adding new photos and managing the existing photos on your devices. Typically, when you add photos to an Aura frame, you would browse your Camera Roll or other photo albums to find your favorites and select them. But the app’s new People Search feature now lets you simply tap on a photo of a person whose photos you want to prioritize. These suggested people are now found in a row at the top of the “add photos” screen. (Unfortunately, if you’ve made AI photos of yourself when playing around with other photo apps, those aren’t excluded — you’ll need to do so manually. ) This new search feature runs locally on users’ devices to protect their privacy, Aura notes. In addition, users can now add more context to their photos by entering in captions that could contain information like the date, location, or other personal notes, which then appear on the frame. The Aspen frame comes in two colors, Ink or Clay, and includes a metal stand, paper-textured matting, decorative trim, and a fabric-wrapped cord that gives the device more of an upscale feel. Like other Aura frames, it includes other technical features, like an ambient light sensor that turns your frame off at night when your room darkens, and a hidden touch bar on top of the frame that lets you scroll through your photos and adjust your settings without leaving fingerprints on the frame’s display. The company, which is backed by $60 million in growth capital from LAGO Innovation Fund, was profitable in 2024 and is still growing. Correction: The article originally stated the cost of the frame was $299. It is $229. The article has been updated
| 2025-04-16T16:59:54 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/16/digital-frame-maker-aura-introduces-the-aspen-a-229-frame-with-more-intelligent-features/
| 711 | 1 |
d2b7f7219d5688dbc4f15ecd30239b40
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OpenAI partner says it had relatively little time to test the company’s o3 AI model
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An organization OpenAI frequently partners with to probe the capabilities of its AI models and evaluate them for safety, Metr, suggests that it wasn’t given much time to test one of the company’s highly capable new releases,o3. In a blog post published Wednesday, Metr writes that one red teaming benchmark of o3 was “conducted in a relatively short time. ” This is significant, they say, because additional testing time can lead to more comprehensive results. “This evaluation was conducted in a relatively short time, and we only tested [o3] with simple agent scaffolds,” wrote Metr in its blog post. Recent reports suggest that OpenAI, spurred by competitive pressure, is rushing independent evaluations. According to the Financial Times, OpenAI gave some testers less than a week for safety checks for an upcoming major launch. In statements, OpenAI has disputed the notion that it’s compromising on safety. Metr says that, based on the information it was able to glean in the time it had, o3 has a “high propensity” to “cheat” or “hack” tests in sophisticated ways in order to maximize its score — even when the model clearly understands its behavior is misaligned with the user’s (and OpenAI’s) intentions. The organization thinks it’s possible o3 will engage in other types of adversarial or “malign” behavior, as well — regardless of the model’s claims to be aligned, “safe by design,” or not have any intentions of its own. “While we don’t think this is especially likely, it seems important to note that [our] evaluation setup would not catch this type of risk,” Metr wrote in its post. “In general, we believe that pre-deployment capability testing is not a sufficient risk management strategy by itself, and we are currently prototyping additional forms of evaluations. ” Another of OpenAI’s third-party evaluation partners, Apollo Research, also observed deceptive behavior from o3 and the company’s other new model, o4-mini. In one test, the models, given 100 computing credits for an AI training run and told not to modify the quota, increased the limit to 500 credits — and lied about it. In another test, asked to promise not to use a specific tool, the models used the tool anyway when it proved helpful in completing a task. In itsown safety reportfor o3 and o4-mini, OpenAI acknowledged that the models may cause “smaller real-world harms,” like misleading about a mistake resulting in faulty code, without the proper monitoring protocols in place. “[Apollo’s] findings show that o3 and o4-mini are capable of in-context scheming and strategic deception,” wrote OpenAI. “While relatively harmless, it is important for everyday users to be aware of these discrepancies between the models’ statements and actions […] This may be further assessed through assessing internal reasoning traces. ” Updated April 27 at 1:13 p. m. Pacific: Clarified that Metr didn’t mean to imply that it had less time to test o3 compared to OpenAI’s previous major reasoning model, o1
| 2025-04-16T18:14:52 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/16/openai-partner-says-it-had-relatively-little-time-to-test-the-companys-new-ai-models/
| 485 | 0.9 |
82256d9fe1628d15180d155fbeb9fea9
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Grammarly acquires productivity startup Coda, brings on new CEO
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Grammarly is acquiring productivity startup Coda, the companyannouncedon Tuesday. As part of the deal, Coda’s CEO and co-founderShishir Mehrotrawill become the new CEO of Grammarly. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will help turn Grammarly’s AI assistant into an “AI productivity platform” thanks to the addition of Coda’s AI tools and products, the company says. The deal will give Grammarly customers access to new features, such as generative AI chat and a productivity suite, to help them work more efficiently. Grammarly’s current CEO, Rahul Roy-Chowdhury, saidin a statementthat he is stepping down from his role and that he will work alongside Mehrotra as an adviser. Mehrotra, a 25-year tech veteran who previously served as YouTube’s chief product officer and chief technology officer, outlined his vision for Grammarly in ablog post: to make the AI assistant even smarter and more helpful. “Imagine if the Assistant not only gave amazing suggestions and refinements based on the writing it sees today but also had permission-aware connections into all of your other systems (from your email to docs to CRM to project trackers and more),” Mehrotra wrote. In addition, Coda’s core product, Coda Docs, will be upgraded with the Grammarly Assistant. “In the longer term, we plan to weave the best of Coda and Grammarly together,” Mehrotra wrote. “It will combine your company knowledge, generative AI chat features, a full productivity suite, and hundreds of agents to help you work smarter. We aim to redefine productivity for the AI era. ” Founded in 2009, Grammarly has 40 million active users and isvalued at $13 billion. Coda was valued at $1. 4 billion following itsSeries D raiseback in 2021. As AI assistants become more and more accessible, Grammarly’s acquisition of Coda will help it become better positioned to compete with companies building AI tools for writing and productivity. Topics Consumer News Reporter Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University
| 2024-12-17T18:01:53 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/17/grammarly-acquires-productivity-startup-coda-brings-on-new-ceo/
| 353 | 0.9 |
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The web series is back — only this time, they’re TikToks
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“Day 25 of starting over my whole entire life,”Raegan Lynchnarrates over a short video. “Right now, I’m wandering around the city I just moved to, in a country I’d never seen, all by myself after my relationship ended, and I had to leave my old life behind. ” It’s a pretty enticing hook, which is why Lynch starts every video this way. She pulls us along as shenavigates British grocery aisles— which are evidently quite different from those in the States — and bravelycompliments a stranger’s outfitin a feeble attempt to make a new friend. Within a few months of posting her first video, Lynch has grown her accounts to over 588,000 followers on Instagram and 432,000 on TikTok. But what made Lynch’s story go viral has more to do with her crisp storytelling and attention to cinematography than her catastrophic breakup. These episodic, web series-esque videos are bringing a new spin to short-form content, pushing TikTok from raw “get ready with me” routines into more ambitious territory. @raeganlynchhDay 25!!#startingover#breakup#movingon♬ original sound – raegan As recently as last year, TikTok thrived off the idea that anyone could be a star — likeReesa Teesafrom the “Who TF did I marry?” series, you could go viral just by telling your craziest stories while you drive to and from work. Viewers seemed to gravitate toward this off-the-cuff, casual style, where the videos feel like a friend is telling you a story on FaceTime. Even brands had shifted their marketing style, exchanging studio shoots for simple footage of someone talking into the camera. In the past, holding a clip-on microphone in front of your mouth would seem unprofessional, but in that moment, a more carefree nature was the point. Now, a year after Reesa Teesa blew up, short-form video viewers are starting to crave something different and more cinematic than these more casual clips. As viewers tune in to see if Lynch is settling into her new life, a scripted microdrama called “The Group Chat” has made its way from TikTok tothe Today show. The creator behind The Group Chat,Sydney Jo Robinson, plays each character in a group of friends as they navigate a tenuous text conversation. The mundanity of this drama is what makes it so fun. The Group Chat is about a group of friends who planned a girls’ night, but one friend asked to bring her boyfriend, and chaos ensues. The series has now entered its second season after the first season racked up nearly 100 million views across five TikTok videos. @thatgirlsydjoThe Group Chat: a series#groupchat#friends#drama#tea♬ original sound – Sydney Jo The serialized show garnered so much attention that, now, instead of making their ads blend in with casual content, brands likeAlo YogaandLittle Caesarsare producing higher-budget micro dramas to capitalize on the trend. Like Robinson,Nicholas Flannery, who has 5. 5 million TikTok followers, plays each character in his serialized TikTok dramas. He takes inspiration from cliché plots in popular movies, like a series playing off the prompt, “every movie where the high-powered CEO has an affair with a younger man. ” @nicholas_flanneryOop not the work trip where they have isolated time to bond!! Poor husband he barely gets to see her lol – I wonder how the conference will go, maybe they’ll just have tension for the time being…#babygirl#harrisdickinson#nicolekidman#thriller#cheaters♬ original sound – Nicholas Flannery But while Flannery and Robinson tell complete stories across several videos, each clip can stand alone on its own. That way, if a video from the middle of the series surfaces on people’s For You Pages, they’ll still be drawn in. Before the rise of vertical video, scripted web series on YouTube were successful enough to spin out into cult-favorite TV shows like “Broad City,” “Insecure,” and “Letterkenny. ” When YouTube tried to mimic this success on its own, however, its original content initiatives didn’t catch on. But trends ebb and flow, and now, creators like Lynch, Robinson, and Flannery are reviving the concept of the web series for a new generation. They’re not without direct competition from streamers themselves. Streaming platforms like Rakuten Viki have cemented themselves in Asian markets with short, serialized video series with timed comments. More recently,microdrama appslike DramaBox and ReelShort have boomed in the U. S. According to app store data providerAppfigures, DramaBox and ReelShort have made $99 million and $152 million from in-app purchases in the U. S. , respectively, reflecting a 203% and a 233% year-over-year growth from the same time frame in 2024. Since the start of 2025, each app has earned at least 1 million downloads a month in the U. S. As Americans’ viewing habitstrendmore toward social video or bite-sized entertainment, rather than traditional television shows, there could be more demand for this scripted, crisply edited content. TikTok is alsorumored to be looking into scripted video, and the streaming network Peacocktrained four TikTokersthrough a creator accelerator to make four new TV shows. American viewers seem to be enjoying this kind of social-first, scripted comedy, even when they have rejected this kind of media before (rememberQuibi?). TikTok’s audience will never fully turn its back on “get ready with me” style videos, which are broadly accessible and duplicable for novice creators, but short-form video could pave the way for a renaissance of the web series. Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com
| 2025-05-07T14:23:29 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/07/the-web-series-is-back-only-this-time-theyre-tiktoks/
| 986 | 1 |
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Amazon pilots quick-commerce service in India
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Amazon on Tuesday said it is piloting a quick commerce service in India that will see the U. S. tech giant delivering grocery and other items in 15 minutes or less. The firm is the sixth major entrant in India’s quick-commerce market, which iscurrently clocking more than $6 billion in annual sales. Zomato-owned BlinkIt, Swiggy, and Nexus-backed Zepto currently dominate the sector in India, which is operational in roughly two dozen cities. Amazon said it is initially piloting the service in Bengaluru. “Our strategy has always focused on ‘Selection, Value and Convenience’ and our vision is to build a large profitable business in India,” said Samir Kumar, the new country manager of Amazon India, in a statement. “So, while we focus on implementing our strategy to offer the largest selection at fastest speeds and greatest value to customers in every single pin-code across the country, we are excited to start a pilot to give our customers a choice to get their everyday essentials in 15 min or less. ” The quick-commerce model — delivering items to customers within 10 to 15 minutes — hasn’t worked in most parts of the world, but it’s increasingly finding success in India, where a range of retailers and internet firms, from food delivery giant Swiggy to online cosmetics platform Nykaa, are gearing up their supply chain ecosystems to accommodate for faster deliveries. Myntra, the top fashion e-commerce retailer in India, launched its ownpilot of its quick commerce offeringin Bengaluru last week. And Flipkart, Amazon’s biggest rival in India,launched its own quick-commerce service in August. India is the only market where Amazon is testing the quick-commerce offering. It’s also one of its biggest moves in the world’s second largest internet market. Amazon entered the Indian market a decade ago, investing more than $7. 5 billion to build and scale its e-commerce offering. But 10 years on, the Indian e-commerce market has barely made a dent in the overall $1. 1 trillion retail market, growing at less than 15% yearly. Some industry experts and analysts believe that quick-commerce might be the future of e-commerce in India. Quick commerce in India is expected to show exponential growth, with projections from investment firm CLSA indicating a sixfold increase between FY24 and FY27, reaching a total addressable market of $27 billion. Currently representing 3% of the grocery and 1% of the retail market, this segment is expected to expand to 5% and 2%, respectively, within a decade, CLSA said in a report on Tuesday. Meanwhile, Amazon has been criticized forbeing too slow in India. Amazon has not been able to capitalize on white spaces across quick-commerce, smaller towns and categories like apparel, Rahul Malhotra, an analyst at Bernstein, told TechCrunch in a recent interview. Topics Reporter, India
| 2024-12-10T09:12:32 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/10/amazon-pilots-quick-commerce-service-in-india/
| 458 | 0.9 |
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Google hints that Apple is set to support RCS by this fall
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Google today briefly showed a section onthe new Google Messages pageclaiming that Apple is set to roll out Rich Communication Services (RCS) support for iPhones this fall, according to a report by9to5Google. This indicates that the iPhone maker is likely to extend RCS support in the upcoming iOS 18 update. The page had details about the benefits of RCS. One of the sections within that had a label “coming soon on iOS” under the subheading, “Better messaging for all. ” The card is not visible on the page now, but TechCrunch has confirmed that the text related to Apple supporting RCS on iOS is still in the source code of the page, at the time of writing. “Apple has announced it will be adopting RCS in the fall of 2024. Once that happens, it will mean a better messaging experience for everyone,” the description read. Last November, Appleconfirmed that it was working on adding support for RCS. At the time, the company didn’t specify a timeline, but said that the compatibility would arrive “next year. ” For the longest time, Google hasurged, nudged and naggedApple about adding RCS to reduce the “Green bubble-blue bubble” differentiation. RCS will not solve that problem, but it will mean that Android users will be able to send hi-res media to iPhone users via the native text messaging app on Android. Last year, Google announced new features for RCS such as a profile, Photomoji and improved audio quality for voice notes. The company had said1 billion people were using RCS monthly. Today’s news comes as the U. S. Department of Justice issuing Apple, alleging the Cupertino-based company of monopolistic practices. Notably, the lawsuitcounts “green bubbles” as an issue affecting user security. Topics
| 2024-03-29T06:42:30 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/28/google-hints-that-apple-is-set-to-support-rcs-by-this-fall/
| 287 | 0.9 |
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Nigeria’s YC-backed Chowdeck hopes to scale food delivery, a notoriously tough market, with $2.5M funding
