Author: TechBrunch
Microsoft has joined an exclusive club of tech giants that are subject to a special anti-corruption regime in Germany. The country's Federal Cartel Office (FCO) acknowledged on Monday that the software giant could face restrictions if competition authorities decide intervention is necessary. This designation is valid for five years and is important because it allows German authorities to pay close attention to how Microsoft wields influence through its activities around generative AI. But the regulator said it had not yet made a decision on “potential litigation.” Microsoft's influence over OpenAI has brought the two companies to the attention of antitrust…
Beta Technologies on Monday announced the next generation of electric aircraft in its lineup, a passenger-carrying version of its ALIA vertical takeoff and landing aircraft and fixed-wing aircraft. Electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles are runway-independent, while fixed-wing aircraft are runway-dependent. The Vermont-based startup, which has raised more than $860 million in equity to date from leading companies such as Amazon's Climate Pledge, is doing things a little differently than others in the industry. It is pursuing electric aircraft more carefully. Unlike competitors Joby Aviation and Archer Aviation, Beta does not intend to operate its own urban air taxi…
Alternatives to the neural network architectures at the heart of AI models are emerging, such as OpenAI's o1. This AI, called symbolic AI, uses rules related to specific tasks, such as rewriting lines of text, to solve larger problems. Symbolic AI can deftly tackle some of the problems that neural networks struggle with. And recent research shows it's scalable. (Historically, symbolic architectures have not been computationally efficient.) Breakthroughs in scalability have enabled companies like Orby, TekTonic (which builds enterprise automation tools), Symbolica, and Unlikely AI (founded by Alexa co-creator William Tunstall-Pedoe) to apply symbolic AI to a variety of fields.…
At first glance, Qodo, the startup formerly known as CodiumAI, may seem like yet another AI code generation tool. But the team, which today announced a $40 million Series A round led by Susa Ventures and Square Peg, is as focused on code generation as it is on testing and overall code quality. The service was launched in secret 18 months ago, and the company says more than 1 million developers have tried its solution and many Fortune 100 companies have adopted its enterprise platform. One of Qodo's key differentiators is that while the company offers the usual Visual Studio…
The HVAC industry is undergoing a transformation. As private equity firms consolidate the industry, traditional security guard craftsmen are on the verge of retirement. Airship is building software solutions for the next chapter in HVAC. Airship builds point-of-sale software that gives HVAC contractors the knowledge they need to make more sales, including the energy-efficient heat pump incentive programs they need to earn the rebates their customers deserve. Masu. Craig Battin, co-founder and CEO of Airship, said the software is useful because many potential HVAC contractors have not yet adopted any technology and still rely on pen and paper to do…
Lex, a social and dating app for the LGBTQ+ community, has been acquired by 9count, a mobile app conglomerate focused on social networking. Lex started as an Instagram page in 2017, inspired by vintage lesbian personal ads. The page became so popular that founder Kel Rakowski turned it into an app in 2019. In less than a year, the app raised a $1.5 million seed round and added experienced entrepreneur Jennifer Lewis as co-founder and CEO. “Mainstream social platforms aren't really serving this audience,” Lewis told TechCrunch. According to GLAAD, LGBTQ+ people are twice as likely to be harassed online,…
Apps aimed at Chinese consumers and the broader Asian diaspora, especially food-focused urban consumers, could be big business. HungryPanda, one of the pioneering startups in that market, is announcing further funding. Founded in London, the food delivery app primarily targets Chinese and other Asian consumers living outside their home country, and generated $55 million in revenue. The company will use the capital to continue building its existing business and expand into new categories such as groceries. HungryPanda has not disclosed its valuation, but sources say it is currently valued at around $500 million post-money. For context, the last valuation listed…
Android's notification drawer can be both useful and distracting due to the sheer number of notifications you receive. You need to better manage per-app notifications through settings or set up your system so you don't miss important updates. An app called Pinnit lets you use the notification history feature to see missed notifications and create custom notifications. The app was created by an Android developer based in India Sashikant Milyanpalli and Brazilian-based designer Eduardo Platti. The app was first released in 2020, allowing users to pin tasks to their notification bar so they don't forget them. Now the developers have…
Raspberry Pi, which sells small, inexpensive single-board computers, has released add-ons that open up several use cases. And, sure, it's 2024, so there's an AI perspective as well. The image sensor, called the Raspberry Pi AI Camera, has onboard AI processing and will cost $70. More technically speaking, the AI camera is based on a Sony image sensor (IMX500) combined with Raspberry Pi's own microcontroller chip, the RP2040, with on-chip SRAM. Like the rest of the lineup, the RP2040 follows the overall Raspberry Pi philosophy of being cheap, yet efficient. In other words, AI startups aren't looking to replace Nvidia…
There is a lot of controversy going on in the world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites. The central issue is a dispute between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress. WordPress technology is open source, free, and powers a huge portion of the internet (approximately 40% of websites). Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a solution provider like Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution. In mid-September, Mullenweg wrote a blog post calling WP Engine “the cancer of WordPress.”…