Author: TechBrunch

A number of AI bills have been moving through Congress recently, and OpenAI is supporting several of them. OpenAI on Tuesday endorsed three Senate bills that could shape the federal government's stance on artificial intelligence. One of the bills, the Future of AI Innovation Act, would formally authorize the American AI Safety Institute as a federal agency that sets standards and guidelines for AI models. “We have consistently supported the lab's mission to lead the U.S. government's efforts to ensure cutting-edge AI systems are developed and deployed safely,” Anna Makanju, OpenAI's vice president of international affairs, said in a LinkedIn…

Software supply chains face threats from all sides: According to a 2024 report from the Ponemon Institute, more than half of organizations have experienced a software supply chain attack, with 54% experiencing an attack within the past year. Supply chain attacks, which typically target third-party vendor services and open source software that make up a company's technology stack, can cause financial harm to organizations. According to a study by Juniper Research, supply chain cyber attacks could cost the global economy approximately $81 billion in lost revenue and damages by 2026. The White House has signaled its intention to address the…

The founder of once-hyped cryptocurrency startup BitClout is in trouble. The SEC on Tuesday charged BitClout founder Nadar Al Naji with fraud and an unregistered offering of securities, alleging that he used a false name to evade regulatory scrutiny while raising more than $257 million in cryptocurrencies. BitClout, a decentralized social media platform, raised funding from blue-chip firms including a16z, Sequoia, Chamath Palihapitiya's Social Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Winklevoss Capital. Many of these big-name investors participated in the company's roughly $7 million seed round, with Sequoia investing $1 million and a16z investing $3 million, according to sources close to the…

Google had both good and bad news last week. The good news was that its cloud division, which includes Google Workplace software-as-a-service and Google Cloud infrastructure services, made $10 billion in profits in a quarter for the first time, which should have cushioned the blow from missing out on a second $20 billion+ acquisition in less than a month. The first failed acquisition was a long-rumored deal to acquire Boston-based CRM and marketing software company HubSpot. The price was never announced, but the company's market cap is around $30 billion, so you can do the math. The rumors began in…

OpenAI began rolling out ChatGPT's advanced voice mode on Tuesday, giving users access to GPT-4o's ultra-realistic voice responses for the first time. The alpha version was released today to a small number of ChatGPT Plus users, and OpenAI said the feature will be gradually rolled out to all Plus users in fall 2024. When OpenAI first showed off GPT-4o's voices in May, the feature wowed audiences with its fast response and striking resemblance to real human voices, especially one. The voice, named Sky, resembled that of actress Scarlett Johansson, who played the artificial assistant in the film Her. Shortly after…

In May, Spotify quietly started charging for song lyrics, limiting free users to seeing lyrics for just three songs per month, a move that was seen as an attempt to get more users to pay for the service. After receiving numerous complaints, the company has decided to expand the monthly limit. Starting today, Spotify will increase the limit on the number of lyrics that free users can view. Users around the world will see this change. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch: “At Spotify, we're always testing and improving, which means feature availability may vary across tiers, markets, and devices. In…

Airtable today announced that it has acquired Dopt, a startup focused on helping other startups build product onboarding experiences for new users. Dopt introduced several features earlier this year that allowed users to add AI-based assistance tools to their services, which is the main reason for Airtable's acquisition of the company. The acquisition was completed at the end of last month, and Dopt plans to shut down its service on August 15. The Dopt team will join Airtable's AI group. It's all part of Airtable's holistic approach to AI, co-founder and CEO Howie Liu told TechCrunch. The company, like many…

AI hardware is all the rage in the startup world, but the response so far has been mixed: Two notable examples, Rabbit and Humane, have released devices with disappointing results, while a16z-backed Limitless and Exor-backed Bee AI are working on their own screenless AI wearables. Avi Shiffman, a Harvard dropout who built a Webby Prize-winning COVID-19 tracking website, is working on an AI device he's calling “Friend,” which, as the name suggests, is worn around the neck and designed to be treated as a companion. Shiffman has raised $2.5 million at a $50 million valuation from investors including Caffeinated Capital's…

Europe is routinely criticized by tech industry observers for having too few “growth capital” funds, and that's true when compared to the U.S. That said, the space is far from nonexistent: growth equity investor Kennet just announced it has raised €266 million for its largest fund to date, Kennet VI, which is already being deployed in B2B SaaS companies across Europe. Kenet specializes in backing established B2B SaaS startups that are founder-owned and either highly capital efficient or fully bootstrapped, i.e. built without outside capital. A great example is Grip, the conference networking app that raised $13 million in 2021,…

Intelmatix, a deep-tech B2B startup targeting companies in the MENA region who want to leverage the power of AI to aid in decision-making, has closed a $20 million Series A funding round, one of the largest funding rounds for a company of its kind in the region. The startup, which has offices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, London, UK, and Boston, US, was founded in 2021 but only released its enterprise AI platform, EDIX, in March 2024. The company told TechCrunch that it has secured 10 enterprise customers so far, but with its new deep pockets, it plans to expand its…