Technical

Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the future of transportation. Sign up here for free — just click TechCrunch Mobility! TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is wrapped! And what a whirlwind it was. Some highlights? Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson weighed in on whether Tesla robotaxis will launch next […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Lkd4aDs

Old ideas like you need $100 million worth of trailing revenue to go public, and $1 million worth of annual recurring revenue to raise a Series A are so old that they are practically perched atop Abe Lincoln’s head.In today’s market, what a startup needs to raise depends on its sector, founder profile, and, yes, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/KLfAv5Q

Startup work and venture capital investing are usually judged through the lens of their financial results. The bigger a startup gets, the more it’s worth. But some upstart tech companies are also working on making the world better, while making money. We want to know how far the ‘doing good’ can go while not giving […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/FNsi59B

If you aren’t building the next foundation model AI company, raising a Series A today is likely harder than it has been in some time. So, to help founders building at the Seed-stage prepare for their first lettered-round, we’ve rounded up investors to explain what they – and their firms – are looking for in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/LX5chk7

Indian fintech startup Slice has completed its merger with North East Small Finance Bank, marking a rare instance of a startup successfully entering India’s tightly regulated banking sector. The merger, first proposed last year, transforms the Bengaluru-based startup into a banking entity, following months of regulatory scrutiny that has reshaped India’s fintech landscape. Slice, which […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/NQTI4dc

The popularity of an Instagram video can affect its actual video quality: According to Adam Mosseri (the Meta executive who leads Instagram and Threads), videos that are more popular get shown in higher quality, while less popular videos get shown in lower quality. In a video (via The Verge), Mosseri said Instagram tries to show […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/5MQFPCR

The Mac mini will be getting an upgrade this week, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The mini is Apple’s desktop computer (really just a small gray box) positioned between the consumer iMac and the company’s professional-grade desktops. The new mini is reportedly getting smaller — nearly the size of an Apple TV set-top box. It […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/GzjrHXe

While many venture investors, and likely their LPs, were hoping IPOs were going to come back in 2024, that hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to in the next two months. NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman isn’t surprised. Friedman said at Axios’s BFD event on Tuesday that while on paper the public markets have been experiencing a spectacular year […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/xKvEkgQ

Software engineers, developers, and academic researchers have serious concerns about transcriptions from OpenAI’s Whisper, according to a report in the Associated Press. While there’s been no shortage of discussion around generative AI’s tendency to hallucinate — basically, to make stuff up — it’s a bit surprising that this is an issue in transcription, where you’d […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/vf9g1QI

A federal jury ruled Friday that Masimo smartwatches infringed Apple patents, but Apple isn’t getting a big payday. Bloomberg Law reports that the company was only seeking the statutory minimum of $250, and that’s all it was awarded. Apple’s attorney John Desmarais reportedly told jurors, “We’re not here for the money.” Instead, he said the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3fzMKsC

Rental car startup Kyte, which bills itself as the “best alternative to Hertz,” is pulling out of almost all of its major markets in the United States and has cut its workforce roughly in half in a bid to survive after exploring a sale earlier this year. The company is shrinking its operations to focus […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/H49q7wd

Similar to how Mastodon offers an open source, distributed version of X, the fediverse is getting its own TikTok competitor. This week, an app called Loops began accepting signups on its new platform for sharing short, looping videos. Still in the early stages, Loops is not yet open sourced, nor has it completed its integration […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/9I6ktFK

The idea of a $25,000 Tesla has persisted for years — in part, perhaps, because CEO Elon Musk said he was “very confident” the company could do it at an event in 2020. But on Wednesday night, during Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call, Musk said the idea of a $25,000 car with a steering wheel and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/gC21spq

Electric motorcycle company Zero is in the process of closing a new funding round for a little bit more than $120 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The filing shows that Zero has sold around $100 million of the equity round so far from two undisclosed investors. The company […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/9Tcm5ea

Decentralized social app Bluesky announced on Thursday that it has raised a $15 million Series A round, following its $8 million seed raise last year. This funding comes as Bluesky sees increased growth, in part from X users who are troubled by recent changes to the block feature, as well as the move to allow […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/iFJB3UM

