Author: TechBrunch
Some Harvard University students made headlines Wednesday after wearing Ray-Ban Meta glasses with facial recognition capabilities. DIY projects are the latest news to fuel privacy concerns about ubiquitous technology. This issue is gaining importance as cameras become more and more prevalent in society. Connectivity plays a big role in this conversation as well. Remote server requirements come with their own security/privacy issues. More problems arise when Ring's parent company, Amazon, and law enforcement get involved. Founded in 2017, Plumerai's main value pillar is technology that powers on-device AI processing. The London-based company has developed a way to perform tasks such…
The next generation of New York City investors are already making their mark in the Big Apple. They come from big-name venture firms like Female Founders Fund and Lerer Hippeau and smaller ones like Chai Ventures. They work in areas like growth, consumer, and health. They canoe, hike, and play pickleball on the weekends. We chatted with some of the young investors — think, under 30 — who are helping to shape the future of venture capitalism in New York City. Here’s who is on the list so far. (This list will be updated periodically.) Layla Alexander — Female Founders…
Will generative AI tools help people build better websites, or will they just fill the web with spam? With the recent release of Design Intelligence, a new website builder packed with generative AI tools, Squarespace is betting on the former. We spoke with Chief Product Officer Paul Gubbay about Design Intelligence and Squarespace's broader AI strategy. Our conversation echoes what other (unspecified) AI-powered website builders offer when asked to create a typical spa website: a confusing and ugly website. It started with a glimpse of. Of course, this was a demo setup for Design Intelligence, which started with a few…
Kevin Ryan has had a long and storied career as a leading figure in New York City's technology. He is the founder and CEO of AlleyCorp, an investment firm that has invested in a variety of startups, and is a serial founder who has participated in the early stages of companies such as Business Insider, Zola, Gilt, Pearl Health, and Transcend Therapeutics. there is. As president and CEO in the 1990s and early 2000s, he helped found the ad tech company DoubleClick, which was later acquired by Google for $3.1 billion in 2007, transforming the online advertising industry. He then…
Many screenwriters are turning to modern tools instead of traditional PDFs to create pilots for movies and TV shows. SoCreate, the latest entrant into the screenwriting software space, is challenging established players like Final Draft and Celtx with a fresh approach to storytelling. And most importantly, it involves generated AI images. SoCreate offers many of the same features that most screenwriting software offers, including templates to easily create industry-standard screenplays in the correct format. But SoCreate founder and CEO Justin Cuto believes the popular platform is still lacking, especially when it comes to visual and creative tools. “When I decided…
Last month, UCLA professor Terrence Tao, considered “the world's greatest living mathematician,” used ChapGPT's o1 inference model to correctly answer complex analytical questions using “many hints.” He compared himself to a graduate student who is “mediocre, but not completely incompetent.'' I challenge you. AI may never beat human teachers, he now tells The Atlantic. “There is one important difference [today] The relationship between graduate students and AI is that graduate students learn. If you tell the AI that an approach isn't working, it may apologize and temporarily correct course, but in some cases it may revert back to what it…
Last year, Sound Ventures, a nine-year-old Beverly Hills, Calif.-based venture led by general partners Ashton Kutcher, Guy O'Seary and Effie Epstein, launched a new Announced $65 million AI fund. Companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Hugging Face. In fact, the plan was to invest in just six companies. It was a gamble that could pay off big, albeit with risks to the team's future vision. A small number and large number of companies will be the biggest winners in the AI space due to the necessary technical talent and the capital needed to cover computing costs. Sound has since raised even…
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 also brought AI funding news and some warnings. Some categories and stages are showing signs of overheating. Luckily, I also found some cool startups, literally. This week's most interesting startup stories Image credit: Whatnot Believe it or not, OpenAI is still at the top of the list here as it is still a startup. There were other interesting stories this week. BillionAI: OpenAI raises $6.6 billion at a $157 billion post-money valuation,…
Software as a Service (SaaS) is an evolving industry. We speak to some of the brightest minds and leaders in the industry, including executives from early- and late-stage SaaS companies, leaders from the infrastructure companies driving the industry, and the venture capitalists who fund them. Join us on the SaaS stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to explore and have fun! TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 SaaS Stage Agenda From Salesforce to Sierra: Brett Taylor's innovation journey Brett Taylor (Sierra) and We're joined by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who recently co-founded Sierra, a startup building customer experience AI agents, and talks about…
Amazon continues to scale back efforts on its cashierless checkout technology, Just Walk Out. The e-commerce giant closed three Go convenience stores in New York last week, leaving only 17 stores remaining nationwide, the Information confirmed Friday. (Amazon says it recently opened a store in Washington.) These convenience stores use AI systems to track what customers pick up, without having to formally check out at a cashier. We make products available for purchase. Starting in 2023, Amazon will cut the number of Go Stores it operates by almost half. Amazon removed Just Walk Out technology from its grocery stores earlier…