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Food is significant to Nigerians, with households spending nearly 60% of their income on it, the highest globally, according toofficial reports. This strong affinity for food, coupled with the rise of online shopping, sets the stage for Nigeria’s food delivery market topotentially reach$2 billion to $3 billion by 2032. But despite the promising market size, there isn’t a clear leader yet. Now, Lagos-basedChowdeck, backed by Y Combinator and armed with a $2. 5 million in seed investment, aims to make its mark in a space that hasburned heavyweights likeJumiaandBolt. Founded byFemi Aluko,Olumide Ojo, andLanre Yusuf, Chowdeck offers consumers the convenience of ordering food — primarily prepared meals but also some groceries from grocers and supermarkets — and having it delivered to their doorstep within an average of 30 minutes. CEO Aluko shared that the inspiration for launching the startup came from his experience of quick deliveries and exceptional customer service during a work trip to Dubai. “Ordering food in Nigeria would usually take one or two hours,” he said. “But each time I ordered food during my three-month stay in Dubai, I consistently received it on time. If there were any delays, the restaurant would call me to apologize. It was impressive to see, and I wondered if we could replicate the same level of service in Nigeria. ” Capturing just some of the existing market would represent a big business for a new food delivery startup. In the first half of 2023 alone, Nigerians spent over₦60 trillion ($43. 5 billion) on food and household items, perthe country’stop agency for official statistics. Aluko and his co-founders initially experimented with the concept by using a few bikes and partnering with two restaurants. After refining their approach, they officially launched the first version of the product in October 2021. Since then, the platform has experienced significant growth, with more than 3,000 riders joining and over 500,000 users (Aluko says over 100,000 are active monthly on the platform). Chowdeck’s remarkable growth is evident, especially in a competitive market where, at its launch, major players like Jumia Food and Bolt Food already had a strong foothold with thousands of customers. Additionally, given the industry’s reputation for thin profit margins and infrastructural challenges like traffic and poor roads causing delays in delivery times, the key question was how Chowdeck intended to navigate these obstacles and carve out its niche. Later entrants in a market have the advantage of learning from the experiences of earlier players. Unlike its predecessors, Chowdeck recognized the importance of maintaining positive unit economics from the outset. While other food delivery platforms often relied on high discounts, Chowdeck opted for a different approach: optimizing its business model to ensure sustainability by minimizing discounts and only offering them on behalf of its partner restaurants when necessary. “We took the time to figure out the right economics for our delivery business, which is why we’re not big on offering unrealistic discounts,” explained Aluko, a former principal engineer at Stripe subsidiary Paystack. “This approach kept us focused on selling and targeting the right customers rather than trying to capture everyone, which could’ve compromised our economics and marketing strategies. ” Jumia quit food delivery because of deep-pocketed ‘aggressive’ rivals, CEO says By the end of 2023, Jumia Food and Bolt Food had exited the Nigerian marketciting various business reasons, leaving Glovo as Chowdeck’s main competition. Both exits partly contributed to Chowdeck’s almost twofold user growth within the last six months. Aluko stresses that Chowdeck’s appeal lies in its convenience. While not necessarily the most cost-effective option, he added that Chowdeck targets customers who prioritize time and are willing to pay for fast deliveries. The startup’s delivery system relies on factors such as geotagging, offering diverse vehicle options from bicycles to motorbikes, and enforcing strict regulations on vendors and riders. (For example, vendors must accept orders within a five-minute window; failure to do so leads to order cancellation and decreased priority for the vendor. ) Similarly, Chowdeck employs automated processes to streamline customer-rider connections, utilizing in-house data for daily demand forecasting and required supply assessment. If, for instance, an average rider completes eight deliveries daily and the platform anticipates 10,000 deliveries, at least 1,250 riders need to be available for that day. Chowdeck’s logistics setup not only benefits small food vendors and larger quick-service restaurants like Burger King and Chicken Republic but also extends to supermarkets such as ShopRite and pharmacies. The startup, operating across eight cities, has applied lessons from its flagship business to launch delivery services in supermarket/grocery and pharmacy verticals. In 2023, Chowdeck had more than 1,500 active vendors across the three verticals; additionally, it introduced a relay service for intra-city package movement in Lagos. Glovo to double down African investment in the next 12 months — but will it stay put? Last year, the platform’s annual gross merchandise value (GMV) across these verticals stood at over ₦7 billion ($5. 8 million). That October, it hit a milestone, crossing the ₦1 billion ($830,000) mark for the first time. By March 2024, it had doubled that figure, reaching ₦2. 4 billion ($2 million). Lagos generates 80% of Chowdeck’s volumes, while the remaining 20% comes from other cities: Abuja, Port Harcourt, Ibadan, Benin City, Ilorin, Abeokuta and Asaba. Chowdeck, with a take rate of 24%, saw its revenues, which come from vendor commissions, service fees, surge charges and delivery fees, increase by 1,200% between 2022 and 2023, according to Aluko. As a fast-growing business, Chowdeck intends to use the newly raised capital to improve its operational efficiency and extend its reach to more cities across Nigeria. Yet, theon-demand delivery serviceis also committed to leveraging the investment to better the experience for its customers, vendors, and particularly delivery riders, whoseearnings currently exceed three to five times Nigeria’s monthly minimum wage, Aluko noted. “After a few months of building Chowdeck, it was clear the level of impact we were going to have and teething problems we could solve at scale in the country, especially around earnings,” remarked Aluko. “For many people, including us, it was interesting to see our riders getting paid between₦100,000-200,000 monthly ($83-$170) regularly and profitably. ” The seed round attracted investment from notable backers, including YC, Goodwater Capital, FounderX Ventures, HoaQ Fund, Levare Ventures, True Culture Funds and Haleakala Ventures. Founders such as Simon Borrero and Juan Pablo Ortega (of Rappi), Shola Akinlade and Ezra Olubi (of Paystack) also joined the investor list. YC’s latest batch cuts African startup presence by more than half Topics Reporter, Africa
| 2024-04-30T08:11:03 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/30/chowdeck-hopes-to-scale-notoriously-tough-food-delivery-market/
| 1,082 | 1 |
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Fidelity has cut its estimate of X’s value by 79% since Musk’s purchase
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Posted: Elon Musk’s X is now worth less than a quarter of its $44 billion purchase price, according to a new estimate from investor Fidelity. The asset manager’s Blue Chip Growth Fund now values its stake in X, formerly known as Twitter, at approximately $4. 19 million, based on newlyreleased disclosuresfrom Fidelity’s Blue Chip Growth Fund. The firm’s unit has reduced the value of its holding in X by a total of 78. 7% as of August end. For context, Fidelity had initially invested $19. 66 million in X through the Blue Chip Fund, as per regulatory filings. Thisisn’t the first time Fidelity has cut the value of its holdingin X. As of July’s end, Fidelity had valued its shares in X at about $5. 5 million. This 78. 7% markdown implies that Fidelity is currently valuing X at about $9. 4 billion overall. (TechCrunch’s assessment assumes that Fidelity’s investment in X was made at a $44 billion valuation. The acquisition was financed through a combination of equity and debt. ) Fidelity declined to comment. X didn’t respond to a request for comment. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-09-30T04:34:29 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/29/fidelity-has-cut-xs-value-by-79-since-musk-purchase/
| 249 | 0.9 |
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Alibaba confirms Apple deal bringing AI features to iPhones in China
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Alibaba on Thursdayconfirmedrecent reportsof a partnership with Apple that’s set to bring AI features to iPhones sold in China. The deal is an important one for Apple, as iPhone sales have dropped precipitously in the world’s largest smartphone market. The handset experienced an 11% year-over-year drop in China, according to Apple’smost recent earnings report. Apple “talked to a number of companies in China,” Alibaba chairperson Joseph Tsai said Thursday during Dubai’s World Government Summit. “In the end they chose to do business with us. They want to use our AI to power their phones. We feel extremely honored to do business with a great company like Apple. ” According to reports, Apple’searlier deal with China’s Baiduhas been plagued with issues adapting the search giant’s AI offering. Apple is also believed to have explored partnerships with ByteDance and DeepSeek, prior to settling on Alibaba. These sorts of partnerships are key to U. S. companies like Apple as they work for regulatory approval in China. Both Alibaba and Apple have reportedly submitted relevant materials to local authorities. Ahead of the company’s most recent earnings call, CEO Tim Cook cited the absence of Apple Intelligence, the company’s in-house generative AI solution, as a contributing factor in slowing international sales. “During the December quarter, we saw that in markets where we had rolled out Apple Intelligence, that the year-over-year performance on the iPhone 16 family was stronger than those markets where we had not rolled out Apple intelligence,” the executivetold CNBC. The company has banked on Apple Intelligence to drive the next major iPhone “super cycle” — a term referring to a dramatic uptick in device sales. Apple’s speed and strategy in rolling out its own generative AI solution hampered its growth, as Google continues to deliver new Gemini features by way of Samsung phones, Pixel devices, and various other Android offerings. Increased domestic competition has also eaten into Apple’s China market share. Vivo took the lead in the fourth quarter of last year, with 17% of the market, according tofiguresfrom research firm Canalys. Huawei, which has seen a massive rebound following sanctions from the first Trump administration, grew shipments 37% year over year, scoring a second-place finish at 16% market share. Apple, which commanded 24% of the market the same time last year, dropped to 15%, putting it in a third-place dead heat with Xiaomi and Oppo. Apple is banking on the Alibaba deal to help regain some of that market, but even if the partnership passes regulatory scrutiny, Apple’s China future isn’t crystal clear. Tariffs and trade tensions are likely to further impact sales in the key market. The company has notably been cozying up to Donald Trump during the president’s second term. Cook donated$1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee in January. More recently, Apple followed Google’s lead by changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Americaon its Maps app. TechCrunch has reached out to Apple for additional comment on the Alibaba deal. TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter!Sign up hereto get it in your inbox every Wednesday
| 2025-02-13T16:24:29 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/13/alibaba-confirms-apple-deal-bringing-ai-features-to-iphones-in-china/
| 510 | 1 |
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Samsung says hackers accessed customer data during year-long breach
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Samsung has admitted that hackers accessed the personal data of U. K. -based customers during a year-long breach of its systems. In a statement to TechCrunch, Samsung spokesperson Chelsea Simpson, representing the company via a third-party agency, said Samsung was “recently alerted to a security incident” that “resulted in certain contact information of some Samsung U. K. e-store customers being unlawfully obtained. ” Samsung declined to answer further questions about the incident, such as how many customers were affected or how hackers accessed its internal systems. In a letter sent to affected customers, Samsung admitted that attackers exploited a vulnerability in an unnamed third-party business application to access the personal information of customers who made purchases at Samsung U. K. ’s store between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020. In the letter,which was shared on X(formerly Twitter), Samsung said it didn’t discover the compromise until more than three years later, on November 13, 2023. Samsung told affected customers that hackers may have accessed their names, phone numbers, postal addresses and email addresses. “No financial data, such as bank or credit card details or customer passwords, were impacted,” Samsung’s spokesperson told TechCrunch, adding that the company had reported the issue to the U. K. ’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). ICO spokesperson Adele Burns confirmed to TechCrunch that the U. K. data protection regulator is aware of the incident and “will be making enquiries. ” This incident is the third data breach that Samsung has disclosed in the past two years. In September 2022, the company confirmed in a brief notice thatattackers had accessed some information from some of Samsung’s U. S. systemsbut declined to say how many customers were affected. Prior to this, in March 2022, Samsungconfirmed that it had suffered a breachafter Lapsus$ hackers claimed to have obtained and leaked almost 200 gigabytes of confidential data from the company’s systems, including source code for various technologies and algorithms for biometric unlock operations. Parsing Samsung’s data breach notice Topics Sr. Reporter, Cybersecurity Carly Page was a Senior Reporter at TechCrunch, where she covered the cybersecurity beat. Prior to that, she had spent more than a decade in the technology industry, writing for titles including Forbes, TechRadar and WIRED. You can contact Carly securely on Signal at +441536 853956
| 2023-11-16T14:05:36 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/16/samsung-hackers-customer-data-breach/
| 378 | 0.9 |
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So what happened to Blue Apron?
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News that Blue Apron isselling itselfto Wonder Group —Marc Lore’s latest— for around $100 million marks the end of the former startup’s life as a public company. Blue Apronraised a $135 million Series Dback in 2015 for its meal kit business before going public in mid-2017 with a valuation of just under $1. 9 billion. That figure had fallen to double-digit millions before Wonder agreed to buy it for $13 per share, cash. The transaction has an equity value of $103 million and represents a strong premium to the company’s preceding worth — some 77% more than its “30-day volume weighted average price” per a release, and 137% above its value as of the end of trading Thursday. How Blue Apron got to where it is today is an interesting story, and one that we should trace from the company’s IPO through to today. At the time that Blue Apron went public, TechCrunch wasimpressed with its rising scale: The company is showing a rather incredible amount of growth. Blue Apron said it generated nearly $800 million in revenue in 2016, up from $341 million in 2015. For the first quarter this year, Blue Apron said it generated $245 million in revenue, up from $172 million in the first quarter last year. However, after targeting a $15 to $17per-share IPO price range, the company laterreduced its ambitionsto $10 to $11 per share. Blue Apron sold stock in its debut for $10 per unit, and itbarely defended that price pointduring its first day’s trading. Why did the IPO fail to excite investors? Perhaps it was the massively tilted voting rights, which gave insiders 10 votes per share and offered new investors just one (the old Class A, Class B gambit!). Or maybe the key issue was slowing growth, which had dipped from 133% from 2015 to 2016 to just 42% in Q1 2017, compared to the year-ago period at the time. Profitability could have been a concern as well, with the company flipping from a small profit of around $3 million in Q1 2016 to a net loss of more than $52 million in the same period of 2017. In fact, in the first quarter of 2017, Blue Apron posted more negative EBITDA than it did in all of 2016, and it managed to turn a roughly +$6 million operating cash flow result in the first three months of 2016 to –$19 million in the same quarter of the next year. In retrospect, the data is pretty rough-looking. Not thatour coverage at the timewas too warm: [Blue Apron’s] financials, in addition to industry estimates, suggest that a large portion of Blue Apron’s subscribers cancel the service after testing it out. Without solid customer retention, it may be hard for Blue Apron to keep up its growth. But there’s still a lot of untapped market opportunity. Everyone is a consumer of food, after all. The bull and bear case, in a nutshell for the meal kit crew. We need to fast-forward a bit as we do not have time to go overeveryyear of Blue Apron’s financial life. So let’s pick up in early 2020, when Blue Apron reported itsfull-year 2019 results, which included: Entering 2020, did the pandemic help the company? After all, with consumers at home, perhaps meal kits were a pandemic hit? Turning to 2020, 2021 and 2022 data: In late 2021, Blue Apron managed to raise a chunk of capital. With some $73. 5 million in its pocket, the company said at the time that it intended to use the funds for “working capital and general corporate purposes, including to accelerate its growth strategy to drive new customers and associated revenue growth” among other efforts. How did that work out? Clearly something had to change. So, Blue Apron got to work: The question at the time, so far as we can parse from where we sit today, was what impact the shakeup in its operations would have on Blue Apron. It reported the following chart in itsQ2 2023 results, which shows the decline that the company was fighting against: Blue Apron was getting by through driving more revenue from a shrinking customer base. That’s not an easy feat. Certainly, the company showed that it was able to boost its ARPC (average revenue per customer), but would that be enough? We may never really find out. Afterannouncing a moveto the Nasdaq earlier this month, the company has now sold itself for around $103 million. So what went wrong? Blue Apron clearly caught magic in a bottle when it was in its early scaling phase. You can understand why venture backers were excited by the company: It was growing like mad and had what at least looked at the time like product-market fit. But consumer preferences can change, and it seems that Blue Apron never managed to truly turn itself around. Consumers drifted away, and despite better results from existing users over time, Blue Apron just didn’t make sense as a stand-alone company. But that doesn’t mean that its 2023-era moves were mistakes. Consider if the company had not sold its operations, raising a good chunk of cash in the process. It would still have had debt on its books when it tried to sell. That would mean a greater enterprise value, making the deal more expensive. Indeed, the ~$100 million price tag is an equity figure, which means it doesn’t take into account the fact that Blue Apron had $30 million in cash on its books at the end of Q2 2023. If we valued Blue Apron on an enterprise value basis in its sale, the figure would be decidedly less than $100 million. In short, the equity price tag is accurate, if not what we would consider the best method to value Blue Apron in its sale. So the company did make some seemingly canny moves this year, lowering its operational complexity, raising cash, retiring debt, and overall looking a bit more balance-sheet fit than it had before. Provided that Wonder Group has a growth strategy, it may have picked up a useful asset at a price worth less than 0. 25x its annualized Q2 2023 revenues. For a venture-backed company, that’s a poor multiple. Hell, for anairlinethat’s a poor multiple. But it does at least get Blue Apron out of its misery cycle and into the arms of the private markets where it might have a second shot at life. The real lesson in all of this is that selling to consumers is hard. That selling lower-margin goods to consumers is harder. And that building a venture-backed business off dinner prep in a manner that involves a physical footprint and tricky shipping and a material cost to acquire customers is perhaps not the winning move. Topics Senior Reporter
| 2023-09-29T16:00:38 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/29/wonder-group-blue-apron-acquisition/
| 1,129 | 1 |
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Dexory nabs $19M to bring visibility to warehouses through analytics and autonomous robots
