Author: TechBrunch
Two of the industry's most famous sisters, Erin Foster and Sara Foster, sit down with business partner Phil Schwartz at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to talk consumer investing, cultural curation, and what it means to be a creative today. Conversations taking place on the main stage at Disrupt will cover a range of topics, including the creator economy, consumer investment and more. Erin Foster and Sara Foster are the very definition of a multi-hyphenate duo. They are the founders of Oversubscribed Ventures, which invests in consumer brands and technology (its portfolio includes diaper brand Kudos). Sarah is also an angel investor,…
Hydrogen as a fuel has many advantages — it can be burned instead of coal to produce heat, it can be run through electrolysers to generate electricity, and it can refuel cars as quickly as gasoline or diesel — but getting it to where it's needed is a challenge. Hydrogen, the lightest gas in the universe, is hard to contain: it leaks through tiny cracks and seeps into certain metals, where it breaks down. Transporting it typically requires compressing it or liquefying it, both of which require a lot of energy. But there's an alternative: attach hydrogen atoms to carrier…
Benjamin Franklin once wrote that nothing is certain except death and taxes. Let us revise that phrase to reflect the current AI gold rush: nothing is certain except death, taxes, and new AI models, the last of which is emerging at an unprecedented pace. Earlier this week, Google released its upgraded Gemini model, and earlier this month OpenAI unveiled its o1 model, but on Wednesday it was Meta's turn to show off its latest model at Meta Connect 2024, its annual developer conference in Menlo Park. Llama diversity Meta's family of multilingual Llama models has reached version 3.2. With this…
Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook service, continues to experiment with AI to improve audiobook discoverability and provide customized recommendations. Recent tests include AI-powered tags that analyze customer feedback to make customized suggestions based on individual preferences, and topic pages that recommend tags to help you find highly relevant subjects. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that the experiment is only available to 50% of U.S. users with iOS and Android devices. Image credit: Audible Through the app's new “Tags” carousel, Audible's AI analyzes customer reviews and provides brief descriptions of why other listeners enjoyed a particular audiobook. For example, at the top…
The European Commission has published a list of the first 100-plus signatories to the AI Pact, an initiative focused on getting companies to publish “voluntary commitments” about how they will approach and deploy artificial intelligence. The EU's risk-based, legally binding AI rulebook (AI Act) came into force last month, but its compliance deadlines will take several years to come into full force, creating a non-compliance gap that the EU is seeking to fill with its AI treaty. The initiative aims to increase engagement and foster commitment so that companies can take preemptive steps to implement the law's requirements ahead of…
Toyota Ventures was founded in 2017 to help startups envision the future, with the aim of ensuring that Toyota, as a car manufacturer and brand, remains at the forefront of innovation. The company initially targeted mobility startups, but the move into climate tech was a natural fit: Toyota Ventures now manages more than $800 million in assets across six funds, with $300 million dedicated to climate-related funds. During Climate Week NYC, Rebecca Beran spoke with Lisa Coca, partner at Toyota Ventures and head of the firm's Climate Fund, about trends and challenges in investing in climate tech. This week's episode…
Tick tock! The countdown is on to secure your tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 at a deep discount. Register by September 27th at 11:59pm PST to save up to $600 per ticket type. Secure your seats before prices go up. This offer won't last long. Disrupt 2024 is your gateway to the heart of the startup ecosystem. From October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco, 10,000 tech founders, innovators, and venture capital leaders will come together to network, learn, and share their expertise. With over 250 industry experts and 200+ sessions, this event is perfect for anyone serious about…
Meta Connect 2024 kicks off today at 10am PST with a keynote from CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The developer event will focus on Meta's XR (VR and AR) platform, the Metaverse, and Llama, the Facebook parent company's open source generative AI platform. New hardware like the Meta Quest 4, updates to Meta Ray-Bans, and a preview of the new “Orion” AR headset may be shown off in the California sun. There are a few ways you can stream the presentations live. The easiest way is to bookmark the Meta Connect site, which is free to sign up for. Meta will also…
Nostalgic '90s PC game Backyard Baseball is coming to Steam on October 10th, 27 years after its original release, for $10. Arcade-style baseball games have become cult favorites among sports fans who grew up with the game, many of whom are now in their 20s and 30s (including MLB All-Stars, like Bobby Witt Jr. and Trea Turner). Though they're aimed at kids, they have their own unique charm: Who would have guessed that a pizza box could serve as home plate, that wacky outfields are sometimes built around swimming pools, and that neighborhood kids defy the laws of physics when…
A common assumption is that companies like Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic have bottomless pockets and hundreds of top researchers, which allows them to create state-of-the-art foundational models. But as one of them famously put it, they “have no moat.” And AI2 proved that today with the release of Molmo, a multimodal AI model that most closely rivals those companies, but that is small, free, and truly open source. To be clear, Molmo (a multimodal open language model) is a visual understanding engine, not a full-service chatbot like ChatGPT. It does not have an API, does not support enterprise integration, and…