Author: TechBrunch

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The clock is ticking! There are only 48 hours left to lock the spot at TechCrunch's 2025 blockade, saving up to $1,130 for individual ticket types and 30% on group tickets. Don't wait – Secure your pass now before it rises to 11:59pm on February 28th. The 2025 turmoil will be held in Moscone West, San Francisco from October 27-29 to celebrate 20 years, the epicenter of innovation. Connect with over 10,000 technology leaders, dive into over 250 sessions, gain valuable insights from over 200 experts, and of course, see the epic Startup Battlefield 200 Pitch Competition. Our legendary former…

FinTech is fragmented into increasingly specialized cucumber sliced ​​microservices, ranging from embedded buy-out payment loans to specialized NEO banks and even more payment processing systems. What opportunities do innovators remain in such fragmented landscapes? One UK startup just moved, zoomed out and realized that everyone in the industry was overlooking the home. It also raises a $8 million Series A funding round for its home setup service led by EOS Ventures (Global Insurance VC). Strategic support for EOS ventures means it will expand into built-in financial services and simplify processes such as credit and insurance products protection. The company says…

Automatic logic behind many financial decisions – for example, the decision that determines whether a client is approved for a credit line is hardcoded. Often it doesn't change easily. For example, if your bank's credit manager wants to adjust the bank's lending criteria, you probably need to raise your ticket. Entrepreneurs Maximilian Eber and Make Taro Wehmeyer met while studying at Harvard University, opposed the limitations of financial decision-making logic at Quantco, which builds AI-powered apps for corporate clients. In 2020, the pair decided to find Taktile, a startup, to make automated decision logic a more self-service process. “We realized…

Meta reports that he is launching a standalone app for short-format videos, citing an anonymous source where he heard Instagram head Adam Mosseri talk to staff about the project. The project is a codenamed project Ray, which aims to improve recommendations for new users and existing users in the US, and is reportedly posting more three-minute videos. Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Last month, the company announced a video editing app called Edit to compete with Capcut (owned by Tiktok Parent Company Bytedance) with the aim of taking advantage of the uncertain future of Tiktok and…

Google’s trying to make waves with Gemini, its flagship suite of generative AI models, apps, and services. But what’s Gemini? How can you use it? And how does it stack up to other generative AI tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta’s Llama, and Microsoft’s Copilot? To make it easier to keep up with the latest Gemini developments, we’ve put together this handy guide, which we’ll keep updated as new Gemini models, features, and news about Google’s plans for Gemini are released. What is Gemini? Gemini is Google’s long-promised, next-gen generative AI model family. Developed by Google’s AI research labs DeepMind and Google…

Former North Carolina Rep. Patrick McHenry announced Wednesday that he had set up a job at VC company Andreessen Horowitz. He will become a senior advisor. His posts on X say little about what the work entails, except defending a startup with policymakers (which A16Z likes to call “Little Tech”). Andreessen Horowitz did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Mchenry spent 20 years in Congress before resigning in January. As chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, he was probably best known for dressing down with SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. Gensler has become a boogeyman, especially in the crypto…

Millie, a California-based maternity clinic founded by ANU Sharma, has announced a $12 million Series A salary increase from investors, including key ventures from RH Capital, TMV and Melinda French Gates. Sharma was inspired to start a company in 2019 after the birth of her daughter. She faced pregnancy complications and as a doctor's child, she was able to identify symptoms that medical staff had missed. This experience led her to build a maternity clinic she had hoped for when she was giving birth. As a result, Millie was released in 2022. We provide birth and gynecological care, postnatal coaching,…

There is immense power in being in control of your own data. As ownership and governance of apps and online services consolidate, it’s understandable if you want to consider your options when it comes to where you store your private data and records of your everyday activities.  Fortunately, not every service out there is trying to monetize your personal data, and many offerings are just as good (if not often better) as their commercial or ad-supported rivals.  Take a minute to think about what you’d want to leave behind. Big Tech giants that hoard your data? Subscription services? Invasive ad…

Inception is a new Palo Alto-based company launched by Stanford Computer Science professor Stefano Ermon, and claims to have developed a new AI model based on “diffusion” technology. Inception calls it a major diffusion-based language model, or “DLM” for short. The most attention-grabbing generation AI models can be broadly divided into two types: large-scale language models (LLM) and diffusion models. LLMS built on a trans architecture is used for text generation. Meanwhile, diffusion models that power AI systems such as Midjourney and Openai's SORA are primarily used to create images, video and audio. According to the company, Inception's model offers…