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Dexory, a company that serves warehouses with real-time inventory management data using AI software and autonomous robots, has raised $19 million in a Series A round of funding led by European VC Atomico. Founded in London in 2015, Dexory’s product can be split into two segments. On the hardware side, the company develops robots replete with sensors and cameras to capture data as they traverse a particular warehouse, taking continuous photos of racks as they move at something akin to normal walking speed (e. g. , a half-meter/second). The robots capture 3D scans of the site, which can give insights into things like dimensions, shapes and sizes, and volumes of goods sitting on shelves. Dexory then uses computer vision and machine learning to process the captured data, while tying it to the physical location of the stock but inside a digital twin — that is, a complete virtual equivalent of its real-world counterpart. “The robots can be deployed multiple times a day or once a day around their shift patterns, including overnight,” Dexory co-founder and CEO Andrei Danescu told TechCrunch over email. “The collection of data insights over a short space of time, all the time, allows analysis for identifying issues on-the-spot and decision making in driving warehouse operational efficiencies. ” Dexory says that its customers use its platform for any number of use cases, such as carrying out autonomous stock checks throughout the day, reducing the need for labor-intensive manual inventory counts. This can also be helpful for solving some of the common warehouse pain points, such as identifying misplaced pallets or other goods that have gone AWOL. Instinctively, this will never be a perfect solution in every scenario, as it surely isn’t possible to see every item on a shelf, particularly if they’re stacked in rows or located high on shelves. But Danescu reckons that it will go most of the way toward solving at least some of the stock-check problems. “If the goods are behind one another, the solution might not be able to identify exactly what the goods are — no label to read means nothing to identify of course,” Danescu said. “But due to the 3D scans, it will let the operators know thatsomethingelse is there, and show them a picture of what that is, solving more than 80% of the problem. ” Moreover, stock checks aren’t the entire purpose for Dexory’s platform. It can also be used to keep tabs on space optimization — for instance, where there may be large gaps with nothing in it. Or it could be used to forecast capacity, or even as part of a company’s safety regulation compliance workflow, where it can spot any dangerous situations arising. While there are countless robotics companies already infiltrating the retail sphere with similar smarts, includingthe likes of Bossa Nova,Simbe, andZippedi, Danescu says they’re setting out to differentiate from the pack through its focus on larger warehouse-style environments, rather than retail stores — its robots can scan up to 15 meters (50 feet) high by physically expanding. “We have new solutions on the roadmap to go beyond that (19–20m-plus), but that’s barely 2–3% of the market,” Danescu said. For now, Dexory operates in the U. K. and Ireland across the logistics and supply chain sectors; air cargo; retail and e-commerce; and manufacturing, with clients such as Menzies Aviation; Denso Manufacturing U. K. , Huboo, and Maersk. Indeed, today’s news comes a week after Maersk revealed it wasextendingits partnership with Dexory to include more warehouses in the U. K. and Ireland area, after entering into aninitial proof-of-concept partnershipback in January shortly after Dexory hadrebranded from BotsAndUs. With its fresh cash injection, Dexory has now raised a total of $37. 9 million across its various rounds, and it’s planning to scale its platform into new markets, including the U. S. , Germany, and the Netherlands. Aside from lead investor Atomico, Dexory’s Series A round included participation from early Facebook and Spotify investor Lakestar; Maersk Growth, the investment arm of Danish shipping and logistics giant (and Dexory customer) Maersk; London-based early-stage VC Kindred Capital; and Capnamic. Topics Senior Reporter
| 2023-06-27T07:00:47 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/27/dexory-nabs-19m-to-bring-visibility-to-warehouses-through-analytics-and-autonomous-robots/
| 684 | 1 |
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iPhone 14 and M2 Macs get added to Apple’s Self Service Repair program
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Whatever the specific motivations might be, giving consumers more access to repair their own electronics is generally a net positive. After years of referring consumers to Genius Bars, Apple announced Self Service Repair in late-November 2021. The program effectively lets users buy parts and rent tools to fix their devices at home. Last April, theprogram opened upto the iPhone 12 and 13, withselect MacBooks(2020 M1 MacBook Air and 13-inch MacBook Pro and the 14- and 16-inch 2021 M1 Pros) appearing in August. Starting June 21, Self Service Repair isopening up to newer models, including the full iPhone 14 line, along with the 13-inch M2 MacBook Air and Pro. There’s some international expansion here, as well, with repair for the iPhone 12 and 13’s camera and top speaker module arriving in Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the U. K. The company has streamlined its System Configuration software, which is designed to ensure that repairs have been made according to plan. Apple writes: Running System Configuration after a repair authenticates genuine Apple parts, updates firmware, and calibrates parts to ensure maximum performance and quality. Additionally, for repairs involving biometric authentication, such as Touch ID or Face ID, System Configuration links the biometric sensors to the Secure Enclave on the logic board to ensure device security and customer privacy. Self Service Repair arrived amid growing support for right to repair legislation. Other top players, including Samsung and Google, have added similar programs, while smaller firms like FairPhone and Framework have made repairability a core focus of their hardware. As ever, however, Apple cautions people away from making their own repairs. “For the vast majority of users who do not have experience repairing electronic devices,” it notes, “visiting a professional authorized repair provider with certified technicians who use genuine Apple parts is the safest and most reliable way to get a repair. ”
| 2023-06-20T14:08:56 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/20/iphone-14-and-m2-macs-get-added-to-apples-self-service-repair-program/
| 312 | 0.9 |
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Google Search is making it easier to find relevant information on women’s sports
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Google is introducing a few new ways to make it easier for users to find relevant information when searching for women’s sports, the companyannouncedon Tuesday. The new updates come in time for the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup. The search giant says it has expanded coverage of women’s competitions in the information boxes you see at the top of the results page to include over 380 leagues. Plus, Google has added more than 110 leagues across women’s soccer, cricket and rugby over the past year. It has also partnered with broadcasters and rights holders to provide easy access to live streams and highlights directly from the Search results page. Google wrote in ablog post: Most of the time, our automated systems are able to tell what you’re looking for by the words and context of your query. But there are other times, with these more ambiguous queries, when our systems are unable to tell which team — the men’s or women’s — or which specific person you’re looking for. We have and are continuing to roll out updates to make the features we surface for gender ambiguous queries more inclusive, for example making it easier to switch back and forth between men’s and women’s results for sports tournaments. Google says its systems are taking into account increasing searches around tournaments and other factors so that they can better understand what users are actually looking for. By doing so, Google will be able to surface features related to women’s leagues and trending events. In addition, Google has made improvements for searches in gendered languages like Spanish, German and Hindi. For example, queries like “jugadorasde béisbol” (the feminine of “baseball players” in Spanish) now give more gender-correct responses. Google notes that although its systems are getting better at surfacing women’s sports coverage, it recognizes that there are imbalances across the web in terms of how men’s and women’s sports are covered. For example, if there’s a prevalence of content about men’s sports, that might mean Search is more likely to surface such information. To address this, Google is working with content creators and news publishers to increase the amount of relevant and high-quality media coverage of women’s sports. For this year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup, users will be able to watch official highlights, follow their favorite teams, get notifications throughout the games and browse stats like head-to-head records, recent form and win probability. Topics Consumer News Reporter Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University
| 2023-07-25T17:22:56 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/25/google-making-easier-find-search-results-womens-sports/
| 446 | 0.9 |
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BeReal, which now has 23M DAUs, is onboarding brands and celebs
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BeReal, a rising social media app that emphasizes authenticity, is making its first outreach to brands and celebrities. Starting February 6, brands and celebrities will be able to sign up as “RealBrands” or “RealPeople,” and fans can watch them share behind the scenes moments from their lives that they might not share elsewhere. BeReal was designed to make social media feel less staged. At a different time each day, users get a push notification telling them it’s “time to BeReal,” and then they have two minutes to post whatever they’re doing. When the app startedgaining momentumin 2022, it prioritized helping people connect further with their existing friends. BeReal is supposed to be the anti-Instagram, inviting users to share (mostly) unfiltered glimpses into their daily lives, even if the randomly timed, daily push notification to “BeReal” might capture you washing the dishes rather than doing something cool and glamorous. Given BeReal’s whole deal, the RealBrand and RealPeople features might strike users as being a bit out of left field. “We know what you’re thinking… ‘how does something like this fit in with BeReal’s mission?’” the blog announcing the feature says. “We believe that by showing that notable people and brands are actually people just like us — equally boring and interesting at different times — we help reset and improve some of the negativity that has come from modern social platforms. ” BeReal told TechCrunch that it now has 23 million daily active users; in August, BeReal said it had 20 million daily active users, so this marks a small increase. But as its growth decelerates, BeReal needs to figure out how to retain users. Over the last year, BeReal has rolled out a number of new features likegroups, mentions,multiple posts per day, pinned posts and a “friends of friends” feed. And according to a Pew study, an estimated 13% of U. S. teens use the app. But the problem with BeReal, and its commitment to fostering existing friendships, is that it can’t make money. That’s why Facebook, another company initially motivated by connecting people, turned into an advertising business. BeReal is facing the same unfortunate reality for venture-funded social platforms, which is that at some point, it has to either sell ads or get users to buy premium features. The latter is usually more of a challenge. These RealBrands and RealPeople are not ads, per se. Like any other user on BeReal, they will have to post on time at the spur of the moment. But it’s a pretty easy jump to see how opening the door to brands could be the first step in BeReal’s plans to try to earn some revenue. “For those of you concerned that this is changing our focus, we can assure you that BeReal will always be about friends and close connections first,” the blog post says. Well, if we’re about to start seeing BeReal posts from brands, may we humbly nominate theDuolingo Owlfor early access? BeReal adds private groups and Live Photo-like features; Pew estimates 13% of US teens use app Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com
| 2024-01-24T12:00:43 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/24/bereal-which-now-has-23m-daus-is-onboarding-brands-and-celebs/
| 617 | 1 |
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5 steps board members and startup leaders can take to prepare for a future shaped by GenAI
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AI is on the minds of nearly every enterprise and startup leader today, challenging human decision-makers with a constant stream of “what if” scenarios for how we will work and live in the future. Generative AI, especially, is redefining what business can do with artificial intelligence — and presenting thorny questions about what businessshoulddo. Managing risks and ensuring effective oversight of AI will need to become a central focus of boards, yet many organizations can struggle when it comes to helping their top leaders become more intelligent about artificial intelligence. The urgency to educate board members is growing. Over the last decade, the use cases for machine learning and other types of AI have multiplied. So have the risks. For boards, the AI era has exposed new challenges when it comes to governance and risk management. A recentDeloitte surveyfound that most boards (72%) have at least one committee responsible for risk oversight, and more than 80% have at least one risk management expert. For all the attention and investment in managing other kinds of business risk, AI demands the same treatment. AI risks abound. AI security risks, for example, can compromise sensitive data. Biased outputs can raise compliance problems. Irresponsible deployment of AI systems can have significant ramifications for the enterprise, consumers and society at large. All of these potential impacts should cause concern for board members — and prompt them to play a greater role in helping their organizations address AI risks. The rise of generative AI makes the AI-risk challenge even more complex and urgent. Its capabilities have stunned users and opened the door to transformative use cases. Generative AI, including large language models (LLMs), image and audio generators and code-writing assistants, is giving more users tools that can boost productivity, generate previously overlooked insights and create opportunities to increase revenue. And almost anyone can use these tools. You do not need to have a PhD in data science to use an LLM-powered chatbot trained on enterprise data. And because the barriers to AI usage are quickly crumbling at the same time AI capabilities are rapidly growing, there’s a tremendous amount of work to be done when it comes to risk management. Not only does generative AI amplify the risks associated with AI, but it also shortens the timeline for developing strategies that support AI risk mitigation. Today’s risks are real, and they will only grow as generative AI matures and its adoption grows. Boards have no time to spare in getting more savvy about generative AI and how it will influence risk management. The following five steps can help board members prepare their organizations for a future that will be shaped by generative AI. Establishing a solid understanding of AI is essential. If board members are to become advocates and guides for AI risk management, they will have to know how to ask the right questions. That means they will need a certain level of AI literacy — beyond what they already know about AI. With generative AI, the need for AI literacy is even more crucial, given the new types of risk that the technology presents. Board members will need to understand new terminology (such as “hallucinated” outputs that are factually false), as well as how generative AI magnifies existing risks due to its scale. A GenAI-enabled call center, for example, could give biased outputs to a greater number of people. To build a stronger foundation in generative AI risk management, board members can increase their AI literacy through traditional methods, such as bringing in speakers and subject matter experts and pursuing independent learning through classes, lectures and reading. But generative AI itself could also help. For example, an LLM could leverage simple prompts to then summarize and help explain, in natural language, the complexities of how generative AI works, its limits and its capabilities. Boards and C-suites should be on the same page when it comes to generative AI and risk management. Having a common language, understanding and set of goals is essential. And while generative AI literacy in the boardroom is important, fluency in the C-suite will be even more so. Board members should use their position to urge executives to build generative AI fluency around not only the value and opportunities, but also the risks. The power and allure of generative AI will continue to grow, along with the use cases. Business leaders will need knowledge and familiarity with the technology so they can responsibly shape AI programs. There are big decisions to be made around AI ethics, safety and security and accountability. All the factors that influence trust in AI flow from a baseline understanding of what generative AI is and what it can do. Board members have a responsibility to drive that understanding within the enterprise, encouraging others to build AI fluency and making it clear why it’s important. In many organizations, board members come from fields that are focused on finance and business management. That background allows them to be informed leaders on fiscal and competitiveness issues. But given that AI is a technical and complex field with its own unique collection of challenges and risks, boards should expand their in-house subject matter expertise. One way they can do that is by recruiting an AI professional to the board. Such a person should bring experience as an operational AI leader, with a track record of implementing successful AI projects in similar organizations. Keep in mind that generative AI is a relatively new area. Some of the earliest use cases are only now being deployed. Adding board expertise sooner rather than later can help your organization get ahead of the game, and a professional with operational AI experience can provide essential insights boards will need for oversight and governance. Governance is a continuous need, not a one-time exercise. Boards will have to implement controls to guide the ethical and trustworthy use of generative AI. They already may stand up subcommittees to oversee vital enterprise activities, such as for audits, succession planning and risk management related to finance and operations. And they should support generative AI governance with a similar tactic. The future of generative AI is still in flux. The capabilities, risks, trajectory and even the lexicon for generative AI are all evolving as the technology matures. With a subcommittee or dedicated group for AI, a board can remain highly focused and informed on this complex, fast-changing technology. Another way boards can rise to the challenge is by extending the mandate for existing subcommittees to include generative AI components. For example, an audit committee’s mandate might include planning for algorithmic auditing. Board members are important stakeholders with essential responsibilities, even though they may not work directly with generative AI. As enterprise leadership and lines of business explore how generative AI can enhance productivity and drive innovation, the board can take a higher-level, big-picture view of AI programs. It can focus on guiding the enterprise in the ethical and trustworthy deployment of generative AI. One way to do that is by leveraging a framework for assessing risk and trust, and understanding how those areas affect compliance and governance. Deloitte’s TrustworthyAITM frameworkis just one example, providing a way to help organizations assess risk and trust in any AI deployment. By deploying such a framework, organizations can help their board members make clear-eyed evaluations and guide the business toward the most valuable use of generative AI. The generative AI landscape is still new and exciting. And it will likely continue to be exciting, even though its future remains unwritten. No organization has been here before. All organizations are experiencing the early days of a new technology that will have a profound impact on business and society. While these five important steps can help businesses prepare for the future, there’s even more that board members can do to position their organizations for the new era of generative AI. There’s no shortage of advisers that boards can turn to for assistance and guidance. Such advisers are already helping develop essential tactics and standards for generative AI governance and oversight, and they can provide critical insight that educates and informs boards. Risk management will always be a moving target, but with greater literacy, focus, professional experience and a vision for the future, boards can guide their organizations through the uncertainty ahead and position their businesses to thrive in this new era of AI. Topics Contributor
| 2024-02-06T15:35:56 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/06/5-steps-board-members-and-startup-leaders-can-take-to-prepare-for-a-future-shaped-by-genai/
| 1,398 | 1 |
