Author: TechBrunch
Tran Li was an engineering student at Stanford University who was enrolling in a clinical trial for a chronic disease. She identified several promising clinical trials, but found the enrollment process daunting. This required extensive email communication with clinical sites and the completion of a lengthy 20-page form. All this paperwork was very cumbersome, so Le saw an opportunity to use generative AI to reduce the time it takes to enroll in a clinical trial from weeks to minutes. Last year, she co-founded Grove AI with fellow Stanford engineer Sohit Gatiganti. Many patients are referred to clinical trials by their…
Ahead of the holiday season, Microsoft announced that it is upgrading the AI model behind Bing Image Creator, the AI-powered image editing tool built into its Bing search engine. Microsoft says this new model (the latest version of OpenAI's DALL-E 3 model, codenamed PR16) will allow users to create “higher quality” images “twice as fast as before”. I promised. But it never arrived. Complaints quickly flooded X and Reddit. “The DALL-E we loved is gone forever,” said one Redditor. “Now that Bing is no longer working for me, I use ChatGPT,” another wrote. The backlash was so great that Microsoft…
H1, a healthcare data analytics platform that provides data on more than 10 million healthcare workers to the pharmaceutical industry, has acquired Ribbon, a startup that helps patients find doctors with insurance support. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2016 and a Y Combinator alum, Ribbon last raised funding in 2021, closing a $43.5 million Series B at a valuation of $283.5 million, according to PitchBook data. It amounted to 1 million dollars. Many startups that haven't secured funding in more than three years are facing increasing pressure, with many becoming acquisition targets or facing imminent…
Educational technology giant PowerSchool told customers that a “cybersecurity incident” occurred in K-12 school districts across the U.S. in which personal data of students and teachers was compromised by hackers. California-based PowerSchool, acquired by Bain Capital in 2024 for $5.6 billion, is the largest provider of cloud-based educational software for K-12 education in the U.S., reaching more than 75% of North American students. It is said that they are providing a service. Company website. PowerSchool says its software is used by more than 16,000 customers and supports more than 50 million students in the United States. In a letter sent…
The Supreme Court has ordered the European Union's top enforcement authority to pay 400 euros (about $410) in damages to German citizens for violating its own data protection laws. The EU General Court said in a statement that the European Commission had transferred some personal data to the United States without adequate safeguards, infringing the rights of citizens. The court said the German national registered for the European Commission-administered conference using the “Sign in with Facebook” option on the conference's website. However, citizens said that information about their IP addresses, browsers and devices were transferred to US companies, namely Meta,…
Whatnot, a platform that allows users to sell items such as trading cards, comics and sneakers through live video, announced Wednesday that it has secured $265 million in a Series E funding round. This is a significant investment for a livestream shopping platform. This round values Wattnot at $4.97 billion. This investment is an important milestone for Watnot and highlights the potential for livestream shopping to grow in the US. It reflects investors' belief that they can innovate further in the item space. The new capital will be used to expand into more categories, including art, golf and records. Whatnot…
Japanese consumer electronics giant Casio has confirmed that the personal data of approximately 8,500 people was stolen in a ransomware attack in October. Casio was the target of a ransomware attack on October 5th, in which hackers accessed sensitive data and rendered many of the company's systems unusable. The attack was carried out by the Underground ransomware group, which claimed to have stolen over 200 gigabytes of data from Casio's systems, according to a dark web post seen by TechCrunch. In an update posted on Tuesday, Casio said a hacker group that security experts associate with the Russia-linked cybercrime group…
The United Nations aviation agency has confirmed that hackers accessed thousands of records after breaching its internal recruitment database. Last weekend, an individual using the alias “Natohub” claimed to have accessed 42,000 documents from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The agency announced on Monday that it was investigating the incident and confirmed Natohub's claims in an updated statement sent to TechCrunch on Tuesday. “ICAO said the reported information security incident involved approximately 42,000 job application data records from April 2016 to July 2024 that were allegedly exposed by a threat actor known as Natohub. I was able to confirm…
Microsoft announced a series of wide-ranging artificial intelligence partnerships in core areas in India on Wednesday, a day after pledging to invest $3 billion over the next two years in the country as competition from rivals Google and Amazon intensifies. The tech giant's chief executive, Satya Nadella (pictured above), announced agreements with five major organizations spanning rail, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing and education. This includes an agreement with India's Ministry of Electronics and IT, as part of which Microsoft will contribute to the ministry's IndiaAI Mission Datasets platform by supporting data collection and synthetic generation. The company also plans to…
January 8th 9:30am Dubai VC investment in emerging markets such as the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) has plummeted by more than 40% compared to 2023, according to a new report. This data reflects a broader global trend of declining VC funding, particularly in non-AI companies, over the past two years. Total funding across surveyed markets in 2024 was $9.1 billion, down 41% year-over-year (YoY). Furthermore, trading activity decreased by 20% year-over-year, with the number of transactions falling to 1,527. However, while early-stage investments are showing resilience, lower interest rates globally and the associated fall in inflation could soon…