Author: TechBrunch
a16z-backed Character.AI today announced that users can now converse with AI characters over phone calls, a feature that currently supports multiple languages including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. The company tested the calling feature ahead of today's public launch. During the test period, more than 3 million users made more than 20 million calls. The company also noted that calling with AI characters can be useful for practicing language skills, mock interviews, and adding to role-playing gameplay. With the tap of a button, users can initiate a call directly with the user-created AI character, a feature that…
TikTok is gearing up to compete with Amazon's Prime Day event in July, as the social network announced on Thursday that its TikTok Shop will host a “Deals For You Days” sales event in the US starting July 9. The announcement comes just days after Amazon announced that its annual Prime Day sale will take place on July 16th and 17th. Prime Day's success has prompted other retailers, big and small, to use the day to run competing sales, and now TikTok is one of them. According to TikTok, the sale event will offer great deals on fashion and beauty…
SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son announced on Thursday that the Japanese technology giant has formed a joint venture in Japan with Chicago-based health tech company Tempus. The two companies plan to conduct data analytics in Japan and develop personalized medical services using AI under the name SB Tempus. The company plans to start with oncology, which remains the biggest cause of death in Japan, according to Son, whose father died of the disease last year. The move underscores Son's ambitious and broad focus on AI. At a special press conference today, Son detailed one more specific application of AI: the…
Startup valuations have plummeted since the 2021-2022 bull market, which has hit the European startup ecosystem particularly hard, but there is one European region where the correction has worked slightly in its favor: the South. Evidence of this was apparent at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, as TechCrunch reporters repeatedly encountered Nordic venture capitalists scouting startups in the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). These startups bring a winning combination that venture capitalists love: significantly lower operating costs and much lower valuations. Further evidence of this “southern trend” comes with the news that Enrique Linares, one of the…
We now know how important it is to have quality data to use in large-scale language models (LLMs), but preparing the data for the models is an early challenge for companies and an opening for enterprising entrepreneurs. That's where Illumex, a two-year-old Israeli startup founded by a former VP of AI at Sisense, comes in. The startup is using GenAI to get data ready for LLMs, and today the company announced a $13 million investment. Inna Tokarev-Sela, founder and CEO of Illumex, says she recognized this data preparation problem years ago and founded Illumex with the goal of making it…
A travel hack that went viral on TikTok taught users how to save money on hotels and Airbnb by booking directly with the accommodation. Now, a new startup, Directo, is helping travelers find the same deals with the help of a Chrome extension that directs them to the accommodation's website, where they can often find discounted rates because the accommodation doesn't have to pay a sales commission. On social media, creators and influencers post various money-saving tips, teaching users how to book a room or homestay for less. This often involves doing a reverse image search of the accommodation's photos…
The generative AI boom is driving demand for AI chips specialized for training and running generative AI models, and major players, from venture capital firms to startups, are rushing to get in on the action. SoftBank's Masayoshi Son is reportedly looking to raise $100 billion for a chip business to rival tech giant Nvidia, while OpenAI is said to be in talks with investment firms to launch an AI chip manufacturing venture. AI chip startup Axelera has kept a relatively low profile, but it has managed to garner the support of backers, including Samsung, by focusing on a niche area…
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…
AI “agents,” generative AI models that can autonomously take actions, like copying information from emails and pasting it into a spreadsheet, have been hailed as a huge productivity boost. It may be a bit premature, given that models are prone to making mistakes. But at least a few founders (and analysts and investors) seem convinced that agents are the next frontier for generative AI. Vera Liu and William Lu are two such founders. Their company, Orby AI, is building a generative AI platform that automates a variety of business workflows, including workflows such as data entry, document processing, and form…
Sometimes the most successful startup ideas come from people building tools to solve their own needs. That was the case with security expert Dafydd Stuttard, better known as Daf. Nearly 20 years ago, Duff, who lived in Knutsford, a small market town in Cheshire, northwest England, worked as a security consultant for a variety of clients. Meanwhile, he was also building apps he could use himself to speed up routine parts of his work. He gave each tool a random name and used one for a while before moving on to another. Sometimes he would talk about the tool to…