Author: TechBrunch

Successful technology companies follow a typical pattern from product to platform that other startups build their businesses on. To facilitate this, they often launch funds. In this case, someone else is starting a fund to support Bluesky, a fast-growing social media site that currently has 25 million users. On Wednesday, open source and Python mogul Peter Wang announced a fund called Skyseed with an initial $1 million war chest. Bluesky is a decentralized social app developed by Jack Dorsey (although Dorsey left the Bluesky board in May). It was launched five years ago and became popular as an alternative to…

Successful technology companies follow a typical pattern from product to platform that other startups build their businesses on. To facilitate this, they often launch funds. In this case, someone else is starting a fund to support Bluesky, a fast-growing social media site that currently has 25 million users. On Wednesday, open source and Python mogul Peter Wang announced a fund called Skyseed with an initial $1 million war chest. Bluesky is a decentralized social app developed by Jack Dorsey (although Dorsey left the Bluesky board in May). It was launched five years ago and became popular as an alternative to…

GPS tracking company Hapn has revealed the names of thousands of its customers due to a bug on its website, TechCrunch has learned. Security researchers alerted TechCrunch in late November about customer names and affiliations (including work names) that had been leaked from one of Hapn's servers, and TechCrunch confirmed it. Hapn, formerly known as Spytec, is a tracking company that allows users to remotely monitor the real-time location of internet-enabled tracking devices that can be attached to vehicles and other equipment. The company also sells GPS trackers to consumers under the Spytec brand that use the Hapn app for…

Threads is introducing a new way to reshare photos and videos on social networks. Instead of posting a quote on the original post and then adding a comment, Threads users can simply reshare the photo or video directly into a new post by clicking on the new option “Use Media” and add their own post there. You will be able to add. Sentence. However, the image or video credit remains with the original poster. The feature was announced Wednesday by Instagram head Adam Mosseri in a thread. He said the new option will be a “quick and easy way to…

Perplexity has acquired Carbon, a small Seattle-based startup that specializes in connecting AI systems to external data sources, the companies announced Wednesday. CEO Aravind Srinivasan said Perplexity will be able to search files and work messages in Notion, Google Docs, Slack and other enterprise applications in early 2025. Carbon specializes in search extension generation (RAG). RAGs allow large language models to access information from external databases before generating answers. By bringing Carbon's technology and staff on board, Perplexity could open the door to launching an enterprise search product. These tools connect generative AI to corporate databases, allowing employees to quickly…

After slowing in 2022, the global app economy continued to recover in 2024, at least in terms of consumer spending. In 2024, global consumer spending on mobile apps and games across the App Store and Google Play reached $127 billion, an increase of 15.7% year over year. But new data from app intelligence firm Appfigures says those increases were driven by Apple's App Store as spending on Google Play declined. While spending was rising, there were other worrying signs regarding the overall health of the app ecosystem. This year, global app downloads decreased by 2.3% compared to 2023, reaching nearly…

Alphabet's Wing announced Wednesday it is expanding its partnership with DoorDash to offer drone delivery to customers in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Customers in the area will now be able to order food from 50 merchants located at Stonebriar Center in Frisco and Hulen Mall in Fort Worth. Wing says its drones can “deliver goods and meals to your doorstep in as little as 15 minutes.” The drone can travel up to a customer's residence at speeds of 100 miles per hour and a cruising altitude of about 150 feet. When customers with eligible addresses in Dallas-Fort Worth place an…

Microsoft has bought more than twice as many Nvidia Hopper chips this year as its biggest rival. The tech giant bought 485,000 Nvidia Hopper chips this year, according to a report in the Financial Times, citing data from technology consultancy Omdia. For comparison, Meta bought 224,000 of the same flagship Nvidia chips this year. Microsoft's 2024 chip purchases were more than triple the number of Nvidia chips it purchased in 2023. Microsoft is also developing its own custom AI chip called Maia, which it announced at the Ignite conference in late 2023. This year, the company got serious about AI.…

ChatGPT is coming to your phone. No, it's not a smartphone, it's a landline. Call 1-800-242-8478 (1-800-CHATGPT) and OpenAI's AI-powered assistant will respond starting Wednesday afternoon. “[Our mission at] OpenAI is about making artificial general intelligence beneficial to all humanity, and part of that is making artificial general intelligence accessible to as many people as possible,” said Kevin, OpenAI Chief Product Officer. Weil said on a livestream. “Today, we're taking the next step and bringing ChatGPT to your phone.” This experience is similar to Advanced Voice Mode, OpenAI's real-time conversation feature for ChatGPT, except for multimodality. ChatGPT can respond to…

Hello everyone, welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. If you'd like to have this sent to your inbox every Wednesday, hit the link and sign up here. Last week, OpenAI launched Advanced Voice Mode with Vision, which feeds real-time video into ChatGPT, allowing chatbots to “see” beyond the limitations of the app layer. The premise is that by adding more context awareness to ChatGPT, bots can respond in a more natural and intuitive way. But the first time I tried it, it lied to me. “That couch looks comfy!” ChatGPT said when I held up my phone and asked the…