Author: TechBrunch
To shine a much-deserved and long-overdue spotlight on women researchers and others focused on AI, TechCrunch has been publishing a series of interviews highlighting notable women who have contributed to the AI revolution. As the AI boom continues, we'll be publishing these stories throughout the year, shining a spotlight on important research that often goes unrecognized. Find the other profiles here. Sarah Myers West is Managing Director of the AI Now Institute, a US research institute that explores the social impacts of AI and policy research addressing the concentration of power in the tech industry. She previously served as Senior…
Keeping up with an industry that changes as quickly as AI can be a challenge. Until AI can do it for you, here's a roundup of recent buzz in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments that we wouldn't have covered on our own. By the way, TechCrunch will be launching an AI newsletter soon. Stay tuned. In the meantime, we're increasing the semi-regular cadence of our AI columns from twice a month to weekly, so keep an eye out for upcoming issues. In AI news this week, OpenAI announced it had inked a deal with…
Evan, a high school sophomore in Houston, was stuck on a calculus problem. He fired up Answer AI on his iPhone, took a photo of the problem from his advanced math textbook, and ran it through the Homework app. Within seconds, Answer AI generated the answer, along with instructions on how to solve the problem. A year ago, Evan would comb through lengthy YouTube videos to work through his homework assignments, and he also had private tutors who charged $60 an hour. Now, the rise of AI bots is threatening established tutoring franchises like Kumon, a 66-year-old Japanese tutoring giant…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje's weekly roundup of the must-reads from the startup world. Sign up here to receive it in your inbox every Friday. Well, folks, there seems to be a new twist in the Techstars drama. CEO Mael Gavet is stepping down and co-founder David Cohen is coming back to save the day. At least, he tries to. Gavet's three-and-a-half-year tenure was riddled with controversy, from mass employee turnover to the closure of its accelerator program faster than you could say “pivot.” Despite the fact that an $80 million deal with JP Morgan turned into a Titanic-level…
Last year's investors' dreams of a robust IPO pipeline for 2024 are fading, if not disappearing entirely, as we approach the halfway point of the year. 2024 looked like it might finally generate the momentum investors were hoping for in 2023, with four venture-backed tech IPOs in March and April – Reddit, Astera Labs, Ibotta and Rubrik. But despite the success of these four, secondary investors and IPO lawyers recently told TechCrunch that the IPO market won't fully reopen until 2025 or later, given macro conditions such as the looming presidential election and rising interest rates. This year is expected…
Terra One aims to reduce the quantity of clean energy created significantly and then lost from the German grid owing to a lack of storage capacity. Lacking storage capacity is an entirely pressing need and one desperate for solutions, so it’s great to see companies thinking up ways to fix it and going after the funding to make it happen. Fresh from its April fundraiser, where it raised $7.5 million to scale its battery storage system, Germany-based Terra One has shared its pitch deck with TechCrunch for a teardown. Let’s get in there and see how it won over its…
To shine a much-deserved and long-overdue spotlight on women researchers and others focused on AI, TechCrunch has been publishing a series of interviews highlighting notable women who have contributed to the AI revolution. As the AI boom continues, we'll be publishing these stories throughout the year to shine a spotlight on important research that often goes unrecognized. Find more profiles here. Chinasa T. Okoro is a Fellow in the Governance Studies Program at the Brookings Institution's Center for Technology Innovation. Previously, she served on the Ethics and Social Impact Committee that helped develop Nigeria's National Artificial Intelligence Strategy and has…
Another week has passed, and another incredible infusion of capital and valuation has come out of the AI space. AI language translation startup DeepL raised $300 million at a $2 billion valuation. Scale AI, a data labeling platform for machine learning models, secured $1 billion at a nearly doubled valuation to $13.8 billion. And H, a French startup working on its own cutting-edge models, raised a staggering $220 million seed round at an undisclosed valuation (though H is definitely comfortably in unicorn territory). All the usual institutional investors are on board, including Accel, Index and Y Combinator (YC), and these…
Harlem Capital has raised $150 million in funding, according to documents filed with the SEC. If the new fund, the firm's third, goes through, it will be its largest to date: Harlem Capital oversubscribed and raised $134 million in 2021. That's a big increase over the $40 million the firm raised in its first fund in 2019. The firm was founded in 2015 with the goal of backing diverse founders. The second fund focuses on early-stage post-product companies across all sectors, with a particular focus on consumer and enterprise technology. According to Pitchbook, the firm currently has $174 million in…
US pharmaceutical manufacturer Sencora has announced that it is notifying affected individuals of a cyberattack and data breach earlier this year, which resulted in the theft of personal information and highly sensitive medical information. In a letter sent to affected individuals this week, Sencora said the data from its systems included patients' names, addresses and dates of birth, as well as information about medical tests and medications. The pharmaceutical giant said it initially obtained the patient data through partnerships with other pharmaceutical companies “in connection with patient assistance programs,” including patients from companies including AbbVie, Acadia, Bayer, Novartis and Regeneron.…