Author: TechBrunch

Since government experiments in 2022 proved that nuclear fusion is not as unrealistic as once thought, physicists, engineers and investors have become increasingly optimistic that fusion technology has the ability to deliver on its long-held (and often postponed) promise of providing nearly unlimited, emissions-free electricity. No company is more reflective of that enthusiasm than Type One Energy, which today announced a new round of funding of $53.5 million. The company had raised $29 million in 2023, and the extension brings its total to about $82.5 million. The extension was led by Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures, with participation from Australia-based…

UK antitrust regulators have said they are conducting an early-stage investigation into Google's relationship with Anthropik after the Alphabet subsidiary made multiple investments in the US AI rival. While it is not yet at the formal investigation stage, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is inviting comments from interested parties and other “stakeholders” ahead of a final decision on whether the deal “results in the creation of a relevant merger situation” and whether this would lead to a “substantial lessening of competition” in the UK. Founded in San Francisco in 2021, Anthropic develops AI systems with a focus on safety,…

London-based nutrition company Zoe has raised $15 million in a Series B extension to expand its U.S. presence. Here's how it works: Zoe sends customers take-home testing materials and draws their blood or stool samples to test blood fats, blood sugar levels, and the health of their gut microbiome. Based on the results, the company assigns a score (on a scale of 0 to 100) to every food item, which can help people make better dietary choices. Zoe's nutrition tracking program includes blood glucose monitoring. (Image courtesy of Zoe)Image courtesy of Zoe / Along the way, Zoe teaches users how…

Users are getting their first taste of Apple Intelligence as Apple begins making some features of its AI suite available in the iOS 18.1 developer beta released on Monday. The company announced Apple Intelligence at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, but the first developer and public beta versions didn't include any of Apple Intelligence's features. Usage restrictions The rollout in iOS 18.1 is also limited. Apple's June news release stated that iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPad, and M1-powered Mac users would be able to try out the Apple Intelligence beta feature at a later date…

Canva has acquired generative AI content and research startup Leonardo.ai as it looks to bolster its investment in its AI tech stack. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, but Canva co-founder and chief product officer Cameron Adams said it was a combination of cash and stock. All 120 Leonardo.ai employees will join Canva, including the company's management team. “Leonardo will continue to operate independently from Canva and will focus on rapid innovation, research and development backed by Canva's resources,” Adams told TechCrunch. “All of Leonardo's existing tools and solutions will continue to be available. This acquisition is intended…

The U.S. Department of Commerce today released a report supporting “open-weighted” generative AI models like Meta's Llama 3.1, but recommending that the government develop “new capabilities” to monitor these models for potential risks. The report, written by the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), argues that open-weighted models would broaden the scope of generative AI available to small businesses, researchers, nonprofits, and individual developers. For these reasons, the report suggests, governments should not restrict access to open models, at least not before studying whether such restrictions would have a negative impact on the market. This sentiment echoes recent…

Shared micromobility giant Lime is piloting two new vehicles designed for women and seniors who prefer a lower step-through frame, smaller wheels and an upgrade from pedal assist. Lime has tried several new form factors over the years to win over customers and adapt to changing tastes and trends. The efforts have paid off in some important ways. The company has been able to turn a profit at times in an industry where most other companies, such as Tier, Bird, and Spin, have struggled to survive. In 2023, Lime earned more than $90 million in adjusted EBITDA, which the company…

Apple has published a technical paper detailing the models it developed to power Apple Intelligence, a set of generative AI features coming to iOS, macOS, and iPadOS in the coming months. In the paper, Apple refutes accusations that it took an ethically questionable approach to training some of its models, reiterating that it does not use private user data and that it uses a combination of public and licensed data for Apple Intelligence. “[The] “The pre-training datasets consist of data licensed from publishers, curated public or open-source datasets, and public information crawled by our web crawler, Applebot,” Apple wrote in…

A chat between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the SIGGRAPH 2024 conference in Colorado on Monday took an unexpected turn. The conversation started out as standard — Huang spoke positively about the power of Nvidia GPUs and Zuckerberg talked about the future of AI chatbots — but ended with Huang and Zuckerberg exchanging custom jackets, a conversation reminiscent of a meme that went viral earlier this year. “It's black and leather and shearling,” Zuckerberg said of the coat he brought for Huang. “It's got vibe. Buy this guy a chain.” Image credit: Nvidia Huang gifted…

Meta had a big win last year with “Segment Anything,” a machine learning model that could quickly and reliably identify and outline almost anything in an image. The sequel, which CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted onstage at SIGGRAPH on Monday, brings the model into the video realm, showing how rapidly the field is evolving. Segmentation is the technical term for a visual model looking at an image and picking out parts: “This is a dog, and this is the tree behind the dog,” and hopefully not “This is the tree growing out of the dog.” This has been done for decades,…