Author: TechBrunch
Founder-market fit is one of the most important factors in a startup's success, and operators (those involved in the day-to-day operations of a startup) turned founders have a near-impossible chance of finding that fit. Have a fair advantage. Data shows that founders' lack of expertise and business acumen contributes to the failure of VC investments. The same principle applies somewhat to operator VCs (companies usually founded by former startup founders). Although there is no conclusive evidence that operator VCs make better investors, recent research shows that founders and operators who become VCs are far more successful in supporting companies than…
Merchant commerce startup Pine Labs has received approval from a Singapore court to merge its local subsidiary with its Indian arm and transfer all assets and properties, effectively moving the company's operations to India. permitted to be transferred. Pine Labs disclosed the court order in a recent regulatory filing seen by TechCrunch. Pine Labs offers a variety of products and services to merchants, including cloud-connected POS machines and working capital. Backed by Peak XV, Fidelity, Invesco, Temasek, PayPal, and Alpha Wave, his valuation exceeds $5 billion. The company is one of the few Indian startups that have recently moved their…
Ahead of the AI Safety Summit kicking off in Seoul, South Korea later this week, co-host the UK is expanding its own efforts in the space: The AI Safety Association – a UK group founded in November 2023 with the ambitious goal of assessing and addressing risks in AI platforms – has announced it will open a second location in San Francisco. The idea is to move closer to what is now the epicenter of AI development, particularly the Bay Area, home to OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Meta, which are building foundational AI technologies. Fundamental models are the building blocks…
Monday, Melinda French Gates resigned She got it from a charity she ran with her ex-husband Bill Gates. That she left is less surprising than that she stayed for so long. The couple divorced in 2021. In August 2021, the charity told CNN it was setting up a two-year trial period to see if the pair could continue to work together. They lasted almost a year beyond that period. Mr. French Gates plans to leave the company next month with an additional $12.5 billion, he said. She wants to dedicate the money to her “lifelong work for women and families,”…
Creative Artists Agency (CAA), one of the top talent agencies in entertainment and sports, wants to be at the forefront of AI protection services for Hollywood celebrities. Because many stars have their digital likenesses used without their permission, CAA is creating a virtual media storage system that allows A-list talent (actors, athletes, comedians, directors, musicians, etc.) to store digital assets such as names and images. I built it. , digital scanning, audio recording, etc. This new development is part of the company's studio “theCAAvault'', where the actor uses scanning technology to record his body, face, movements and voice, and AI…
When Jeffrey Wang posted to X on Monday asking if anyone would like to order a luxurious but affordable office nap pod, he didn't expect the post to go viral. He said he may have been able to order more than 100 units because there were so many others who wanted them. “We had too many people available,” Wang, co-founder of AI research startup Exa Labs, told TechCrunch. “He ordered two nappods for himself and wanted to see what would happen. There were over 100 requests.” I am purchasing a Japanese capsule bed as a nap pod for my new…
OpenAI's Superalignment team is responsible for developing ways to manage and operate “super-intelligent” AI systems, and is committed to providing 20% of the company's computing resources, according to team officials. It is said that there is But requests for some of that compute were often denied, hampering the team's work. The issue, among others, led to the resignation of several team members this week, including co-leader Jan Reich. He is a former DeepMind researcher who worked on ChatGPT, GPT-4, and ChatGPT's predecessor, InstructGPT, during the OpenAI era. Reich announced the reasons for his resignation Friday morning. “I disagreed with OpenAI's…
A new crop of early-stage startups and some recent venture capital investments indicate that a niche market is emerging in the self-driving vehicle technology space. Unlike companies that are bringing robotaxis to the streets, these startups are taking their technology off-road. Two recent entrants, Seattle-based Overland AI and New Brunswick-based Potential, are looking to gain first-mover advantage in this self-driving space. Although these startups apply their technologies in different ways, Overland AI and Potential have something in common in the off-road space. The startup founders aim to tackle one of the more challenging applications of self-driving by building software that…
When Sagetap founders Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes started working at an early-stage enterprise software startup, the companies they worked for were using old-fashioned methods such as repeated cold emails and email exchanges to I was surprised that they were trying to sell innovative technology. call. Mr. Khanna, a former product marketer, and Mr. Hughes, a former sales manager, recognized that these methods were not effective at selling software or getting buyers the solutions they needed. I was there. They were determined to build a better way. “The executives at the company are frustrated and the emails are being destroyed,”…
Keeping up with an industry as rapidly changing as AI is a challenge. So until AI can do it for you, here's a quick recap of recent stories in the world of machine learning, as well as notable research and experiments that we couldn't cover on our own. By the way, TechCrunch is planning to launch an AI newsletter soon. stay tuned. In the meantime, he will increase the frequency of his semi-regular AI columns from twice a month (or so) to weekly. So keep an eye out for more editions to come. This week in the AI space, OpenAI…