Author: TechBrunch

Lakera, a Swiss startup developing technology to protect generative AI applications from malicious prompts and other threats, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by European venture capital firm Atomico. Generative AI has emerged as a leading figure in the burgeoning AI movement, driven by popular apps such as ChatGPT, but it remains a concern in enterprise environments, mainly due to issues around security and data privacy. For context, large-scale language models (LLMs) are the engine behind generative AI, enabling machines to understand and generate text like humans. But if you want such an application to write…

Alongside a series of announcements for Play, including AI-powered app comparison and the ability to bundle similar apps, Google also introduced new “Curated Spaces,” which are hubs dedicated to specific topics. “Comics,” unveiled on Wednesday, is designed to appeal to manga fans. Located at the top of the screen between “Recommended” and “Top Charts,” the new hub will give Japanese users access to content such as manga and anime titles, live events and trailers. Google has partnered with top providers such as Kodansha, the publisher of “Attack on Titan,” to allow users to preview samples directly in the app store,…

Farmers have to deal with pests, but nobody likes the idea of ​​using more chemical pesticides. Thomas Laurent's company Micropep thinks the answer may already be in the plants themselves. MicroPep is investigating how natural compounds known as micropeptides could work as an entirely new class of insecticide, which, if successful, could make the startup more effective and less toxic than existing synthetic insecticides. Micropeptides are tiny proteins less than 100 amino acids in length. For years, researchers ignored the genes that code for these proteins, thinking they were too small to do anything meaningful. But they were wrong! Micropeptides…

Google on Wednesday introduced a series of features to the Play Store aimed at encouraging users to use the app store to discover and consume content, rather than just download apps. The Play Store will add features such as AI-powered app comparison, auto-organized categories of similar apps, a dedicated content hub, data personalization controls, and support for playing multiple mobile games on PC. AI-powered search suggestions. Image courtesy of Google Notably, the app comparison feature is powered by Google's Gemini AI model, which allows users to easily compare apps in similar categories. When searching for an app that can perform…

Vanta , a trust management platform that automates many of an enterprise's security and compliance processes, today announced it has raised $150 million in a Series C funding round led by Sequoia Capital. The company is currently valued at $2.45 billion, up from $1.6 billion when it raised a $40 million Series B round in 2022. Earlier this year, Vanta announced that it had surpassed $100 million in ARR for the fiscal year that ended in January. Image credit: Vanta Initially, Vanta was focused on helping companies achieve certifications like ISO 27001, HIPAA and SOC 2. Now the company is…

Cybersecurity has become a hot topic in the tech world. Not only are there a never-ending stream of data breaches, but security companies themselves are also receiving a lot of attention as a result. One of the fastest growing companies, Wiz, was the subject of a $23 billion acquisition bid by Google that has now been withdrawn. Now, another cybersecurity startup that happens to have close ties to Wiz has just raised a significant amount of funding: Dazz, which focuses on fixing vulnerabilities for companies that use cloud services, has raised $50 million in equity funding. The startup hasn't disclosed…

Apple has a new antitrust headache in Europe: Spain's competition authority, the CNMC, said Wednesday it was opening an investigation into Apple's App Store, citing concerns that the iPhone maker may be imposing unfair trading terms on developers who use its store to distribute software to iOS users. Few details were released about the nature of CNMC's concerns, but the agency wrote in a press release: [in Spanish; this is a machine translation] “Apple may be engaging in anticompetitive behavior by imposing unfair trade terms on developers who use Apple's App Store to distribute applications to users of Apple products.”…

If you think about it, Proton has always been a crypto company — cryptography, not cryptocurrency — but the Swiss-based company best known for its secure email, VPN and storage services is now launching its first crypto product. It's a cryptocurrency wallet called Proton Wallet that's designed to make it easy to get started with Bitcoin. The wallet only supports Bitcoin for now, but the company says it plans to add support for more currencies in the future, depending on user feedback. Proton Wallet is a self-custodial wallet, which means that users maintain control over their private keys. When sending…

Content creators are busy people. Most spend 20+ hours a week creating new content for their corner of the web. That doesn't leave much time for audience engagement. But Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, believes AI can solve this problem. In an interview with internet personality Rowan Chan, Zuckerberg laid out his vision of a future in which creators have their own bots that capture their personality and “business goals.” He said creators could hand off some of their community outreach to these bots, freeing up their time for other, perhaps more important tasks. “I think we're going to see…

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says the streaming service is still in the “early stages” of bringing hi-fi support to its platform. During the company's earnings call on Tuesday, Ek detailed the upcoming Deluxe tier. Spotify announced in 2021 that it would be rolling out a new high-end subscription tier called Spotify HiFi. At the time, the company said that the tier would allow users to upgrade the sound quality to a “CD-quality lossless audio format.” Fast forward to mid-2024, and the company has yet to release this tier. “The plan here is to offer a better version of Spotify,” Ek…