Author: TechBrunch

Brendan Smith never intended to get into the critical minerals business. Initially, he thought his high-tech filters would be good for desalination. But he and his mentor, MIT professor Jeffrey Grossman, quickly dismissed it because it would be difficult to outperform existing systems. After “intentionally going off the rails” for a few years, they entered an entirely different industry: mining. Producing critical minerals is no easy business. Take copper for example: the world uses around 25 million tonnes of copper per year, but demand is expected to grow by 24% over the next decade due to an increase in buildings,…

By now, most people have heard of AI agents: software that can perform a set of tasks autonomously. But Asana decided to take a different approach when it comes to AI. On Wednesday, the company announced a beta version of what it's calling an “AI teammate” to help with work transitions within organizations. Paige Costello, head of AI at Asana, said the company chose the name intentionally to signal a shift in how people think about interacting with AI in the workplace. “We believe the future of work is not just humans working with other humans, but humans working with…

Back in 2014, Understory co-founder and CEO Alex Kubicek was on a mission to deploy a network of ground-level weather stations to track the weather in real time and anticipate needs, such as deploying resources to an area after or during a storm. At the time, Kubicek worked with Brian Dow to build a weather station with the goal of adding an extra 10 to 15 minutes to thunderstorm and tornado warnings, but it turned out that much of the data used to forecast the weather was from the 1980s. “We needed a better weather data set, so we teamed…

In 1816, French physician René Laennec invented an instrument that could listen to the human heart and lungs. That device, the stethoscope, evolved from a simple wooden tube to the lightweight, two-earpiece version that most physicians today wear around their necks. Founded in 2013, startup Eko Health is using AI to enhance this ubiquitous medical tool and bring it into the digital age. Over the past decade, Eko has sold stethoscopes to more than 500,000 doctors and healthcare professionals. Because the stethoscopes have been used by millions of patients, the company has amassed a large dataset of chest sounds and…

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized startups have also seen a fair amount of cuts, and in some cases, have shut down operations altogether. By tracking these layoffs, we’re able to understand the impact on innovation across companies large and small. We’re also able to see the potential impact of businesses…

Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off on Monday at 10am PST/1pm ET with the customary Tim Cook keynote. Last year's WWDC will be remembered as the event where Vision Pro was finally introduced to the world, but the company is hoping to make next week's event even more memorable by finally revealing its generative AI plans. Find out how to live stream your event here. The opening of WWDC is different from other Apple keynotes in that it kicks off a week of online and in-person events that will run from June 10 to 14. Although the company began…

Last week, we announced the winners of our breakout sessions. Now, it's time to introduce the roundtable sessions that truly “closed out” the competition for this year's Disrupt 2024 Audience Choice Program. With thousands of votes from around the world and five incredible sessions earning finalist spots, these finalists proved they have what it takes to make things happen. You can take that same can-do attitude and know-how with you when you join us for our roundtable sessions this October. Now, meet the winners! Your Enterprise GTM is broken—here's how to fix it Speaker: SC Moatti, Founding Managing Partner, Mighty…

TikTok said its security team was working to address the issue after hackers breached the accounts of several celebrities and brands on its video platform, including Paris Hilton, CNN and Sony. The ByteDance-owned video app maker did not provide any information about the nature of the attack or its mitigation techniques, saying only that it thwarted it and has taken steps to prevent such an incident from happening in the future. As previously reported by Semaphore and Forbes, the malicious attack likely involved malware sent through TikTok direct messages, potentially impacting account owners' ability to access their TikTok profiles. None…

After experiencing an outage that lasted for several hours in the early morning, OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbot was down again, but this time it wasn't the only AI provider affected: Anthropic's Claude and Perplexity both began experiencing issues on Tuesday morning as well, though these were resolved more quickly. Google's Gemini appears to still be operational, although some users have reported that it may have gone offline temporarily. It's unusual for all three major AI providers to be down at the same time and could indicate a broader infrastructure or internet-wide issue, such as affecting multiple social media sites at the…

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. 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 for more wide-ranging needs. And that growth has propelled OpenAI itself into becoming one of the most-hyped companies in recent memory, even if CEO and co-founder Sam Altman’s firing and swift return raised concerns about its direction and opened the door for competitors. What does that mean for OpenAI, ChatGPT and its other ambitions? The fallout is still settling,…