Author: TechBrunch

Meta's latest open-source AI model is its largest to date. Meta today announced the release of Llama 3.1 405B, a model with 405 billion parameters. Parameters roughly correspond to the model's problem-solving ability, and models with more parameters generally perform better than models with fewer parameters. With 405 billion parameters, Llama 3.1 405B is not the largest open source model in absolute terms, but it is the largest in recent years. Trained using 16,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs, the model also benefits from new training and development techniques, and Meta claims it can compete with leading proprietary models such as OpenAI's…

Let's start with the premise that many of us take notes while interacting with customers as part of our job. While taking notes, we may need to access a customer record in Salesforce or open a Jira ticket to involve IT in a customer issue, but this requires us to engage in tedious task switching by switching from the application we were working in to open another application to complete another job or access additional information. Noded AI, a new startup that wants to change that by making all your work tools automatically available from the place where you take…

Nathan Rosenberg, founder of agricultural automation platform FarmBlocks, said if there's one thing to know when selling technology to farmers, it's that you can't tell them what to do. “[Farmers] “The Silicon Valley tech industry is multigenerational,” Rosenberg told TechCrunch. “It's not a profession, it's a community, it's a way of life, and you have to respect that. You can't just be someone who works in Silicon Valley tech and tell them what to do.” Rosenberg said that's why his startup, FarmBlocks, is approaching agricultural tech a little differently than previous companies. The startup has developed a solar-powered, connected monitor…

Adobe on Tuesday released a new Firefly tool for Photoshop and Illustrator, giving graphic designers more ways to tap into the company's in-house AI models. Adobe's new feature lets creative workers describe what they want in a short prompt and receive AI-generated textures and images that would normally take hours to create. Adobe is walking a delicate balance between its focus on AI and some loyal users who feel threatened by it. The company trains Firefly with the work of many creative workers and pays Adobe Stock photographers and illustrators an annual bonus for the privilege. In light of this,…

Platforms like TikTok and Spotify have experimented with events on their platforms, but rather than focusing on concerts or large gatherings, events startup Posh is focusing on intimate gatherings of up to a few hundred people: friends, friends of friends, people you meet at parties. The company today announced $22 million in Series A funding led by Goodwater Capital with participation from FirstMark Capital, Companyon Ventures and Epic Ventures. The company has previously raised a total of $31 million from investors including Companyon Ventures, Epic Ventures, Day One Ventures and Pareto Holdings. With this funding, the startup aims to expand…

Robotics startup Mytra has been working quietly behind the scenes to reimagine warehouse automation since its launch in May 2022. The company is a company with a strong track record, founded by automotive industry veterans from EV companies such as Tesla and Rivian. With the pandemic crippling global supply chains and the effects still being felt, warehousing/fulfillment has become a hot area for automation, and the sector is highly competitive, with big players like Amazon, Locus, and Zebra/Fetch making inroads, setting the stage for an explosion of interest in the bipedal humanoid form factor. The world has bounced back after…

In the world of app development, quality assurance is essential but often a resource-draining endeavor. According to Statista, 23% of companies' annual IT budgets are allocated to in-house or third-party QA and testing. The risks are high: A survey by QA software testing company QualiTest Group found that 88% of app users would not use an app that had bugs or glitches. Jon Perl, Laura Cressman, and Scott Wilson, three software developers and marketers, came up with the idea to create QA Wolf, a platform that would make QA for mobile and web apps easier by automating the aspects of…

Engineer Ashish Nagar was working on the conversational AI team within Amazon's Alexa organization when he realized AI had the potential to significantly improve contact center productivity. “Frontline workers like customer service workers are the largest source of human capital in the world,” Nagar told TechCrunch, “so my idea was to augment the work of humans with ambient computing, an AI that you can just talk to and it can listen in the background.” In 2019, Nagar founded Level AI, which offers a suite of AI-powered tools that automate a variety of customer service tasks. The platform scores contact center…

Flashfood, an app that allows shoppers to buy food that is close to its expiration date at discounted prices, announced on Tuesday that independent grocers have been added to the app, making grocery purchases more affordable for more shoppers. It's a notable move for the company because small, independently owned grocers play a vital role in rural and urban communities where low-income families live. With food prices rising, not everyone can afford fresh produce, so FlashFood's expansion aims to help those customers save money. To date, the company says it has helped customers save about $280 million on their grocery…

A school in the UK has been formally reprimanded by the UK's data protection regulator for using facial recognition technology without getting explicit opt-in consent from students to process their face scans. The news rekindles an ongoing privacy debate over the use of biometric data in school settings, particularly where children are involved. Last year, New York became the first US state to ban facial recognition in schools after AI companies stepped up their marketing efforts promising to make schools safer. Fingerprint technology has been used in UK schools for a variety of identity and authentication purposes for many years,…