Miles Brundage, a longtime policy researcher at OpenAI and senior adviser to the company’s AGI readiness team, has left. In a post on X on Wednesday and in an essay in his newsletter, Brundage said that he thinks he’ll have more impact as a researcher and advocate in the nonprofit sector, where he’ll have “more […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/p6MALzm

LinkedIn users on Tuesday began noticing a problem with their follower counts on the platform: They were dropping rapidly, and sometimes by many hundreds of users at once. With no official word at the time from LinkedIn, many began speculating that the situation was the result of LinkedIn purging fake accounts from the platform. Some […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/JHR2IUh

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week we’re looking at One Zero potentially raising $100 million, Apple Pay expanding support for loan options, and another way Stripe is making crypto a big priority for its business.  If you’d like to receive the Fintech newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday, sign up here! The big story One […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ALShdZ7

OpenAI has hired its first chief economist: Aaron Chatterji, formerly the chief economist at the Commerce Department under President Joe Biden and a senior economist in President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers. Chatterji, who’s also a professor of business and public policy at Duke, will study AI’s economic impacts at OpenAI, leading research into how […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/h2SMY79

Shortly after the social marketplace Poshmark announced it would lower selling fees and increase fees for buyers, the company decided to revert to its original fee structure following outrage among sellers.  In an email to sellers sent on Monday (and viewed by TechCrunch), founder and CEO Manish Chandra wrote an apology about the fee change, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/aRf8wh1

A fledgling startup is setting out to become one of Europe’s first “AI compute” hyperscalers, with renewable energy playing a pivotal part in its pitch to prospective customers. The AI goldrush has spurred unprecedented demand for “compute,” which refers to the processing power, infrastructure and resources needed for tasks such as running algorithms, executing machine […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/PeJO2Hh

AI search engine Perplexity is in fundraising talks and hopes to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation, according to the Wall Street Journal. If a deal happens with those terms, it would more than double Perplexity’s valuation from its $3 billion valuation when it raised from SoftBank over the summer. The WSJ […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/FDn8Kb6

This is part of TechCrunch’s ongoing Women in AI series, which seeks to give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved time in the spotlight. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/DrYpKfo

Toyota-backed autonomous vehicle company Pony AI has joined the list of Chinese firms going public on the U.S. stock market after a multi-year ban from Beijing on offshore capital raising.  Zeekr, a luxury Chinese electric vehicle startup, debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in May, and WeRide, another AV startup, also hopes to file […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Fkioe2f

This story has been updated throughout with more details as the story has developed. We will continue to do so as the case and dispute are ongoing. The world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. The core issue is the fight […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ZxcePk1

Acrew Capital has raised $700 million in fresh funds. The San Francisco-based venture capital firm announced in a blog post on Thursday that it raised $700 million to invest in companies building in data and security, healthcare, or fintech. This fundraise brings the firm’s assets under management to $1.7 billion. It’s unclear how much of […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/vNLiZq2

Elon Musk’s X is planning to make a change to how the block function works, breaking from the established standards of other social media apps. When the policies around blocking change, people who have been blocked by someone will still be able to see that person’s posts, so long as they’re public. They just won’t […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/lOkCmUI

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week brought us some exciting fundraising news from around the world, and even some exits. But if you are looking for tech IPOs, you will have […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ylM2SdQ

This week, OpenAI quietly published a statement on its website pledging not to use its patents offensively. Asserting its commitment to the principles of “broad access” and “collaboration,” OpenAI said that it would only use its patents in a way that supports innovation. “We pledge to only use our patents defensively, so long as a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/tpEcXRP

Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Thursday that Prabhakar Raghavan, the executive in charge of the company’s search engine and ads products, is leaving his role. Longtime Google executive Nick Fox will replace Raghavan, who will now take on the role of chief technologist. “Prabhakar has decided it’s time to make a big leap in […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/efFTcQj

Sheena Allen, the company's founder, told TechCrunch that CapWay had to close after it couldn't raise another round. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/tCn6FQq

Elias Torres has achieved a lot for somebody who immigrated to the US from Nicaragua at 17 without knowing any English. He served as a VP of engineering at HubSpot before co-founding Drift, a company that sold to Vista Equity for about $1.2 billion in 2021. “It’s very rare to get this far, but I’m […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/kwqQiB9