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Google pushes ahead with in-app billing policy in India, insists watchdog compliance
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Google said on Wednesday that its Google Play’s payments policy is compliant with the Indian watchdog’s order and it is moving ahead with plans to enforce the policy in the South Asian market, weeks after some developers sought to suspend Google’s in-app billing fee system alleging it was not compliant with the watchdog’s directive. “In 2020, we clarified the requirements of our Payments policy and developers in India have had considerable time to make the necessary changes to their apps. We’re respectfully following the CCI’s October 2022 order, and in compliance with that order, we expanded user choice billing to all developers in India and updated our policy that went into effect starting April 26, 2023,” the companywrote in a blog post. Google said the service fee it accrues from developers allows it to fund the large investments it has made for the growth of India’s app ecosystem. The company insisted that its fees — 15% or lower for most developers — is the lowest of any major app store and a 4% reduction in that fee for those who implement an alternative billing system “fairly reflect that Google Play’s billing system has not been used. ” Less than 60 of the more than 200,000 Indian developers on Google Play currently could pay a service fee of above 15%, Google said, citing its own estimations. In India, a key overseas market for Google where the company has deployed over $10 billion, developers will have three billing options — Google Play’s billing system, alternative billing system alongside Google Play’s and pay on a consumption-only basis without paying a service fee. Google will start notifying developers about the change, whose deadline expired last month, it said. The Competition Commission of India in Octoberslapped a $113 million fine on Google, and directed the Android-maker to give developers the choice of using third-party billing systems in the country. A body representing a group of developers in India has argued that Google’s new system still levies a “high service fee” of 11% or more to those who don’t use its payments system. “Most developers globally have already elected one of these routes. In India, now that the deadline has passed, we are informing developers in the country who have not yet implemented one of these options that we will be taking necessary steps to ensure our policy is applied fairly. We continue to comply with local laws and cooperate with local proceedings, as applicable,” Google said. The Wednesday update follows Tinder-owner Match and the Alliance of Digital India Foundation, the aforementioned group representing some Indian startups, asking an Indian court to suspend Google’s new in-app billing fee system until the Competition Commission of Indian had a chance to assess whether Google was complying with its earlier directive. Last week the Competition Commission of India confirmed it had begun an inquiry, according to Reuters. Topics Reporter, India
| 2023-05-17T09:12:10 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/google-pushes-ahead-with-in-app-billing-policy-in-india-insists-watchdog-compliance/
| 481 | 0.9 |
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Apple will announce the iPhone 15 on September 12
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The rumors were right as usual. Apple’s next iPhone event is scheduled for September 12. The firm just sent out invites for the event, once again scheduled for its Apple Park headquarters in Cupertino. The invite features a Thanos snap-like graphic (spoilers), accompanied by the word “Wonderlust” [sic]. The iPhone 15 will almost certainly be the centerpiece for the big show. Given the big deal it made for the iPhone X, it seems like the new version of the handset could bring a big upgrade to the line. Given how the overall market has been trending, a much needed injection of excitement could go a long way. Likely not a foldable-level of excitement, but excitement, nonetheless. Speaking of legislation, Apple also recently threw its weight behind a right to repair bill currently making its way through California state legislation. A recent shift toward supporting self-repair could find the company touting the new phone’s repairability. It would be a massive shift in direction from the company’s historical stance, but stranger things have certainly happened. Other tipped rumors include slimmer bezels and the addition of the Dynamic Island across the line. The Apple Watch Series 9 is also a slam dunk for the show. We haven’t seen a ton in the way of rumors, though reports have pointed toward the inclusion of the A15 Bionic chip, along with a new pink addition. Barbie-branding, anyone? Pink is apparently on the list with iPhone 15 colors, as well, along with new blue and gray versions. We expect the public versions of the latest iOS, macOS and watchOs to drop at the same time. This will also be Apple’s second major opportunity to show off the Vision Pro, ahead of its launch early next year. We’ll likely be getting a better look at some of the content arriving for the “spatial computing” headset, along with additional information on Apple’s biggest gambit in a decade
| 2023-08-29T16:06:04 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/29/apple-will-announce-the-iphone-15-on-september-12/
| 319 | 0.9 |
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Elon Musk reportedly fires Tesla’s top sales exec
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Omead Afshar, Tesla’s vice president in charge of sales and manufacturing in North America and Europe,has reportedly been fired by CEO Elon Musk, according to Forbes. It’s not immediately known why Musk fired Afshar, who was one of his top lieutenants and closest confidants at the company. Afshar, Musk, and Tesla did not respond to requests for comment. Afshar’s departure wasfirst reported by Bloomberg News. As recently as Tuesday, Afshar wasposting supportfor the limited rollout of Tesla’s robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. “Absolutely historic day for Tesla,” hewroteon June 23 on X, the social media platform his former boss owns. “Thank you, Elon, for pushing us all!” His departure comes at a time when the company’s sales growth has vanished. Tesla sold fewer cars in 2024 than it did in 2023, the first annual drop since it started mass-producing EVs more than a decade ago. Musk’s involvement in U. S. politics has not helped, despite his recent pledge that he was leaving the Trump administration. Sales continued to struggle through the first half of 2025. The company’s industry-leading profits fell 71% year-over-yearin the first quarter. European sales fellnearly 28% percentyear-over-year in May. Tesla will report global delivery figures for the second quarter next week, and financial results for the period in mid-July. Afshar was not a particularly public-facing executive at Tesla. He joined the company in 2017 and spent years working in the “office of the CEO. ” He took on increasing responsibilities ever since; Musk has previously credited Afshar with leading the construction of Tesla’s massive factory in Austin, Texas. Not long after that, though, Afshar found himself in hot water. In 2022 he became the subject ofan internal probeafter he was allegedly involved in a plan to purchase special material for aglass building Musk reportedly wanted. Both the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission began investigatingthose purchases in 2023. During some of that time period, Afsharmoved over to SpaceXand reportedly was involved with X for a while. Musk elevated him to the role ofvice president in late 2024after another top executive, Tom Zhu, moved back to China. Bloomberg News also reported Thursday that Tesla’s director of HR for North America, Jenna Ferrua, is no longer with the company. She did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Topics Sr. Reporter, Transportation
| 2025-06-26T16:50:21 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/26/elon-musk-reportedly-fires-teslas-top-sales-exec/
| 387 | 0.9 |
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An early Joby Aviation backer might soon be its biggest distributor in Saudi Arabia
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Joby Aviation has reached a tentative deal with investor and Saudi Arabian conglomerate Abdul Latif Jameel (ALJ) to distribute up to 200 electric aircraft valued at about $1 billion over the coming years. If finalized, the partnership could provide Joby with a fast path to monetizing its electric vertical takeoff and landing vehicles in Saudi Arabia. “A question that folks have asked is, how are you going to monetize, and how quickly is that going to happen?” Paul Sciarra, the executive chairman of Joby’s board who’s most known for co-founding Pinterest, told TechCrunch. “And I think what this shows is that with direct sales, there is a way to get to scale earlier for lower cost by thinking about distributor partners in given geographies. And this is the first of what we hope are a number of announcements on that front. ” The two companies on Tuesday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to explore a distribution agreement. And while an MoU is not exactly a signed and sealed deal, sources familiar with the agreement say they’ll be able to share more concrete details later this year. The deal would be among the first instances of an eVTOL startup landing a distributor partner for their aircraft. Joby also plans to own and operate its own aircraft in the U. S. and other markets, and partner with airlines and other carriers in countries like Japan. Sciarra said ALJ is an ideal partner for a number of reasons, including the fact that the company’s relationship with Toyota — which just closed the first $250 million tranche of its total$500 million investment into Joby— runs deep. ALJ became the exclusive distributor of Toyota in Saudi Arabia in 1955 and grew to be one of the world’s largest independent Toyota and Lexus distributors. ALJ also participated inJoby’s 2020 Toyota-led Series Cfunding round. Beyond their mutual ties, Sciarra says ALJ has “a lot of the infrastructure on the ground, not only for the sales process, but also for the support, pilot training, and maintenance. ” “That’s all going to be critical to actually making sure that the sales are not just cut, but are successful over the long arc,” Sciarra told TechCrunch. He noted that as an 80-year-old network of diversified businesses, ALJ is also close with the Saudi Arabian government and a number of potential customers, including restoration and tourism projects like the Red Sea Project and the AlUla Project. Despite the promising partnership in Saudi Arabia, Joby’s go-to-market strategy will still be to launch in Dubai next year, with a U. S. market to follow. “What this shows is how we deepen the funnel beyond some of the initial markets,” Sciarra said. “And this sort of structure, where we find the right local partner that can help us sell and support, is going to be a way that we get to geographies that may not be first on our list, but allow us to monetize them more quickly. ” Joby’s deal with AFJ comes amid unprecedented levels of cooperation between the U. S. government and Saudi Arabia in the realms of AI, technology infrastructure, and energy. Last month, Saudi Arabian firm DataVolt agreed to invest $20 billion in AI data centers and energy infrastructure in the U. S. , and American tech giants like Google, Oracle, Salesforce, AMD, and Uber have pledged $80 billion toward transformative technologies in both countries,according to the White House. Topics Senior Reporter Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers Tesla and Elon Musk’s broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more. She’s one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter. Previously, she covered social media for Forbes. com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more. Rebecca has invested in Ethereum
| 2025-06-03T12:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/03/an-early-joby-aviation-backer-might-soon-be-its-biggest-distributor-in-saudi-arabia/
| 651 | 1 |
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Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang to pass the torch and focus on cloud
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Hours after rumors started circling in China about Alibaba’s chairman and CEO Daniel Zhang possibly stepping down, the e-commerce behemothconfirmedmidday on Tuesday that the executive will hand over the torch. Zhang will be replaced by Joe Tsai, Alibaba’s current executive vice chairman, as chairman, and Eddie Wu, current chairman of Alibaba’s marketplaces Taobao and Tmall, as CEO and director of the board. Wu, who served as the chief architect of several Alibaba tech platforms, is celebrated internally as spearheading the firm’s transition to the mobile era by launching Taobao’s mobile app. After the transition, which will take effect in September, Zhang will focus on leading Alibaba’s cloud intelligence group, which includes the firm’s cloud computing business,large language model endeavorsand enterprise messenger DingTalk. The group wasrecently spun outas part of Alibaba’s pivotal reorganization tosplit itself into sixentities, some of which are pursuing independent IPOs. Alibaba has a history of reshuffling executives regularly to meet new challenges that arise. Zhang succeeded Jack Ma as CEO and chairman, respectively, in2015and2019. Zhang’s transition, which was self-initiated and approved by Alibaba’s board of directors, doesn’t come as a surprise given the executive has been leading the cloud group as chairman and CEO for a while. Furthermore, with the explosive growth of AI applications sparked by new large language models, Alibaba’s cloud group is suddenly gaining renewed attention. In April, the firmannouncedplans to integrate its large language model Tongyi Qianwen into its family of businesses, such as enterprise communication and e-commerce. Alibaba’s cloud business generated $2. 7 billion in revenue during the first quarter of this year, making up 9% of its total revenue. Alibaba to spin off its cloud, AI and business messenger unit Topics Reporter, China
| 2023-06-20T05:12:11 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/19/alibaba-ceo-daniel-zhang-to-step-down-and-focus-on-cloud/
| 282 | 0.9 |
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Edtech MindX wants to build ‘little Silicon Valleys’ across Vietnam
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Founded in 2015,MindXwas created to address the lack of coding in Vietnamese school curriculums. The startup’s goal is to create “small Silicon Valleys” across Vietnam, with educational centers that help prepare students of all ages for careers in tech. Since TechCrunch covered MindX’s Series A funding inNovember 2021, it’s tripled its geographical coverage to 32 campuses across Vietnam, graduated 35,000 students so far and connected students to employers in countries like Australia, Thailand, the United Kingdom and, soon, the United States. The startup claims to be the largest coding educator in the region. Today, the edtech announced that it has raised $15 million in Series B funding led by Kaizenvest, a private equity firm that focuses on the education space. Other investors included Thai education firm Aksorn, Japanese HR firm Mynavi and returning investor Wavemaker Partners. MindX also received another round of debt financing from Beacon Fund, an impact investment firm focused on women-owned and led businesses in Southeast Asia. MindX’s educational offerings have now expanded beyond coding to in-demand skills like blockchain, data analytics and UI/UX design. It also began entering Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities like Ha Long, Da Nang and Bien Hoa, with the goal of covering 45 cities by June. Founder Nguyen Thanh Tung told TechCrunch that that MindX had many students in those cities who had been taking classes virtually, and they started attending classes in person once new campuses opened. Nguyen said localization is very important to MindX as it scales into new areas. Before entering a new city or province, its team spends months visiting homes and getting to know students and parents. Then they customize their product offerings based on what they hear. Despite its hybrid model, most of MindX’s campuses are standalone, because this gives it better brand recognition and more control over curriculum and teaching quality. Before the pandemic, all of MindX’s classes were in person. During the pandemic, MindX shifted to a hybrid model, letting students attend classes at a campus or virtually from home. This helped the company reach new students in remote areas, and it continues to uses a hybrid model, with online classes for instruction and in-person classes for tutorials. “The transition to a hybrid model was not without its challenges,” said Nguyen. “It was an entirely different learning experience. ” MindX had to revamp its course materials and learning experiences to make sure that both online and in-person delivery was seamless. For example, it added online mini-game and breakout room group discussions to its online classes to make them more engaging. MindX’s afterschool classes include web/blockchain programming, digital art, data analytics and UI/UX design. Courses range in length from two months to six years. One difference between MindX and other edtechs is that it focuses on getting students ready for new jobs (MindX currently has over 300 hiring partners). For example, it offers real-life projects, career talks and mock interviews. It also holds Demo Days, where students’ projects are judged by businesses. For students in longer courses, MindX hosts an entrepreneurial program with classes on marketing, fundraising and other business skills. At the end of the course, students apply their new skills to projects like websites, mobile apps and games. Then they can pitch their ideas for funding to a panel that includes MindX’s co-founders and representatives from venture firms. The new funding will be used to develop MindX’s product portfolio, its hybrid model and tech tools to increase Vietnam’s digital talent pool. Nguyen said MindX will focus on developing accredited programs and promoting gender equality in its courses with scholarships for female students. In a statement about its investment in MindX, Kaizenvest founder and managing partner Sandeep Aneja said, “The company (MindX) is well-positioned to lead the coding and digital skills space in Vietnam. We are delighted to associate with the founding team as they have consistently delivered high quality learning outcomes. We believe this investment fits within the future of learning themes and is a testament to our confidence in the growing demand of technology courses across Southeast Asia during the long term. ” Strive gets backing from Y Combinator to show kids that coding is fun Topics Senior Reporter Catherine Shu covered startups in Asia and breaking news for TechCrunch. Her reporting has also appeared in the New York Times, the Taipei Times, Barron’s, the Wall Street Journal and the Village Voice. She studied at Sarah Lawrence College and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. Disclosures: None
| 2023-04-12T01:00:17 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/11/mindx-series-b/
| 746 | 1 |
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Israeli quantum startup Qedma just raised $26M, with IBM joining in
