Author: TechBrunch

TikTok is rolling out TikTok Notes, a competing service to Instagram, in some markets. The app is available on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store in Canada and Australia, the company said. The company said on X that the app's rollout is in the “early stages.” TikTok said the app is a “space dedicated to photo and text content.” /1 We are in the early stages of experimenting with dedicated spaces for photos and text content using TikTok Notes. Starting today, TikTok Notes is available for download and limited testing in Australia and Canada. — TikTokComms (@TikTokComms) April…

CommentSold, an e-commerce technology startup that provides web and video tools to online retailers, on Wednesday culled live-streamed footage to help sellers access websites, apps, and social media platforms. The “AI ClipHero” feature creates short clips from hours of live streaming sales events. Instead of retailers having to rewatch content or find relevant clips to edit and post, CommentSold's new tools allow customers who missed an event to watch the livestream to get a quick overview of the product. Save time by automatically identifying the most interesting parts. This tool uses speech recognition to generate captions. “Shoppable 'instructor' videos are…

Palo Alto Networks this week responded to a newly discovered zero-day vulnerability in one of its widely used security products after malicious hackers began exploiting the bug to infiltrate corporate networks. Companies are urged to apply the patch. The vulnerability, officially known as CVE-2024-3400, was discovered in a new version of PAN-OS software running on Palo Alto's GlobalProtect firewall products. Palo Alto rated this bug as maximum severity because this vulnerability could allow hackers to gain complete control of affected firewalls over the Internet without authentication. Hackers can easily exploit this bug remotely, putting thousands of businesses that rely on…

This week Boston Dynamics retired its famous hydraulically powered Atlas robot. And today, it announced its new electric-powered Atlas robot. It may seem like not much has changed, but Brian Heater of TechCrunch He told TechCrunch Minute that the now-deprecated hydraulic system is outdated. It's not hard to see why Hyundai's Boston Dynamics wanted to go electric. The new Atlas robot is slimmer and appears to have a better range of motion. Size and the ability to bend and maneuver are not superficial factors for humanoid robots. Robots can unlock new use cases and possible work environments. The new Atlas…

Privacy-focused search engine Brave announced Wednesday that it is revamping its answer engine to return synthetic answers using AI. This new feature is available to users worldwide. The new 'AI Answers' feature provides nicely formatted answers to questions like 'Who walked on the moon?', 'A list of all the actors who played Batman' and 'How to scale down a Nespresso pixie.' returns the answer. For example, you can summarize restaurant reviews and salient points. Image credit: Brave The company launched an AI-powered summary function in March 2023. The company said its new AI-powered search is a significant upgrade from that.…

Jaclyn Johnson and Angeline Vuong found themselves stumbling upon a startup idea while hiking to discuss how difficult it is for people to start angel investing. Currently, they are co-founders of Cherub, a marketplace that connects angel investors and entrepreneurs. Vuong spent nearly five years working on product and growth at Opendoor. Johnson founded Create & Cultivate, a self-described “media company for ambitious women,” where she has experienced both sides of the investment world as a founder and investor. Before starting her Create & Cultivate, Johnson sold her own startup (No Subject) in 2016 and invested in numerous companies, including…

In 2022, Rewind had just raised $10 million from a16z to build a personal data recording service that promised to privately record your activities and make your own history searchable. . But that was before OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Now, generative AI makes what Rewind built earlier — a searchable record of activity — even more useful. So it's not too surprising that the startup would pivot to integrating AI more deeply into its products. The company has rebranded itself as Limitless and offers an AI-powered meeting suite and a hardware pendant that can record conversations. Dan Siroker, the company's co-founder,…

TikTok owner ByteDance is facing new questions about its compliance with the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA is an online governance and content moderation framework that imposes legal obligations on large platforms to reduce systemic risks in areas such as youth mental health. The EU's latest concerns regarding TikTok's DSA compliance center on the launch of TikTok Lite. It's a version of the video-sharing app that recently launched in France and Spain (a “test launch,” according to TikTok) that allows users over 18 to enjoy certain apps, such as liking content or following new creators. Allow you…

NeuBird founders Goutham Rao and Vinod Jayaraman came from PortWorx, a cloud-native storage solution that they eventually sold to PureStorage in 2019 for $370 million. This was their third successful sending off. Last year, when I was looking for my next startup challenge, I saw an opportunity to combine my cloud-native knowledge, especially in IT operations, with the fast-growing field of generative AI. Today, Neubird announced a $22 million investment from Mayfield to take the idea to market. That's a lot of money for an early-stage startup, but the company is likely banking on the founders' previous experience to build…

What's worth $11 billion and wants to go to Mars to collect rocks? NASA's rock collection mission to Mars was expected to cost $11 billion and take a long time. That means the U.S. space agency is opening its doors to more input, and that means startups are looking at opportunities that are truly out of this world. But that's not all that's happening. Today's stocks episode focuses on startups in general. That meant we also got to talk about Two Chairs' recent big Series C, Quilt's heat pump business and financing, and some IPO updates. We expect more of…