Author: TechBrunch

API company Kong today announces an open source AI gateway. It is an extension to the existing API Gateway that allows developers and operations teams to integrate their applications with one or more Large Language Models (LLMs) and access them through a single API. In addition to this, Kong will release several AI-specific features such as prompt engineering, credential management, etc. “We see AI as an additional use case for the API,” Kong co-founder and CTO Marco Palladino told me. “APIs are driven by use cases like mobile, microservices, and AI just happens to be the newest thing. When we…

There are a lot of things that can go wrong with GenAI, especially third-party GenAI. It makes things. It's biased and harmful. And it may violate copyright rules. According to a recent study by MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group, more than 55% of AI-related failures in organizations are caused by third-party AI tools. So it's not entirely surprising that some companies are still cautious about adopting this technology. But what if GenAI came with a guarantee? It's a business idea that entrepreneur and electrical engineer Kartik Ramakrishnan came up with a few years ago while working as…

Gemini, Google’s answer to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, is here. Is it any good? While it’s a solid option for research and productivity, it stumbles in obvious — and some not-so-obvious — places. Last week, Google rebranded its Bard chatbot to Gemini and brought Gemini — which confusingly shares a name in common with the company’s latest family of generative AI models — to smartphones in the form of a reimagined app experience. Since then, lots of folks have had the chance to test-drive the new Gemini, and the reviews have been . . . mixed, to put it generously. Still, we at…

Taylor Swift fake porn. Realistic yet fictionalized images of Gaza. The list of bewildering deepfakes continues, and as deepfake creation tools become easier and cheaper to use, the waves of fakes are hitting faster and harder. According to a recent Pew Center poll, nearly two-thirds (66%) of Americans say they at least sometimes encounter altered videos or images that are meant to mislead, and 15% answered that they encounter it frequently. In a separate Axios/Syracuse University survey of AI experts, 62% said misinformation is the biggest factor in maintaining news credibility and authenticity in the age of AI-generated content. I…

406 Ventures, a Boston-based venture firm that invests in enterprise-focused startups in healthcare, data and AI, and cybersecurity, has closed its fifth fund with $265 million in capital commitments. The company is partnering with Liam Donahue, founder of Boston venture firm Arcadia Partners, and two others, including Maria Cirino, co-founder of managed security services firm Gardent, and former Razorfish CFO Larry Begley. Founded by partners. The new fund is supported by a group of new and existing limited partners including university endowments, foundations, pension plans and strategic investors. Including the new fund, the 18-year-old firm has raised more than $1.4…

Bending Spoons, the owner of popular apps and services like Evernote and Meetup, today announced that it has raised $155 million in a new equity funding round at a post-money valuation of $2.55 billion. Durable Capital Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors including Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, NB Renaissance, NUO Capital, and StarTIP (managed by Tambuli Investment Partners). The company said it would use the new cash injection to acquire more brands. Bending Spoons has already begun an acquisition spree this year. The company acquired event startup Meetup in January. Later that month, his CEO of Bending…

The global venture capital market has endured limited exits for an extended period of time. The IPO market remains frozen, as startups continue to go private for an extended period of time, M&A activity is quietly taking place due in part to increased regulatory oversight. This means that many historic venture deals are slowly rotting away from an IRR perspective. The crypto market is no exception, but some investors in this space remain unfazed. New data from PitchBook’s Q4 2023 Crypto Report reveals that if the large startup market is suffering from an exit drought, crypto startups may be drying…

Amazon researchers have trained the largest text-to-speech model ever. This model claims to exhibit “emergent” properties that improve the ability to speak naturally even in complex sentences. A breakthrough could be just what technology needs to get out of the uncanny valley. These models are constantly growing and improving, but the researchers specifically hoped to see the kind of jump in power that was observed when language models got beyond a certain size. For unknown reasons, as LLMs grow beyond a certain point, they become more robust and versatile, capable of performing tasks for which they were not trained. This…

the [checks calendar] One and a half weeks left until Mobile World Congress 2024 [mild panic creeps in]TechCrunch returns to Barcelona again for a big phone show [soothing memories of tapas past]. This event is always a big one for major carriers, mobile phone manufacturers, and European startups alike. As always, we are particularly interested in the last category. Above all, this show serves as a great opportunity to get some hands-on time with startups that couldn't or couldn't attend his CES last month. If you run an interesting or innovative startup, MWC 2024 could be the perfect opportunity to…

Meta is in turmoil after announcing plans to remove politics from recommendations across Instagram and Threads (a new Twitter-like app for text-based posts). This leaves a window of opportunity for startup Bluesky. The company's CEO, Jay Graber, recently said Meta's decision was based on the types of problems that can arise when “one company runs one algorithm,” and how Bluesky's app works. He explained that it symbolizes how different things are. “It's kind of a black box, and companies can do whatever they want, but users don't really have a choice,” Graeber said in an interview on the podcast Techmeme…