Author: TechBrunch

AI continues to reshape power and energy markets, and even oil giants like ExxonMobil are getting in on the act. Exxon this week announced plans to build power plants for its data centers, reflecting how much the power technology company expects to need them over the next decade. By 2027, nearly half of new AI data centers may not have enough power, according to some estimates. Oil and gas companies already operate power plants for their own operations, but the new project will be the first for an external customer. The planned power plant will run on natural gas and…

Healthcare giant Optum has restricted access to its internal AI chatbot used by its employees after security researchers discovered that it was published online and could be accessed by anyone using only a web browser. restricted. The chatbot, seen by TechCrunch, allows employees to ask the company questions about how to handle patient health insurance claims and member disputes in accordance with the company's standard operating procedures (SOPs). The chatbot did not appear to contain or generate any sensitive personal or protected health information, but its parent company, the health insurance conglomerate UnitedHealth Inc., used it to override doctors' orders.…

Welcome to Startups Weekly — a weekly roundup of must-sees from the world of startups. Want it delivered to your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week in startup news, we highlight some contrarian bets, funding rounds from around the world, new VC funds, and a final warning. This week's most interesting startup stories Image credit: www.ginomaccanti.com / Getty Images Several articles this week remind us that just because something hasn't worked before doesn't mean it's not worth trying from a different angle. Plus, we have one M&A to take a break from other WordPress news. New Wave: A…

Google has released a prototype of its Project Astra AR glasses for real-world testing. The glasses are part of Google's long-term plan to one day have hardware with augmented reality and multimodal AI capabilities. In the meantime, we plan to release a demo to attract the attention of consumers, developers, and competitors. Along with the glasses, Google also announced a new operating system, Android XR. This allows developers to build experiences for XR hardware such as glasses and headsets. The OS, along with the newly announced Samsung headset Project Moohan, will power Project Astra glasses and will be released next…

OpenAI hit back at billionaire Elon Musk on Friday, releasing a series of emails and texts in which the company claims Musk's lawsuit against the company is misleading. At the heart of Mr. Musk's legal battle with OpenAI, which has been going on for months, is the company's abandonment of its original nonprofit mission of making the fruits of AI research available to everyone. Things escalated further last month when Musk's legal team filed for an injunction to halt OpenAI's ongoing transition from a nonprofit to a for-profit entity. OpenAI says Musk's complaints are unfounded and nothing more than sour…

All year long, TechCrunch covers startups, everything from unicorns to tiny seed-stage launches. We are, in many ways, the startup experts. To create this list, organized alphabetically, we looked back through our year’s worth of coverage for startups that stood out to us. They have fascinating new technologies, business models, or founder stories, or are pushing an industry forward in exciting ways. You’ll note that OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral, and other big AI model makers and newsmakers (like Perplexity), are not named on this list. While these companies are among the most disruptive of the year — and possibly of a…

A few months ago, Google's notepad app NotebookLM debuted an audio summary feature that uses an AI virtual host to generate podcasts based on the information you share with the app. Currently, NotebookLM is rolling out features that allow users to interact with an AI podcast host. The idea behind audio summaries and AI hosts is to give users new ways to digest and understand information in documents they upload to the app, such as course readings or legal summaries. With this new feature, you can talk to your AI host to ask for more information or explain a concept…

OpenAI seems to be in the holiday spirit. The series of ChatGPT rollouts, dubbed “12 Days of OpenAI,” will be live-streamed weekdays at 10 a.m. Pacific time through December 23. So far, we've seen the launch of ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI's $200/month subscription plan. A version of the “Inference” o1 model, the long-awaited public release of the text-to-video generator Sora, Canvas in Apple Intelligence, the deployment of ChatGPT, and real-time video capabilities in ChatGPT. We don't know what other announcements or product launches are planned, but we could learn more about potential efforts towards AI agents, among other surprises. Below, we'll…

Liquid AI, the AI ​​startup co-founded by robotics celebrity Daniela Russ, has raised $250 million in Series A led by AMD. The round values ​​Liquid AI at more than $2 billion, according to Bloomberg. Liquid AI aims to build general-purpose AI systems that leverage a relatively new type of AI model called liquid neural networks. Liquid neural networks are made up of “neurons” that are controlled by equations that predict the behavior of individual neurons over time. The “liquid” bit in the term “liquid neural network” refers to the flexibility of the architecture. Inspired by the “brain” of roundworms, this…

In October, Google began testing NotebookLM, a viral AI note-taking and research app for businesses. The company is now introducing NotebookLM to enterprises with work-focused security and privacy features. NotebookLM for enterprises (called NotebookLM Plus by Google) provides the same experience as the consumer version, but with additional access and data management controls. Employees can upload data and files to create things like notebooks and podcast-like audio summaries (called audio summaries), and then search and share these projects with organization members. Additional benefits include audio summaries like podcasts, notebooks, and 5x more data sources per notebook. Ability to customize the…