Author: TechBrunch

Cybersecurity remains a hot area for investors, and in the latest example of that demand, EQT has acquired a majority stake in Acronis, a security company that specializes in data protection, cloud and integrated security solutions for managed service providers (which resell services to consumers) and enterprise IT teams. The size or value of the stake or Acronis' enterprise value was not disclosed. EQT and Acronis said the transaction values ​​Acronis at a higher than its previously disclosed valuation of $3.5 billion, which was based on 2022 investments. To give some background on the growth, Acronis itself says that its…

The UK data protection authority has imposed an interim fine of more than £6 million on NHS vendor Advanced after finding that the company failed to properly protect the personal information of thousands of people that was later stolen in a ransomware attack. The UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said in a statement that it imposed the fine after determining that the cybercriminals behind the August 2022 ransomware attack “initially accessed some of Advanced's health systems through customer accounts that lacked multi-factor authentication.” The cyber attack on Advanced caused widespread disruption to NHS services across the UK at the time,…

During Airbnb's second-quarter earnings call with investors on Tuesday, CEO Brian Chesky hinted that the company will soon expand into new products and services, including co-hosting, the relaunch of Airbnb Experiences and guest services. The company sees its future services as a way to increase revenue by raising awareness through expanding into multiple businesses beyond just short-term vacation rentals. “We're going to have to do some new things,” Chesky told investors. With co-hosting, set to launch later this fall, Airbnb hopes to connect homeowners who don't have the time to manage their properties with those who do but don't have…

Reddit users will soon start seeing AI-generated summaries at the top of their search results. Reddit CFO Drew Vollero told investors on an earnings call on Tuesday that the company plans to test an AI-powered search results page to “summarize and recommend content,” which he said will help users explore content “more deeply” and discover new Reddit communities. Volero explained that Reddit will use a combination of first- and third-party technology to make this feature possible, and the company plans to begin experimenting with it later this year. Those who have been following the company's latest endeavors would have expected…

The fate of Google Assistant has been an open question for more than a year. Once Google's crown jewel, the software was key to the company's mobile and smart home strategy. Five years ago, Google gave away its Home Mini speaker for free in an effort to expand its ecosystem. But ahead of its Made by Google 2024 event next week, the company announced on Tuesday that Assistant will live on, at least on the Home and Nest side of things. Google Assistant and Alexa got a lot of attention out of the pandemic as people around the world suddenly…

Amazon has released an upgraded version of its home-grown image generation model, Titan Image Generator, for AWS customers using its Bedrock generative AI platform. The new model, simply called Titan Image Generator v2, packs several new features, as Channy Yun, principal developer advocate at AWS, explains in a blog post. Yun says that users can use reference images to “guide” the image they generate, edit existing images, remove backgrounds, and generate variations of an image. “Titan Image Generator v2 can intelligently detect and segment multiple foreground objects,” Yun wrote. “Titan Image Generator v2 allows you to generate color-adjusted images based…

X (formerly Twitter) appears to be making progress in developing its upcoming payments system, bringing it closer to Elon Musk's vision of making X the “everything app.” The company is working on adding a “Payments” button to the navigation bar under the bookmarks tab, according to a recent discovery by app researcher Nima Ouji. Ouji, who made the discovery yesterday, told TechCrunch that he found references to new payment features such as “transactions, balances, and transfers.” When Musk originally acquired the social networking app formerly known as Twitter, he envisioned a platform where users could store funds in X accounts,…

Google's next big hardware event is scheduled for August 13 at 10am PST, roughly two months earlier than its usual mid-fall Made By Google event, and it's notable that the company will unveil its latest flagship device, the Pixel 9, ahead of the iPhone 16. Apple's latest products are due to be unveiled in September. Google hasn't offered a justification for the change — perhaps things are too noisy now, less than a month before the strangest presidential election in modern U.S. history — but the company certainly has a lot to discuss with Gemini, too, and the new device…

When Nick Frost was attending college more than a decade ago, he worried that he was a little behind in the field of AI. Frost, co-founder of enterprise AI startup Cohere, said during a recent episode of TechCrunch's Found podcast that he came to that conclusion in 2012 after Geoffrey Hinton published research showing that neural networks could be trained to successfully identify objects like cars and animals. Looking back, Frost said that while that research is archaic compared to current AI capabilities, at the time he felt like he'd missed out on a technological breakthrough. “It felt like a…

Decentralized X competitor Bluesky, a startup that offers a social network where users can choose their own algorithms and moderation services, announced on Monday that it had hired Mike Masnick as its new board member. Masnick, best known as the founder of tech blog Techdirt, is also said to have inspired the Bluesky project through his paper titled “Protocol, Not a Platform.” The company said in a blog post that the team had already sought Masnick's advice, and that bringing him on to the board was a “natural next step” to formalize the relationship between the two companies. Bluesky was…