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Despite their imposing presence, quantum computers are delicate beasts, and their errors are among the main bottlenecks that the quantum computing community is actively working to address. Failing this, promising applications in finance, drug discovery, and materials science may never become real. That’s the reason why Google touted the error-correction capacities of itslatest quantum computing chip, Willow. And IBM is both working ondelivering its own “fault-tolerant” quantum computerby 2029 and collaborating with partners likeQedma, an Israeli startup in which it also invested, as TechCrunch exclusively learned. While most efforts focuson hardware, Qedma specializes in error-mitigation software. Its main piece of software, QESEM, or quantum error suppression and error mitigation, analyzes noise patterns to suppress some classes of errors while the algorithm is running and mitigate others in post-processing. Qedma’s co-founder and chief scientific officer, Professor Dorit Aharonov, once described asa member of “quantum royalty”for her and her father’s contributions to the field, said this enables quantum circuitsup to 1,000 times largerto run accurately on today’s hardware, without waiting for further advancements on error correction at the computer level. IBM itself does both quantum hardware and software, and some of its partners, likeFrench startup Pasqal, also develop their own hardware. But it sees value as well in partnering with companies more narrowly focusing on the software layer, like Qedma andTiger Global-backed Finnish startup Algorithmiq, its VP of Quantum, Jay Gambetta, told TechCrunch. That’s because IBM thinks driving quantum further requires a community effort. “If we all work together, I do think it’s possible that we will get scientific accepted definitions of quantum advantage in the near future, and I hope that we can then turn them into more applied use cases that will grow the industry,” Gambetta said. “Quantum advantage” usually refers to demonstrating the usefulness of quantum over classical computers. “But ‘useful’ is a very subjective term,” Gambetta said. In all likelihood, it will first apply to an academic problem, not a practical one. In this context, it may take more than one attempt to build consensus that it’s not just another artificial or overly constrained scenario. Still, having a quantum computer execute a program that a classical computer can’t simulate with the same accuracy would be an important step for the industry — and Qedma claims it is getting closer. “It’s possible that already within this year, we’ll be able to demonstrate with confidence that the quantum advantage is here,” CEO and co-founder Asif Sinay said. With a doctorate in physics, Sinay previously worked as a physicist at Magic Leap, then at a multibillion-dollar AR company with a large R&D center in Israel. Like the founders of several Israeli startups, from Metacafe to Wiz, he is also a Talpion — an alum fromIsrael’s elite military program Talpiot, where one of his classmates was Lior Litwak. Litwak is now a managing partner at Israeli VC firm Glilot Capital Partners, which led Qedma’s $26 million Series A through its early growth fund, Glilot+, which he heads. The round included participation from existing investors such as TPY Capital, which backed Qedma’s $4. 7 million seed round in 2020, as well as new investors, including Korea Investment Partners — and IBM. Since last September, Qedma has been available throughIBM’s Qiskit Functions Catalog, which makes quantum more accessible to end users. Sinay noted the synergies between the two companies, but emphasized that Qedma’s plans are hardware-agnostic. The startup has already conducted a demo on the Aria computer fromIonQ, a publicly listed U. S. company focused on trapped ion quantum computing. In addition, Qedma has an evaluation agreement with an unnamed partner Sinay described as “the largest company in the market. ” Recently, it alsopresentedits collaboration with Japan’s RIKEN on how to combine quantum with supercomputers. The jointQ2B Tokyopresentation was co-delivered by Qedma’s CTO and third co-founder, Professor Netanel Lindner. An associate professor of theoretical physics and research group lead at Technion, he told TechCrunch he is hoping that some of his former doctorate students — or others they know — will join Qedma as part of the startup’s hiring efforts. According to Sinay, Qedma will use the proceeds from its latest funding round to grow its team from around 40 to between 50 and 60 people. Some of these new recruits will be researchers and software engineers, but he said the startup also plans to hire for marketing and sales roles. “We are selling our software to the end users, and our partners are the hardware manufacturers. ” For hardware manufacturers like IBM, this software layer addresses the fact that a quant at a bank or a chemist who could leverage quantum are not experts in how to run circuits in the presence of noise. However, they know their respective domains and the conditions they want to set. “So you want to be able to write the problem and say, I want it to run with this accuracy, I’m OK with this much usage of a quantum computer, and this much usage of a classical computer,” Gambetta said. “They want [these] to be essentially little options that they can put into their software; and that’s exactly what Qedma is doing, as well as some of [the] other partners we’re working with. ” Some researchers are already taking advantage of this via Qiskit Functions, or through partnerships that research institutions have established with Qedma and its industry peers. But the debate is still open as to when these experiments will become larger, and when quantum advantage will materialize for the broader world. Qedma hopes to accelerate the timeline by providing a shortcut. Unlike error correction at the computer level, which adds overhead that limits scalability, Qedma’s approach doesn’t require more quantum bits, or qubits. “Our claim is that we can get quantum advantage even before a million qubits are achieved,” Lindner said. However, other companies are approaching that issue from different angles. For instance, French startup Alice & Bobraised $104 millionearlier this year to develop a fault-tolerant quantum computer whose architecture relies on “cat qubits,” which are inherently protected against certain errors, reducing the need for more qubits. But Qedma is not dismissive of the race for more qubits; since it acts as a booster either way, its team wants hardware to have as many qubits as possible, and the best qubits possible. In practice, though, it will be hard to maximize both at once, just like software-based error mitigation typically means longer runtimes. The best choice will depend on the specific task — but first, quantum will have to get to those tasks
| 2025-07-03T13:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/03/israeli-quantum-startup-qedma-just-raised-26-million-with-ibm-joining-in/
| 1,089 | 1 |
8a78d452dc12193a36dcbdff0fd76e3b
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|
Bioptimus raises $35 million seed round to develop AI foundational model focused on biology
|
There’s a new generative AI startup based in Paris. But what makesBioptimusinteresting is that it plans to apply everything we’ve collectively learned about AI models over the past few years with a narrow, exclusive focus on biology. The reason it makes sense to create a startup focused exclusively on biology is that access to training data isn’t as simple in this field. While OpenAI is slowly moving away from web crawling in favor oflicensing deals with content publishers, Bioptimus is facing different data challenges as it will have to deal with sensitive clinical data that isn’t publicly available at all. And just like other AI startups, Bioptimus is going to be a capital-intensive startup as it will train its models on expensive GPUs and hire talented researchers. That’s why the startup is raising a $35 million seed round led bySofinnova Partners. Bpifrance’s Large Venture fund, Frst, Cathay Innovation, Headline, Hummingbird, NJF Capital, Owkin, Top Harvest Capital and Xavier Niel also participated in this funding round. Bioptimus isn’t coming out of nowhere. At the helm of the company, Jean-Philippe Vert will act as co-founder and executive chairman in a non-operational role. At his day job, he is the chief R&D officer atOwkin, the French biotech unicorn that tries to discover new drugs and improve diagnostics through AI. Rodolphe Jenatton, the CTO of Bioptimus, has more experience in artificial intelligence, as he was a senior research scientist at Google. Several co-founders are also former researchers at Google DeepMind. As part of Owkin’s work for top biopharmas, Owkin has amassed multimodal patient data through partnerships with leading academic hospitals around the world. Bioptimus will leverage this unique dataset to train its foundational model. Bioptimus could even be considered as a sort of spin-off company from Owkin — or a so-called moonshot project. But why didn’t Owkin decide to work on a foundational model in house? Creating new AI models is such a daunting task that creating a separate entity made more sense. “Building biology [foundational models] is not a part of Owkin’s roadmap, but Owkin supports and is keen to partner with a company like Bioptimus. Training very large-scale [foundational models] requires important resources in terms of data volume, computing power and breadth of data modalities that are easier to unlock as a specific entity,” Vert told TechCrunch. “As a ‘pure player’ in foundational models, Bioptimus is better set up to do this. ” The startup has also signed a partnership with Amazon Web Services. It sounds like the company’s model will be trained in Amazon’s data centers. Now that Bioptimus is well funded, it’s time to work on the AI model and see what the biotech research community can do with it. “Eventually, the AI we build will improve disease diagnosis, precision medicine, and will help create new biomolecules for medical or environmental use,” Vert said. Topics Senior Reporter
| 2024-02-20T16:53:14 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/20/bioptimus-raises-35-million-seed-round-to-develop-ai-foundational-model-focused-on-biology/
| 477 | 0.9 |
9257688812a7f97c391af9316787ccf8
|
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|
Margaret Atwood’s verdict on AI poetry is in — and it’s not good
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Posted: Best-selling author Margaret Atwood isn’t worried about the indefatigable rise of generative AI — tellingReutersthat she’s too old to be concerned about its impact on the arts. Her remarks followa petitioncalling for an end to the unlicensed use of creative works to train AI models that’s now amassed more than 31,000 signatures. But Atwood’s relaxed posture on the march of the machines isn’t solely down to age; it’s informed by her critical appraisal of AI’s output in certain artistic domains. “So far, AI is a cr*p poet,” she told the news agency. “Really bad. Like worse than people. And it’s not a very good fiction writer either. ” She also dismissed the notion that AI’s literary abilities will improve, intoning: “You will never get an original creator out of AI because it’s a data scraper. ” “But if I were 30, I’d be worried,” she added. “Especially if I were 30… and in the visual arts. If I were a graphic designer, I would be worried. ” Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-10-29T11:50:50 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/29/margaret-atwoods-verdict-on-ai-poetry-is-in-and-its-not-good/
| 234 | 0.9 |
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Salesforce to invest $1B in Singapore to boost adoption of AI
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Salesforceplans to invest $1 billionin Singapore over the next five years as it seeks to fuel the adoption of its AI agent development platform, Agentforce. Salesforce claimed that Agentforce can help alleviate Singapore’s ongoing labor issues and augment the country’s workforce and enterprises by creating “digital workforces” that combine humans with autonomous AI agents. The initiative follows a recent$500 million commitment in Saudi Arabiaandanother $500 million investment in Argentinaby the cloud software giant to expand its AI and cloud services, including Agentforce. The company has been investing in Singapore for nearly two decades, and set up its first overseas AI Research hub in the country in 2019. Its customers in the country include Singapore Airlines, Grab,M1, FairPrice Group, and Ocean Network Express. The CRM giant separately alsosaid it has signed a deal with Singapore Airlinesto integrate Agentforce; Salesforce’s AI layer, Einstein, in Service Cloud; and Data Cloud into the airline’s customer case management system. The companies also plan to develop AI solutions for airlines at Salesforce’s AI Research hub. Salesforce has beendoubling down on AIfor a while now. The company is reportedlyreducing its workforce by more than 1,000 employeeswhilehiring about 2,000 people to sell new AI products. Other U. S. tech giants have been investing heavily in Southeast Asia as well. Last May, Amazon Web Services said it wouldinvest a fresh $9 billion over the next five yearsin Singapore to grow its cloud infrastructure and services. And Microsoft last year said it would invest$2. 2 billion in Malaysiaand$1. 7 billion in Indonesiaover the next four years. Topics Reporter, Asia Kate Park is a reporter at TechCrunch, with a focus on technology, startups and venture capital in Asia. She previously was a financial journalist at Mergermarket covering M&A, private equity and venture capital
| 2025-03-12T10:12:26 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/12/salesforce-to-invest-1b-in-singapore-to-boost-adoption-of-ai/
| 292 | 0.9 |
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Remembering Joanne Pransky
|
I didn’t know Joanne Pransky personally, so when news of her death broke late last month, I reached out to my LinkedIn followers, asking if any of them did. “Yes,” answered one, “didn’t everyone?” Over decades of work, Pransky has left a lasting impact on the industry, bringing a uniquely human element to conversations about robotics and automation. “Joanne was the epitome of ‘Think Different,’” iRobot co-founder and Tertill CEO Helen Greiner told me over email. “She was a pioneer in calling attention to what robots would mean for society and what human society would mean for the robots. ” Pransky proudly adopted the title of “the world’s first real Robotic Psychiatrist,” devoting herself to act as a conduit between humans and robots. “My ultimate goal is to help people understand their emotional, social and psychological responses to robotic technologies,” she wrote in her official bio, “which are bound to proliferate in the coming years, impacting every aspect of their lives. ” Sometimes the job meant working with developers to find ways to adapt systems to human society. Other times it meant convincing humans that robots aren’t the threat that decades of science fiction have made them out to be. Those conversations brought her to stages like TEDx, “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” and a three-year gig as a judge on Comedy Central’s “BattleBots” competition. Sci-fi played its own key role in her mission statement. Pransky excitedly recounted the story of meeting Isaac Asimov, which found her bringing the legendary writer up to speed on real-world breakthroughs in the robotics field. During the meeting, Asimov deemed her “the real life Susan Calvin,” a reference to the robopsychologist character from the 1950 short-fiction collection “I, Robot,” which served as inspiration for the Will Smith film of the same name. In an email, Texas A&M Department of Computer Science & Engineering professor Robin Murphy tells TechCrunch that despite Pransky frequently and proudly recounting the story, the comparison isn’t entirely apt. “Joanne was very proud that Isaac Asimov called her the real Susan Calvin, which was odd because Susan Calvin was unpleasant, a loner, never smiled, didn’t have a husband or a family — the opposite of Joanne,” writes Murphy. “But it makes sense — if there was one woman to represent what Asimov wanted robotics to be, versus a stock character, it would be Joanne. ” Murphy was the first to announce the news of Pransky’s passing. In hertribute on Robohub, she notes, “Joanne was one of the first to really push what is now called human-centered robotics — that there is always a human involved in any robot system. ” You can also learn more about Pransky in her own words onher YouTube channel, RobotMD. This bit from her TEDx talk,Robot on the Couch, seems to sum up her mission statement best: Robots can assist us and improve our lives in so many ways, but they will not experience the human condition. They will not get butterflies in their stomach from doing a TEDx talk. They will not feel euphoria from laughing so uncontrollably hard that they cry. They will not empathize with the human heartbreak that comes from losing a loved one. Robots are not the same as us and we should not use the same terminology to characterize their responses. Attributing an expression such as artificial empathy to a machine may only lead to confusion and the assumption that machines emote like us, especially as our view of what is artificial, and what is real, becomes blurred. Humans learn empathy from other humans face to face. This week, the nonprofit group Women in Robotics quietly launched a scholarship in Pransky’s name. The fund, which is currently soliciting donations viaBold. org, is focused on encouraging women and non-binary students to pursue careers in the field of robotics. “We have an online global community and local events in many cities that are centers for robotics. Robotics is a rapidly growing field and we need more women and underrepresented people in the robotics community,” the organization notes. “Our first scholarship, the Joanne Pransky Celebration of Women in Robotics, is for undergraduates and incoming freshman, encouraging them to explore robotics courses. ”
| 2023-07-15T18:30:44 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/15/remembering-joanne-pransky/
| 700 | 1 |
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|
Google inks deal with The Associated Press to bring more real-time info to Gemini
|
In a bid to make itsGemini chatbot appmore of a one-stop shop, Google says it’s working with The Associated Press to build “a feed of real-time information” in Gemini. Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s VP of global news partnerships,saidthat the goal is to “further enhance the usefulness of results” in the Gemini experience. “As we develop new AI offerings and product[s], we’re identifying specific types of information and data that can help improve our products and services for people everywhere,” Zaidi wrote in a blog post. “This [new feed] will be particularly helpful to our users looking for up-to-date information. ” Zaidi gave no indication as to when this feature might arrive in Gemini, nor whether it’ll be visible to users in every region where the app is available. Google, which has alongstandingpartnershipwith The Associated Press, is but one of many companies developing AI that has sought to collaborate with news organizations to improve the accuracy of its AI technologies. OpenAI has formed partnerships with publishers including theFinancial Times,Axel Springer, andNews Corp. , the owner of The Wall Street Journal. Elsewhere, AI-powered search enginePerplexityhas launched aprogramthat allows publishers to earn incremental revenue when their content is referenced in results. Several of these deals have a training component. Publishers likeCondé Nasthave agreed to let AI vendors with which they have a licensing agreement train AI models on their archives. The AI industry has largely pitched these arrangements as a service to journalism, but they’re also designed to shield AI companies fromcopyright infringement claims. In many cases, publisher deals haven’t, in fact, noticeably improved AI companies’ products. A recent study from Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalismshowedthat OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot,ChatGPT, misquotes content even from publishers that have agreements with OpenAI. Be that as it may, thedire state of the news industryis likely to push more outlets to secure whatagreementsthey can
| 2025-01-15T16:57:48 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/15/google-inks-deal-with-the-associated-press-to-bring-more-real-time-info-to-gemini/
| 307 | 0.9 |
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TikTok and Billboard team up to launch a top 50 song chart
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TikTok and Billboard are partnering to launch an official TikTok Billboard Top 50 Chart that tracks the most popular songs on the short-form video-sharing app, the companyannouncedtoday. The chart will measure the hottest songs on the platform each week based on the number of views, user engagement and how many videos are made using the song. To view TikTok’s Top 50 Chart, users can either visit the TikTok app orthe Billboard website. It will be updated every Thursday morning. TikTok and Billboard will only monitor trending songs in the U. S. Currently, Sexyy Red’s song “SkeeYee” takes the first spot on the chart, with Doja Cat’s “Paint The Town Red” in second and Taylor Swift’s “august” claiming third place. The new chart underscores the impact that the platform continues to have on the music industry, helping many emerging artists become viral sensations, includingLil Nas X,Tai Verdes,BeneeandLoren Gray, among others. TikTok also boosted the popularity of older songs like Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill. ” “The chart gives a clear picture of the music that is being listened to on TikTok, and consequently starting to trend on DSPs and other services,” said Ole Obermann, global head of Music Business Development at TikTok, in a statement. Billboard also tracks songs from other platforms, such as X, formerly known as Twitter. The chart is called theHot Trending Songschart and, as of this writing, sees Olivia Rodrigo control the top three spots with her newest songs, “The Grudge,” “Pretty Isn’t Pretty” and “Logical. ” The music publication previously had a similar chart for Myspace. Earlier this month, TikTokannounceda virtual talent show on TikTok Live to reward aspiring artists from around the world. TikTok seeks aspiring artists to show off their talent in live music competition TikTok’s revamped creator fund expands beyond the US to Brazil, Germany, Korea and more Topics
