Author: TechBrunch
Flash, a payment management service that tracks all your online purchases, announced its entry into the U.S. market on Tuesday, giving U.S. customers the ability to manage all their spending in one place while offering perks like gift cards and cashback. can now also be obtained. The US has many high-spending consumers, making it a strategic choice to launch the app here. The Department of Commerce's Census Bureau estimates that U.S. online shopping brought in approximately $291.6 billion in the second quarter of 2024. We estimate that total retail sales will reach approximately $1.8 trillion. Projections for the global e-commerce…
Most AI benchmarks don't tell you much. They ask questions that can be solved by rote memorization, or cover topics that are irrelevant to the majority of users. That's why some AI enthusiasts are turning to games as a way to test an AI's problem-solving skills. Freelance AI developer Paul Calcraft built an app that allows two AI models to play a Pictionary-like game with each other. One model doodles and the other model tries to guess what the doodle represents. “I thought this looked like a lot of fun and could be interesting from a model functionality standpoint,” Calcraft…
“Move carefully and be on the red team” is unfortunately not as catchy as “move fast and break things.” But three AI safety advocates made it clear to startup founders that moving too quickly could lead to ethical issues in the long run. “We're at a tipping point where a lot of resources are moving into this space,” said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Rushing to bring certain products into the world without considering the traditional questions of what kind of world we really want to live in and…
Months after ending its Prime Air drone delivery program in California, Amazon announced it has begun delivering to some customers by drone in Phoenix, Arizona. Starting today, Amazon customers in the West Valley-Phoenix metropolitan area can now access drone-delivered products from Amazon's catalog, including home, beauty, office, health, and tech supplies. To be eligible, your product must weigh 5 pounds or less. According to Amazon, approximately 50,000 units will be available at the time of release. Before checking out, customers can select the drone delivery location according to their address. Amazon says most items will be shipped directly from the…
Cortue Management, the hedge fund that invested heavily in tech startups during the pandemic boom, is raising $1 billion to back AI-focused companies, Bloomberg reported Monday. Reported. Funds to replenish the company's flagship fund will primarily be raised from institutional investors. However, the report said wealthy individuals with accounts at brokerage firm Raymond James & Associates may also invest in Courtue. Coatue has nearly $50 billion in assets under management and invested in more than 170 VC-backed companies in 2021, according to PitchBook data. Since then, Coatue has significantly slowed down the pace of its startup investments, backing only 81…
The former head of Meta's augmented reality glasses efforts announced Monday that he is joining OpenAI to lead robotics and consumer hardware, according to a post on LinkedIn. OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch that Caitlin Kalinowski will be joining the startup. Kalinowski is a hardware executive who began leading Meta's AR glasses team in March 2022. She oversaw the creation of Orion, an impressive augmented reality prototype that Meta recently unveiled at its annual Connect conference. Kalinowski led Meta's hardware team developing virtual reality goggles for about nine years. Before that, he designed MacBook hardware at Apple. “I’m excited to share…
Although the end of zero interest rates has prompted businesses to look for savings wherever possible, there are still areas where there are significant budget drains. Observability (gathering and understanding data and systems) is typically the second-highest cloud spend for organizations, after cloud provisioning itself. People are even talking about an observability cost crisis, highlighted by anecdotes like Coinbase spending $65 million on Datadog claims. And why is observability so expensive and important? Complex cloud architectures and microservices are here to stay, and security issues and outages are common, making it difficult for operations teams to keep their systems up…
Bowery Farming, the agricultural technology unicorn, is shutting down, according to Pitchbook, which cited internal documents and multiple company employees. The New York-based agtech company was known for building vertical farms that could produce crops such as lettuce, herbs, and berries. The company has raised more than $700 million in funding from VCs including First Round Capital, General Catalyst, and GV, according to PitchBook data. The company's latest funding round values the company at more than $2 billion in 2021. Pitchbook previously reported that Bowery Farming had made multiple layoffs in 2023. Vertical farming has proven to be a tough…
Apple products will integrate with OpenAI's ChatGPT in December when iOS 18.2 is released, powering Siri and several other features with smarter AI. On Wednesday, iOS 18.2 beta testers got a taste of how OpenAI could benefit from its partnership with Apple. According to an iOS 18.2 beta update spotted by 9to5Mac, Apple is including an option to upgrade to ChatGPT Plus within the Settings app. This will allow Apple users to sign up directly for OpenAI's premium subscription plan for $20 per month. This could lead many users to sign up for ChatGPT Plus, which is the core of…
Aravind Srinivas, CEO of AI search company Perplexity, has stepped across the picket line and offered his services to help cushion the impact of the tech workers' strike at the New York Times. The NYT Tech Guild announced the strike on Monday, after setting a Nov. 4 deadline months ago. The employees represented will provide software support and data analysis to The Times on the business side of the dealership. They are asking for, among other things, a 2.5% annual wage increase and firming up the current two-day work week expectation. “However, the company has determined that our members are…