Author: TechBrunch
Indian quick-commerce startup Zept has crossed the $1 billion annual revenue milestone just 29 months after it was founded, Goldman Sachs wrote in a note Thursday, citing Zept management. The startup, which competes with Zomato-owned Blinkit and SoftBank-backed Swiggy Instamart, has also gained market share and is now in a position “close to the second-largest player,” the report added. His Zepto, which became a unicorn last year, counts YC Continuity, StepStone Group, Glade Brook Capital, and Lachy Groom among its backers. Zepto operates across seven cities in India and leverages a network of over 300 dark stores, or micro-fulfillment centers,…
To give female academics and others focused on AI their well-deserved and overdue spotlight time, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews highlighting notable women who have contributed to the AI revolution. Start. As the AI boom continues, we will be publishing works throughout the year that focus on key research that is hard to recognize. Click here for a detailed profile. Emilia Gomez is a Principal Scientist at the European Commission's Joint Research Center and Scientific Coordinator of AI Watch, the EC's initiative to monitor the progress, diffusion and impact of AI in Europe. Her team leverages its scientific…
DataStax made a name for itself by commercializing its open source Apache Cassandra NoSQL database, but more recently the company has focused on using the database's capabilities to build a “one-stop GenAI stack.” Masu. One of the first building blocks to this was introducing vector search functionality to our hosted Astra DB service last summer. Since then, the company has further built out the stack to build his GenAI applications that leverage acquisition augmentation generation (RAG). And today, the company announced its next goal in this direction, announcing that it has acquired his company, Logspace, which developed Langflow. – Code…
Five months ago, Rooms, a 3D design platform created by former Google employees, launched its beta version on the App Store. Today, we're getting a big update to our free iOS app, adding new discovery-first features like an activity feed, an explore page, and the ability to browse by category. Rooms is an interior decoration app that falls under the category of cozy games. Players can build and code complex 3D rooms and mini-games using a library of over 7,500 digital items. Users can customize items by editing code in Lua, a programming language also used in Roblox Studio. Rooms…
Two years ago, Jobs for the Future (JFF), a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the upward mobility of low-wage workers, created JFFVentures, a venture arm that supports innovative employment technologies. In a move that signals a successful launch, JFFVentures today announced its second fund, JFFVentures Fund II, with a $50 million target. So far, $15 million has been raised. The new fund, funded in part by the Autodesk Foundation, Workday Foundation, and American Council on Education, will “enable economic mobility for workers in low- and middle-wage jobs,” according to JFFVentures. The company said it will target founders building HR, education,…
While major social apps are optimizing for maximum engagement using algorithmic feeds and personalized content recommendations, Retro wants to go in the opposite direction. The company is launching a new feature called Journal. A flexible way to share photos with your favorite people and visually record what's important in your life. Therefore, this feature can be used as something similar to a shared photo album, or it can be used to store personal records. yes i know. Photo sharing is nothing new. Many have tried, but most have failed. Marissa Mayer's latest effort, an app called Sunshine, also raises questions.…
SiMa.ai, a Silicon Valley-based startup that manufactures embedded ML system-on-chip (SoC) platforms, today plans to introduce a second-generation chipset built specifically for multimodal. Announced that it has raised a $70 million expansion funding round. Bringing generative AI processing to market. According to Gartner, the global AI support chip market is expected to reach $119.4 billion by 2027, more than doubling from 2023. However, only a few companies have started producing specialized semiconductors for AI applications. Most of the prominent candidates initially focused on supporting AI in the cloud. Nevertheless, various reports predict significant growth in the AI on the edge…
TechCrunch Early Stage 2024 adds an outstanding addition to its speaker roster with the addition of Paris Heymann, partner at Index Ventures. In a session titled “Scaling Through Chaos: The Art & Science of GTM,” Heyman promises to take a deep dive into the intricacies of go-to-market strategies at an event he will hold on April 25 in Boston. With deep venture capital experience and a keen eye for emerging technology, Heyman brings valuable insight to the table. As a partner at her Index Ventures, which focuses on software, data, and AI companies, Heyman is an expert at navigating the…
India has long struggled to deploy technology to persuade its citizens, but it is one of the world's hot spots when it comes to how AI is used and abused in political debates, especially democratic processes. It's a spot. The technology company that originally built the tool is visiting the country to promote the solution. Earlier this year, Andy Parsons, Adobe's senior director who oversees the cross-industry Content Authenticity Initiative (CAI) engagement, traveled to India to visit media and technology organizations in the country, and was among the I stepped into it. AI facilitates tools that can be integrated into…
AI won't be implemented in every job, but it may be in some. The job cuts, the largest in UPS's 116-year history, were partly the result of new technology, including AI, CEO Carol Tomé said on an earnings call in February. Ta. Meanwhile, IBM plans to pause hiring for jobs it believes could soon be automated by AI, CEO Arvind Krishna told Bloomberg last year. Workers are not optimistic about the future. In a recent McKinsey survey, 25% of business professionals said they expected their employers to lay off employees as a result of AI implementation. And, well, their pessimism…