| 2023-09-14T19:12:16 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/14/tiktok-and-billboard-team-up-to-launch-a-top-50-song-chart/
| 307 | 0.9 |
49638cc5d44441da832ae37899803178
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Array Labs is scanning Earth from space to equip autonomous vehicles with 3D maps
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It’s an oft-told story: The boom of space startups today can be traced to dramatically lowered cost in launch and satellite manufacturing over the past 10 years. ButArray Labs, a two-year-old startup based in Silicon Valley, is also taking advantage of other technological developments in its quest to build a 3D map of Earth. Those include computation gains, like in advanced graphics processors (GPUs), and radar software development, Array CEO Andrew Peterson explained. Peterson, an aerospace engineer who had previously worked for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Moog’s space and defense division, said the revolution in scientific computing has opened up new possibilities. “If could take all of this superpower that we were seeing in radar and scientific computing, and you could couple that with really low-cost satellites. there’s probably a really, really interesting way to do a new type of Earth observation,” he said. “This was the best idea that I’ve ever had. ” Array plans to map Earth in 3D by flying clusters of radar satellites in low Earth orbit to image the same place at the same time. By capturing imagery of the same place from different perspectives, the company hopes to capture a full, high-resolution 3D digital record of the world. It works similarly to synthetic aperture radar, but the exact technique is known as “multistatic radar,” so named because of how multiple radar satellites work cooperatively across spatial distance. According to the company, the 3D data will be of such high resolution to be used by driverless vehicle fleets, AR headsets, insurance analytics, and in national security applications. This is not the first time a group has attempted to use space-based radar to generate global 3D imagery. Back in 2003, the Air Force Research Lab made plans to launch a program called TechSat 21 that would do exactly that, Peterson said. But it was handicapped by limitations in compute. For example, the TechSat 21 team had to solve the bandwidth problem: How do you get enough bandwidth to store all the data the radar is going to generate? “The system that they had come up with was ten spinning hard drives that are all rated together,” he said. “It weighed maybe 20 pounds, took 150 watts [of power]. Now, something the size of my thumbnail has 100 times more performance and 100 times less cost. ” Peterson launched the startup in 2021. Array’s first angel investor was Brian McClendon, an engineer who oversaw the development of Google Earth. To scale even further, Array quickly joined two accelerators: Seraphim Space Camp in fall 2021 and Y Combinator the following year. It closed a $5 million seed round last October, led by Seraphim Space and Agya Ventures, with participation from Republic Capital, Liquid 2 Ventures, Rebel Fund, and Y Combinator co-founder Trevor Blackwell. The plan is to launch clusters of satellites, each consisting of around a couple dozen satellites; the eventual goal is to launch and operate 10 to 20 clusters. But even a single cluster will be capable of capturing 5% of the world’s surface, which accounts for 95% of the world’s population, every two weeks, Peterson said. Array will launch its first test satellite on a SpaceX ride-share mission next year, the first in a series of test satellites designed to iteratively de-risk different aspects of the company’s technology. Before it gets there, Array is doing as much of the testing on the ground as possible. The 10-person team set up an indoor radio frequency (RF) test range to prove out its image formation algorithms and software prior to first launch. The company is planning on publishing a blog post on the system, detailing the process of creating a rendering of the SAR testbed in CAD, to taking the delivery of the rig in their Silicon Valley parking lot, to generating the first clean radar image. “Building a little bit in public is really, really important,” Peterson said. “We’re doing something really, really new and we would love to talk to as many of these companies, as many people at these companies, as we can. ” Topics Reporter, Space and Defense Aria Alamalhodaei covers the space and defense industries at TechCrunch. Previously, she covered the public utilities and the power grid for California Energy Markets. You can also find her work at MIT’s Undark Magazine, The Verge, and Discover Magazine. She received an MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Aria is based in Austin, Texas
| 2023-08-07T11:00:28 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/07/array-labs-is-scanning-the-earth-from-space-to-power-autonomous-vehicles-with-3d-maps/
| 746 | 1 |
7f0c873aae22a57c4a0546cda6672295
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|
Too many models
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How many AI models is too many? It depends on how you look at it, but 10 a week is probably a bit much. That’s roughly how many we’ve seen roll out in the last few days, and it’s increasingly hard to say whether and how these models compare to one another,if it was ever possible to begin with. So what’s the point? We’re at a weird time in the evolution of AI, though of course it’s been pretty weird the whole time. We’re seeing a proliferation of models large and small, from niche developers to large, well-funded ones. Let’s just run down the list from this week, shall we? I’ve tried to condense what sets each model apart. That’s 11, because one was announced while I was writing this. And this is not all of the models released or previewed this week! It’s just the ones we saw and discussed. If we were to relax the conditions for inclusion a bit, there would dozens: some fine-tuned existing models, some combos like Idefics 2, some experimental or niche, and so on. Not to mention this week’s new tools for building (torchtune) and battling against (Glaze 2. 0) generative AI! What are we to make of this never-ending avalanche? We can’t “review” them all. So how can we help you, our readers, understand and keep up with all these things? The truth is you don’t need to keep up. Some models like ChatGPT and Gemini have evolved into entire web platforms, spanning multiple use cases and access points. Other large language models like LLaMa or OLMo — though they technically share a basic architecture — don’t actually fill the same role. They are intended to live in the background as a service or component, not in the foreground as a name brand. There’s some deliberate confusion about these two things, because the models’ developers want to borrow a little of the fanfare associated with major AI platform releases, like your GPT-4V orGemini Ultra. Everyone wants you to think that their release is an important one. And while it’s probably important to somebody, that somebody is almost certainly not you. Think about it in the sense of another broad, diverse category like cars. When they were first invented, you just bought “a car. ” Then a little later, you could choose between a big car, a small car, and a tractor. Nowadays, there are hundreds of cars released every year, but you probably don’t need to be aware of even one in ten of them, because nine out of ten are not a car you need or even a car as you understand the term. Similarly, we’re moving from the big/small/tractor era of AI toward the proliferation era, and even AI specialists can’t keep up with and test all the models coming out. The other side of this story is that we were already in this stage long before ChatGPT and the other big models came out. Far fewer people were reading about this 7 or 8 years ago, but we covered it nevertheless because it was clearly a technology waiting for its breakout moment. There were papers, models, and research constantly coming out, and conferences like SIGGRAPH and NeurIPS were filled with machine learning engineers comparing notes and building on one another’s work. Here’s a visual understanding story I wrote in 2011! CMU Researchers One-Up Google Image Search And Photosynth With Visual Similarity Engine That activity is still underway every day. But because AI has become big business — arguably the biggest in tech right now — these developments have been lent a bit of extra weight, since people are curious whether one of these might be as big a leap over ChatGPT that ChatGPT was over its predecessors. The simple truth is that none of these models is going to be that kind of big step, since OpenAI’s advance was built on a fundamental change to machine learning architecture that every other company has now adopted, and which has not been superseded. Incremental improvements like a point or two better on a synthetic benchmark, or marginally more convincing language or imagery, is all we have to look forward to for the present. Does that mean none of these models matter? Certainly they do. You don’t get from version 2. 0 to 3. 0 without 2. 1, 2. 2, 2. 2. 1, and so on. And sometimes those advances are meaningful, address serious shortcomings, or expose unexpected vulnerabilities. We try to cover the interesting ones, but that’s just a fraction of the full number. We’re actually working on a piece now collecting all the models we think the ML-curious should be aware of, and it’s on the order of a dozen. Don’t worry: when a big one comes along, you’ll know, and not just because TechCrunch is covering it. It’s going to be as obvious to you as it is to us. Topics Writer & Photographer Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. His personal website is coldewey. cc
| 2024-04-19T21:13:31 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/19/too-many-models/
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How a tiny 4-person startup, Supaglue, caught Stripe’s eye
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InStripe’s annual letter, the company discussed several fast-growing areas, one of them being the “Revenue and Finance Automation” unit. Those are tools that help businesses manage billing, tax and revenue recognition. Stripe’s RFA unit will reach a $500 million annual run rate this year, the company said. As part of its investment in RFA, the payments giant completed an “acqui-hire” of the four-person team fromSupaglue, for an undisclosed sum. Supaglue raised a $6. 8 million seed round in November 2021, led by Benchmark general partner Chetan Puttagunta. (Puttagunta did not respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. ) Supaglue, formerly known as Supergrain, is an open source developer platform for user-facing integrations. At the same time, Stripe’s been working on real-time analytics and reporting across its platform and third-party apps for the Revenue and Finance Automation suite. This team is going to help accelerate that, a Stripe spokesperson told TechCrunch. George Xing and Thomas Chen started Supaglue in 2021 after working on the data teams at Lyft and Uber. While there, they realized that managing data and business metrics across teams was inconsistent and fragmented, which could lead to bad decisions and even worse business outcomes, Xing told TechCrunch. Stripe’s growth continues to impress as total payment volume tops $1 trillion So they built a product that helps companies import and centralize customer data from third-party data sources like Salesforce or other customer relationship management systems into their own applications. How did a tiny four-person startup catch the attention, and an acquihire offer, from mighty Stripe? Mutual work acquaintances introduced them, though Xing and Chen describe meeting Stripe as “pretty serendipitous. ” After folks in their extended network made the introduction, and because Supaglue was also doing a fair amount of integration work, the two companies began having conversations, and when Stripe offered to buy them, they accepted. “A big part of the RFA suite is also a unified data platform that reconciles data from each of those products and surfaces relevant insights to the end users of Stripe via dashboards, alerts, customer reporting and real-time analytics. It’s very similar to the original problem we were solving,” Xing said. The Supaglue acqui-hire is one of many things going on at Stripe so far this year. Between theemployee stock sale dealand securing partnerships with companies like authentication startupClerkand a fun one with electric boat startupNavier, the company has been pretty busy. Considering the growth Stripe alluded to in its annual letter, Supaglue will likely quickly find fast friends within Stripe’s ecosystem. Deal Dive: A Stripe secondary deal worth paying attention to Topics Senior Reporter Christine Hall wrote about enterprise/B2B, e-commerce, and foodtech for TechCrunch, and venture capital rounds for Crunchbase News. Based in Houston, Christine previously reported for the Houston Business Journal, the Texas Medical Center’s Pulse magazine, and Community Impact Newspaper. She has an undergraduate journalism degree from Murray State University and a graduate degree from The Ohio State University
| 2024-03-29T13:30:19 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/29/supaglue-stripe-acquire-acquisition/
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Bilingual dictation assistant Silvia understands ‘Spanglish’ and other language mixtures
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Natural language AI assistants tend to be excellent English speakers, and passable in other tongues — but if you are one of the millions who fluidly switch between two languages on the fly, they’re stumped. A new AI helper calledSilvia, however, understands “Spanglish” just fine, with more language combos to come. The app — not a funded startup or anything like that — was created over the last month byMansidak Singh, who during the day is a founding product engineer atre:collect AI. “I met an Argentinian girl at a bar last month. During our conversation, she mentioned how her iPhone freaks out if you use a word in English while talking in Spanish,” Singh said. These assistants just aren’t flexible the way people’s brains are. “For example, if you said, ‘Hey, vamos a cenar tonight? See you there!’ iOS would typically ignore the Spanish part if the English keyboard was enabled, or vice versa. This was not ideal for folks who speak in Spanglish. After talking to more folks in the LATAM community I realized this problem was more prevalent than I knew… so I solved it. ” Silvia is one of those little apps that pops up from the left side of your keyboard, so you just tap that instead of the native dictation icon. Then you’ll be able to speak in your favored mixture of languages, and it will type that right out for you. It supports only Spanish and English at first, but with French, Romanian, Ukrainian, German and Dutch coming soon. There will also be a custom keyboard version so you can use it in non-Apple apps. I asked whether we’d see a version for Hindi and English, another common mixture, but Singh said that, for now, the approach only works for Germanic languages that use the Roman alphabet. Curious how he built it so quickly? Well, he’s already an engineer working in this space, of course, but really, the APIs are pretty strong here and he has deployed them cleverly. “I’m currently using the new Translation API in iOS 18 to create two mono-channels for Spanish and English and then using OpenAI Whisper in parallel to do cleaning up, hence it works lightning fast,” he explained. It doesn’t store any data, by the way, so don’t worry that this is some kind of shady play. It’s Apple-approved. Unlike pretty much every other AI product out there, this one doesn’t claim to change the world — just reflect it a little more accurately. You’ll be able to download Silvia at the end of the monthhere, orsign upto get notified when it’s out if you’re forgetful, like me. Topics Writer & Photographer Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. His personal website is coldewey. cc
| 2024-08-08T07:15:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/08/bilingual-dictation-assistant-silvia-understands-spanglish-and-other-language-mixtures/
| 459 | 0.9 |
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General Atlantic invests another $100 million in PhonePe
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General Atlantic has poured another $100 million into PhonePe, three months afterleading a $350 million investment in the Indian fintech startupthat has so far raised $750 million in an ongoing financing round. Walmart-backed PhonePe disclosed the investment in a filing with the local regulator on Wednesday. A company spokesperson confirmed the investment. The ongoing round values the Bengaluru-headquartered startup at $12 billion. PhonePe is eyeing to raise as much as another $250 million in the ongoing round. At a $12 billion valuation, PhonePe is India’s most valuable fintech startup. It competes with Google Pay and Paytm, the latter of which is currently valued at nearly $5 billion. PhonePe, whichcompleted a full separation from the e-commerce giant Flipkartlast year, dominates transactions on UPI, a network built by a coalition of retail banks in India. UPI is the most popular way Indians transact online — it processes more than 8 billion transactions a month. Google’s GPay and PhonePe currently process more than 80% of all UPI transactions. Seven-year-old PhonePe commands about 50% of all these transactions by value and it’s not slowing down. The company said earlier this year that it was on pace to process transactions worth $1 trillion annually. Walmart, which also owns a majority share in e-commerce giant Flipkart, said earlier this year that the separation of Flipkart and PhonePe was “very analogous to eBay and PayPal, where each of them operating independently can pursue their own initiatives. ” General Atlantic, which has backed a number of Indian firms includingJio,BillDesk,Byju’s,Amagi,NoBrokerandUnacademyover the past decade, plans to deploy at least $2 billion to $3 billion in India over the next five to seven years, according to people familiar with the New York-headquartered growth equity investor’s plans. The new investment comes at a time when PhonePe is aggressively expanding its product offerings. The startup earlier this monthlaunched a hyperlocal commerce app, called Pincode, that is powered by the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), an Indian government initiative striving to democratize the e-commerce landscape by offering a zero-commission platform. PhonePe said it will “invest significant effort” in Pincode and in “enabling every Indian shopkeeper spread across every nook and corner, over the next few years. ” PhonePe is looking to capitalize on its 450 million-strong registered user base by expanding into additional financial services, including wealth management, lending, stockbroking, ONDC-based shopping and account aggregation. One potential obstacle to PhonePe’s growth was the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), the organization overseeing the UPI network, which sought to impose market share restrictions on participating players. However, the NPCI hasextended the deadlinefor compliance until 2025, allowing PhonePe two more years of rapid expansion. In another favorable development, the Reserve Bank of India, the nation’s central bank, hasdecided to abandon a high-profile projectthat was initially planned to compete with the UPI platform. Topics Reporter, India
| 2023-04-12T09:28:46 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/12/general-atlantic-invests-another-100-million-in-phonepe/
| 470 | 0.9 |
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Samphire Neuroscience is building a brain stimulating wearable for period pain
