Author: TechBrunch
The FBI yesterday announced that Joanna Smith-Griffin, the founder of AI startup AllHere Education, was involved in “securities fraud, wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft related to defrauding investors” for nearly $10 million. An indictment was released alleging deception. The FBI alleges that she misrepresented the company's revenue, customer base and cash to investors from at least November 2020 to June 2024. According to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the company is in Chapter 7 bankruptcy. If convicted, Smith-Griffin faces up to 20 years in prison for securities fraud, up to 20 years for wire fraud, and up to two years…
A Chinese research institute has announced what appears to be one of the first “inference” AI models to rival OpenAI's o1. On Wednesday, DeepSeek, an AI research firm funded by quantitative traders, released a preview of DeepSeek-R1. The company claims that DeepSeek-R1 is an inference model comparable to o1. Unlike most models, inferential models effectively check facts by spending more time considering questions and queries. This helps avoid some of the pitfalls that models usually stumble upon. Similar to o1, DeepSeek-R1 reasons through tasks, plans ahead, and performs a series of actions that help the model arrive at an answer.…
TV Time, a popular TV and movie tracking and recommendation app with more than 30 million registered users, has disappeared from Apple's App Store for several weeks, prompting questions about its future from the app's loyal fan base. a voice rose. 2.5 million users use the app every month to track what they're watching, comment on individual episodes, vote for their favorite characters, post images and GIFs, and share with other users Its disappearance is very important considering that we participate in social networks that allow us to connect with and connect with others. I couldn't help but notice. On…
Pony AI, a Chinese self-driving car startup aiming to list on the Nasdaq stock exchange, is currently aiming to raise about $260 million, according to a new regulatory filing. This is an increase from the previous target of approximately $224 million. To achieve this goal, Pony plans to sell up to 20 million American Depositary Shares. This is still lower than the much higher target of $425 million that Pony was aiming for earlier this year before the board approved lowering the minimum valuation from about $8 billion to $4 billion. low. Pony has struggled in early testing in the…
Late last week, U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Gary Gensler said he was “proud to serve” the commission, a comment some took as a hint that he would soon resign. Mr. Gensler has faced severe criticism over his crackdown on virtual currencies, including recent lawsuits from 18 states, and is likely to be replaced by President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to oust Mr. Gensler. . On Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump met with Brian Armstrong, CEO of cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, to discuss possible personnel changes. On the same day, President Trump said he would…
Belgium-based Odoo decided to use open source tools as a way to attack the enterprise resource planning (ERP) software market against giants like SAP. Decades later, the company has now raised 500 million euros (approximately $527 million at current exchange rates) in secondary investment from CapitalG (Alphabet's venture fund), Sequoia Capital, and other investors . The new funding is expected to raise its valuation to 5 billion euros ($5.26 billion). Yes, that's right. With over 5 million users and 40% annual growth, Odoo's business is actually so good that it hasn't had to raise any primary capital in eight years.…
When Brandon Contino and co-founder Dan Chi were developing Four Growers' produce-harvesting robot, they essentially lived in a greenhouse for a year. They coded at a small desk in the back corner and discovered that a fertilizer bag made a comfortable bed. “We actually just started doing everything on a laptop and I was participating in line coding. [Chi] We will make changes mechanically,” current CEO Contino told TechCrunch. “You run it, and then you change the code, you redevelop it, and you go back and run it again. So it was a really fun time just basically living on…
Manufacturing is one of the hottest venture categories this year, but there are still many innovative materials and processes that have yet to be scaled up. One example is thermosetting composite materials. This material is widely used in aerospace and defense because of its high temperature resistance and light weight, but it typically comes with long lead times and high prices for customers. Raven Space Systems, a Kansas City, Missouri-based startup, announced it has developed a new process that enables scalable 3D printing of commercially available, off-the-shelf thermoset composite parts for the first time. “We're basically making the entire field…
Insurance is fertile ground for artificial intelligence innovation, working at the nexus of huge data sets, risk assessment, predictive analytics, fintech, and customer service. Riding on that momentum, startup Federato has now raised $40 million to expand its AI-powered underwriting platform that helps insurers better understand and respond to risks. Stepstone Group is leading the round, with participation from previous backers Emergence Capital, Caffeinated Capital, and Pear VC. The startup has now raised a total of $80 million. The company did not disclose the valuation, but CEO and co-founder Will Roth acknowledged in an interview that it was a “significant…
AI is permeating every corner of biotech and pharmaceutical research, but like other industries, implementation is not as easy as it seems. Converge Bio has built tools to help companies put biology-focused LLMs to work, from “enriching” data to explaining answers. The company raised $5.5 million in a seed round to expand its products. “A model is just a model. It's not enough,” said Dov Gertz, CEO and co-founder. “We need to create a pipeline so that companies can actually use the models in their own R&D processes. We want to be able to integrate it and use it anywhere.We…