Author: TechBrunch
Helen Toner, a former OpenAI board member and strategy director at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, worries that if the status quo doesn't change, Congress will have a “knee-jerk” reaction when it comes to AI policymaking. “The current Congress, maybe people haven't noticed, is not very functional and not very good at passing laws unless there's a major crisis,” Toner said at TechCrunch's StrictlyVC event in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. “AI is going to be a big, powerful technology, but at some point something's going to go wrong. And if the only laws we get are ones…
Being laid off is tough. According to layoffs.fyi, 254 companies have already cut 60,000 jobs this year alone. Finding ways to expand your network during uncertain times is even tougher. To help those affected by a layoff within the past year (from any company, region, or industry) and who are still looking for full-time work, TechCrunch is offering Expo+ passes at 50% off the current rate. Don't let firing get you down. Take the next step in your career at Disrupt 2024 Whether it's downsizing, layoffs, or reductions, losing your job can be a tough experience, especially during unpredictable times.…
The hospitality industry is back, creating an opportunity for tech startups to not only make hotels more efficient at running their operations, but also to focus on ways to improve the guest experience. “Most of today's travelers were born into an era where they are very comfortable with technology,” says Harman Singh Narula, co-founder and CEO of Canary Technologies. “They have expectations of technology. For example, instead of picking up the phone, they want to send a text message to the front desk.” Hotels also face competition in the market with the availability of other options like Airbnb, which Narula…
It’s WWDC 2024 keynote time! Each year Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference with a few hours of just straight announcements, like the long-awaited Apple Intelligence and a makeover for smart AI assistant, Siri. We expected much of them to revolve around the company’s artificial intelligence ambitions (and here), and Apple didn’t disappoint. We also bring you news about Vision Pro and lots of feature refreshes. Here’s how to watch the archive of WWDC 2024. Developers should expect hardware and software updates, per the usual, and some other items we initially thought would be unveiled. Brian Heater also went…
Financial reporting and the audit process aren't often on the list of sexy topics that tech startups want to tackle, but financial reporting errors like those experienced by Lyft earlier this year can have disastrous consequences for a company. Just ask Lyft. After years of doing reporting and auditing work for companies like Miro, Autodesk, Dropbox, Flexport, and Yelp, Mary Antony and Kelsey Gootnick decided that reporting and auditing also required their love of technology. Both have backgrounds in accounting and met while leading accounting at Flexport in 2018. They saw firsthand how difficult it is for companies to put…
A huge thank you to all the early-stage founders who missed the application period for TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield 200 (SB 200). We have some great news just for you! For all you procrastinators, be in luck: we're giving you (a little) more time to put your application together. Pro tip: Applying and participating in SB 200 is completely free. You have nothing to lose. Startup Battlefield 200 Deadline Extended Don't put this task off any longer: there's only one week left to apply for Startup Battlefield 200. Stop what you're doing and get it done by June 17th at…
The founders of six-month-old RetailReady, graduates of YC's Winter 2024 cohort, say they discovered an overlooked area of the warehousing/delivery industry, which costs retail brands roughly $40 billion a year. They're developing a tablet app to replace paper warehouse manuals with packing instructions. Co-founders Elle Smyth and Sarah Hamer came up with the idea while working together at Stord, a supply chain unicorn startup. “We met and bonded over our love of the supply chain industry,” Smith told TechCrunch. “We call it an engineer's playground. There's no shortage of problems to solve.” Smith and Hammer left Stord and began working…
Over the past few years, venture capital has become increasingly difficult to obtain, even for companies with strong track records. That's been the experience of Foresight Capital: Despite having done 47 IPOs, 28 M&A deals and 58 FDA-approved drugs, it took the 13-year-old multi-stage healthcare and life sciences firm two years to raise its sixth fund. “Almost all of our LPs from Fund 5 have renewed for Fund 6. They just renewed with 30% less capital,” Foresight CEO and founder Jim Tananbaum told TechCrunch. “We needed to fill a little hole.” The San Francisco-based firm was determined to ensure its…
A year ago, Databricks acquired MosaicML for $1.3 billion. Now rebranded as Mosaic AI, the platform has become an integral part of Databricks' AI solutions. Today, at the company's Data + AI Summit, the company is announcing several new features for the service. Ahead of the announcement, I spoke with Databricks co-founder and CEO Ali Ghodsi and CTO Matei Zaharia. At the conference, Databricks will be announcing five new Mosaic AI tools: Mosaic AI Agent Framework, Mosaic AI Agent Evaluation, Mosaic AI Tools Catalog, Mosaic AI Model Training, and Mosaic AI Gateway. “This year has been great. There's been great…
When one of the co-creators of the popular open-source stream processing framework Apache Flink launches a new startup, it's worth keeping an eye on. Stephan Ewen joined the founding team of the open-source project in 2010 and later became CTO of Data Artisans, which aimed to monetize Flink before Alibaba acquired the company in 2019 and rebranded it as Ververica. After the requisite three years there, Ewen launched workflow-as-code startup Restate with Flink committers and former Data Artisan/Ververica colleagues Igal Shilman and Till Rohrmann. Restate, whose overall mission is to make distributed application development easier, today announced that it has…