Author: TechBrunch
A month after announcing its first product, Humane's co-founders reportedly took their well-funded startup to market. Even the company's biggest cheerleaders didn't expect AiPin to change the world so quickly, but some of its many critics didn't expect things to get so bad so quickly. Humane's biggest competitor, the Rabbit R1, also didn't fare much better. Upon release, the generative AI-powered handheld device was panned by critics, with the most prominent criticism of the “half-baked” device being that it could have been an app instead of a $200 piece of hardware. The excitement surrounding the launch of both devices is…
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. Arati Prabhakar is the White House Director of Science and Technology Policy and science advisor to President Joe Biden. She previously served as the first woman to head the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and director of…
AniML, the French startup behind a new 3D capture app called Doly, wants to create a PhotoRoom of product videos, so to speak. If you're selling sneakers on an online marketplace or need to create Instagram ads for a direct-to-consumer item, Doly lets you generate 3D models on your phone and turn them into professional-looking product videos. Video creation is notoriously difficult, but generating 3D models is even harder, which is why the AniML team is focused on simplifying the experience: they want to make 3D capture a mainstream technology, starting with packaging it into an iPhone app. Here's how…
Elon Musk's AI startup xAI said today it has raised $6 billion in a new funding round, one of the biggest deals in the hotly anticipated emerging space as it ramps up cash to aggressively compete with rivals like OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google. Backers who invested in xAI's Series B funding include Valor Equity Partners, Vy Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital, Fidelity, Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding, the startup said in a blog post. The funding confirms a TechCrunch report from April that xAI was looking to raise $6 billion. At the time, TechCrunch reported that the company…
Indian startup Zypp Electric plans to expand its EV rental service to Southeast Asia early next year, leveraging new investment from Japanese oil and energy conglomerate ENEOS, TechCrunch has learned exclusively. The company aims to expand into 15 markets over the next two years. In an exclusive interview with TechCrunch, co-founder and CEO Akash Gupta said the company plans to begin piloting in at least one of those markets, a Southeast Asian market, early next year. The latest funding round, led by ENEOS, is $15 million and is part of Zypp Electric's Series C round. Gupta expects the deal to…
Last month, Uncork Capital, one of the Bay Area's most prominent early-stage venture capital firms, celebrated its 20th anniversary with a party in a converted church in San Francisco's SoMa district, where 420 guests gathered to help and celebrate the company, swap advice and share stories of hardship. There's no doubt that the venture industry has changed a lot since Uncork started. When founder Jeff Clavier started the company, he mostly used his savings and wrote six-figure checks to founders. Now Clavier and his colleagues, including Josh Kopelman at First Round Capital and Aydin Senkt at Felicis, collectively manage billions…
Y Combinator president and CEO Garry Tan told an audience at the Economic Club of Washington, D.C. this week that artificial intelligence “will likely require regulation.” Tan spoke one-on-one with General Catalyst board member Teresa Carlson about everything from how to get into Y Combinator to AI, saying, “There's never been a better time to be working in technology.” Tan said he “overall supports” the National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) efforts to build a GenAI risk mitigation framework, adding that “most of the Biden administration's executive order is probably a step in the right direction.” The NIST framework…
It feels like everything in society is geared towards optimization, whether it's standardized testing or artificial intelligence algorithms: We are taught to know what outcome we want to achieve and then find a path to get there. Kenneth Stanley, a former OpenAI researcher and co-founder of the new social media platform Maven, has argued for years that this mindset is counterproductive and harmful. Instead of prioritizing goals, he says, we should prioritize serendipity. “Sometimes we have to get off the path of purpose and down an interesting path to find a stepping stone that leads to what we care about,”…
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. Miriam Vogel is CEO of EqualAI, a nonprofit founded to reduce unconscious bias in AI and promote responsible AI governance. She also chairs the recently launched National AI Advisory Council, which is mandated by Congress to advise President Joe…
Google has come under fire for some of the inaccurate, ridiculous, and just plain weird answers it serves up through its AI summary for search. AI Overview, the AI-generated search results that Google began rolling out more broadly earlier this month, has had mixed results. Apparently, one user wanting to know how to make cheese stick to pizza was told to add glue (the advice was taken from an old Reddit post), while another was told to “add glue to the pizza.”One small rock a day(From The Onion) Don't be discouraged if you can't find the answer or reproduce it…