Fisker’s plan to liquidate its assets has been accepted by the bankruptcy court in Delaware. And with it, the issue of who should pay for labor costs associated with a pair of recalls on the bankrupt EV startup’s SUVs is finally settled. Fisker has also reached a deal with American Lease, the buyer of its […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/d8pkn5q

Meta’s X rival Threads is rolling out a new “activity status” feature that will let you see when someone on the social network is online. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the feature on Tuesday in a Threads post, noting that it’s meant to act as “a way to help you find others to engage with […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/EmsdhSK

The Biden administration has privately discussed capping sales of advanced AI chips from Nvidia and AMD to certain Persian Gulf countries in the interest of national security, Bloomberg reported on Monday. The restriction could put a ceiling on export licenses for certain countries, potentially Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, which are heavily investing […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/lzs9ZjN

During Tesla’s “We, Robot” event last week, which TechCrunch covered late into the night, sources on the ground sent me a handful of videos of the automaker’s Optimus humanoid robots walking around the party, dancing, mixing drinks, and talking to guests. Most, if not all, of those who attended the affair are Tesla investors and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3tkigmh

Josh Buckley, the former CEO of Product Hunt, is aiming to raise a fourth $250 million fund for his venture capital firm, Buckley Ventures, according to a regulatory filing. Buckley’s ambitions for this fund are significantly lower than for his previous one. He sought to raise a $500 million third fund in February, 2022, right […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/vuRtCsZ

Some of the largest, most damaging breaches of 2024 already account for over a billion stolen records. Plus, some special shout-outs. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ma4bgko

Table Space is targeting a valuation of $2.5 billion or higher for an India IPO planned planned for 2025. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ldvGSVN

The telecom industry is undergoing its greatest period of disruption since the telegraph, as companies work to open up space as the next frontier for communications. French startup Constellation hopes to take part by repurposing 5G tech to provide a Starlink-like satellite broadband that uses telecoms’ existing assets. Constellation Technologies and Operations, to call it […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/HrkpA94

If you’re starting a fintech company, there’s a new, small early-stage fund looking for investment opportunities. Founded by Anthony Danon (pictured above), Rerail could be called a micro-fund, a solo GP fund, or an angel fund. Danon has been an investor for the past 10 years. He started his career with Anthemis Group in London […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/UWbAQP3

One of the most attention-grabbing aspects of “Roadrunner,” the Morgan Neville-directed documentary about Anthony Bourdain, was Neville’s use of generative AI to replicate Bourdain’s voice. Looking back now, Neville told Wired that he saw this as a “fun” way to “keep [Bourdain’s] voice going in the film.” But his approach drew intense criticism — while […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/4FGuflS

When you think of brain stimulating medtech, startups building wearables as therapeutics probably aren’t the first thing that springs to mind. Such tech is still flying fairly under the radar — perhaps, in part, because these sorts of companies have raised a fraction of the investment that’s been ploughed into invasive technologies for targeting treatments […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/C9V0ryB

AI pioneer Yann LeCun doesn’t think artificial intelligence is actually on the verge of becoming intelligent. LeCun — a professor at New York University, senior researcher at Meta, and winner of the prestigious A.M. Turning Award — has been open about his skepticism before, for example tweeting that before we worry about controlling super-intelligent AI, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ItdpnJ6

The dispute between WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg and hosting provider WP Engine continues, with Mullenweg announcing that WordPress is “forking” a plugin developed by WP Engine. Specifically, Advanced Custom Fields — a plugin making it easier for WordPress users to customize their edit screens — is being taken out of WP Engine’s hands and updated […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/GZ3lFEs

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re taking a closer look at Tesla’s Cybercab and Robovan reveals, the “complete disarray” at Fisker HQ, and a horrifying side effect of living in our modern world: AI summaries of your breakup texts. Let’s do this. Tesla finally revealed its Cybercab robotaxi. Unveiled at the company’s […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/fp3E6ew

Khosla Ventures has raised $405 million for OpenAI, according to a regulatory filing. Based on the filing alone, Khosla’s stake in the ChatGPT maker appears to be at least 6% of the $6.6 billion round the company closed last week. But that doesn’t mean Khosla has put substantial or any capital into the round. The […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/YwTKvAk

