Author: TechBrunch

Spotify has expanded its streaming service to include education courses in addition to music, podcasts, and audiobooks. The company on Tuesday mentioned one of its new features, called Courses, where users can learn about topics in areas such as business, technology, lifestyle and music. Spotify says the feature is initially being piloted in the UK. But further evidence indicates it could arrive in the US soon Technology enthusiast and early adopter Chris Messina highlighted the development of the course in the United States. Messina's findings indicate that courses will become available on subjects that may appeal to more technical people,…

Meta is luring TikTok creators to its platform with promises of cash bonuses, content deals, and support to grow their community. The company announced Tuesday that eligible TikTok creators can earn up to $5,000 in bonuses over three months when they post Reels on Facebook and Instagram. These creators will also have access to the Facebook Content Monetization Program, which allows them to earn money with videos, photos, and text posts on Facebook. Additionally, Meta plans to offer content deals to TikTok creators to grow their audience on Instagram and Facebook. Some TikTok creators can also take advantage of a…

Meta announced on Tuesday that users will soon be able to add their WhatsApp accounts to their account center. Account Center is a hub where users can manage their connected experiences across their Facebook, Instagram, and Meta Quest accounts. This integration will allow users to cross-post their WhatsApp statuses as Stories to Instagram and Facebook, eliminating the need to post multiple times. It also allows users to log into multiple apps with the same account using the “single sign-on” feature. This is an authentication option that allows you to do things like log in to Instagram using your Facebook account…

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the company plans to release a “two-way” voice mode for its chatbot, Claude, as well as a memory feature that allows Claude to remember more details about users and past conversations. . Speaking to the Wall Street Journal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Amodei said Anthropic plans to release “smarter” AI models in the coming months and that the company is responding to the global “surge in demand.” He also revealed that he was “overwhelmed.” last year. “The surge in demand we've seen over the last year, especially in the last three months,…

French AI institute Mistral is working towards an initial public offering, co-founder and CEO Arthur Mensch said in an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday. . Mistral is “not for sale,” Mensch said, adding that the company plans to open an office in Singapore to focus on the Asia-Pacific region and is also growing in Europe and the United States. [an IPO is] It's a plan. ” Mistral, which Mensch launched in 2023 with former researchers at Google's DeepMind and Meta, is often described as Europe's answer to American incumbents like OpenAI. The lab…

Canada's largest school board announced that hackers may have accessed nearly 40 years of student data during the recent PowerSchool breach. The Toronto District School Board (TDSB) said in a letter sent to parents this week that the data breach affected all students enrolled in the district from September 1985 to December 2024. The school board, which serves about 240,000 students each year, said it stores past student information in PowerSchool “to respond to former student records requests.” The compromised data includes students' names, addresses, dates of birth, and phone numbers. More recent data from 2017, also taken in the…

Hewlett-Packard Enterprise is investigating a data breach after a known hacker claimed to have stolen sensitive information from the company. The hacker, who goes by the alias “IntelBroker,” claims to have stolen large amounts of data from HPE, the enterprise IT division of hardware giant HP. In a Jan. 16 post on a popular cybercrime forum seen by TechCrunch, IntelBroker said the stolen data includes product source code, private GitHub repositories, as well as APIs and platforms such as WePay, GitHub, and GitLab. It said it contained access keys to certain HPE services. . The hacker has previously claimed to…

French startup Karmen has secured a small funding round to improve its instant lending product. The company provides short-term loans to small and medium-sized enterprises facing a lack of working capital. This is a €9 million ($9.4 million at current exchange rates) equity and debt round in which Seventure Partners will buy a stake in the small startup. Financière Albevel and BPiFrance are supplementing the round with some debt. The company is not the only company operating in this field of instant financing for small and medium-sized businesses. French competitors include Silvr, Defacto, Unlimitd and Hero. Revenue-based finance has become…

OpenAI may be close to releasing an AI tool that can take control of your PC and perform actions on your behalf. Tibor Blaho, a software engineer with a reputation for accurately leaking upcoming AI products, claims to have discovered evidence of OpenAI's long-rumored Operator tool. Publications like Bloomberg have previously reported on Operator, which is described as an “agent” system that can autonomously handle tasks like writing code and booking travel. According to The Information, OpenAI is targeting January as the release month for Operator. Code discovered by Blaho this weekend lends credence to that report. According to Blaho,…

Friend, a startup developing a $99 AI-powered necklace designed to act as a digital companion, has delayed shipping its first batch until the third quarter. Friend planned to ship the device to customers who pre-ordered it in the first quarter. But co-founder and CEO Avi Schiffman says that's no longer possible. “We had hoped to ship in the first quarter of this year, but improvements are still needed. Unfortunately, we can only begin manufacturing electronics when the design is 95% complete,” Schiffman told customers. stated in an email to. “We hope to be able to start the final spurt by…