Author: TechBrunch

Jay-Z's venture capital firm, Mercy Venture Partners, has merged with another black-owned investment firm, Pendulum Opportunities, the investment arm of Pendulum Holdings, to form MercyPen Capital Partners, a MercyPen spokesperson said. A representative confirmed this to TechCrunch. The newly formed MercyPen Capital Partners has $900 million in assets under management, according to PitchBook. A MercyPen spokesperson declined to comment further on the matter, but records filed with the private equity industry database PreQuinn and the California Secretary of State indicate the merger was completed around September. has been done. It looks like MarcyPen is already moving forward. Prior to merging…

Colin Angle, one of the co-founders of Roomba maker iRobot, is raising money for his home robot venture. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Mr. Angle's new company, Familia Machines & Magic, is seeking to raise $30 million. To date, it has raised $15 million from a group of eight investors. The filing, known as Form D, does not identify the backers by name. However, Data Point Capital lists Familiar Machines on its website as one of the VC firm's portfolio companies. Familiar Machines has a domain name and a trademark application, but no functioning…

TuSimple co-founder and former CEO Xiaodi Hou is on a warpath heading into Friday's annual shareholder meeting, which will decide the composition of the company's board of directors. Over the past few weeks, Mr. Hou has sued TuSimple over voting control, demanding that the company immediately liquidate and return all remaining cash to shareholders and blocking TuSimple from transferring funds to China. asked the court. Now Mr. Hou is pushing shareholders to change the board, even if it means fighting outside the annual general meeting. Mr Hou sent an open letter to shareholders on Monday warning of plans to begin…

ConnectOnCall has issued a warning to approximately 1 million individuals whose personal and health information was stolen in a data breach in May. ConnectOnCall, owned by healthcare technology company Phreesia, provides healthcare providers with a digital answering service to answer patient calls during after-hours. The May breach included information such as patient names, phone numbers, and dates of birth, as well as information related to health conditions, treatments, and prescriptions, that was shared between patients and clinics that relied on ConnectOnCall. It contained information. ConnectOnCall said some Social Security numbers were also stolen in the breach. Freesia did not say…

ChatGPT Search, OpenAI's AI-powered web search experience, is now available to all ChatGPT users with several new features. By default, ChatGPT automatically determines which questions to route to ChatGPT Search. Alternatively, users can tap the new “Web Search” icon in the ChatGPT interface. ChatGPT search not only displays a summary of answers from various online sources, but also displays “rich” content such as embedded photos and YouTube videos. ChatGPT Search was launched in October as an evolution of OpenAI's SearchGPT prototype announced this summer. Powered by a fine-tuned version of OpenAI's GPT-4o model, ChatGPT Search provides web information such as…

Instagram has quietly rolled out a feature that allows users to schedule direct messages. The Meta-owned social network confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday that the new feature will be rolling out to all users worldwide. The option to schedule DMs is especially useful for creators and brands who want to schedule their outreach messages at the best time. It is also useful for ordinary users who want to contact their friends at a specific time due to different time zones. Additionally, you can also use this feature to send reminders about something at a specific point in the future. The…

Google Labs, Google's experimental arm, is testing a new image generator called Whisk. This tool gives you prompts using images instead of text, allowing you to remix your photos by changing the subject, scene, and style. Whisk uses Google's image generation model Imagen 3 to combine three images: one for the subject, one for the scene, and one for the style. For example, you can choose a photo of yourself as the subject, a futuristic landscape as the scene, and an anime style as the final look. This model automatically generates detailed captions for images. This is used by Imagen…

Google said YouTube creators and rights holders will soon start allowing third-party companies, including OpenAI, Apple and Meta, to use their videos to train AI models. “In the coming days, creators and rights holders will be able to choose to allow third-party companies to use their content to directly train AI models using their content under 'Third Party Training' in Studio settings. ,” Google said in a blog post. “To be eligible for AI training, videos must be authorized by the creator and applicable rights holder.” Google said that the update does not change its terms of service, but that…

YouTube announced Monday that it will give creators more options for how their content can be used by third parties to train AI models. Starting today, creators and rights holders will be able to report to YouTube if they allow certain third-party AI companies to train models on their content. Creators will be able to opt in to this new feature if they want through YouTube Studio, a new setting in their Creator Dashboard. Here you'll see a list of 18 companies that you can choose to have permission to train with your videos. Companies included in the initial list…

Meta's Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses have several new AI-powered upgrades, including continuous conversation and the ability to translate between languages. Ray-Ban Meta owners participating in Meta's early access program for the US and Canada can now download firmware v11, which adds “Live AI.” Live AI, first announced this fall, allows wearers to have continuous conversations with Meta AI, Meta's AI assistant, and see what was discussed earlier in the conversation. The wearer can interrupt the Meta AI to ask a follow-up question or change the subject without having to say the wake word “Hey, Meta.” Live AI also works with…