Author: TechBrunch
As far as hardware startups go, few are as entertaining as Bird Buddy. Its simple innovation — attaching an internet-connected camera to a bird feeder — has spawned a strong customer base and a slew of copycats, with our own Sarah Perez being a well-known fan of the gadget. The Michigan-based company today announced “Name That Bird,” a new AI-powered feature that lets users name and track individual birds. While we can't speak to the effectiveness of the feature just yet, we can easily imagine it being one of the most requested features among users, one that strengthens the emotional…
YouTube Music is introducing two new ways to boost song discovery on the platform. YouTube on Monday announced it's experimenting with an AI-generated conversational radio feature and rolling out a new Shazam-like tool that lets users discover songs by singing, humming or playing snippets of a song. YouTube Music's new AI-generated conversational radio feature is rolling out to some premium users in the U.S. Those with access to the feature can create custom radio stations by describing the songs they want to hear, such as requesting “catchy pop choruses” or “upbeat pop anthems.” The launch of the experimental feature comes…
On today's episode of Equity, Rebecca Beran explores Google's reported talks to acquire cloud security company Wiz for around $23 billion. Wiz offers an “all-in-one approach to cloud security,” pulling data from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and more, and scanning it all for security risk factors. Google may see this as a good way to bolster its own cloud business, which grew 28% to $9.57 billion in the first quarter of this year. We also discussed a letter from OpenAI whistleblowers alleging that the AI company places unlawful restrictions on employees' communications with government regulators: They argue…
With the help of a robot, Google has found a new way to show what its Gemini AI model is capable of. This is a robot from Google's Everybody Robots division, which was shut down last year, but apparently the robots still exist, as Google fitted one of them with a yellow bow tie and used Gemini to teach the robot how to respond to commands and navigate around the DeepMind office space. To achieve this, Google uses visual language models, VLMs, trained not only on text but also on images and videos, to help answer questions and perform tasks…
Get ready for a week of great deals at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 with the launch of Disrupt Deal Days. From now through July 19 at 11:59pm PST, we're returning to early bird ticket prices, allowing attendees to save up to $800 on their passes. This limited-time offer is your perfect opportunity to secure your seat at one of the most anticipated tech events of the year. Get your pass here. Why attend TechCrunch Disrupt 2024? Whether you want to learn, share or grow, TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 offers unparalleled opportunities to expand your knowledge and network. Connect with 10,000 startup leaders…
Deezer is the latest music streaming app to introduce an AI playlist feature. The company announced on Monday that some paid users will be able to use the “AI Playlist” feature to create custom playlists with text prompts. The release of the new feature comes months after Spotify and Amazon Music began testing personalized AI playlist generators with their users, while YouTube is also said to be testing a prompt-based AI radio feature. Deezer said 5% of its paying subscribers will have access to the beta feature, which will allow users to create new playlists from prompts describing mood, genre,…
The construction industry has a problem with delayed payments. Studies show that due to factors such as delays, multiple payment tiers, and cost overruns, it takes an average of two to three months for construction companies to get paid. The cost of missed construction contract payments is expected to reach $273 billion in 2023, accounting for 14% of total project spending that year. Matthew Calvano, along with Henry Bradlaugh and Francisco Enriquez, saw the problem as being due to back-office inefficiencies, so in 2021, the three co-founded Adaptive, a platform that provides tools to simplify payments and accounting for general…
While real-time payments are becoming the norm for individuals and businesses, that's not yet the case for cross-border transactions, and Carriza wants to change that, starting in Latin America. Founded in 2021 by Ezra Kebrave, an American entrepreneur who now lives in São Paulo, Brazil, Caliza offers an alternative to sending money via SWIFT, which is standard in the Americas but can take days to settle. Instead, Caliza offers an API and front-end payment system that uses cryptocurrency stablecoins (specifically Circle’s reserve-backed USDC) and an existing real-time payments network to enable instant transfers and provide U.S. digital dollar accounts to…
When VanMoof declared bankruptcy last year, around 5,000 customers who had pre-ordered electric bikes were left in the cold. Now VanMoof has relaunched under new management, and the company's current owners are offering those same customers a €1,000 discount on new bikes to buy them. It was a bold strategy, a gamble that abandoned customers who liked VanMoof bikes would shell out a few thousand euros more. Before its bankruptcy, VanMoof required customers to pay nearly the full amount when they pre-ordered to give the startup working capital, but this resulted in long wait times for delivery. Prices for bikes…
Rice is the staple food for more than half of the world's population. Demand is also growing as the population in South and Southeast Asia grows. However, a significant portion of rice production still relies on traditional cultivation methods, which emits large amounts of methane, a major contributor to climate change. Methane is about 30 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than carbon dioxide, but dissipates faster than carbon dioxide. Rice production also requires large amounts of freshwater, about 3,000 liters per kilogram of rice, or 20 million liters per hectare of rice farmland. Mitti Labs aims to use…