Author: TechBrunch
Many industries that rely on traditional energy sources are looking to electrify or at least streamline their operations, but for countless use cases the technology doesn't exist yet. H3X is changing that with an electric motor that is compact and efficient enough to catch the attention of the aerospace and marine industries, and investors too. We reported on the H3X's stealth launch back in 2021. Since then, CEO Jason Silvestre spoke exclusively to TechCrunch, saying that the H3X was “primarily demonstrating that this technology works, and we've got orders from a number of aerospace companies to prove that.” They've also…
John Shulman, one of OpenAI's co-founders, has left the company to join rival AI startup Anthropic. The news comes after The Information reported that OpenAI president Greg Brockman is taking an extended leave of absence, along with product manager Peter Deng, who joined OpenAI last year after leading products at Meta, Uber and Airtable. We asked OpenAI about Schulman's departure and the status of Brockman and Deng. A spokesperson said of Schulman: “We appreciate John's contributions as a founding team member of OpenAI and his dedicated efforts in advancing alignment research. His passion and hard work have established a strong…
Grok (not to be confused with the homophone-named AI startup Groq, which raised more than $600 million this morning) is spreading misinformation about Vice President Kamala Harris on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. This comes according to an open letter written by five secretaries of state to Tesla, SpaceX and X CEO Elon Musk, alleging that X's AI-powered chatbot falsely suggested Ms Harris was ineligible to appear on some ballots in the 2024 US presidential election. The letter, led by Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon and signed by Secretaries of State Al Schmidt of Pennsylvania, Steve…
Google is set to appeal on Monday a U.S. District Court ruling that found the company acted illegally to maintain its monopoly on online search. The ruling by Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is a major defeat for Google and, if upheld, could change the way the company does business and even the structure of the internet as we know it. Mehta said Google was abusing its monopoly power in the search business by paying companies like Apple to have its search engine appear as the default on devices and web…
Last year, OpenAI held a splashy press conference in San Francisco during which it unveiled a slew of new products and tools, including the ill-fated App Store-like GPT Store. But this year's event is set to be quieter. On Monday, OpenAI announced it would change the format of its DevDay conference from a main event to a series of on-the-road developer engagement sessions. The company also confirmed that it would not release its next flagship model during DevDay, instead focusing on updates to its APIs and developer services. “We are not planning on announcing our next models at DevDay,” an…
We're excited to announce that we're adding a dedicated AI stage, powered by Google Cloud, to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. This joins industry-specific stages like Fintech, SaaS, and Space, all coming together under one big roof. TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 wouldn't be complete without a deep dive into all things artificial intelligence, so we're giving you a first sneak peek at the agenda for the AI Stage, which runs all day on Wednesday, October 30. The TechCrunch stage will feature some of the industry's biggest startup names, including Alexandr Wang and Aravind Srinivas, along with partners like Nebius AI. Check out the…
For better or worse, location data remains part of the fabric of app development. Now Placer.ai, a startup developing AI market research based on that location data, has quietly raised $75 million at a valuation approaching $1.5 billion, TechCrunch has learned. The startup combines anonymized data obtained from third-party apps with AI to provide a wide range of location-based analytics to companies in industries including retail, events and entertainment, CPG, retail real estate, financial services, and healthcare. We first learned of the funding in a Form D filing in July that detailed Placer's intentions to raise $75 million. After speaking…
Safari's latest feature, Distraction Control, lets you remove distracting elements from websites. It follows Browser Company Arc Browse's Boosts addition last year, which also let users remove features from sites to further customize their appearance. Apple is rolling out an early version of the feature this week via new developer betas of iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia. Users can access the Distraction Control tool from the page menu in the Smart Search field. They then select the items on the website they want to remove. Safari will remember to remove the element the next time they visit the…
YouTube creators are filing a class action lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging that the company used millions of transcripts of YouTube videos to train a generative AI model without notifying or compensating video owners. In a complaint filed last Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, lawyers for Massachusetts-based YouTube user David Millett allege that OpenAI secretly transcribed Millett and other creators' videos to train models that power its AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT and other AI-generated tools and products. By collecting this data, OpenAI “significantly profited” from the creators' work, but violated copyright law and YouTube's…
Defending a company the size of Amazon is a daunting task, with so many bad actors targeting the company and its customers. Over the years, Amazon has developed a variety of strategies to identify and mitigate risks to its network, from machine learning and monitoring tools to old-fashioned phone calls. The company on Monday unveiled a comprehensive platform called “Mithra” that is built for Amazon's scale. The key technology behind the solution is a massive graph database with 3.5 billion nodes and 48 billion edges, according to Amazon CISO CJ Moses. Simply put, Moses says, Mithra is essentially a big…