Author: TechBrunch

Yelp today announced a new AI-powered chatbot for consumers to help them connect with businesses relevant to their jobs. The company joins a long list of organizations that are turning to AI chatbots as a supporting medium. The company is rolling out its AI assistant in the Projects tab of its iOS app, with plans to expand to Android later this year. Yelp says the chatbot uses OpenAI's Large-Scale Language Model (LLM) and proprietary data to ask users questions about their problems and connect them with experts related to the job. Rather than using traditional search boxes to find experts…

Technology founder Dan Purcell was devastated to discover that his ex-partner had posted videos of their private, intimate relationships on a porn site without his knowledge. He was determined to come up with a solution to prevent such violations from happening again. His Ceartas startup has now raised a $4.5 million seed round from European VC firm Earlybird and Upside VC, a fund founded by YouTube influencer group The Sidemen. Ceartas DMCA was founded in 2021 by Purcell (CEO) and Jonny Smith (CTO) to apply AI to brand protection and anti-piracy services for content creators and brands. This is done…

Food is important to Nigerians, with households spending almost 60% of their income on food, the highest level worldwide, according to official reports. With this strong affinity for food and the rise of online shopping, Nigeria's food delivery market could reach $2-3 billion by 2032. Despite the promising market size, there is still no clear leader. But backed by Y Combinator and armed with a $2.5 million seed investment, Lagos-based Chowdeck is looking to make its mark in a field that has produced heavy hitters like Jumia and Bolt. Founded by Femi Aluko, Olumide Ojo, and Lanre Yusuf, Chowdeck offers…

The eyes are more than just windows to the soul. Tracking saccades can help doctors identify various problems with brain health. That's why French-Belgian medical technology startup Neurocruise is building fast, accessible eye-tracking technology that incorporates AI-driven analytics. The company wants to enable healthcare providers to use eye tracking to help diagnose neurodegenerative conditions. The company has begun to focus on Parkinson's disease, which typically already includes testing of patients' eye movements. Today, doctors ask patients to “follow my fingers,” but NeuroCruise allows clinicians to use a proprietary portable headset to capture eye movements at 800 frames per second, and…

It's hard to wake up in 2024 without reading about another big funding round in an enterprise AI company. Intuition, a new venture capital firm based in Paris, is doing something radical by betting solely on consumer technology. Behind the scenes, Hugo Amselem (pictured left) and Etienne Boutin (pictured right) will be the new fund's general partners. Hugo Amsellem works at Jellysmack and has been writing about consumer technology and influencers for several years. It also includes a very interesting article about loneliness and how it affects consumer technology and culture. Amsellem is also best known as one of the…

In the startup world, it's not uncommon to see talented people from successful companies founding their own ventures. This is especially true in European fintech, where graduates of unicorns like Monzo, N26 and Revolut are starting new companies one after another. Andrena Ventures, a UK-based solo GP fund, wants to support the snowball effect of this startup factory by investing in these second-generation startups at the pre-seed and seed stages. To that end, the company has raised $12 million from backers including multiple VCs and entrepreneurs. Gideon Valkin, the company's general partner, told TechCrunch that Andrena itself is sector agnostic,…

French startup Carbonfact believes that the best carbon accounting solutions are those that focus on one area. Therefore, the company decided to offer its carbon management and reporting tools exclusively to the fashion industry. And Carbon Fact recently raised $15 million in a round led by Alven, the French venture capital firm that already led Carbon Fact's seed round in 2022. Other investors in this round include follow-on investments from Headline and Y Combinator. Changing regulations in Europe and the US, such as the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), California's Climate Change Corporate Data Responsibility Act, and New York's…

Google is trying to create a buzz with Gemini, its flagship suite of generative AI models, apps, and services. So what is Gemini? How can it be used? And how does it compare to its competitors? We've created this handy guide to help you easily stay up to date with the latest developments in Gemini. This guide will be updated as new Gemini models, features, and news about Google's Gemini plans are released. What is Gemini? Gemini is Google's long-promised next-generation GenAI model family, developed by Google's AI research lab DeepMind and Google Research. Available in 3 flavors. Gemini Ultra…

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce that develops and tests technology for the U.S. government, businesses, and the broader public, announced Monday that a new NIST-led announced the launch of the NIST GenAI program. AI technology, such as AI that generates text and images. NIST GenAI releases benchmarks to help create “content authenticity” detection (i.e. deepfake checking) systems and encourage the development of software that identifies sources of AI-generated false and misleading information. , explains NIST on the newly launched NIST GenAI website. In a press release. “The NIST GenAI…

WWDC is still over a month away, but Apple has gotten ahead of the curve and sneaked into another event. On Tuesday, May 7th at 7am PT/10am ET, the company is scheduled to announce the latest addition to his iPad product line. Rumor has it that the list includes the new iPad Pro, iPad Air, Apple Pencil, and keyboard cases. Even more surprising, a little more than six months after the company unveiled three new M3 chips all at once, the event could also see the unveiling of a new M4 chip. Why refresh the silicon so quickly? First, word…