Author: TechBrunch

OpenAI has developed a tool that could potentially catch students cheating by asking ChatGPT to ghostwrite their assignments, but the company is debating whether to actually release it, according to The Wall Street Journal. In a statement provided to TechCrunch, an OpenAI spokesperson confirmed that the company is researching the text watermarking technique described in the WSJ article, but said the company is taking a “cautious approach” to releasing anything publicly because of “the complexities involved and the potential impact to the broader ecosystem outside of OpenAI.” “While the text watermarking methods we are developing show promise as a technology,…

Yelp might not be the first company that comes to mind when someone mentions artificial intelligence, but Chief Product Officer Craig Saldanha said AI is already transforming the Yelp experience. In fact, most of the company’s recent announcements center on AI, whether that’s adding new AI-powered summaries or launching an AI assistant to connect consumers with service providers. So I spoke to Saldanha (who joined Yelp after nearly a decade at Amazon) to learn more about Yelp’s AI strategy. We also discussed what advantages Yelp brings to the AI race, how Yelp can add AI without threatening the authenticity of…

When Mosa Meat served up a first-of-its-kind, lab-grown hamburger in 2013, it cost over $300,000. Eleven years later, around 200 startups worldwide remain hopeful that growing meat from cells, rather than slaughtering animals, will one day be a major portion of our food supply.  Despite their optimism, such success is not a given. In 2024, the industry has hit such rocky times that multiple startups have been forced to scale back or close shop.  The industry is talking about eventually producing about 30 million pounds of finished product annually. However, over 100 billion pounds of traditional meat is produced annually…

For years, Elon Musk has talked about Dojo — the AI supercomputer that will be the cornerstone of Tesla’s AI ambitions. It’s important enough to Musk that he recently said the company’s AI team is going to “double down” on Dojo as Tesla gears up to reveal its robotaxi in October.  But what exactly is Dojo? And why is it so critical to Tesla’s long-term strategy? In short: Dojo is Tesla’s custom-built supercomputer that’s designed to train its “Full Self-Driving” neural networks. Beefing up Dojo goes hand-in-hand with Tesla’s goal to reach full self-driving and bring a robotaxi to market.…

Peloton has had one of the most eventful five years in tech. The home fitness company experienced industry highs and lows in dizzying succession. This is the story of a buzzy startup that grew into a cult following among influencers and fitness enthusiasts. A global pandemic catapulted the brand to unknown heights, only to then see it plummet back to earth amid overinvestment, recalls, mass layoffs, and executive departures. As of mid-2024, Peloton is in decline but not bankrupt. The company avoided a major liquidity crisis with a major debt refinancing in late May, the same month it cut 15%…

Sri Lanka isn't known for its startup ecosystem, but one company has been something of an outlier in the South Asian island nation for the past two decades: WSO2, an open-source enterprise software provider with customers including Samsung, Axa, and AT&T, recently agreed to be acquired by private equity giant EQT, in a deal that TechCrunch reported at the time was valued at more than $600 million (we can now confirm that the valuation was, in fact, $600 million). The transaction, which is pending regulatory approval, will see EQT become the sole owner of WSO2 and acquire all outstanding shares,…

The humble garage is so ingrained in Silicon Valley lore that it's almost a cliché, but that's exactly how Caleb Boyd and Kevin Bush started Molten Industries: in the garage of a Stanford professor's on-campus home, and Kevin Bush rented an apartment. It had everything they needed: space and, most importantly, power. They hoped to essentially break the backbone of methane, separating hydrogen from carbon without emitting atmosphere-heating carbon dioxide. “We call it a garage, but it was really just a carport. We plugged in his EV charger, heated the methane pyrolysis reactor up to about 1,000 degrees Celsius, and…

It’s no accident that the European Union’s Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act have such similar-sounding names: They were conceived together and, at the end of 2020, proposed in unison as a twin package of digital policy reforms. EU lawmakers had overwhelmingly approved them by mid-2022, and both regimes were fully up and running by early 2024. While each law aims to achieve distinct things, via its own set of differently applied rules, they are best understood as a joint response to Big Tech’s market power. Key concerns driving lawmakers include a belief that major digital platforms have ignored…

A cyber attack on the UK's Electoral Commission, which led to the leak of 40 million voter register data, could have been entirely preventable if the commission had taken basic security measures, according to a damning report published this week by the UK's data watchdog. A report published Monday by the UK's Information Commissioner's Office blamed the Electoral Commission, which keeps a copy of the register of citizens eligible to vote in UK elections, for a series of security failings that led to the mass theft of voter information beginning in August 2021. The elections commission did not realize the…

Self-driving technology company Aurora Innovation was hoping to raise hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding as it pushes ahead with commercializing self-driving cars by the end of 2024. The company had planned to sell up to $420 million in stock, but exceeded its target, raising $483 million. The new funding comes just over a year after Aurora raised $820 million through a public offering and parallel private placement. “This funding demonstrates investor confidence in Aurora's long-term capabilities and follows our recent analyst day, where investors got to test drive our self-driving trucks, as well as other recent milestones…