Author: TechBrunch
When Jeffrey Wang posted to X on Monday asking if anyone would like to order a luxurious but affordable office nap pod, he didn't expect the post to go viral. He said he may have been able to order more than 100 units because there were so many others who wanted them. “We had too many people available,” Wang, co-founder of AI research startup Exa Labs, told TechCrunch. “He ordered two nappods for himself and wanted to see what would happen. There were over 100 requests.” I am purchasing a Japanese capsule bed as a nap pod for my new…
OpenAI's Superalignment team is responsible for developing ways to manage and operate “super-intelligent” AI systems, and is committed to providing 20% of the company's computing resources, according to team officials. It is said that there is But requests for some of that compute were often denied, hampering the team's work. The issue, among others, led to the resignation of several team members this week, including co-leader Jan Reich. He is a former DeepMind researcher who worked on ChatGPT, GPT-4, and ChatGPT's predecessor, InstructGPT, during the OpenAI era. Reich announced the reasons for his resignation Friday morning. “I disagreed with OpenAI's…
A new crop of early-stage startups and some recent venture capital investments indicate that a niche market is emerging in the self-driving vehicle technology space. Unlike companies that are bringing robotaxis to the streets, these startups are taking their technology off-road. Two recent entrants, Seattle-based Overland AI and New Brunswick-based Potential, are looking to gain first-mover advantage in this self-driving space. Although these startups apply their technologies in different ways, Overland AI and Potential have something in common in the off-road space. The startup founders aim to tackle one of the more challenging applications of self-driving by building software that…
When Sagetap founders Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes started working at an early-stage enterprise software startup, the companies they worked for were using old-fashioned methods such as repeated cold emails and email exchanges to I was surprised that they were trying to sell innovative technology. call. Mr. Khanna, a former product marketer, and Mr. Hughes, a former sales manager, recognized that these methods were not effective at selling software or getting buyers the solutions they needed. I was there. They were determined to build a better way. “The executives at the company are frustrated and the emails are being destroyed,”…
Keeping up with an industry as rapidly changing as AI is a challenge. So until AI can do it for you, here's a quick recap of recent stories in the world of machine learning, as well as notable research and experiments that we couldn't cover on our own. By the way, TechCrunch is planning to launch an AI newsletter soon. stay tuned. In the meantime, he will increase the frequency of his semi-regular AI columns from twice a month (or so) to weekly. So keep an eye out for more editions to come. This week in the AI space, OpenAI…
Retro game emulator Delta, an app 10 years in the making, shot to the top of the App Store charts after Apple relaxed App Store guidelines to allow game emulators. But the increased attention also brought the threat of legal action. Adobe targeted Delta, whose logo closely resembles its own. Delta's game emulator was built by developer Riley Testut. He began experimenting in this area by figuring out how to load games onto a graphing calculator before turning to iOS. The app itself evolved from his old Testut app GBA4iOS, which exploited a loophole that allowed him to run emulated…
Meta is once again trying to take on competitors by developing features that borrow concepts from other companies, in this case BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature for Instagram called “Peek” that will allow users to post real photos that can only be viewed once. While Snapchat popularized the concept of ephemeral content on social media, BeReal led the trend of posting authentic, unedited content. Meta is known for copying startups and other technology companies, and it looks like they're doing it again with a new feature. The social media company confirmed to TechCrunch on Friday that…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje's weekly roundup of must-sees from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every Friday. I've been drowning in AI news this week. His I/O at Google set the pace: In the keynote, the word “AI” came up once every minute throughout the two-hour keynote. Yausers! Here's the DL about Google's AI plans: OpenAI has dropped GPT-4o, an AI model that powers ChatGPT. This new “omni” wonderchild can handle text, audio, and video like a multitasking genius sprung to his shot of espresso. His boyfriend Ilya Sutskever, co-founder…
IndieBio's Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th group of biotech startups. We specifically focused on a few companies that were making serious claims that bordered on the ridiculous, with the potential for big profits. Biotechnology has begun to influence adjacent industries in recent years, showing how companies rely on outdated processes and even organisms to get things done. So while it may come as no surprise that the latest batch includes a microbiome company, you might be surprised to hear that it's a copper ore microbiome. I spoke with Wes Dang, chief scientific officer at IndieBio, about…
YouTube TV has announced that its “Multi-View” feature, which lets you watch four streams simultaneously, is now available on Android smartphones and tablets. The Android release comes two months after YouTube TV rolled out the feature to iPhone and iPad. First introduced in March 2023, the feature is aimed at sports viewers who want to follow multiple live matches at once without having to change channels frequently. If you want to start multi-view streams on your Android smartphone or tablet, you'll need to make sure you've updated the YouTube TV app to the latest version. From there, you should see…