Author: TechBrunch
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on his channel on Thursday that WhatsApp has surpassed 100 million monthly active users in the US, where SMS/text is a common form of communication. This is the first time WhatsApp has released data about its U.S. users. The company also noted that more than 50% of WhatsApp users own an iPhone, which isn't surprising given that iOS holds the lion's share of the market in the U.S. WhatsApp is a popular app around the world with over 2 billion monthly active users. The company has so far focused on countries such as India, which…
Amid the generative AI boom, companies are spending too much on cloud infrastructure and they're worried about it: According to a 2024 survey by cloud cost monitoring platform CloudZero, less than half of companies consider their cloud costs to be “healthy,” and 58% say they are too expensive. Many public cloud providers, including AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure, offer savings plans and reserved instances that aim to incentivize enterprise infrastructure investments by offering discounts, but these discounts require signing multi-year contracts that not all customers can afford. Aran Khanna, a former AI engineer at AWS, realized there might be a…
Meta's AI integration into apps like Instagram and Facebook feels a bit useless right now — why would you have to navigate through a Meta AI interface desperately trying to tell you the top five vegetarian protein sources when all you want to do is find your friends' Instagrams? But with the release of Meta's new Llama 3.1 405B model, a feature that could actually become pretty popular is on the way. In Messages with Meta AI, you'll be able to ask the AI to create an avatar of you, be it an astronaut, a superhero, or whatever you want…
Google is rolling out an update to the free tier of its AI-powered chatbot Gemini, focusing on improving the platform's performance and making it more broadly available, as it tries to keep up with generative AI rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI. Starting Thursday, Gemini 1.5 Flash, the lightweight multimodal model that Google unveiled in May, will be available on web and mobile in 40 languages and about 230 countries. Google claims that Gemini 1.5 Flash offers improved quality and latency, with notable improvements especially in inference and image understanding. The upside for Google is that it may be cheaper to…
A year ago, Arjun Pillai was in a comfortable and important role as chief data officer at B2B database company ZoomInfo, but the serial entrepreneur was getting restless. He's already launched and sold two startups, including Insent, which was acquired by ZoomInfo in 2021. “When you launch a startup, the heat is with you,” he told TechCrunch. Shortly after ChatGPT was released, he was ready to launch his third. After more than a decade of running startups and working in sales tech, he was convinced that generative AI could help make technical sales faster and more effective. “I couldn't wait.…
Disrupt 2024 is the premier event where tech careers are launched, connections are made and the future of tech talent is in focus. Disrupt Career Fair is your opportunity to showcase your company and attract the best candidates, with a diverse range of companies from tech giants to agile startups competing for top talent in fields such as AI, software, cybersecurity, design, sales/BD, research and more. Secure a one-day exhibit table at the Career Fair on the final day of the event, giving your company unparalleled access to Disrupt attendees. This package includes four team tickets (all three days) and…
Substack is rolling out a feature that lets writers draft and publish new posts directly from their phones through its iOS app, the company announced Thursday. Previously, users could only read content through the app. The update brings Substack into line with Medium and WordPress' mobile apps, which also let users draft and publish. The first version of the mobile editor will include text and image publishing; later versions will include additional features, such as the ability to sync in-app drafts to a web dashboard. The editor is currently only available on iOS, but Substack plans to bring it to…
There are several shady industries for people who want to monitor or spy on their family members, with app makers selling software, also known as stalkerware, to jealous partners that can remotely access the victim's phone. However, despite how sensitive this data is, a growing number of businesses are losing huge amounts of it. Including Spytech's latest hack, at least 21 stalkerware companies have been hacked or have had their customers or victims' data leaked online since 2017, according to a TechCrunch tally. That's not a typo: At least 21 stalkerware companies have been hacked or suffered significant data leaks…
As the technology sector becomes increasingly decentralized, venture capital has become a more global industry: in 2022, more than 50% of venture capital deployed worldwide was invested in startups outside the United States, according to data from the National Science Foundation (NSF). This is in stark contrast to 20 years ago, when roughly 80% of global venture capital went to U.S. companies. Countries such as China, India, Israel and the UK have led this transformation, but smaller ecosystems in Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa are also contributing. About 26% of the world's unicorns currently exist…
TechCrunch reports that a little-known Minnesota-based spyware company has been hacked, revealing that thousands of devices around the world were under covert remote surveillance by the company. A person with knowledge of the breach provided TechCrunch with a cache of files taken from Spytech's servers, including detailed device activity logs for phones, tablets and computers monitored by Spytech, with some files dating as recently as early June. TechCrunch confirmed the data was authentic by analyzing some of the leaked device activity logs relating to the company's CEO, who installed spyware on one of his devices. According to the data, Spytech's…