Author: TechBrunch
AI is driving a surge in electricity demand. In a May 2024 report, Goldman Sachs predicted that data centers will use 8% of the U.S.'s total electricity supply as cloud service providers expand to meet AI infrastructure demands, up from 3% in 2022. Assuming current trends continue, U.S. utilities will need to invest roughly $50 billion in generating capacity to support all those upgraded (and new) AI-powered data centers. There could be serious negative externalities. In Kansas, where Meta recently broke ground on a major new server facility, utility Evergy announced it was postponing the retirement of coal-fired power plants…
Ever wanted a personalized makeup dispenser? Karin Layton, co-founder and CTO of Boldhue, has created just that: a device that aims to be the “Keurig for makeup.” Baldhue's device essentially scans your face and then applies a customized foundation formula that matches your skin tone. The beauty tech startup announced Tuesday that it had raised $3.37 million in funding led by Lucas Venture Group and with participation from Mark Cuban and others. The idea came to Leighton, a former aerospace engineer for Raytheon, when she was getting ready for work one day and noticed that a bottle of a new,…
Indian education technology giant Unacademy is laying off around 250 employees, the latest in a series of job cuts the company is making after the pandemic lockdown was eased and schools across the country reopened. The Bengaluru-based startup, which was valued at $3.4 billion in its last round of funding in 2021, plans to lay off 100 people across marketing, business and product departments and about 150 in sales, according to sources familiar with the matter. The cuts will bring Unacademy's total job cuts to about 2,000 from the second half of 2022 onwards. A UAcademy spokesman confirmed the cuts…
Apple unveiled iOS 18 at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) last month. Since then, the company has released two developer betas in the past few weeks, expanding support for several new languages across iOS 18's lock screen, Siri, keyboard, and search. With the new update, you can now customise your lock screen to display time in different numerals with support for 12 languages - Arabic, Arabic Indic, Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Meitei, Odia, Ol Chiki and Telugu. Image credit: Apple The iOS keyboard has received a number of updates, including system-wide support for predictive typing in three languages.…
Anthropic is launching a program to fund the development of new types of benchmarks that can evaluate the performance and impact of AI models, including generative models like its own Claude. Anthropik's program, announced Monday, will award grants to third-party organizations that can “effectively measure the advanced capabilities of AI models,” as the company put it in a blog post. Interested parties can submit applications for evaluation at any time. “Our investments in these assessments are intended to advance the overall field of AI safety and provide valuable tools to benefit the entire ecosystem,” Anthropik wrote in a blog post.…
A group of senators has banded together to urge Synapse's owners, as well as its bank and fintech partners, to “immediately restore access to customer funds.” As part of their demands, the senators suggested that both the company's partners and investors were to blame for the loss of customer funds. In a letter released on Monday, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, along with Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and John Fetterman (D-Pennsylvania), noted that customers of companies that partnered with banking-as-a-service startup Synapse have not been able to…
Music, podcasts, audiobooks… emergency alerts? Spotify's latest test sees the streaming app venturing into new territory, testing an emergency alert system in its home country of Sweden. According to code references found within the Spotify app, the company is looking at a system that could help deliver public announcements about “accidents, major events, significant service disruptions, and more.” The company confirmed to TechCrunch that it is testing such a system, but did not explain why it's interested in offering this kind of service to users. Swedish law does not require apps to do so, and Spotify said that at this…
Meta isn't the only company grappling with the rise of AI-generated content and its impact on its platform. YouTube also quietly implemented a policy change in June to allow users to request the removal of AI-generated content that mimics their face or voice or other synthetic content. The change allows users to request the removal of this type of AI content through YouTube's privacy request process. This is an expansion of the company's previously announced approach to its responsible AI agenda, which was first introduced in November. Rather than requesting removal for misleading content like deepfakes, YouTube would prefer that…
Remittance and fintech company Wise said on Friday that some of its customers' personal data may have been stolen in a recent data breach at Evolve Bank & Trust. The news highlights that it is still unknown how the Evolve data breach will impact third-party companies and their customers and users, likely including as yet unknown companies and startups. In a statement on its official website, Wise said that it worked with Evolve “to provide USD account details” from 2020 to 2023. It also said that given Evolve's recent breach, “it is possible that some of the personal information of…
Afloat, a gift delivery app that lets you shop locally and have gifts delivered to loved ones the same day, is now available across the U.S. The startup announced Monday that it's expanding the service nationwide, after it was previously only available in select cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, Charleston, Fort Worth, Kansas City, Nashville and Wichita. The startup was founded by Sarah Allen Preston after experiencing the stress of newborn heart surgery and receiving thoughtful gifts from loved ones, and wanted to make it possible for anyone to give gifts instantly to support loved ones in need, even if they…