Author: TechBrunch
Nobody likes waiting in line, and I learned just how awful it can be last Saturday when I was forced to stand like a cow in a two-hour queue at a nightclub in unseasonably cold weather. I don't plan on repeating that experience anytime soon. Luckily, there's a startup out there for that. Y Combinator-backed LineLeap is a service that lets you pay to skip the lines at the bar. The startup's mobile app lets users purchase priority entry passes to venues that LineLeap partners with. “As college students, we noticed a common problem that many before us had experienced,”…
The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized startups have also seen a fair amount of cuts, and in some cases, have shut down operations altogether. By tracking these layoffs, we’re able to understand the impact on innovation across companies large and small. We’re also able to see the potential impact of businesses…
OpenAI is in talks with investors to raise $6.5 billion in new funding, valuing the company at $150 billion, according to Bloomberg and the Financial Times. This is significantly higher than OpenAI's reported valuation of $86 billion earlier this year, and much higher than other AI startups today. The funding round is reportedly being led by Thrive Capital, which invested heavily in OpenAI in previous rounds. Other reported investors include OpenAI's partners, including Microsoft, Apple, and Nvidia, all of whom are invested in the AI startup's success in some way. Bloomberg also reports that OpenAI is in talks to raise…
On today's episode of Equity, Rebecca Beran speaks with Alok Sama, Morgan Stanley veteran and former president and CFO of SoftBank Group International. The two discuss Apple's latest tech announcements, Sama's views on the AI hype cycle, and how the tech investment landscape has changed since the dot-com era. Sama also shares insights from his upcoming memoir, “The Money Trap: Lost Illusions Inside the Tech Bubble,” due for release on September 17th. Sama joined SoftBank in 2014 after cutting his teeth at Morgan Stanley, where he worked closely with Masayoshi Son, the Japanese conglomerate's iconic founder. He oversaw Son's $32…
YouTube on Wednesday confirmed the full rollout of its collaborative “Add Yours” stickers for YouTube Shorts, after the Google-owned company first announced the feature in July. The stickers work in a similar way to Instagram's feature of the same name, encouraging users to share their own interpretations of creators' videos. Both platforms' “Add Yours” features take a leaf out of TikTok's book, as they look a bit like the short-form video app's “Duet” tool, which lets users create content with original videos. With the new Shorts feature, you can spark a chain reaction of adorable content by posting a Short…
After a historic presidential debate filled with discussion about eating pets, Taylor Swift ended the night with a bang. The singer-songwriter, arguably the most influential figure in American pop culture, used the night of the debate to announce on Instagram that she would be voting for Kamala Harris for president. Swift's support is monumental — she has enough political clout to get tens of thousands of Americans registered to vote simply by sharing a link — but more surprisingly, in her announcement, she also voiced concerns about AI deepfakes. Swift posted on Instagram: “I recently learned that an AI of…
Hello everyone and welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. If you'd like to receive this newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. This week in AI, if a story in The Information is to be believed, OpenAI's next major product announcement is on the horizon. The Information reported on Tuesday that OpenAI plans to release Strawberry, an AI model that can effectively fact-check itself, within the next two weeks. Strawberry will be a standalone product but will also be integrated with OpenAI's AI-powered chatbot platform, ChatGPT. Strawberry is reported to be better at programming and math problems than…
HUSSLUP founder and CEO H. Schuster notified users on Wednesday that the company would be going on an “indefinite hiatus,” starting Friday, according to an email reviewed by TechCrunch. The job-search and networking app for the entertainment industry launched to the public in January after being in invite-only beta for the past three years and has 15,000 members. In an email to users, Schuster said the entertainment industry is going through “incredibly challenging times.” “I am deeply committed to HUSSLUP's mission and am heartbroken that we will not be able to help you through this difficult time for the entertainment…
The Bay Area's coolest startup isn't building AI robots or self-driving taxis. It's actually a baseball team. With his beloved Oakland Athletics planning to leave the Bay Area, serial entrepreneur Paul Friedman sought out a different kind of venture: What if he could use what he'd learned from leading edtech startups to create a baseball team worthy of Oakland? And so Friedman founded the Oakland Ballers, or Oakland Bees for short. With the mindset of a startup founder, Friedman and co-founder Brian Karmel are taking on a huge challenge: The B's can't fully make up for the loss of an…
Google on Wednesday announced that it's adding a new “audio summary” feature to its AI note-taking and research app, NotebookLM, which gives users another way to digest and understand the information in documents they upload to the app, such as course readings or legal summaries. Since its launch, NotebookLM has used text to summarize and explain material, but now it can use audio to explain it to you. This feature is made for people who understand material better by hearing an explanation rather than reading it. An AI-generated virtual host uses your conversational voice patterns to provide an overview of…