Author: TechBrunch
The founders now have a way to ensure investors aren't losing money from countries like China, Russia, Iran and Cuba. More than 20 venture companies have signed the Clean Capital Certification, certifying that they have not received or intend to receive funding from foreign adversaries. Signatories include Marlinspike Partners, Humba Ventures, and Snowpoint Ventures. “We need to ensure that America's adversaries do not directly benefit from our successes, and publicly signing the Clean Capital Certification is an , it's a way to address that obligation as a community.” The pledge was created by Future Union, an advocacy group that works…
Google has released what it calls a new “inference” AI model. However, this is still in the experimental stage and from our quick testing, there is certainly room for improvement. The new model, called Gemini 2.0 Flash Thinking Experimental (a mouthful, to be sure), is available in AI Studio, Google's AI prototyping platform. The model card describes it as being “ideal for multimodal understanding, reasoning, and coding” and capable of “reasoning through the most complex problems” in fields such as programming, mathematics, and physics. In a post on X, AI Studio product lead Logan Kilpatrick calls the Gemini 2.0 Flash…
As expected, ServiceTitan's highly successful IPO has inspired other fintech companies to move forward with their own public debuts. Digital bank Chime has filed confidential documents with the SEC, Bloomberg reports. The company has been preparing for this moment since hiring banker Morgan Stanley in September, aiming for an IPO in 2025. The IPO won't become a reality until those documents are made public and institutional investors agree to buy at Chime's desired price. That may be a tall order. Chime was last valued at $25 billion when it raised $1 billion at the height of the valuation frenzy in…
It took much longer than originally planned weeks, but a pivotal privacy decision that has been hanging over Sam Altman's World (also known as WorldCoin) for months has finally made the block's data secure. The decision was finally made in late December from the Bavarian data protection authority to enforce. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a comprehensive privacy framework that enables sanctions reaching up to 4% of global annual revenue. The results appear to be different than what the eyeball-scanning crypto identity venture was expecting. A remedial order has been issued requiring comprehensive deletion of user data upon…
OpenAI seems to be in the holiday spirit. The series of ChatGPT rollouts, dubbed “12 Days of OpenAI,” will be live-streamed every weekday at 10 a.m. Pacific time through December 20th. So far, we've seen the launch of ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI's $200/month subscription plan. The complete version of that “reasoning” o1 model. Text-to-video generator Sora is now available to the public. Deploying Canvas. ChatGPT for Apple Intelligence. ChatGPT's real-time video capabilities. Ability to call ChatGPT via a 1-800 number. You can find out how to watch the event below. OpenAI will livestream the event on its YouTube channel. We'll be…
A young startup that emerged from stealth in less than two months is back in the spotlight with a high-profile backer and bigger ambitions to make it big in the world of AI. Decart is building what CEO and co-founder Dean Leitersdorf describes as a “fully vertically integrated AI research lab” alongside enterprise and consumer products based on the lab's work. I am. The first enterprise product to optimize GPU usage has already generated millions of dollars in revenue. And its first consumer product, a playable “open world” AI model called Oasis, was released when Descart came out of stealth…
The US government is calling on senior politicians and officials to lock down their devices as China continues to breach at least eight major telecommunications providers. U.S. cybersecurity agency CISA said in an advisory on Wednesday that “highly targeted officials,” including government officials, will be subject to Apple's lockdown mode, which restricts iPhone functionality and limits attacks across the phone. He said you need to enable advanced security features such as: surface. The agency also recommends authorities switch to end-to-end encrypted messaging apps like Signal. The advice comes shortly after U.S. officials urged Americans to also use encrypted messaging apps…
There's a sea of meme coins beyond Dogecoin, but a new startup called Neverless wants to make it easier to start trading cryptocurrencies, with a particular focus on providing access to small-cap tokens. This is an interesting new crypto startup founded by three former executives from London-based fintech giant Revolut. Phuc To is Revolut's Global Head of Product and was responsible for the company's crypto projects in 2021. Mikael Peydayesh was head of core payments at Revolut and later became head of premium plans, while Arthur Johanet was responsible for card payments for a while before becoming head of Revolut's…
As crypto assets increase in popularity and value, theft is also on the rise. This year, the total amount of stolen cryptocurrencies has surged by 21% to reach a whopping $2.2 billion. And more than half of that amount was stolen by a North Korean-linked hacker group, according to a Chainalysis report released Thursday. Earlier this year, the United Nations Security Council announced that North Korean hackers stole $3 billion in crypto assets between 2017 and 2023. In 2024, hackers linked to North Korea accounted for 61% of the total stolen, with 47 cases worth $1.34 billion. , according to…
“I think the most ironic way the world will end is for someone to create a meme coin of a man's extended anus and that will bring about the singularity.” That's Andy Ayrey, founder of decentralized AI alignment research institute Upward Spiral and developer of viral AI bot Truth Terminal. You may have heard about Truth Terminal and the bizarre and naughty pseudo-spiritual posts on X that caught the attention of VC Marc Andreessen, who sent him $50,000 in Bitcoin this summer. Or maybe you've heard about a fabricated religion promoted by the Goatse Gospels, which was influenced by the…