Author: TechBrunch
As electric vehicle startup Fisker Inc. enters its fourth month of Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, existing owners have received bad news: They will have to pay labor costs to resolve two of the five outstanding recalls for their Ocean SUVs. Fisker broke the bad news in a FAQ posted on its website Sunday night, saying that three of the five recalls — sudden power loss, false warning lights and reduced regenerative braking — can be fixed with a free over-the-air software update. Problems emerged in two other recalls: some Oceans had faulty door handles; and all SUVs needed replacement of…
As part of Salesforce's big tech conference, Dreamforce, taking place in San Francisco this week, the company's venture capital arm, Salesforce Ventures, announced a new $500 million fund dedicated to AI companies. This is significant for a few reasons. First, in June 2023, Salesforce Ventures is doubling its AI fund from $250 million to $500 million, and the additional $500 million will bring the AI fund to $1 billion. This will match the total of $5 billion put into it in the first 15 years since its launch in 2009. Salesforce Ventures is also helping make San Francisco a hotspot…
Gogoro, a Taiwanese company that makes electric scooters and replaces batteries, said in a regulatory filing that its CEO and chairman, Horace Luke, has resigned following allegations of subsidy fraud. Gogoro is accused of using Chinese-made parts in its electric scooters to cut manufacturing costs, despite reporting it was using domestically produced parts to qualify for government subsidies. Gogoro said in the filing that an internal investigation found “certain irregularities” in its supply chain that led to the “erroneous incorporation of certain imported parts into some of our vehicles.” Gogoro said in the filing that Luke had resigned to demonstrate…
On Monday, Apple released a new version of iOS, the operating system for its iPhones. iOS 18 is free to download and works on iPhone XR and XS and later, and second- and third-generation iPhone SE. That means if your iPhone supports iOS 17, you can install iOS 18 on it. When Apple announced iOS 18 at its annual developer conference WWDC, the company spent a lot of time talking about Apple Intelligence, the umbrella term Apple is using for all of its upcoming generative AI-related features. However, Apple Intelligence is not part of iOS 18.0. The first AI features…
Speaking at the Oracle Financial Analysts Conference, Oracle CEO Larry Ellison said he hopes AI will one day power large-scale law enforcement surveillance networks. “We're going to have a monitoring system in place,” he said. “All of our officers will be monitored at all times, and if there's an issue, the AI will flag it up and report it to the right people. We're constantly recording and reporting everything that's going on, so citizens will be on the best behavior.” Ellison believes that continuous AI surveillance could significantly reduce crime, but the evidence doesn't necessarily support his claim. As The…
11xAI, a startup that builds AI bots for process automation, or end-to-end workflow automation, just raised $24 million in new Series A funding led by Benchmark. It's also one of several AI startups moving their headquarters to San Francisco, according to founder and CEO Hasan Sukkar. The company was founded in London. The Series A comes about a year after 11xAI raised $2 million in a seed round led by Project A Ventures. Founded in 2022, the company calls its AI agents “automated digital workers,” and like others in the space, its pitch is that its software can handle repetitive…
As TikTok heads to court on Monday to challenge the U.S. ban, parent company ByteDance's new social app Lemon8 has once again rocketed to the top of the U.S. App Store, a rise that's in part due to an increase in advertising. The app, described by TikTok influencers as a cross between Pinterest and Instagram, or more recently as “Pinterest on steroids,” was appearing in the App Store's top charts when the TikTok ban was being debated in the U.S. Congress. Apparently geared to act as a backup plan if TikTok is barred from the US market or sold by…
The U.S. government announced on Monday that it had imposed new financial sanctions on five individuals and one company linked to the Intelexa consortium of spyware manufacturers, following sanctions imposed on the company's founders several months ago. In a recent statement, the U.S. Treasury Department said it had imposed sanctions on five individuals, including senior executives and associates of Intellexa, for allegedly selling Intellexa's “Predator” mobile phone spyware to authoritarian regimes. “Predator can be used to hack fully patched mobile phones almost invisibly, giving organizations that deploy it full access to a target's device, including private messages and real-time location…
Typeface, a generative AI startup focused on enterprise use cases, has acquired two companies just over a year after raising $100 million at a $1 billion valuation. Typeface said on Monday that it has acquired Treat, a company that uses AI to create personalized photography products, and Narrato, an AI-powered content creation and management platform. Treat and Narat: [Typeface’s] “We are committed to advancing multimodal capabilities,” the company said in a press release. [its] An end-to-end content lifecycle transformation vision.” “Building on the foundation of our multimodal AI workflows, this acquisition adds leading AI technology and talent to further strengthen…
Earlier this year, former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick launched Lumi, an AI startup. There have been thousands of articles written about Kaepernick and he knows all too well what it feels like to lose control of your own narrative. Now, with Lumi, he's trying to help creators take control of their own narrative, giving them AI tools to write and own their stories. We're thrilled to welcome Kaepernick to the main stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco. We'll hear from him about his clash with the media industry, the challenges facing creators today, and…