Author: TechBrunch

Over the past decade, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance has grown from a dorm room operation to a thousands-strong global network of experts, investors, and “ecopreneurs.” They all believe the best way to save our ailing oceans is to embrace innovation. Founder Daniela Fernandes has been at the helm of the ship, and SOA is ready to make new waves. Since Fernandez started SOA in 2014, SOA's approach to addressing the climate crisis has embraced the emerging startup economy. “Before us, no one in this space was even considering entrepreneurship and innovation as part of the solution,” she said in an…

OpenAI seems to be in the holiday spirit. ChatGPT's series of reveals is called “12 Days of OpenAI,” and will be streamed live weekdays at 10 a.m. Pacific time through December 23. 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. You can find out how to watch the event below. OpenAI will livestream the event on its YouTube channel. We'll be live blogging everything announced so you can…

After nearly four years in a sales role at personal software company ServiceTitan, Mark Hoadley (pictured above) was looking for a change and exploring the possibility of starting something of his own in a similar industry. Hoadley's brother-in-law and current co-founder Ben Sikma was working on M&A in the waste management space at the time. Sikma discovered how outdated many companies are in changing hands. When he and Mr. Hoadley started looking deeper, they realized that waste management might be what Mr. Hoadley was looking for. “All the existing software in this space was clunky and outdated,” Hoadley told TechCrunch.…

When it comes to frontier technology, the interests of governments and Silicon Valley are increasingly aligned. We've seen an emerging trend where dual-use startups make a mark by solving government defense, infrastructure, and intelligence problems, and then scale by making those products available to the public. I've been doing it. “The advantage of government is that you have a problem. You're solving the government's big data problem, and you're probably solving the commercial world's big data problem as well,” Gilman-Louis said in this week's Equity magazine. said in an interview. This week on Equity Wednesday, Rebecca Beran joins Louie, co-founder…

The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that ByteDance and TikTok will hear a challenge to a law that bans social networks in the United States unless they separate from Chinese ownership by January 19. On January 10, Supreme Court justices are scheduled to hear arguments on whether the anti-sale law violates the First Amendment. It is unclear how quickly the court will issue a decision. The companies asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block the law. ByteDance and TikTok filed an emergency motion last week asking the Court of Appeals to temporarily block the law to give the Supreme Court…

A ransomware attack earlier this year on UnitedHealth-owned health tech company Change Healthcare likely stands as one of the largest data breaches of U.S. health and medical data in history. Months after the February data breach, a “substantial proportion of people living in America” are receiving notice by mail that their personal and health information was stolen by cybercriminals during the cyberattack on Change Healthcare. At least 100 million people are now known to be affected by the breach. Change Healthcare processes billing and insurance for hundreds of thousands of hospitals, pharmacies and medical practices across the U.S. healthcare sector.…

Social magazine app maker Flipboard is reinventing itself for a new era of the open social web. The company's original app, which allowed users to curate content from blogs, news websites, and traditional social media services like Facebook and Twitter to create a curated magazine, is today launching an invite-only beta. Launching Edition A new app called Surf lets users browse and explore the open social web instead. This includes services like Mastodon and Bluesky, as well as other public web content such as blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Surf uses open protocols like RSS, which provides a feed of…

The US state of Nebraska has sued health tech giant Change Healthcare over a series of alleged security flaws that led to a historic data breach that exposed sensitive health information of at least 100 million Americans. Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers said in a complaint filed this week that Change Healthcare, a unit of UnitedHealth, failed to take adequate security measures and that its influence and size meant that he had access to “historic” data. It alleges that this led to what it calls an infringement. This comes after it was revealed in October that more than 100 million…

OpenAI is well on its way to becoming a for-profit company governed by a nonprofit board of directors, which could be compensated with royalties. This is according to the New York Times, which reports that OpenAI is in talks to pay billions of dollars to a nonprofit group to transfer control. There is pressure to close the deal. OpenAI will reportedly have to change its corporate structure within two years or the company's recently raised $6.6 billion will be converted into debt. “Non-profit and for-profit exist within a single corporate structure, and how do we reconfigure that?” OpenAI board chairman…

The European Data Protection Board (EDPB) on Wednesday outlined how AI developers can use personal data to develop and deploy AI models, such as large-scale language models (LLMs), without violating the bloc's privacy laws. A written opinion was published for consideration. Its views are important because the Board plays a key steering role in the application of these laws and issues guidance to support regulatory enforcement. Areas covered by the EDPB opinion include whether AI models can be considered anonymous (which means privacy laws do not apply); Whether the legal basis of “legitimate interest” can be used to lawfully process…