Author: TechBrunch

A generative AI-based fact-checking company started by two expatriates from Humane.AI enters the race with $4 million in seed funding. The initial round, led by Bee Partners, includes participation from a16z's Scout Fund, Alumni Ventures, and FJ Labs. Infactory's value is estimated at $25 million. The San Francisco startup was reported in a TechCrunch article in July. One of the more notable elements of the story was Brooke Hartley Moy and Ken Kocienda's decision to jump into the troubled Humane Corporation. Prior to that, Kocienda worked for 15 years as a software engineer for Apple's iPhone. As well as co-founders…

Chipmaker Nvidia generated $30 billion in revenue in the last fiscal quarter, driven largely by the AI ​​industry's insatiable demand for GPUs. GPUs are essential for training and running AI models. These contain thousands of cores working in parallel to rapidly execute the linear algebraic equations that scaffold the model. Interest in AI remains high, and Nvidia's GPUs have become the chips of choice among AI players of all sizes. But TensorWave, a company founded late last year, is going against the grain by launching a cloud that only provides access to Nvidia rival AMD's hardware for AI workloads. “We…

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has announced the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. Jeff Hinton and John Hopfield will jointly share the prestigious award for their research in artificial neural networks, which began in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Specifically, Hinton and Hopfield received the award for their “fundamental discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” The news comes as AI emerges as one of the key drivers behind what some are calling the fourth industrial revolution. Major innovators in this field are recognized for their work. Earlier this year, Demis Hassabis, co-founder and…

As Uber continues to work to bring more electric vehicles to its ride-hailing and delivery platform, it believes it will be helpful to provide drivers with a chatbot that can answer all their EV-related questions. Starting in early 2025, Uber will launch an AI assistant for drivers in the U.S. powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o. At launch, the assistant will only answer questions about electric cars, such as where to charge and which one to buy, an Uber spokesperson said, but the integration could expand to other use cases in the future. That's what it means. Uber announced integration with OpenAI's…

Lightdash, the business intelligence (BI) platform and open source alternative to Google's Looker, has lifted the lid on a new product that will allow companies to train “AI analysts” specifically for individual team use cases. and allows anyone in your company to run queries. Aggregate business data. To support this, the four-year-old startup also announced Tuesday that it has raised $11 million in a Series A round led by Accel. Lightdash is built around an open source command-line-based data transformation tool called dbt (Data Construction Tools) that leverages SQL to help businesses transform raw data into structured, analyzable datasets. We…

Middle school and high school students are both the easiest and most difficult audience. If you're building a neat little video game, chances are they'll download it right away. But if you're working on a learning app, like the team behind Revyze, try pitching it. Still, the French startup defied the odds and attracted 1 million users in the past two years. In June, the Revyze app achieved the coveted #1 spot in Apple's App Store for free downloads. One-third of French 9th graders used Revyze for last-minute study before their junior high school entrance exams. Around 2,000 content creators…

Middle school and high school students are both the easiest and most difficult audience. If you're building a neat little video game, chances are they'll download it right away. But if you're working on a learning app, like the team behind Revyze, try pitching it. Still, the French startup defied the odds and attracted 1 million users in the past two years. In June, the Revyze app reached the coveted number one spot in Apple's App Store for free downloads. A third of French grade 9 students used Revyze for last-minute study before national secondary school exams. Around 2,000 content…

French biotech startup Generare has announced a funding of 5 million euros (at current exchange rates) to step up the development of what it touts as a scalable approach to identifying promising compounds for drug discovery that already exist in nature. Closed a seed round of approximately $5.5 million. It focuses on screening molecules produced by microorganisms that have the potential to be repurposed as human treatments. Such molecules were once a rich source for drug discovery using early chemistry-based discovery techniques. A major example is the antibiotic efficacy of Penicillium, which was discovered after the mold was accidentally grown…

Chainalysis co-founder and CEO Michael Gronagar has taken a personal leave of absence from the company. The blockchain analysis group did not specify the reason, but said the development was temporary. According to The Block, which first reported the news, Chainaloss president and COO Sari Granat, who joined the company in 2022, will serve as interim CEO. Ten-year-old, New York-based Chaina Analysis quickly developed a reputation as a “crypto detective” working on behalf of the U.S. government and corporate clients. A year ago, Chainalysis laid off more than 15% of its 900 employees and plans to focus more on government…

General Catalyst, one of Silicon Valley's largest capital firms, is preparing to launch a so-called “continuation fund” worth between $800 million and $1 billion, according to people familiar with the plans. Continuation funds consist of a portion of the equity that a VC firm holds in its portfolio companies. With approximately $25 billion in assets under management as of 2023, General Catalyst's exact continuation fund portfolio composition has not yet been determined. However, it is likely to include shares in Stripe, Gusto and Circle, the people said. The company recently hired Jefferies as its secondary investment advisor. Once the fund…