Author: TechBrunch
Russian internet provider Nodex suffered a devastating cyberattack earlier this week in which hackers breached its network and wiped its internal servers, immediately completely cutting off internet connectivity to Russian customers. announced that the system is being restored. The Russian regional ISP outage began late on January 6, and customer internet traffic levels continue to show 0%, according to data from Cloudflare, a leading network that monitors internet trends and traffic. Nodex's internet traffic collapsed late on January 6, 2025. Image credit: Cloudflare / TechCrunch (screenshot) In a post on Russian social networking site VK, Nodex acknowledged the cyberattack. “The…
Hello everyone, welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. If you'd like to have this sent to your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. The AI news cycle didn't slow down much this holiday season. Blink and you'll miss some new developments between OpenAI's 12-day “shipmas” and DeepSeek's major model release on Christmas Day. And its momentum has not slowed down even now. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a blog post on Sunday that OpenAI knows how to build artificial general intelligence (AGI) and is starting to set its sights on superintelligence. He said he was thinking about it. AGI…
TikTok's potential competitor, Triller, hopes to capitalize on a potential ban on TikTok in the US by pitching creators to move their content from the popular short-form video app to its own app. The company has now launched a website, SaveMyTikToks.com, which promises to back up all your TikTok videos by uploading them to Triller. The site is powered by Amplify.ai, a customer engagement platform that Triller's parent company, TrillerNet, acquired in 2021. The deal was initially focused on helping Triller creators track and monetize their content, while also helping brands and advertisers match their content with consumers. . From…
The smart pet wearables market is estimated at $1.72 million in 2024, with pet technology startups entering the market with dog trackers and collars that can link directly to satellite tracking without the need for an LTE signal. I am. At CES 2025, SATELLAI introduced a pet tracker and smart collar. This includes features such as health monitoring, activity tracking, and an AI coach (accessible through a companion app) that provides guidance on training and pet care recommendations tailored to your specific dog. . The company was founded by Mark Mao (now CEO), who previously worked at Huami, a Chinese…
The Japanese government issued a warning on Wednesday, saying a Chinese hacker group has targeted and compromised dozens of government agencies, companies and individuals in the country since 2019. Japan's National Police Agency and the National Cybersecurity Incident Preparedness Strategy Center have attributed the years-long hacking incident to a group called MirrorFace. According to a machine translation, authorities said in a warning: “The Mirrorface attack campaign is a coordinated cyberattack suspected to be linked to China, and is designed to steal information related to Japan's national security and advanced technology. “It is the main purpose.” A longer version of the…
San Francisco startup Based Hardware announced the launch of its new productivity-enhancing AI wearable, Omi, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week. The device can be worn as a necklace, and saying “Hey Omi” will activate Omi's AI assistant. The company also claims that Omi can be attached to the side of your head using medical tape and can understand what you're talking to using a “brain interface.” The startup's founder, Nick Shevchenko, started selling the device on Kickstarter as a “Friend,” but another San Francisco hardware maker launched its own Friend device and changed its domain…
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…