Author: TechBrunch
The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics created two major robot-related news cycles last week. The bigger of the two was, unsurprisingly, the announcement of the electric Atlas. As of this writing, the less than 40 second video is steadily approaching his 5 million views. The previous day, the company struck a chord with the local community when it announced that the first-generation hydraulic Atlas would be put out to pasture 10 years after its introduction. The accompanying video celebrated the old Atlas' journey from DARPA research project to impressively agile bipedal “bot.” But after a minute, the tone changes. In…
A lot has happened since Dev Ittycheria took the helm of MongoDB, the $26 billion database company he led as president and CEO since September 2014. Ittycheria is where he moved MongoDB to the cloud, ran it through its IPO, oversaw its transition from open source, and launched it. He became a venture capital arm and grew his client base from a few hundred to nearly 50,000. “When I joined, it wasn't clear that people would trust us to be a truly mission-critical technology,” Itticheria told TechCrunch. “When I joined, we had about $30 million in revenue. Now we're close…
What's the next big thing in enterprise automation? According to the tech giants, it's agents, powered by generative AI. Although there is no universally accepted definition of an agent, the term has recently been used to describe AI-powered generative tools that can perform complex tasks through human-like interaction between software and web platforms. I am. For example, an agent can create an itinerary by entering customer information on an airline or hotel chain's website. Alternatively, agents can automatically compare prices between apps and order the cheapest ride to your location. Vendors sense an opportunity. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly deep…
“When investors abandon you, they won't tell you the real reason,” says Tom Bromfield, group partner at Y Combinator. “At the seed stage, frankly, no one knows what’s going to happen. The future is so uncertain. All they’re judging is the perceived qualities of the founders. The thoughts in my head are: This person isn't impressive enough. They're not smart enough. They're not hardworking enough. I don’t think people are the winners.” And they'll never tell you anything like that because you'll get upset. That way you'll never want to throw them again. ” Bromfield should know – he was…
Givebutter started in a dorm at George Washington University in 2016 as a software solution to make nonprofit fundraising more transparent and fun. Eight years later, the company is profitable and he just raised $50 million to scale as the nonprofit-focused startup appears to be gaining momentum. Max Friedman, the company's co-founder and CEO, supports a variety of organizations on campus, from fundraising for GW's Greek Life to raising money for national nonprofits like TAMID. We collected donations for. Friedman told TechCrunch that no matter the size or scope of the organization they were funding, they all had the same…
Jonathan Strimling faced a dilemma. His company has been working for nine years on a chemical process that turns old cardboard boxes into high-quality building insulation. The good news is that the team finally cracked it. CleanFiber technology delivered the insulation. It was a really good insulator. It contained fewer pollutants and produced less dust than other cellulose insulation materials made from old newspapers. Insulation contractors loved it too. CleanFiber needed to do more with it. A lot more. Many founders and CEOs may be envious of this problem. However, the transition from a scientific project to a commercial project…
OpenAI's video generation tool Sora wowed the AI community in February with smooth, realistic videos that appeared far ahead of its competitors. But the carefully stage-managed debut left out many details. The details were filled in by a filmmaker who was given early access to create a short using Sora. Shy Kids is a Toronto-based digital production team that was selected by OpenAI to be one of the few teams to create a short film essentially for promotional purposes for OpenAI, but they had quite a bit of work to do when it came to making “Air Head.” Creative freedom…
When Aseem Chandna drove into Rubrik's offices in Palo Alto on a Friday night in early 2015, he was excited to see what the young company, which had yet to develop a product, would have in store. Greylock's partners did not disappoint. The company's CEO, Vipul Sinha, whiteboarded Rubrik's plans to revolutionize the data management and recovery market. “The old and new architecture he presented was very convincing,” Chandna said. “Based on my knowledge of the field, I knew it had the potential to be built into a large business.” It was a visionary call. On Thursday, nine years after…
EyeEm, a Berlin-based photo-sharing community sold to Spanish company Freepik after bankruptcy last year, now licenses users' photos to train AI models. The company notified users via email earlier this month that it was adding a new clause to its terms of service that “gives you the right to upload your content to train, develop, and improve our software, algorithms, and machine learning models.” ” The user was given his 30 days to opt out by removing all content from EyeEm's platform. Otherwise they were agreeing to this use case for their work. At the time of acquisition in 2023,…
Meta's new large language model, Llama 3, powers the imaginatively named “Meta AI.” This is the new chatbot that social media and advertising companies are installing into as many apps and interfaces as possible. How does this model compare to other general purpose conversational AIs? It tends to regurgitate a lot of web search results and isn't great at anything, but it's reasonably priced. Currently, Meta AI can be accessed for free on the web at Meta.ai, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and perhaps a few other places if those aren't enough. While it's always been available, with the release of Llama…