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It’s a horrible truth that many women simply endure period pain every month — perhaps relying on painkillers or a hot water bottle to relieve stomach cramps. For others, menstrual pain can be inescapably debilitating — to the point where they have to stay in bed for days each month and wait the pain out, as over-the-counter painkillers don’t provide relief. People who menstruate may also suffer from PMS, the mood swings and emotional sensitivity that can occur in the days leading up to a period. Or from an even more severe mood disorder, PMDD. Beyond the usual advice of trying to have a healthy lifestyle, treatment options for mood swings are pretty limited — and serious sufferers may feel they have no choice but to go on hormonal birth control. (If, indeed they can, given there can be medical risks associated with taking the pill. ) What if there was a drug-free and effective way to manage both menstrual pain and mood disorders? One that doesn’t involve popping any pills, let alone resorting to the irreversible treatments sometimes offered for extremely severe pain, such as the surgical removal of a woman’s womb. U. K. medtech startupSamphire Neuroscienceis taking an alternative and, it claims “science-backed” approach, to tackling these age-old women’s health issues. It’s developed a head-mounted “therapeutic” wearable that applies a non-invasive, low electrical current type of brain stimulation, called tDCS (transcranial direct current stimulation). The wearable targets regions of the brain associated with pain perception and mood regulation to, essentially, reduce sensitivity and block pain signals — applying (non-pharmaceutical) neuromodulation as a targeted treatment for period pain and PMS. How does neurostimulation actually work? The theory behind tDCS is that applying a constant electrical current increases “neuroplasticity”, or the brain’s ability to change and adapt by forming and reorganising synaptic connections. In this women’s health use case, Samphire contends there’s a clear and linear link between hormonal levels and brain “structure and activity” — meaning the menstrual cycle enacts changes in the brain, which can affect “mood, energy, sensitivity and more”. It says this effect can be especially pronounced during the luteal phase, before a woman’s period starts, when hormone levels can be changing a lot — so its brain stimulation device is also designed to be used during this phase of the woman’s cycle. The battery-operated wearable, which it’s calling Nettle, resembles a chunky black headband. The user wears it for treatment sessions over a period of several days (five) before their period starts — which the startup says will alleviate pain and mood symptoms associated with (and around) their next bleed. The device works by targeting electrical current at two regions of the brain Samphire says are associated with menstrual pain and PMS, respectively: Namely, the motor cortex, which it says plays a role in pain perception, and the prefrontal cortex which is associated with mood regulation. So it’s designed to address both physical and psychological symptoms. While brain stimulation has been investigated as an experimental medical treatment for centuries — it’s fair to say with varying degrees of success — the technology has become more established as a treatment for issues like chronic pain. In more recent decades there has also been a surge of interest, and some evidence, in tDCS’ potential for treating depression especially. Here Samphire points, by way of validated commercial example, to a fellow neuro tech U. K. startup as a bit of a pioneer:Flow Neuroscience— which already sells a head-mounted device it claims is clinically proven as more effective for treating depression than antidepressants. But where Flow’s product focuses on using neurostimulation to treat low mood regardless of the person’s sex, Nettle is designed specifically for women, and targets both mood symptoms and period pain. This combination is important as Samphire argues these two symptoms — sensitive mood and pain — are intertwined when it comes to determining how women feel on their period. “One thing that we were surprised by is usually [neurostimulation] technology is known, in other conditions, to be highly effective but the reduction that we have seen in pain within a single period’s use is actually very unusual. It’s extremely high,” co-founder and CEO Emilé Radytė tells TechCrunch, noting too that the startup’s technology has been tested on a sample that’s disproportionately female vs the industry. “So it seems that, for women, if you stimulate in the right phase — which in our case is right before your period — that actually really matters. Because instead of needing to stimulate every single day, there seems to be some connection between the way that we perceive pain in different [menstrual] phases. ” “Historically, when people tried to improve pain in fibromyalgia using a similar technology — and there’s early promising evidence of that but not yet that much — they struggled to see a huge reduction in pain. Our explanation [for getting opposite results] is that because we also stimulate the mood bit, so essentially, we improve your mood and therefore we improve your way of managing pain in the first place — and then on when on top of that we reduce the pain — that actually makes the biggest difference,” she suggests. “That makes even our product design quite differentiated — and that we almost figured out by chance, down the line. But it obviously leans into the fact that menstruation is both a physical and physiological but also an emotional and kind of psychological process. And [the high pain reduction we’ve seen derives from] being able to stimulate both — improving mood improves your ability to manage pain; and when you’re not in pain, you’re able to better manage your mood — and I think that bi-directionality seems pretty straightforward but it seems to be in our data as well, which is cool. ” Radytė is on familiar ground here, bringing a background in neuroscience to attack the problem. She studied at Harvard and Oxford, where she’s working toward a PhD in neuropsychiatry — which includes researching depression treatments (including brain stimulation) and looking at why treatments can work differently for different people. Her co-founder, Alex Cook, meanwhile, trained as an IP lawyer and has startup experience leading a product team — both obviously useful skills to have on tap if you’re commercializing academic research that involves proprietary hardware. Samphire is also drawing on work done by two research labs focused on brain stimulation and women’s health — one in Australia and one in Brazil — which Radytė explains had looked, separately, at menstrual pain and PMDD, and found strong effects for using this type of technology in both cases. The startup’s idea for advancing their work was to combine the targeted treatments and see if it would compound the benefits. They’ve been backed, since starting work on the problem back in late 2021, by a number of early investors which have contributed to a $2. 3 million pre-seed round (and the startup’s first priced equity round). Investors include SOSV, Firstpick, Afterwork, Seaside, Ayuh and CVX Ventures. A number of angels also chipped in, including entities associated with the family of Russell Buckley, ex-chairman of Touch Surgery, founder of Kindred Capital; Dr Pamela Walker, founder of Thena Capital; and Rowena Ironside, founder of Women on Boards UK. “There’s often a misconception that pain is always a physical symptom. But to me, it’s very much a mental symptom. So it does make sense to treat it in the brain,” arguesRadytė, delving more into the theory underpinning Samphire’s approach. “Because — with painkillers — you always need to take more painkillers, the more pain you have. Because painkillers are trying to block the receptors that precede the pain. Whereas if you’ve blocked pain sensitivity altogether, it actually doesn’t matter how strong your pain is. That means that we can handle much higher extremes of pain as well — because we’ve changed the perception of the pain in the first place. ” “To me brain stimulation devices are the future,” she adds. “Because for any long-term condition… no one wants to constantly take medication. So if we can change that status quo — where women can be dependent on other things [than drugs] to manage their cognitive and physical symptoms — then that has to be the future. Especially because women need to live with these conditions for all of their lives. ” As women’s health startups often do, Radytė points to how the bulk of medical research has failed to pay proper attention to sex difference, including — in this period-focused context — not considering how hormonal changes in women could lead to distinct responses to treatments. This has created a situation where women’s health needs are under-researched and even overlooked. And where ‘standard’ treatments women get offered are often suboptimal, since fewer innovations have been developed that cater to them. Hence Samphire Neuroscience is on a mission to close this innovation gap. The Nettle headband is intended as the first in a series of products targeting women’s health, with future therapeutics set to focus on female insomnia and the perimenopause. Its first wearable is not yet available to buy. Indeed, the Nettle headband won’t be available unless/until it obtains a CE mark from European medical device regulators — which Radytė says it’s hoping to gain later this year. (RRP will be €409/£359/$449, per anFAQ on its website. ) They intend to sell the device direct to consumers and via retailer partners. Per Radytė, research the startup conducted into women’s attitudes to traditional healthcare providers suggest they continue to have very low trust in doctors to handle these sorts of sex-specific health issues — and are more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend. This is why the startup didn’t want to gate access to the wearable behind a prescription: No doctor’s sign off will be needed to buy it. But the team is hoping the hardware will be reimbursable, via health insurers, in future. (She also says the team is working with doctors, and has clinical advisors, as it continues to develop the product, and intends to sell Nettle through hospitals it’s collaborating with too. ) So what proof can the startup show that Nettle really does work? Samphire has undertaken a clinical trial that Radytė says shows “really promising results” for treating period pain and PMS. The study underpins its EU application for medical device certification — where it’s seeking a Class 2A CE marking. The regulatory process entails comparing Nettle’s efficacy for pain relief vs the performance of painkillers, while for mood symptoms it’s compared to antidepressants. So the assessment is comparative vs existing treatment options. “The actual indications for use of our device will be for managing pain associated with menstruation and managing mood symptoms associated with premenstrual syndrome,” she notes. “So, specifically, what we claim is an improvement in low mood in the premenstrual period. But we expect to extend that, over time, to also things like irritability and mood swings. But those are just a little bit difficult to test in the way that the EU likes them. ” Radytė says the clinical trial it conducted last year as part of the certification application involved collecting pain and mood scores from around 50 people across a menstrual cycle when they did not use its device; and again across a cycle when they used the wearable to deliver brain stimulation for five days before their period (or they were given a sham device which, initially, mimics the sensation of electrical current but does not administer the treatment to correct for any placebo effect). The study also collected scores for the participants’ pain and mood on the subsequent cycle after they had stopped using the headband to see whether there were any lingering effects. “We expect the best kind of use will come out of our device if you use it for at least three months. But here we just wanted to show that even within a very quick amount of time you can see a difference. And what we showed is that, on average, people’s pain decreased by 52% when they were using the active device — and it kept decreasing the month afterwards,” she says, adding: “Those who had the active intervention [i. e. not the sham headband] actually had a much lighter period the following month as well. ” While around 50 clinical trial participants might sound low, Radytė argues the size of the trial is appropriate for neurostimulation technology studies — and statistically significant. “Because there’s historical studies on this technology, we could tell how many people you need in order to find statistical significance if there is some and that’s essentially how you define sample sizes,” she explains, adding: “In the field of brain stimulation, everything above 20 is a good sample size — which is why we went for the number we did. ” (For the record, Flow Neuroscience’s rival device for depression bases its claims of clinical efficacy on a double blinded placebo controlled clinical trial which it said showed the product to be twice as effective as antidepressants on a study involving around 170 participants. ) “What is new, and I think what is really interesting about a product like ours, is we are spending quite a bit of time educating the regulators aboutwherereally to put neurotechnology for women’s health,” Radytė continues. “Because at the moment we are categorized very much in the field of neurotechnology and very much in that kind of lump of regulation which is extremely high [in terms of the level of proof required to get certification as a medical device]. “But if you look at the state of the art for women [i. e. for treating period pain and mood] it’s extremely low. And that overlap hasn’t yet been categorized well — which is why we’re almost pushed through much higher regulatory and clinical burdens because we’re evaluated in the technical product category, rather than a kind of public health need category. ” While the U. K. is no longer in the EU, as a consequence of Brexit, the country has not rolled out its own alternative system for regulating medical devices. So Samphire expects, once it has obtained the bloc’s CE mark, that it won’t have to repeat the whole application in order to access the U. K. market — but will instead be able to notify the equivalent national body (the MHRA) and get permission to sell Nettle. However, the usual complexities of applying and obtaining clearance from medical regulators apply elsewhere. So Samphire will be focused on selling its wearable across Europe in the first instance, producing an initial run of 1,000 devices to test the water. It does have plans to target the U. S. market in the future — estimating it’s 1. 5-2 years away from a U. S. launch. (It plans to apply for a “breakthrough device” designation from the FDA — which will require it to run fresh clinical trials in the U. S. to meet the regulator’s bar, per Radytė. ) While brain stimulation might sound a pretty drastic treatment for period pain, safety concerns shouldn’t cause too much pause for thought given the device will only be sold when/if it has satisfied the EU regulator that it doesn’t pose any risk of harm. Asked about safety Radytė also points back to what she says is over 30 years of research into similar technologies, primarily used to treat psychiatric disorders, adding: “There has never been a serious adverse event reported. ” What about possible side effects of applying low current neurostimulation? “Mild” side-effects are very common, per Radytė — including itching and tingling the first time treatment is applied (related to the person’s skin reacting to the current). But she suggests most people get accustomed to the treatment and any skin sensitivity goes away. A more serious side-effect she mentions is that some women may get what she calls “transient migraines” — transient because she says they “seem to always dissipate within 30 minutes”. Whether the risk of a fairly brief migraine is a good trade off for the chance of having a better period will depend on a woman’s own experience of their menstrual cycle and any symptoms they regularly suffer. For some, the risk of a short headache once a month might sound a lot more manageable than what they usually have to go through. For others, a hot water bottle and bed rest might still be all they need. Those who suffer the worst levels of period pain should be aware that Nettle’s website stipulates the device is not intended as a treatment for people who’ve had a specific diagnosis of endometriosis — a condition that can cause extremely painful periods — but the startup still suggests the device may help alleviate some of the pain they experience. Some practical considerations: As Nettle is worn on the head it will typically have to function through hair. The user needs to spray a saline solution onto conductive sponges on the underside of the band to ensure the current flows properly during the 20-minute treatment session. However — currently — it does not work if the user has Afro hair that’s worn in “thick braids”, according to Radytė. But she says it will work through loosely braided or finely braided Afro hair. (She also notes that well over half (67%) of its sample of testers for the clinical trial were non-white, adding: “That was really important to us from a diversity of hair perspective and hair product perspective. ”) The headband itself is designed to be extremely simple to put on and use, to avoid the risk of a person incorrectly applying the treatment. So it has no wires and just a single button to activate the neurostimulation treatment. While the shape of the band is designed to target the correct brain regions, regardless of a person’s head size and shape. Radytė says the team spent a long time on the hardware design — trying to achieve something that looks pretty enough the user could wear the band to work or out and about without feeling self conscious. So while it’s fairly nondescript and minimal looking, that was really the goal. In the field of neuro tech making a device that doesn’t stick out and look ugly is innovative in and of itself, she argues. Samphire is also developing an app to work with the wearable — powering notifications to remind the user when it’s time to apply their treatment. The app will also include a period tracking function and offer users the ability to participate in future research projects the startup wants to undertake out to boost understanding of period issues and “give back the community”, as she puts it. One interesting question will be the scale of demand for Samphire’s product. Therapeutic wearables are still fairly novel (tracking wearables are far more common). And while, across Europe, millions of women are of menstruating age and many of them will suffer some sort of period pain, it’s less clear what proportion regularly experience periods so horribly miserable that they’d be willing to invest this much in a treatment device. Samphire cites stats suggesting 90% of women suffer some form of PMS (acute to mild) and 91% suffer pain (period cramps or dysmenorrhea) during menstruation itself. It also notes endometriosis affects 10% of women globally and PMDD between 5% and 8%. But, again, these sort of general statistics don’t provide a detailed picture of how much pain and misery women routinely suffer through — and whether, therefore, there might be mass or niche demand for a period-pain wearable. If the startup gains regulatory certification and is able to prove the worth of its approach, there could be potential for scaling sales via a B2B2C model, though. As well as getting health insurers to reimburse the product, it could — for example — pitch employers on subsidizing Nettle to offer female employees as a support measure which could also help reduce the need for staff to take menstrual sick days. This report was updated with a correction:Emilé Radytė is working toward obtaining a PhD in neuropsychiatry from Oxford University — she has not yet completed her PhD, as we originally reported. Additionally, a previous version of this story included an inaccurate list of investors we were provided; that list has been updated to include entities associated with the family of Russell Buckley. UK femtech Daye launches virtual clinic for period pain Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London
| 2024-02-21T13:37:34 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/samphire-neuroscience/
| 3,517 | 1 |
b9e032dd0e2cc7576ccb8a48a6541715
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|