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. It was once again the private market that generated the most funding-related news in the startup world this week, both for companies and for funds. But it […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/P8rDH3M

Arne Schepker, the CEO of the popular Berlin-based language learning platform Babbel, is stepping down, and the company’s co-founder and former CEO Markus Witte is stepping back in to lead the company “into a new phase while searching for Arne’s successor with patience,” the company said. This new phase, unsurprisingly, will involve AI. Witte will not […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/atFv4bg

Three Amazon executives in charge of developing new technologies for checking out of physical stores – including Just Walk Out, Dash Carts, and Amazon One – are leaving or have left the division, TechCrunch has learned. In addition, a former high-ranking advertising executive at Amazon, Colleen Aubrey, was recently put in charge of Just Walk […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/ht6Tg9A

After the criminal implosion of the crypto exchange FTX, many of the company’s executives have been found guilty on various counts of fraud or conspiracy to commit such acts. Ryan Salame, the former co-CEO of FTX Digital Markets, is starting his seven-and-a-half-year fraud sentence today, but not before posting an all-time absurd LinkedIn post (and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/dZFTaf8

Interlagos, the venture capital firm started by former senior SpaceX leaders, is looking to raise $550 million for its first venture fund, according to regulatory filings and a confidential deck sent to prospective LPs and viewed by TechCrunch.  The existence of the firm was first reported by TechCrunch in April, but almost nothing has been […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/j7e8uRQ

As X continues to alienate advertisers, even recently suing a group over their boycott of the platform, the company is shifting its creator payments policy to be less dependent on ads. Before, creators would be paid a percentage of the ad revenue from ads shown in their replies. Now, X says it will instead pay […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/9q4D0Mj

Shield AI cofounder Brandon Tseng has raised over $1 billion to create AI pilots. Here's what he's learned in Ukraine and the future of AI-powered weapons. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/yf4UmQT

Geoffrey Hinton accepted a Nobel Prize this week, recognizing the foundational work on artificial neural networks that earned him the nickname “godfather of AI.” In a speech Tuesday, Professor Hinton praised one student – alluding to OpenAI’s former Chief Scientist, Ilya Sutskever – for revolting against OpenAI’s CEO. “I was particularly fortunate to have many […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Nn58ihI

Fourteen U.S. attorneys general sued TikTok on Tuesday, alleging that the platform negatively impacts minors’ mental health and harvests data without their consent. TikTok, a U.S. company owned by the Chinese conglomerate ByteDance, is embroiled in a number of lawsuits that could threaten its operations. In another recent lawsuit, the FTC and the Justice Department […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/uFtdszl

Even a category as hot as robotics is not immune from macroeconomic trends. According to figures from automation advocacy group, A3, the North American robotics market declined in the first half of 2024, both in terms of sales and revenue. The number of industrial robotics ordered in H1 declined 7.5% year-over-year to 15,705. Revenue dipped […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/IHhg2o4

The Central Consumer Protection Authority, India’s consumer rights regulator, has sent a show-cause notice to Ola Electric over alleged violation of consumer rights, escalating troubles for the leading electric vehicle maker whose shares dropped 9% earlier on Monday, The notice, issued on Monday, gives the Bengaluru-headquartered firm 15 days to respond to allegations that include […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/sehjnRg

Tesla has lost a top executive to Waymo in the lead-up to the EV-maker’s Robotaxi unveiling on Thursday.  Daniel Ho, Tesla’s former head of vehicle programs and new product integration, last week announced his new role as programs director at Waymo.  Ho, who previously reported directly to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, oversaw the development and […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/e1H85mq

Flutterwave CEO GB discusses the company's recent product and administration changes and their implications for the company as it scales. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/OdjlWhN

Indian electric vehicle maker Ola Electric’s customers aren’t happy with its service and scooters, and it’s affecting the company’s stock and market share. The company’s shares fell by as much as 9.1% on Monday to ₹89.14, sending its market cap below $4.75 billion for the first time since its IPO in August. The company’s shares […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/XEZszf0

