Author: TechBrunch
Engineer Ashish Nagar was working on the conversational AI team within Amazon's Alexa organization when he realized AI had the potential to significantly improve contact center productivity. “Frontline workers like customer service workers are the largest source of human capital in the world,” Nagar told TechCrunch, “so my idea was to augment the work of humans with ambient computing, an AI that you can just talk to and it can listen in the background.” In 2019, Nagar founded Level AI, which offers a suite of AI-powered tools that automate a variety of customer service tasks. The platform scores contact center…
Flashfood, an app that allows shoppers to buy food that is close to its expiration date at discounted prices, announced on Tuesday that independent grocers have been added to the app, making grocery purchases more affordable for more shoppers. It's a notable move for the company because small, independently owned grocers play a vital role in rural and urban communities where low-income families live. With food prices rising, not everyone can afford fresh produce, so FlashFood's expansion aims to help those customers save money. To date, the company says it has helped customers save about $280 million on their grocery…
A school in the UK has been formally reprimanded by the UK's data protection regulator for using facial recognition technology without getting explicit opt-in consent from students to process their face scans. The news rekindles an ongoing privacy debate over the use of biometric data in school settings, particularly where children are involved. Last year, New York became the first US state to ban facial recognition in schools after AI companies stepped up their marketing efforts promising to make schools safer. Fingerprint technology has been used in UK schools for a variety of identity and authentication purposes for many years,…
LiDAR is the foundation for the autonomous vehicle and robotics industries, and while it has become an industry standard, the technology does have its drawbacks, the biggest of which is its high cost. Anand Gopalan, former CTO and CEO of LiDAR leader Velodyne, is well aware of the technology's pros and cons, so it's significant that the executive's latest endeavor has chosen to forego the technology altogether — in fact, Vayu Robotics is positioning LiDAR-free navigation as one of its biggest selling points. Vayu Robotics, which Gopalan co-founded in 2022, two years after taking Velodyne public through a SPAC, aims…
Clio, a Canadian software company that aims to help legal practices work more efficiently with cloud-based technology, has raised $900 million in a Series F round, valuing the company at $3 billion. The valuation is nearly double the $1.6 billion valuation the Vancouver, British Columbia company achieved when it raised $110 million in April 2021. Clio describes itself as “the operating system for law firms,” and Clio founder and CEO Jack Newton says the company has been profitable (EBITDA positive) for several years, with ARR recently exceeding $200 million, up from $100 million in June 2022. The company is working…
The European Commission announced a formal investigation into Berlin-based food delivery giant Delivery Hero and its Spanish subsidiary Globo on Tuesday, citing cartel concerns. The Commission will launch a thorough investigation into contracts between online delivery companies to check whether anti-competitive practices are taking place. “The Commission is concerned that prior to the acquisition, Delivery Hero and Globo may have allocated geographic markets and shared commercially sensitive information (e.g. commercial strategies, pricing, production capacity, costs and product attributes),” the Commission said in a press release. “The Commission is also concerned that the companies may have agreed not to poach each…
Singapore-based ride-hailing and food delivery company Grab is expanding its services beyond ride-hailing and food delivery as it focuses on Southeast Asia's competitive restaurant booking industry. Grab has confirmed to TechCrunch that it has acquired Singapore-based restaurant booking platform Chope for an undisclosed amount. Grab already offers a restaurant booking service in Singapore, having acquired HungryGoWhere in 2022. With 13,000 restaurants registered in Singapore and overseas on Choop (which operates in Hong Kong, China (Shanghai and Beijing), Indonesia (Bali and Jakarta)) Grab plans to significantly expand this business to differentiate itself from competitors and improve profit margins. A Chope spokesperson…
Security researchers and Ukrainian authorities have concluded that for two days in mid-January, some Ukrainians in the city of Lviv were forced to go without central heating and suffered freezing cold due to a cyberattack on the city's energy company. On Tuesday, cybersecurity firm Dragos published a report detailing a new piece of malware called FrostyGoop that the company said is designed to target industrial control systems, in this case specifically a type of heating system controller. Dragos researchers wrote in a report that they first detected the malware in April. At the time, Dragos didn't have any details about…
Messaging app Telegram has reached 950 million active users and aims to surpass the 1 billion mark this year, the company's founder Pavel Durov said on his channel on Monday. The company plans to launch an app store and an in-app browser with support for Web3 pages later this month, Durov said last week. In March, Telegram surpassed 900 million users, and in an interview with the Financial Times at the time, Durov said the company aimed to become profitable next year. Telegram appears to be accelerating the adoption of Web3 technologies on its platform. The company has supported cryptocurrency…
India's federal government has repealed the controversial “angel tax” for all investor classes, delivering a major victory for the country's startup ecosystem, which had long lobbied against the measure. “To strengthen India's startup ecosystem, stimulate entrepreneurship and support innovation, I propose to abolish angel tax for investors across all walks of life,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech. Introduced in 2012 as an anti-money laundering measure, the tax has long been a thorn in the side of early-stage companies and their backers. It taxes investments in startups whose valuations exceed what tax authorities consider to be fair…