Author: TechBrunch
Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.” Previous versions of Airchat released last yearBut a team led by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product executive Brian Norgard rebuilt the app and relaunched it on iOS and Android yesterday. Airchat, which is currently invite-only, is already ranked 27th in social networking on Apple's App Store. Visually, Airchat feels very familiar and intuitive, allowing you to follow other users, scroll through a feed of posts, and reply to, like, and share posts. It has functions. The difference is that posts and replies are audio…
In the generative AI boom, data is the new oil. So why not sell the products yourself? From big tech companies to startups, AI manufacturers are licensing e-books, images, video, audio, and more from data brokers, all for better (and more legally defensible) AI-powered products. We aim to train. Shutterstock has deals with Meta, Google, Amazon, and Apple to provide millions of images for model training, while OpenAI has contracts with several news organizations to train models on news archives. has a contract with. In many cases, the individual creators and owners of that data never see a single penny…
When Josh Silverman started exploring the idea for his methane-eating microbial startup Windfall Bio eight years ago, the market wasn't ready. No one cared about methane, he said. Companies focused instead on reducing their carbon footprint. But a few years later, the market is starting to pick up again. Menlo Park-based Windfall Bio has raised $28 million in a Series A round to expand its commercialization efforts. The round was led by Prelude Ventures, with participation from Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, Incite Ventures, Positive Ventures, and existing investors including Mayfield. Windfall works with industries that produce large amounts of methane,…
This week in Las Vegas, 30,000 people gathered to hear the latest and greatest from Google Cloud. What they heard was always generative AI. Google Cloud is first and foremost a cloud infrastructure and platform vendor. If you didn't know that, you might have missed it amidst the onslaught of AI news. Not to discount what Google had on display, but like Salesforce at its New York City roadshow last year, the company couldn't do anything other than nods to its core business — not to mention generative AI. (out of context). Google announced a number of AI enhancements designed…
Ad blockers may seem like an unlikely defense in the fight against spyware, but a new report reveals how spyware makers are weaponizing online advertising to enable government surveillance. sheds new light on what is happening. Spyware makers can reportedly use banner ads to identify specific targets and secretly infect them with spyware. One of the startups working on ad-based spyware infection systems is Intellexa, a European company that develops Predator spyware. Predators have real-time access to the entire contents of the target's mobile phone. In 2022, Intellexa unveiled a proof-of-concept system called Aladdin that enables the planting of phone…
Noname Security, a cybersecurity startup that protects APIs, is in talks with Akamai Technologies to sell itself for $500 million, according to people familiar with the deal. Co-founded in 2020 by Oz Golan and Shay Levi, Noname is headquartered in Palo Alto but has roots in Israel. The startup has raised $220 million from venture investors and was last valued at $1 billion when it raised $135 million in Series C led by Georgian and Lightspeed in December 2021. Ta. The sale price is a significant discount to its appraised value, but the current transaction will be done in cash,…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — a weekly roundup of must-sees from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every Friday. In the corporate tug-of-war over remote work, CEOs like Andy Jassy and Elon Musk are old-school gym teachers insisting that everyone return to the field, even though the bleachers are perfectly fine. They claim remote work is akin to slacking off, but research and employee sentiment suggest otherwise, and flexibility may be the secret sauce to productivity and satisfaction. It is emphasized that there is. Meanwhile, the rest of us are watching this…
Spotify is working on a mixing tool that will allow users to remix songs on the streaming service, according to a screenshot taken by tech veteran and app researcher Chris Messina. Music lovers use software like Adobe Audition and Ableton Live to create mixes of their favorite songs, but a new feature will now allow them to create mixes directly in Spotify. The screenshot shows that the mixing tool is available in the new “Music Pro” premium subscription tier. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, but sources said discussions about the tool are in the early…
Meta is working to make products powered by generative AI available to more users. Apart from testing the Meta AI chatbot on WhatsApp with users in countries such as India, the company is also experimenting with putting Meta AI in his Instagram search bar for both chatting with his AI and content discovery. going. A search query in the search bar allows you to have a DM conversation with Meta AI, where you can ask a question or use one of the preloaded prompts. Looking at the design of the prompt screen, Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas pointed out that…
Xpanceo is betting big on turning us all into cyborgs with smart contact lenses, and has secured a whopping $40 million in funding to make our sci-fi dreams a reality. Co-founders Roman Axelrod and Valentin S. Volkov are on a mission to do away with traditional gadgets and replace everyone's eyes with new screens. Who needs a smartphone when you can browse with just a blink of an eye? As optoelectronics and new materials push the boundaries of what's possible, we're in a future where losing a contact might mean missing your next Zoom meeting. I can't help but wonder…