Author: TechBrunch

Perplexity, an AI-powered search engine, is looking to get into some kind of hardware. Aravind Srinivas, founder and CEO of Perplexity, posted on X yesterday that the company is looking to create a “simple and under $50” device to “reliably answer” questions “voice-to-voice.” I posted. He promised that Perplexity would “definitely” sell such a device if the post received more than 5,000 likes. It happened. “Okay. LFG!” Srinivas replied. Are you okay. LFG! https://t.co/hMw3eugb0l — Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) November 26, 2024 Hardware is becoming something of an obsession among high-profile AI startups. Partly because of its fame, but also because…

A ransomware attack on Blue Yonder, one of the world's largest supply chain software providers, continues to disrupt operations at many major stores and retailers in the United States and United Kingdom. Arizona-based Blue Yonder, which was acquired by Panasonic in 2021, said in a statement on its website on Friday that it had experienced a disruption in its managed services hosting environment that was “determined to be the result of a ransomware incident. ” he said. The supply chain giant said it was “working diligently” to recover from the incident, but as of Sunday the company had “no timeline…

Just last year, Inflection AI received the highest profile for a startup, releasing a best-in-class AI model that it claims has the potential to outperform technologies from OpenAI, Meta, and Google. This is a stark contrast from today, as Inflection's new CEO told TechCrunch that his startup is no longer trying to compete in that space. Of course, a lot has changed at Inflection between then and now. Microsoft hired then-CEO Mustafa Suleiman to run its own AI business, hired most of its staff and paid the startup $650 million to license the technology. . A few months ago, Inflection…

Cleo Capital, an early-stage venture fund that counts AI company Groq, fintech company Ellevest, and fashion brand Hill House among its investments, has announced the launch of a new cybersecurity accelerator. The program seeks pre-seed and seed companies from around the world. The accelerator is a remote 12-week program with a standard investment of $250,000 for 7% equity. The venture fund said up to 10 companies will be selected for the program. Sarah Kunst, founder and managing partner of Creo Capital, is concerned about the amount of fraud she sees in the cryptocurrencies and fintechs she invests in, as well…

Brazil's antitrust regulator Cade has ruled that Apple must lift restrictions on in-app purchases within 20 days, Reuters reported. Otherwise, iPhone makers face fines of $43,000 per day if they don't comply. This decision is the result of a complaint filed in 2022 by e-commerce operator Mercado Libre. If you've been following recent changes to the App Store around the world, the list of complaints isn't all that surprising. Brazilian regulators have decided that Apple must allow app developers to link to external websites for subscriptions and digital purchases. Alternatively, the company could hand over payment processing to developers themselves.…

Google has announced further changes to the way it displays search results in the European Union in response to ongoing complaints about its non-compliance with the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA). This includes what it calls a “short-term test” of simple “Blue Link” style search results for hotel queries in three EU markets (Belgium, Estonia and Germany). The company suggests this is similar to how its search engine originally worked. Displayed results. Under the EU's flagship market competitiveness reform, violations are subject to heavy penalties of up to 10% of annual global sales (or higher for repeated violations). Google's…

SoftBank-backed online shopping site Meesho became the first Indian e-commerce company to deploy a GenAI-powered voice bot for customer support, reducing some of its expenses by 75%. The Bangalore-based e-commerce startup announced on Tuesday that its AI bots are now fielding 60,000 customer calls every day in English and Hindi. The startup, which also counts Elevation and Prosus among its backers, plans to add support for six more Indian languages. Meesho has over 160 million customers in India, 80% of whom live in small cities, towns and villages. The startup is valued at $4.9 billion and has annual sales of…

Using AI to accelerate biotechnology is quickly becoming standard practice, and companies providing services to rapidly deploy this technology are seeing significant uptake and new investment. One such company is Cradle, which focuses on protein design and just raised $73 million to build out its lab and team. Cradle emerged in 2022 as part of a wave of companies exploring the use of language models in biotech. The company's founder and CEO, Steph Van Grieken, memorably called strings of amino acids and bases “an alien programming language,” but AI models can still be parsed to some extent. It's a language.…

In the fight against climate change, battery technology is critical as the world turns to electrification to drive decarbonization. But rising demand is drawing attention to the limitations and shortcomings of the current generation of lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery technology. This is where Morion, a spin-out company from the University of Cambridge, wants to get involved. The British startup is developing next-generation lithium-sulfur (Li-S) technology. Li-S batteries offer the advantage of higher energy density and supply chain resilience compared to lithium-ion batteries due to their higher sulfur content, and are expected to perform much better. Some minerals essential to lithium-ion batteries…

The documentation that must be done in parallel with new drug development is a very labor-intensive process. There is not much software used and there is a lack of professional writers. Paris-based Biolevate helps medical writers get their work done faster using NLP and a platform that goes from visual document reading to writing assistance. It has now raised €6 million in a seed funding round led by EQT Ventures. CEO Joel Berrafa told TechCrunch: “Nathan Chen (COO) and I have been friends for 25 years. We both understand how slow and difficult research and development of therapeutics and access…