Author: TechBrunch

There are other great reasons to join a defense startup besides patriotism. That means the pay is very good. Thanks to the Federal Funds Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA), we now know how much Anduril, a defense technology startup valued at $14 billion, pays its top employees. The law requires companies to report maximum compensation after receiving at least 80% of their annual gross revenue from federal awards and earning at least $25 million in annual gross revenue from these awards. (Mr. Anduril reportedly told investors that revenue reached $500 million last year.) The data in this report also includes…

There are other great reasons to join a defense startup besides patriotism. That means the pay is very good. Thanks to the Federal Funds Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA), we now know how much Anduril, a defense technology startup valued at $14 billion, pays its top employees. The law requires companies to report maximum compensation after receiving at least 80% of their annual gross revenue from federal awards and earning at least $25 million in annual gross revenue from these awards. (Mr. Anduril reportedly told investors that revenue reached $500 million last year.) The data in this report also includes…

A group appears to have leaked access to Sora, OpenAI's video generator, in protest of duplicity on the part of OpenAI and what it calls “artwashing.” The group published the project on Tuesday on Hugging Face, an AI development platform that appears to be connected to OpenAI's Sora API, which is not yet publicly available. This group created a frontend that allows users to generate videos with Sora, presumably using an authentication token from an early access program. Why I think this is real – It uses the OpenAI Sora API endpoint to generate and download a video with hardcoded…

Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, is looking to get into some kind of hardware. Aravind Srinivas, founder and CEO of Perplexity, posted on X yesterday that the company is looking to create a “simple and under $50” device to “reliably answer” questions “voice-to-voice.” I posted. He promised that Perplexity would “definitely” sell such a device if the post received more than 5,000 likes. It happened. “Okay. LFG!” Srinivas replied. Are you okay. LFG! https://t.co/hMw3eugb0l — Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) November 26, 2024 Hardware is becoming something of an obsession among high-profile AI startups. Partly because of its fame, but also because…

A ransomware attack on Blue Yonder, one of the world's largest supply chain software providers, continues to disrupt operations at many major stores and retailers in the United States and United Kingdom. Arizona-based Blue Yonder, which was acquired by Panasonic in 2021, said in a statement on its website on Friday that it had experienced a disruption in its managed services hosting environment that was “determined to be the result of a ransomware incident. ” he said. The supply chain giant said it was “working diligently” to recover from the incident, but as of Sunday the company had “no timeline…

Just last year, Inflection AI received the highest profile for a startup, releasing a best-in-class AI model that it claims has the potential to outperform technologies from OpenAI, Meta, and Google. This is a stark contrast from today, as Inflection's new CEO told TechCrunch that his startup is no longer trying to compete in that space. Of course, a lot has changed at Inflection between then and now. Microsoft hired then-CEO Mustafa Suleiman to run its own AI business, hired most of its staff and paid the startup $650 million to license the technology. . A few months ago, Inflection…

Cleo Capital, an early-stage venture fund that counts AI company Groq, fintech company Ellevest, and fashion brand Hill House among its investments, has announced the launch of a new cybersecurity accelerator. The program seeks pre-seed and seed companies from around the world. The accelerator is a remote 12-week program with a standard investment of $250,000 for 7% equity. The venture fund said up to 10 companies will be selected for the program. Sarah Kunst, founder and managing partner of Creo Capital, is concerned about the amount of fraud she sees in the cryptocurrencies and fintechs she invests in, as well…

Brazil's antitrust regulator Cade has ruled that Apple must lift restrictions on in-app purchases within 20 days, Reuters reported. Otherwise, iPhone makers face fines of $43,000 per day if they don't comply. This decision is the result of a complaint filed in 2022 by e-commerce operator Mercado Libre. If you've been following recent changes to the App Store around the world, the list of complaints isn't all that surprising. Brazilian regulators have decided that Apple must allow app developers to link to external websites for subscriptions and digital purchases. Alternatively, the company could hand over payment processing to developers themselves.…

Google has announced further changes to the way it displays search results in the European Union in response to ongoing complaints about its non-compliance with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). This includes what it calls a “short-term test” of simple “Blue Link” style search results for hotel queries in three EU markets (Belgium, Estonia and Germany). The company suggests this is similar to how its search engine originally worked. Displayed results. Under the EU's flagship market competitiveness reform, violations are subject to heavy penalties of up to 10% of annual global sales (or higher for repeated violations). Google's…

SoftBank-backed online shopping site Meesho became the first Indian e-commerce company to deploy a GenAI-powered voice bot for customer support, reducing some of its expenses by 75%. The Bangalore-based e-commerce startup announced on Tuesday that its AI bots are now fielding 60,000 customer calls every day in English and Hindi. The startup, which also counts Elevation and Prosus among its backers, plans to add support for six more Indian languages. Meesho has over 160 million customers in India, 80% of whom live in small cities, towns and villages. The startup is valued at $4.9 billion and has annual sales of…