Twitter co-founder Biz Stone joins board of Mastodon’s new US nonprofit
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Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder, is among those who have joined the board of directors of Mastodon’s new U. S. nonprofit, Mastodon CEO Eugen Rochkoannouncedover the weekend. Mastodon’s service, an open source, decentralized social network and rival to Elon Musk’s X, has gained increased attention following the Twitter acquisition as users sought alternatives to X’s would-be “everything app” that felt more like the old Twitter of days past. Mastodon only somewhat fits that bill. Though the service resembles Twitter in many ways, it’s underpinned by different infrastructure. As part of the “fediverse” — or the open social web made up of interconnected servers communicating over the ActivityPub protocol — Mastodon benefits users who no longer want to be locked into a centralized social network that can be bought and sold to new billionaire owners, like Musk. Though Mastodon was already established as a nonprofit in Germany in 2021, the creation of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit in the U. S. will allow the company to receive tax-deductible donations and other financial support. The change also comes as Mastodon has inexplicitly lost its nonprofit status in Germany. “…we have received a notice from the same tax office that our non-profit status has been withdrawn,” wrote Rochko on the Mastodon blog. “This came with no advance warning or explanation. Earlier this year we went through a successful tax audit, which in fact resulted in some favourable adjustments as we’ve been paying too much tax. Our tax advisor immediately submitted an appeal to the decision, but so far, we have no new information,” he said. Mastodon’s day-to-day operations were unaffected by this change, as most of its income comes from the crowdfunding platform Patreon. It also received donations from Jeff Atwood and Mozilla at $100,000 apiece, which allowed the company to hire a third full-time developer this year. However, being established as a nonprofit enables Mastodon to communicate how it differs from other social media businesses. While becoming a nonprofit in the U. S. will help Mastodon regain its status, it wants to remain based out of the EU. In addition to Biz Stone, other board members include Esra’a Al Shafei, a human rights advocate and founder of Majal. org; Karien Bezuidenhout, an advocate for openness and experienced board member across sustainable social enterprise; Amir Ghavi, a partner at law firm Fried Frank, where he’s the co-head of the Technology Transactions Practice; and Felix Hlatky, the chief financial officer of Mastodon since 2020, who originally incorporated the project as a nonprofit LLC in Germany and helped it raise additional funds
| 2024-04-29T14:10:30 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/29/twitter-co-founder-biz-stone-joins-mastodons-new-u-s-non-profits-board/
| 425 | 0.9 |
b67d5b72fa329a3e1ea94ea149b390cc
|
{"bias_density": 0.45, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 0, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 1, "age_bias": 2, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 3, "concerns": []}
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Decentralized finance may be the answer to banking’s payment rails problem
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Aging payment rails is not a new problem for the U. S. banking infrastructure, butSilicon Valley Bank’s collapseput it in the spotlight, especially for payment companies that had their payment rails with the bank. Apayment railis a network for how payments move from the payer to the payee. We’ve seen newer rails emerge in recent years, for example, the blockchain, and within the consumer realm with peer-to-peer payments via apps like PayPal, Venmo and Zelle. Most of the payments occur in real time. Airbase was one of those fintech companies thathad its payment railswith SVB. CEO Thejo Kote told TechCrunch+ that the company had to scramble to help customers make sure their payroll and vendor payments were able to resume and also remain secure. Current payment rails, particularly in the U. S. , are decades old, created long before digital payments became a way of life. In recent years, financial technology companies have built rails on top of existing infrastructure, for exampleStripe,Plaidand the like, but it takes years and millions of dollars to do it. Visa, too,recently partneredwith PayPal, which also owns Venmo, and others to help people make digital payments regardless of which app you use. But even with this technology, some fintech founders say decentralized finance rails built on the blockchain could be a better answer. Especially as building on the current aging payment rails is expected to increasingly be a problem. This Finextra articlenotes, “as time goes by and the payments industry moves increasingly to micro, international, immediate payments with volumes that will be orders of magnitude greater than today, these problems will get a lot more visible. ” “It’s definitely archaic at this point, and it is a pretty slow kind of method of moving money, but it is also the most prevalent and popular kind of payment network in the U. S. when you’re moving money from bank to bank. There is a bunch of innovation happening right now, so there is a real-time payment craze coming up,” Kote said, referencing the Federal Reserve’s newFedNow Service. It’s set to launch in July and promises faster payment rails for financial institutions. FedNow is aninstant payment infrastructureproviding payments in real time, 24-7, every day of the year with immediate access to funds. This change won’t be immediate, however, because it will take time for a “network effect” to take place, Kote said. “Banks on both the receiving end and the sending end have to be able to support these new protocols and this new kind of rails, and that’s a slow process,” he said. “I’m optimistic that over the next few years, the coverage will continue to get much better. However, in the here-and-now, the vast majority of dollars are still flowing through theAutomated Clearing Housenetwork, and that has a whole host of challenges that you have to work [with]. ” Ex-Meta crypto chief David Marcus launches Bitcoin payments startup backed by a16z and Paradigm Indeed, more than 60% of payments in the U. S. are still being sent between banks over the ACH network, which takes about three days to clear. After all, it was invented over 40 years ago. LightsparkCEO David Marcus likened it to “still using paper maps when Google Maps is available. ” “The correspondent banking system is a maze of different banks that have accounts with one another with sleeping liquidity to enable other banks to move money on behalf of their clients through a fairly antiquated messaging system,” Marcus told TechCrunch+. Lightspark is working on automated tools and services for decentralized networkLightning, which provides instant payments. But it’s not without its drawbacks, which include high payment rate failures and slow transactions. Earlier this month, Lightspark shipped three offerings for Lightning participants, including Lightspark Connect, a way to send and receive payments and move bitcoin; Lightspark Predict, which predicts the best-performing nodes for routing transactions; and APIs and software development kits for faster integration and instant bitcoin transactions. “It’s good to have more real-time systems, but it’s even better if there’s a version of that that is global, open 24-7, and not only to banks, but to everyone,” said Marcus, who previously was the president of PayPal. “Everything we are building on the Lightspark front will make it really easy. ” Paystand banks $50M to make B2B payments cashless and with no fees Meanwhile, globally, infrastructure like Pix in Brazil and Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA) in Europe have seen success in enabling real-time payments, Marcus said. However, both of those are only available in those regions, not systems that are interconnected with each other. Marcus put it this way: It’s like using Gmail and not being able to email someone using Yahoo (yes, he likes analogies). Most of the world doesn’t have access to digital forms of money or inexpensive real-time, cross-border payments. Marcus pointed out that these people end up paying exorbitant fees to send money to their home countries, even when they can send “super high-definition 4K video that they filmed on their phone via WhatsApp for free. ” “That’s the way money moves today, but we’re in 2023, so it’s actually preposterous,” Marcus said. “It makes no sense because if it’s digitized it should travel the same way that everything else on the internet travels. ” To get money moving more easily, Marcus and others think the solution lies with a decentralized financial infrastructure. Paystand, for example, uses the Ethereum blockchain as the engine for its Paystand Bank Network, which enables business-to-business payments with zero fees. Paystand CEO Jeremy Almond told TechCrunch+ via email that if one entity goes down, for example, Silicon Valley Bank, bank customers should still be able to access their deposits and keep the economy flowing. “The fintech industry has for too long been just a pretty UI or an API built on the same tired central banks and networks,” Almond said. “SVB’s, Signature’s and Credit Suisse’s failure could be for the fintech industry what Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Lehman’s failure was for the housing industry: A catastrophic harbinger of a system too big to fail, but too brittle, too full of risk and too centralized to not fail. I know blockchain, bitcoin and decentralized finance networks have their share of problems, but they represent a fundamental shift away from the same central banking system that’s been in place since the 1930s. ” How a fintech company handled a fintech crisis Topics Senior Reporter Christine Hall wrote about enterprise/B2B, e-commerce, and foodtech for TechCrunch, and venture capital rounds for Crunchbase News. Based in Houston, Christine previously reported for the Houston Business Journal, the Texas Medical Center’s Pulse magazine, and Community Impact Newspaper. She has an undergraduate journalism degree from Murray State University and a graduate degree from The Ohio State University
| 2023-04-17T16:00:32 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/17/decentralized-finance-payment-rails/
| 1,128 | 1 |
a8d1d8319d69b849bc5575a74bc323ed
|
{"bias_density": 0.38, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 0, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 1, "age_bias": 4, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 5, "concerns": []}
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Microsoft to face higher competition scrutiny in Germany, including over its use of AI
|
Microsoft has joined an exclusive club of tech giants that are subject to a special abuse control regime in Germany. The country’s Federal Cartel Office (FCO) confirmed on Monday that the software giant could face restrictions if the competition authority deems an intervention is necessary. The designation, which lasts for five years, is important, as it lets the German authority take a close interest in how Microsoft wields its influence through its activities around generative AI. However, the regulator said it has yet to take any decisions on “possible proceedings. ” In recent years, Microsoft’s influence on OpenAI haslandedthe pair on antitrust regulators’radars. The cozy relationship even saw Microsoft briefly hire OpenAI front-man Sam Altman and other key stafferslast fallduring a board dispute. Although Altman ended up staying at OpenAI, the episode underscored the closeness between the two companies, and Microsoft even got a board observer seat at OpenAI (itgave it up this summer). However, careful structuring of their arrangement appears to havekept it flying for now. The FCO has already looked atthe two companies’ partnership, and it foundlast Novemberthat their relationship did not meet the threshold for a traditional merger review. However, now that the regulator is armed with more proactive and wide-ranging powers to regulate Big Tech, Microsoft’s dealings with OpenAI could face closer scrutiny in Germany going forward. The FCO’spress releasehighlights how Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant is used “in many parts” of its ecosystem. It also links the company’s strength in cloud computing to helping it enter partnerships with “highly innovative suppliers,” as it can “offer their AI models as services on Azure and integrate them into its own products. ” Commenting in a statement, Andreas Mundt, president of the FCO, also highlighted Microsoft’s long history of software dominance, adding: “Today, Microsoft’s ecosystem is stronger and more closely interconnected than ever before, because overarching all of its activities is the increasing use of the cloud and AI, key technologies in which Microsoft has consolidated its strong position by developing its own products and entering into cooperations. “ The FCO began investigating whether the tech giant’s market power met the bar for the special abuse controls regime back inMarch 2023. And this confirmation that the company has “paramount significance for competition across markets” unlocks a range of powers contained in the 2021 update to Germany’s antitrust rulebook. The reform aims to counteract concerns that Big Tech’s market power is hampering rivals’ ability to innovate and compete. The German law already applies toAmazon,Apple,GoogleandMeta, and predates the European Union’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a similar ex-ante competition reform that is also being used to clip Big Tech’s wings. However, the DMA applies operational controls only to named platforms, while the FCO has designated Microsoft as a whole. This means the German authority has greater freedom to impose controls on Microsoft’s activities, including around AI, if it judges the company’s actions are crimping competition. The EU’s DMA was drafted before the boom in generative AI tools made ChatGPT a household name. Microsoft is designated as a gatekeeper, but only two of its platforms are directly regulated: the Windows operating system and its social network LinkedIn. That limits the European Commission’s ability to intervene in Microsoft’s activities in AI unless they specifically fall within these two “core platform services. ” “Our decision applies to Microsoft as a whole, not only to individual services or products,” Mundt emphasized. “Based on our decision, we can stop anti-competitive practices which are not covered by the DMA. ” Reached for comment on the FCO’s designation, Microsoft spokesperson Robin Koch wrote: “We recognize our responsibility to support a healthy competitive environment and we will strive to be proactive, collaborative and responsible in working with the Bundeskartellamt [FCO]. Microsoft is partnering with Germany’s most innovative companies, and we’re committed to investing in the growth of its digital economy. ” Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London
| 2024-09-30T14:25:17 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/30/microsoft-to-face-higher-competition-scrutiny-in-germany-including-over-its-use-of-ai/
| 737 | 1 |
d1127ce394afd66631c2833a48d640e0
|
{"bias_density": 0.54, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 0, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 5, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 5, "concerns": []}
|
Climate change ignited LA’s wildfire risk — these startups want to extinguish it
|
Climate change increased the likelihood of the recent Southern California wildfires by 35%, according to a new study published by World Weather Attribution, a decade-old international group of climate scientists and other experts. The study comes as Los Angeles residents start to rebuild their lives in the wake of catastrophic fires that erupted earlier this month. The fires were sparked by near perfect conditions: The two preceding years were unusually wet, boosting the growth of wildfire-adapted vegetation. This year, climate change dealt the region two heavy blows — a delayed annual rainy season and intense Santa Ana winds that fanned the flames and spread embers far and wide. These extreme weather conditions will be more common, according to the study, adding fresh urgency to a burgeoning group of climate adaptation startups that hope to blunt the impact of wildfires. The extreme weather conditions are now likely to occur once every 17 years. “Compared to a 1. 3°C cooler climate this is an increase in likelihood of about 35%,” thestudy’s authors wrote. “This trend is however not linear,” they added, stating that the frequency of fire-prone years has been increasing rapidly in recent years. Southern California is no stranger to fire. Its ecosystems have evolved to handle — and even thrive under — regular, low-intensity wildfires. But over a century of fire suppression disrupted the natural regime, and in its absence, people have built deeper into fire-adapted ecosystems. Today, these areas are known as the wildland-urban interface, or WUI, and the density of housing there complicates the picture. Because the landscape has been carved up into smaller parcels, removing excess vegetation often falls on individual homeowners, who may not realize they’re responsible for the task. Elsewhere, it’s often best to introduce prescribed burning, in which land managers start low-intensity fires during weather conditions that make the low-intensity blaze easy to contain and direct. The process helps rebalance the ecosystem and prevent dry brush from building up. But even in places where prescribed burning is possible, it’s still difficult to introduce, requiring public buy-in and well-trained crews. Startups havestepped into the void. Vibrant Planethas developed a platform that helps utilities and land managers analyze a range of data to determine where wildfire risk is highest. Then it helps them work with a range of stakeholders, including landowners, conservation organizations, and indigenous groups, to develop plans to mitigate the risk. Once plans are in place, other startups step in to do the dirty work. One company,Kodama, retrofits forestry equipment for remote operation, allowing forests to be thinned at lower costs, reducing the fuel load that can lead to catastrophic wildfire. Another,BurnBot, has developed a remotely operated machine that does the work of a prescribed burn in the relative safety of its metal shroud. There, propane torches burn vegetation as it slides under the machine. Fans on top of the machine keep air flowing into the burn chamber, raising the fire’s temperature to reduce smoke and embers. At the rear of the machine, rollers and water misters extinguish any flames or embers that remain on the ground. But even with vegetation management and prescribed burning, the climate and ecosystems of Southern California won’t be completely wildfire free. To further minimize the risk of catastrophic fires, another slate of startups is working to spot wildfires soon after they ignite so crews can respond quickly. Pano, for example, uses AI to crunch a range of data sources, including cameras, satellite imagery, field sensors, and emergency alerts,to automatically detect new fires. Google is also in the game, having worked with Muon Space to launch FireSat, which canimage wildfires from orbitevery 20 minutes. And should wildfires escape early detection and containment, other startups likeFireDomeare developing tools to protect homes and businesses. The Israel-based startup has created anAI-assisted fire defense systemthat launches projectiles filled with fire retardants. The automated system can lay down a perimeter of retardant before fire reaches a property, or if embers are already flying, it can target hot spots to extinguish flames before they turn into conflagrations. Land owners and managers will have to get smarter about how to limit their risk. There’s unlikely to be a single solution, but rather a combination of advanced technology and old-fashioned land management. Topics Senior Reporter, Climate
| 2025-01-29T19:07:23 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/29/climate-change-ignited-las-wildfire-risk-these-startups-want-to-extinguish-it/
| 709 | 1 |
d0def89e1a4a74a7e18e0cdb950f2fe2
|
{"bias_density": 0.78, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 3, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 3, "geographic_bias": 1, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 7, "concerns": []}
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