Author: TechBrunch

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has more than 130,000 job cuts across 457 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…

Yahoo laid off about 25% of its cybersecurity team, known as Paranoids, last year, according to a TechCrunch investigation. Overall, the company has laid off or reduced 40 to 50 of its 200 total cybersecurity team employees since the beginning of 2024, according to multiple current and former Yahoo employees who spoke to TechCrunch on condition of anonymity. He was fired due to this. (Yahoo is TechCrunch's parent company.) Paranoid isn't the only team affected by layoffs. Valeri Ryborsky, who was named Yahoo's chief technology officer in September, sent an email to employees this week announcing changes across a wide…

ServiceTitan, which provides financial and customer management software for trading, went public on Thursday in a big way, much to the delight of retail investors. The stock quickly soared from its initial IPO sales price of $71 million to $105 per share on modest volume. Currently, the price remains above $100. ServiceTitan's success doesn't necessarily portend a return to the painfully tight IPO window for tech companies waiting to go public. This is because the company's motivation for going public was not strictly market-related. ServiceTitan has revealed that it will need to immediately repay some venture investors due to the…

Meta's Threads is developing its own take on Bluesky's “Starter Pack.” The Starter Pack is a curated list of recommended accounts to help new users find people to follow. Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced Thursday that the social network is testing a way to make it easier for users to discover and follow collections of profiles that post about certain popular topics in threads. The release comes two weeks after TechCrunch reported that Threads was working on the feature. A collection of suggested profiles will appear when new users sign up for a thread, and will also appear within the…

OpenAI is making ChatGPT sound like Santa at Christmas. The startup announced Thursday that ChatGPT users will have access to a new “Santa Mode” voice for December. This feature allows users to converse using ChatGPT's existing real-time audio feature, Advanced Voice Mode, but with a Christmas twist. It sounds exactly as “cheerful and upbeat” as OpenAI puts it. Imagine being boomy and cheerful. More or less like every Santa you've ever heard of. ChatGPT Santa Mode Image Credit: OpenAI OpenAI will release this feature ahead of the 2024 holiday season. This time of year, many families with young children will…

OpenAI has finally released the real-time video capabilities of ChatGPT, which we demoed about seven months ago. The company said during a livestream Thursday that ChatGPT's human-like conversation feature, Advanced Voice Mode, is coming to life. The ChatGPT app allows users with a ChatGPT Plus, Team, or Pro subscription to point their phone at an object and have ChatGPT respond in near real-time. Advanced voice with vision mode also lets you understand what's on your device's screen through screen sharing. For example, you can explain the various settings menus or suggest math problems. To access advanced audio modes using Vision,…

OpenAI seems to be in the holiday spirit. The series of ChatGPT rollouts, dubbed “12 Days of OpenAI,” will be live-streamed weekdays at 10 a.m. Pacific time through December 23. So far, we've seen the launch of ChatGPT Pro, OpenAI's $200/month subscription plan. A version of its “inference” o1 model, the long-awaited public release of text-to-video generator Sora, the deployment of Canvas, and ChatGPT in Apple Intelligence. We don't know what other announcements or product launches are planned, but we could hear more information about updates to Advanced Voice Modes, potential work on AI agents, and other surprises. there is.…

Google announced Thursday that it will unveil a new Android-based XR platform to support AI capabilities. The company said the platform, called “Android XR,” supports app development on a variety of devices, including headsets and glasses. The company will release the first developer preview of Android XR on Thursday, which already supports existing tools such as ARCore, Android Studio, Jetpack Compose, Unity, and OpenXR. project muhan headset The company said Android XR will first launch with the Samsung-made Project Moohan headset and is expected to launch next year. Samsung, Google, and Qualcomm announced a partnership to produce XR devices early…

Humba Ventures today announced that it has raised $40 million in investments in deep technology and defense technology startups. The company is a sister company to Susa Ventures, a seed-stage company that has backed companies such as Robinhood, Human Interest, and Flexport. The fund was launched at a time when venture investment in defense technology is at an all-time high, with startups in the space raising nearly $3 billion through 2024, according to Crunchbase. Sousa has previously invested in fintech and software companies, but this is very different from the hardware investments the Humba team has already made. For example,…

Google is slowly peeling back the curtain on its vision of one day selling glasses with augmented reality and multimodal AI capabilities. However, the company's plans for these glasses are still vague. To date, we've seen multiple demos of Project Astra, DeepMind's effort to build real-time multimodal apps and agents using AI, running on mysterious prototype glasses. Ta. Google announced Wednesday that it will release these prototype glasses, equipped with AI and AR features, to a select number of users for real-world testing. Google announced Thursday that its Project Astra prototype glasses run on Android XR, Google's new operating system…