Author: TechBrunch

We were joined by former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who recently co-founded Sierra, a startup building customer experience AI agents, and talked about why he thinks AI agents will transform enterprise software. Taylor also talks about what it's like to move from a large company like Salesforce to a brand new startup, and how he's a change-maker in Silicon Valley, including serving as chairman of the board of several big-name companies, including Twitter and OpenAI. He also talked about his life as a change agent. Subscribe for more on YouTube: https://tcrn.ch/youtube Follow TechCrunch on Instagram: http://tcrn.ch/instagramTikTok: https://tcrn.ch/tiktokX: tcrn.ch/xThread: https://tcrn.ch/threadsFacebook: https://tcrn.ch/facebookBluesky:…

Many celebrities have invested in startups, but the Chainsmokers are different. Instead of angel investing, Drew Taggart and Alex Paul launched a formal fund, Mantis Venture Capital, to invest from formal closed-end funds and invest in businesses such as security startups and analytics platforms that don't necessarily have big-name talent. You're supporting companies in industries that don't serve you. . Watch Taggart, Pall, and Chainguard founder Dan Lorenc discuss how their company can be an asset to B2B startups at Disrupt 2024. Subscribe for more on YouTube: https://tcrn.ch/youtube Follow TechCrunch on Instagram: http://tcrn.ch/instagramTikTok: https://tcrn.ch/tiktokX: tcrn.ch/xThread: https://tcrn.ch/threadsFacebook: https://tcrn.ch/facebookBluesky: https://tcrn.ch/blueskyMastodon: https://tcrn.ch/mstdnRead more:…

The health of your tires has a huge impact on your truck's fuel efficiency and road safety. But despite all the arguably attractive solutions that offer driver assistance features and self-driving software, tires don't get the attention they deserve. At least that's what Ron Lee, director of business development at BANF, a startup that develops hardware and software to monitor tire health, says. South Korea-based BANF, which stands for Begin A New Feature, uses sensors to collect data on tire pressure, temperature, tread wear, wheel alignment, and even lug nut stability. That data is analyzed using machine learning to provide…

Google won't ship technology from Project Astra, a broad effort to build AI apps and “agents” that enable real-time, multimodal understanding, until next year at the earliest. Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed this schedule during his remarks at Google's third-quarter earnings conference today. “[Google is] We build experiences that allow AI to see and reason about the world around it,” he said. “Project Astra offers a glimpse into that future, and we are working to deliver experiences like this by 2025.” Project Astra, which Google demoed at its May 2024 I/O developer conference, includes everything from a smartphone app that…

Esthetic, a new fashion company aiming to be the “Shazam of clothes,” launched this week and uses AI to help people identify and shop for clothes on social media. With the fashion concierge “Alma”, you can easily buy clothes that are hard to find. Let's say you found your favorite outfit on Instagram. Send a link to your post in a direct message to the Aesthetic account on TikTok or Instagram. Alma replies with a link to view the content on the Aesthetic website. There, consumers can purchase looks and add them to collection boards called Lookbooks. “Our goal is…

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies. That growth has propelled OpenAI itself into becoming one of the most-hyped companies in recent memory. And its latest partnership with Apple for its upcoming generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, has given the company another significant bump in the AI race. 2024 also saw the release of GPT-4o, OpenAI’s new flagship omni…

OpenAI is working with TSMC and Broadcom to build its in-house AI chips, and has reportedly started using AMD chips alongside Nvidia chips to train its AI. According to Reuters, OpenAI has abandoned plans to establish a network of factories for chip manufacturing, at least for now. Instead, the company plans to focus on in-house chip design. OpenAI has been working with Broadcom for several months to develop an AI chip to run the models, which could arrive as early as 2026, Reuters reports. OpenAI, on the other hand, plans to use AMD chips through Microsoft's Azure cloud platform to…

According to Bloomberg, actor and director Olivia Wilde, best known for her roles in “Tron: Legacy'' and “Don't Worry Darlings,'' quietly launched a venture company, Proximity Ventures, late last year. She launched an early and growth stage investment fund with Neel Sahni, formerly of Roc Nation's venture arm Arrival. Jason Mack, former Mack Ventures. Santy White is a musician also known as Santigold. The company plans to invest in companies in the consumer and enterprise sectors. The company has already invested in four companies, including biotech company Pendulum Therapeutics. Proximity plans to make its first transaction next month. TechCrunch has…

Elon Musk's AI company xAI is in talks to raise new funding at a valuation of about $40 billion, according to the Wall Street Journal. xAI hopes to raise billions of dollars in this round, on top of the $6 billion in Series B funding the company raised in May. The rumored valuation would be nearly double xAI's current post-money valuation of $24 billion. Musk founded xAI last year. Shortly thereafter, the company, which recently moved into OpenAI's old offices, developed its first model, Grok, which powers various features of Musk's social network X. xAI now offers an enterprise API.…

Generative AI company ElevenLabs has hired the team behind Omnivore, an open source read-later app. Omnivore co-founders Jackson Harper and Hongbu Wu said in a blog post that joining Eleven Labs will give them “an even bigger platform to create accessible and engaging experiences for our passionate readers.” said. “Eleven Labs is committed to our developer community, and the Omnivore codebase remains 100% open source to all users,” Harper and Wu wrote. “This decision ensures that the broader development community can continue to build and improve Omnivore’s technology.” Omnivore users can export their data until November 16th, after which it…