Author: TechBrunch
Google briefly introduced a section of its new Google Messages page that claims Apple plans to roll out support for Rich Communications Services (RCS) for iPhone this fall. This indicates that the iPhone maker is likely to expand its RCS support in its upcoming iOS 18 update. The page, first discovered by 9to5Google, provided details about the benefits of RCS. One of the sections was labeled “Coming soon to iOS” with the title “Better messaging for all.” This card is not currently visible on the page, but the text indicates that it is still in the page's source code. “Apple…
Byju Raveendran, founder of disputed edtech group Byju's, has announced that his board of directors will sell forfeited shares to prevent dilution of their holdings in a last resort to appease disgruntled investors in an Indian startup. He said he was considering selling it. In an email to shareholders Friday morning, a copy of which was seen by TechCrunch, Raveendran said the startup's board would propose to investors to claim surrendered shares in a way that would prevent dilution of Byju's existing holdings. He said he is considering it. Mr. Raveendran also informed shareholders that the startup has already received…
Elon Musk's AI startup X.ai has announced Grok-1.5, its latest generative AI model. Grok-1.5, which is scheduled to power the social network It looks like it'll be a visible upgrade — at least judging by the benchmark results and specs published by X. According to X.ai, Grok-1.5 benefits from “improved reasoning,” especially for coding and math-related tasks. This model more than doubled Grok-1's score in MATH, a popular math benchmark, and outperformed him by more than 10 percentage points on his HumanEval test, which tests programming language generation and problem-solving ability. I am. Of course, it is difficult to predict…
Investor enthusiasm for the dating service has cooled since Bumble's blockbuster IPO at the height of the pandemic. At least Bumble stock is currently trading at around $11 per share, a far cry from its closing price of $76 on its first day of trading in February 2021. Of course, investors are fickle, so this is a challenge for almost all publicly traded companies. A bigger concern for Bumble is user fatigue. People aren't downloading dating apps as enthusiastically as they once were, which means less subscription revenue. Young people in particular are gravitating toward other platforms for love, like…
On Thursday, a federal judge sentenced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman Fried to 25 years in prison after being convicted of seven counts of wire fraud and money laundering. The scam he pulled was very simple. He and his partners founded FTX, an exchange that accepts deposits from customers and invests and trades in cryptocurrencies. Some of these deposits were secretly sent to another company of his, Alameda Research, a hedge fund that he originally founded to arbitrage differences in cryptocurrency prices across countries. It was something I did. According to the government's successful lawsuit, Alameda used the money for…
A week after being hit with a business crunch by a landmark lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice, Apple is firmly denying any similarities between itself and Microsoft in the 1990s. It's a comparison that U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland weighed heavily in his filing last week. Although some parts of the US v. Microsoft case were partially overturned, the Windows maker was ultimately required to correct certain business practices deemed proprietary by the government. Garland and the 16 state attorneys general who joined the Apple lawsuit are no doubt seeking similar results to rein in practices they believe…
On Tuesday, the BBC reported that Pa Edrissa Manjan, a black Uber Eats delivery worker, was receiving payments from Uber after a “racist” facial recognition test prevented her from accessing the app. He had been receiving it since November 2019. A job delivering food on the Uber platform. The news raises questions about how well UK law is adapted to the increasing use of AI systems. In particular, the lack of transparency regarding automated systems that have been rushed to market with the hope of improving user safety and service efficiency is a sign that it will take time to…
Video game giant Activision is investigating a hacking campaign aimed at stealing player credentials, TechCrunch has learned. At this time, it is unclear what the hacker's specific purpose is other than stealing passwords for various types of accounts. Sources say hackers somehow inject malware into victims' computers and steal passwords for things like gaming accounts and cryptocurrency wallets. Activision Blizzard staff are investigating, are “cooperating with the removal of the malware,” and are “working to identify and remediate the malware,” said a person familiar with the incident, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.…
Welcome to Elon Musk’s Twitter (now X), where the rules are made up and the check marks don’t matter. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO announced his bid to buy Twitter in April 2022, zealously driven to rid the platform of spam bots and protect free speech; now, it’s the one-year anniversary since he made his dramatic entrance to the company in October 2022, and the platform has changed so much that even its name is different. “This is just my strong, intuitive sense that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the…
Last time we checked on Zaver, the Swedish B2C Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) provider in Europe, the company raised a $5 million funding round in 2021. The company has now completed its $10 million extension of its Series A funding round. , the total Series A will be $20 million. The total investment amount so far reaches $30 million. In Europe, Zaver competes in BNPL with Klarna, PayPal, and incumbents such as Santander and BNP Paribas. However, Zaver claims that its risk assessment algorithm can assess the risk of BNPL cart sizes up to €200,000 in real time. Other he BNPL providers,…