Author: TechBrunch
Sunil Chawla remembers meeting countless artists during his time at university who all wanted one thing: a sustainable economic infrastructure that would help them scale, rather than drowning in paperwork, filings, and chasing receipts. Chawla thought he might have a solution and launched a music monetization platform in 2020. During the pandemic, he pivoted the company to its current form: Slingshot, a company that helps creators find the tools they need to manage their business requirements. The company also offers its own corporate card to further centralize financial transactions on the platform. “Today, many talented creatives are forced to spend…
Mistral, a Microsoft-backed French AI startup valued at $6 billion, has released the first generative AI model for coding, called Codestral. Codestral, like other code generation models, is designed to help developers write and work with code. According to a Mistral blog post, the model has been trained on more than 80 programming languages, including Python, Java, C++, and JavaScript. Codestral can complete coding features, write tests, and “fill in” partial code, as well as answer English questions about your codebase. Mistral describes its model as “open,” but that's debatable. The startup's license prohibits the use of Codestral and its…
Lux, the startup behind the popular professional photography app Halide, is expanding into the video space with its latest app release. The company on Wednesday announced Kino, a new video capture app aimed at both professional and amateur videographers. The official release comes six months after Lux teased a December 2023 release date. Halide users have long been calling for Lux to add video support to its popular photo app, but the startup didn't want to clutter the platform, leading it to launch a dedicated video app.Given that Halide, which originally won an Apple Design Award for its RAW photo…
Representative Elissa Slotkin plans to introduce legislation in Congress that would limit or ban the adoption of connected cars made by Chinese companies if they are found to pose a national security threat. The bill comes amid an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China following the Biden administration's decision to quadruple import tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles to 100%. Chinese EV makers have not made as big a presence in the US as they have in Europe, and the bill appears aimed at reining in the companies before they flood the US market with sleeker, cheaper cars. Slotkin,…
Representative Elissa Slotkin plans to introduce legislation in Congress that would limit or ban the adoption of connected cars made by Chinese companies if they are found to pose a national security threat. The bill comes amid an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China following the Biden administration's decision to quadruple import tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles to 100%. Chinese electric vehicle makers have yet to make significant inroads in the U.S., unlike in Europe, and the bill appears aimed at curbing their entry before they can flood the U.S. market with sleeker, cheaper cars. Slotkin, a former…
Microsoft's Copilot, an AI-powered generative tool that can generate text and answer specific questions, is now available as an in-app chatbot for instant messaging app Telegram. Currently in beta, Copilot for Telegram allows you to talk to an AI chatbot just like you would in a normal one-on-one conversation with a friend, and can answer a wide range of questions, from general questions like “What movie should I watch?” to questions like “What baseball game is on right now?” The bot can be accessed by searching the username @CopilotOfficialBot and is free for Telegram users and available on both mobile…
In the video, a crowd roars at a packed summer music festival. Beats start to play through the speakers, and finally, a performer steps onto the stage: The Joker. Dressed in a red suit, green hair and distinctive face paint, he pumps his fists, dances around the stage, and jumps down the runway to get even closer to the sea of fans. As he begins to rap, the Joker bends his knees and leaps off the ground, bouncing up and down before spinning 360 degrees on one foot. It looks effortless, but if you tried to pull this off in…
After the Wirecard scandal, Germany's financial regulator BaFin began to place greater scrutiny on emerging fintech startups looking to grow quickly. Better to be safe than sorry. In particular, N26, the Berlin-based start-up bank that has raised hundreds of millions of euros and quickly become a unicorn, has had a complicated relationship with BaFin in recent years, after the regulator imposed a cap on new registrations as a sanction to force start-up banks to improve their anti-money laundering processes. This week, N26 announced that BaFin will lift the growth limit from June 1, 2024. The cap was initially set at…
A new startup called Kinnect aims to help people privately store intergenerational memories, traditions, recipes, and more. Its app, released this month, lets you create invite-only spaces where the whole family can share images, videos, audio, text, and more. Kinnect was founded in May 2023 by Omar Alvarez, an entrepreneur with experience working for a telehealth brand focused on mental health. Alvarez came up with the idea for Kinnect after losing his grandfather to Alzheimer's disease and his best friend to leukemia. As his grandfather began his battle with Alzheimer's, Alvarez and his family were coming to terms with the…
Laws are constantly being revised to provide the best education to students across the country. While these new education policies are generally helpful, they are often difficult to implement and hard for parents to understand. That's where Odyssey comes in. The company has developed an end-to-end public funding distribution and e-commerce platform for program management that eases access to education services such as school tuition, tutoring, technology and extracurricular enrichment. One would think that with this technology, states would race to get on board, but alternative education is a fairly controversial topic for some because it goes beyond the traditional…