Author: TechBrunch
Midjourney, the AI image generation platform that has reportedly generated over $200 million in revenue without any VC investment, is entering the hardware space. The company made the announcement in a post on X on Wednesday, revealing that the new hardware team will be based in San Francisco. We're officially moving into hardware. If you're interested in joining our new team in San Francisco, email us at hardware@midjourney.com.— Midjourney (@midjourney) August 28, 2024 A hint as to what kind of hardware MidJourney, which has a team of fewer than 100 people, might pursue comes from its February hiring of Ahmad…
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. Say what you want about generative AI, but it's becoming a commodity. At least, that's how it appears. In early August, Google and OpenAI both significantly cut the prices of their most budget-friendly text generation models: Google cut the input price (the cost of having the model process text) by 78% and the output price (the cost of having the model generate text) by 71% for Gemini 1.5 Flash, while OpenAI cut the input price of…
OpenSea, which describes itself as “the world's largest” non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, said in a blog post on Wednesday that it had received a Wells Notice from the SEC, suggesting that the regulator may soon file suit against the company. CEO Devin Finzer said in a tweet that the SEC is alleging that NFTs on OpenSea's platform are unregistered securities. He then said that crypto companies have “long been in the crosshairs of the SEC,” and that the SEC has made similar allegations against Binance and Coinbase. The crypto industry has long argued that tokens are not traditional securities, even…
LinkedIn has a new chief information security officer, Lee Kisner. Announcing the appointment (quite literally) in a LinkedIn post, Kisner said he was “excited” to take on his new role. Kisner most recently served as CISO at cloud security startup Lacework, and prior to that was CISO at Twitter, a role he left in November 2022, weeks after Elon Musk acquired the social media giant, now known as X, for $44 billion. Kisner previously held senior cybersecurity and privacy roles at Google and Apple. Kisner replaces Jeff Belknap, who served as LinkedIn's CISO until June. In a separate post, Belknap…
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…
In February, Google suspended the ability of its AI-powered chatbot Gemini to generate portraits after users complained about historical inaccuracies: When asked to depict a “Roman legion,” for example, Gemini drew an anachronistic, racially diverse group of soldiers and portrayed a “Zulu warrior” as a stereotypically black person. Google CEO Sundar Pichai apologized, and Demis Hassabis, co-founder of the company's AI research division DeepMind, said a fix would be in place “very quickly,” meaning within a few weeks. In the end, it took much longer than that (despite some Googlers working 120-hour weeks!). But over the next few days, Gemini…
Niantic wants to build a richer 3D map of the world, and will acquire Scaniverse in 2021 to do so. Following a major update to the app, Scaniverse 4 will allow iOS users to scan landmarks by walking around them and recording a video for around one to three minutes. Niantic has had this functionality for some time, and has used it to build an extensive Visual Positioning System (VPS) that uses an augmented reality experience to pinpoint a user's location on a real-world map. Already, Niantic apps like Pokémon GO, Wayfarer, and Ingress have created in-game incentives for users…
According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, Apple is laying off roughly 100 employees in its Digital Services group, with the main group affected by the cuts being the team that works on the Apple Books app and its associated store. Apple Books, introduced by then-CEO Steve Jobs in 2010 to coincide with the launch of the iPad, never became the “Kindle killer” that Apple hoped it would be. The cuts indicate that Apple Books will no longer be a focus of Apple investment. The Apple News team, along with other services teams, will be affected by the layoffs. In Apple's most…
After a long week of coding, you might think San Francisco builders would retreat to the Bay Area's mountains, beaches, or vibrant club scene. But in fact, the end of the week marks the start of an AI hackathon. AI hackathons have been popular in San Francisco for the past few years. Every Saturday and Sunday, technologists talk about the latest advances in AI and networking, and most importantly, put their ideas into working demos. Hackathons often offer cash prizes, cloud credits, and other prizes, but the real winners go home with startup prototypes. “There's no better place in the…
So you have a product, but how do you find customers? And once you find customers, how do you keep them coming back? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco, October 28-30, we'll be welcoming Spenser Skates, April Underwood, and Tamar Yehoshua to the Builders Stage to discuss how startups can find true and lasting product-market fit. Whether a startup is developing an AI-powered robot or a new social media app, founders need to know which audience their app will target. Our panelists have faced these challenges themselves as founders, advisors, and executives at some of the largest technology companies…