Author: TechBrunch
British chipmaker Graphcore has been officially acquired by Japan's SoftBank. Rumors of the deal have been floating around for a while, but neither company has confirmed anything until now as negotiations and regulatory approvals dragged on. Even today, the company has not acknowledged the one thing most people would be wondering about: how much Japanese multinational SoftBank values the startup that's being touted as a potential rival to AI chip powerhouse Nvidia. The $500 million figure has been floating around in various reports for months, but at a press conference early Thursday, Graphcore co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon was coy…
Elon Musk's X (formerly Twitter) continues to develop a downvote feature that will be used to improve how replies are ranked. While the company has yet to officially announce its plans, recent findings suggest that the downvote feature may actually resemble a “dislike” button, rather than a Reddit-style downvote icon. Code references found in X's iOS app show a button that appears as a broken heart icon next to X's heart-shaped “like” button, as well as a direct reference to the “downvote” feature. Twitter tested a downvote feature in 2021 prior to its acquisition by Elon Musk. However, at the…
A data leak at phone monitoring service mSpy has exposed millions of customers who purchased access to phone spyware apps over the past decade, and the Ukrainian company behind them. In May 2024, unknown attackers stole millions of customer support tickets from mSpy, including attachments such as personal information, emails to support, and personal documents. Hacking of spyware providers is becoming increasingly common, but it still attracts attention because the data often contains highly sensitive personal information – in this case, information about customers who use the service. The hack included customer service records dating back to 2014 that were…
State-of-the-art language models like GPT-4o and Gemini 1.5 Pro are touted as “multimodal” — able to understand not just text but also images and speech — but new research reveals that these models don't actually see in the ways we might expect them to — in fact, they may not see at all. Let's be clear up front: no one is claiming that their AI can see like humans can (well, maybe some people can). But the marketing and benchmarks used to promote these models use phrases like “visual capabilities” and “visual understanding” to describe how the models see and…
You know you've got a successful startup when you start getting ripped off by big tech companies. Retro is a perfect example of this. Retro is a popular photo-sharing app that has garnered a following among users who prefer to be able to privately share photos and videos with friends and family. The company was recently caught off guard by a post from X (formerly Twitter), which debuted a new feature in Google Photos called “My Week.” Unfortunately for Retro, the feature is very similar to their own photo-sharing app, encouraging users to take photos as a daily record and…
After years of criticism over Apple's lack of innovation when it comes to Siri, the company has promised to release a smarter version of its digital assistant this fall. Powered by Apple Intelligence, the company's generative AI service, and a partnership with OpenAI, Siri will get a host of new features and updates. Here we explain what's changing with Siri and what the introduction of Apple Intelligence will enable the digital assistant to do. ChatGPT Integration Image credit: Apple Siri will soon be able to use OpenAI's ChatGPT to answer certain questions: For example, if you need recipe ideas for…
Amid growing competition from TikTok and Reels, YouTube on Thursday unveiled a series of new features aimed at boosting the appeal of its short-form video service, YouTube Shorts. In a video update for creators, YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Vorich introduced six new tools to help creators create short videos, including one that automatically converts longer videos into shorts, as well as tools to inspire creativity, such as “Add Yours” stickers that encourage others to share their own content related to a creator's video. “One of the things I love about it is that anyone can make a short video.…
By now we know a lot about computer cybersecurity, but what happens when a robotic arm on a production line is hacked and instructed to kill its human coworkers? This “device security” is a thorny problem that Rome-based startup Exein is tackling. The IoT cybersecurity company has raised €15 million in a Series B round led by 33N, a venture capital firm specializing in cybersecurity and infrastructure software. The funds will be used to expand operations in Europe, the US and Asia. Exein's IoT security solution seeks to build security measures directly into device software to “protect” devices from attacks,…
WhatsApp is now allowing businesses to send authentication and login codes to users in India through its API, and the company confirmed that it has enabled the feature in India from July 1. Meta introduced the ability for retailers to authenticate users from other regions last year, but in June it began allowing these types of messages from organisations in Malaysia and in July from organisations in India. Last month, the company began applying international authentication rates to activities such as sending login codes to users across borders. “As we discussed onstage at Conversations last month, we want to empower…
Defense AI startup Helsing has raised €450 million ($487 million) in a Series C funding round led by General Catalyst. The company now plans to expand into European countries that border Russia. The announcement comes as NATO holds its annual summit in Washington, D.C., where Russia's invasion of Ukraine is high on the agenda. As part of the plan, Helsing will set up a new company in Estonia and spend €70 million on defense projects in the Baltic states over the next three years. The Germany-based company also has offices in Munich, London and Paris, and the new funding will…