Klarna, the Stockholm-based buy-now-pay-later outfit that’s barreling toward an IPO, isn’t done shaking up its board. According to the FT,  seven directors just agreed to oust investor Mikael Walther from Klarna’s eight-person board, nearly eight years after he joined it. Walther is a confidante of Klarna co-founder Victor Jacobsson, who remains a major shareholder and, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/FKqGMPd

StrictlyVC is hosting its first event inside TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, and if you’re an investor keen to mingle with your peers, you won’t want to miss this opportunity. The StrictlyVC series — which brings the people and stories dominating the headlines straight to an audience of largely VCs, LPs, founders, and operators — is coming […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/nvasYml

The next generation of New York City investors are already making their mark in the Big Apple.  They come from big-name venture firms like Female Founders Fund and Lerer Hippeau and smaller ones like Chai Ventures. They work in areas like growth, consumer, and health. They canoe, hike, and play pickleball on the weekends. We […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/urFODYC

Will generative AI tools help people build better websites, or will they just fill the web with spam? With the recent launch of Design Intelligence, a new website builder full of generative AI tools, Squarespace is betting on the former. I spoke with chief product officer Paul Gubbay about Design Intelligence and Squarespace’s broader AI […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/w37Gljd

The roughly 15 million customers of genetic data outfit 23andMe may be at greater risk than they realize, suggests a new New York Times story that argues the company’s near-term woes could become problematic for others for a very long time if it can’t continue as a going concern. Certainly, with each passing day, the […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/UgoxWTM

Welcome back to Week in Review. This week, we’re diving into OpenAI’s $6.6 billion fundraising round, the fifth Cybertruck recall in less than a year, and a neat project that’s Shazam-ing songs heard on a San Francisco street. Let’s get into it. OpenAI closed the largest VC round of all time this week. The startup […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/xkiODJ7

Amazon continues to scale back efforts around its cashierless checkout technology, Just Walk Out. The e-commerce giant closed three of its Go convenience stores in New York last week, The Information confirmed on Friday, leaving just 17 across the nation. (Amazon notes it recently opened one in Washington.) These convenience stores use AI systems to […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/IPuBZL2

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies. That growth has propelled OpenAI itself into […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/vV4sngD

Initialized Capital is restructuring its team to “meet the moment” in the venture market, according to a blog post from the firm’s managing partner Brett Gibson. The San Francisco-based venture capital firm, originally founded by Alexis Ohanian, Garry Tan, and Harjeet Taggar, announced yesterday that it let multiple people go and specifically named Jennifer Wolf, […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/hYCNEdq

A roundup of the year's billion-dollar take-private deals in the technology sector. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/13NSzT9

The U.S. Department of Justice Thursday announced that it has sentenced a pair of Chinese citizens residing in Maryland following a massive bid to defraud Apple. According to the officials, the scheme involved sending more than 6,000 knockoff iPhones from Hong Kong to the company for repair. With the help of spoofed IMEI and serial […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/IPFtWkA

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware has left a lot of customers uneasy (and with rising bills). For the longest time, VMware was the de facto standard for enterprise virtualization. Now, a lot of businesses are looking for alternatives, and with that, the OpenStack project for managing cloud infrastructure (and one of the world’s largest open source […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/0bhd6Le

Any piece of popular consumer electronics will eventually be hacked, often to prove a point. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/Bp3A2Db

A complete list of all the known layoffs in tech, from Big Tech to startups, broken down by month throughout 2024. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/vQHknJ1

In San Francisco’s Mission district, good music is all around you. That’s why, high up on a street pole at an undisclosed location in the Mission, Riley Walz installed a solar-powered box containing an old Android phone running the song identifying service, Shazam, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The so called “Bop […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/SxzeQFH

Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Tuesday that users who have connected their accounts to the fediverse, also known as the open social web, can now see who follows them and likes their posts from other fediverse servers, such as Mastodon and Pixelfed.  The company said users will now have up to 15 minutes to make […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/V3U1rXa

Durk Kingma, one of the lesser-known co-founders of OpenAI, today announced that he’ll be joining Anthropic. In a series of posts on X, Kingma revealed that he’ll be working mostly remotely, from the Netherlands (where he’s based), but didn’t say which Anthropic org he’ll be joining — or leading. Reached for comment, an Anthropic spokesperson […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. from TechCrunch https://ift.tt/oMaxBZN