Author: TechBrunch
According to the Wall Street Journal, AI search engine Perplexity is in talks to raise about $500 million at a valuation of $8 billion. If the deal closes on these terms, Perplexity would be valued at more than double the $3 billion it was valued at when it raised money from SoftBank in the summer. The company currently receives about 15 million queries per day and generates about $50 million in annual revenue, WSJ reports. Perplexity uses AI to help people search the web with a chatbot-style interface. Some news publishers have accused the company of unauthorized web scraping and…
As part of TechCrunch's ongoing “Women in AI” series, which aims to give female AI-focused academics and others their well-deserved and overdue spotlight time, TechCrunch interviewed Marissa Hummon, chief technology officer at energy company Utilidata. There, she works to make the power grid more sustainable. “The work I'm doing at Utilidata is disrupting the status quo in the utility industry,” Hammon told TechCrunch, adding that AI is poised to help the utility sector operate more effectively. added. “This will give power companies the tools they need to operate a clean, modern and reliable power grid, allowing them to better serve…
Uber and Lyft need to do more to support passengers with disabilities, especially those who are visually impaired, according to protesters who gathered outside the companies' headquarters on October 15. Wired spoke to protesters who shared stories of drivers passing them in front of them and refusing to let guide dogs ride with them. They said ride-hailing companies need to do more to educate drivers about dealing with visually impaired passengers and implement “zero tolerance” policies against discriminatory drivers. Ta. “We strive to provide an inclusive and accessible platform for our passengers, including those who rely on service animals,” a…
AI companies claim they have strong safety checks in place to ensure their models don't say or do anything strange, illegal or unsafe. But what if the model is able to bypass these checks and somehow tries to thwart or mislead the user? Human researchers have found that they can do this. That's what it means. It's just not very good…for now, anyway. Anthropic's Alignment Science team says, “As AI capabilities increase, new types of risks may emerge: models misleading users or subverting the systems they have in place to monitor them. There is a possibility,” he wrote. Therefore, it…
As founders plan for an increasingly AI-centric future, Gusto co-founder and head of technology Edward Kim is cutting back on his existing team and hiring a slew of specially trained AI engineers. He said it was the “wrong way” to do so. Instead, non-technical team members “actually have much more insight into what situations customers might be in and what they're confused about than the average engineer.” He claimed that this gives them a “deeper understanding of the system” and puts them in a better position to guide functionality. It should be built into AI tools. In an interview with…
Not everyone is convinced of the return on investment of generative AI. But many investors are, judging by the latest numbers from funding tracker PitchBook. According to PitchBook, in Q3 2024, VCs invested $3.9 billion in generative AI startups across 206 deals. (That doesn't include OpenAI's $6.6 billion round.) And $2.9 billion of that money went to U.S.-based companies across 127 deals. The biggest winners in Q3 included coding assistant Magic ($320 million in August), enterprise search provider Glean ($260 million in September), and business analytics company Hebbia ($260 million in July). $130 million). China's Moonshot AI raised $300 million…
Open source may have many characteristics, but one thing it doesn't have, at least by most estimates, is a business model. But that didn't stop Joseph Jacks and OSS Capital from seeking out early-stage open source startups and funding them through their formative years. These include Formbrick, an open source alternative to Qualtrics that raised a pre-seed round last year. Another Notion alternative is AppFlowy. An alternative plane for Jira. Calendly alternative Cal.com. Alternative hopscotch for the postman. For those looking for an Okta alternative, Cerbos is worth a look. What they all have in common is that they are…
Throne is a health startup based in Austin. We sell cameras. It clips onto the side of the toilet bowl. Take a picture of your poop. The system, currently in beta, uses artificial intelligence to test your dog as a way to determine things like gut health and hydration. It turns out you can learn an amazing amount from logs. Sloan calls the underlying technology “artificial gut intelligence.” The company says the AI is “trained by doctors to understand what your waste is trying to tell you about your health.” Doctors look for various signs of health in waste products,…
According to Reuters, OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, who announced her resignation last month, is raising VC funding for a new AI startup. The startup reportedly focuses on building AI products based on proprietary models and could raise more than $100 million in this round. At the time of his departure, Murati wrote in X that OpenAI's recent releases “fundamentally changed the way AI systems learn and reason about complex problems.” She said she was “leaving here because I want to have time and space to explore for myself,” but gave no details about her future plans. Before joining OpenAI in…
Penguin Random House, the world's largest commercial publisher, plans to add language to the copyright pages of its books prohibiting the use of these books to train AI. As The Bookseller reports, new books from publishers and reprints of older titles include: “No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any way for the purpose of training artificial intelligence techniques or systems.” It is said that the description will be included. Although the use of copyrighted material to train AI models is currently being challenged in multiple lawsuits, Penguin Random House is the first to update its…