Author: TechBrunch

Anysphere, the company behind the AI-powered coding assistant Cursor, has raised $100 million in Series B, giving it a post-money valuation of $2.6 billion, according to sources familiar with the deal. The round was led by returning investor Thrive Capital, the person said. This new funding comes just four months after Anysphere raised a $60 million Series A from Thrive and Andreessen Horrowitz at a valuation of $400 million. A16Z also participated in the latest round, but this time it was not a co-lead. Thrive declined to comment, and the company and a16z did not respond to requests for comment.…

What if you could generate a usable 3D design as easily as prompting ChatGPT? That's the mission of Backflip, a startup founded by 3D printing veterans. Backflip just secured $30 million from Andreessen Horowitz, New Enterprise Associates, and many other big names in the tech world. Designing physical objects often requires hours or days of specialized work using computer-aided design software. Backflip CEO Greg Mark and CTO David Benhaim, both founders of 3D printing company Markforged, want to cut that down to minutes thanks to Backflip's new foundational model. “AI language models capture how we think, vision models capture how…

A new app called Tapestry that promises to unify social media, news, and RSS in one place is nearing completion. Designed by Iconfactory, the same team that created Twitterific, a third-party Twitter client at the time, Tapestry was introduced this year as a tool to better organize today's fragmented online media and allow users to keep track of their favorite blogs. It was announced first. News sites and social networks all in one app. The company released an update on Tapestry's progress this week, saying it plans to officially launch the app to the public in “early 2025.” “Obviously the…

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri has teased an upcoming generative AI feature for the social app that will allow creators to “change almost every aspect” of their videos using text prompts. In a video shared on Thursday, Mosseri said the editing tool leverages Meta's Movie Generation AI model and is expected to be rolled out on social networks sometime next year. “We're working on some really exciting AI tools for video creators,” Mosseri said. “So many of you are creating the great content that makes Instagram what it is, and we want to give you even more tools to bring your…

The founders now have a way to ensure investors aren't losing money from countries like China, Russia, Iran and Cuba. More than 20 venture companies have signed the Clean Capital Certification, certifying that they have not received or intend to receive funding from foreign adversaries. Signatories include Marlinspike Partners, Humba Ventures, and Snowpoint Ventures. “We need to ensure that America's adversaries do not directly benefit from our successes, and publicly signing the Clean Capital Certification is an , it's a way to address that obligation as a community.” The pledge was created by Future Union, an advocacy group that works…

Google has released what it calls a new “inference” AI model. However, this is still in the experimental stage and from our quick testing, there is certainly room for improvement. The new model, called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental (a mouthful, to be sure), is available in AI Studio, Google's AI prototyping platform. The model card describes it as being “ideal for multimodal understanding, reasoning, and coding” and capable of “reasoning through the most complex problems” in fields such as programming, mathematics, and physics. In a post on X, AI Studio product lead Logan Kilpatrick calls the Gemini 2.0 Flash…

As expected, ServiceTitan's highly successful IPO has inspired other fintech companies to move forward with their own public debuts. Digital bank Chime has filed confidential documents with the SEC, Bloomberg reports. The company has been preparing for this moment since hiring banker Morgan Stanley in September, aiming for an IPO in 2025. The IPO won't become a reality until those documents are made public and institutional investors agree to buy at Chime's desired price. That may be a tall order. Chime was last valued at $25 billion when it raised $1 billion at the height of the valuation frenzy in…

It took much longer than originally planned weeks, but a pivotal privacy decision that has been hanging over Sam Altman's World (also known as WorldCoin) for months has finally made the block's data secure. The decision was finally made in late December from the Bavarian data protection authority to enforce. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive privacy framework that enables sanctions reaching up to 4% of global annual revenue. The results appear to be different than what the eyeball-scanning crypto identity venture was expecting. A remedial order has been issued requiring comprehensive deletion of user data upon…

OpenAI seems to be in the holiday spirit. The series of ChatGPT rollouts, dubbed “12 Days of OpenAI,” will be live-streamed every weekday at 10 a.m. Pacific time through December 20th. So far, we've seen the launch of ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI's $200/month subscription plan. The complete version of that “reasoning” o1 model. Text-to-video generator Sora is now available to the public. Deploying Canvas. ChatGPT for Apple Intelligence. ChatGPT's real-time video capabilities. Ability to call ChatGPT via a 1-800 number. You can find out how to watch the event below. OpenAI will livestream the event on its YouTube channel. We'll be…

A young startup that emerged from stealth in less than two months is back in the spotlight with a high-profile backer and bigger ambitions to make it big in the world of AI. Decart is building what CEO and co-founder Dean Leitersdorf describes as a “fully vertically integrated AI research lab” alongside enterprise and consumer products based on the lab's work. I am. The first enterprise product to optimize GPU usage has already generated millions of dollars in revenue. And its first consumer product, a playable “open world” AI model called Oasis, was released when Descart came out of stealth…