Author: TechBrunch

Embattled Swedish battery maker Northvolt announced Thursday it would file for bankruptcy in the United States, dealing a blow to Europe's ambitions for homegrown lithium-ion batteries. The company reportedly opted for Chapter 11 in an effort to restore its financial health. As a result of the filing, co-founder and CEO Peter Carlson has resigned, but will remain as an advisor and director. “Today marks an important new step for Northvolt and for me personally,” Carlson said in a statement. “Filing for Chapter 11 gives us time to reorganize our company, strengthen our operations while meeting our customer and supplier commitments,…

While Twitter-like social network Bluesky has seen a significant increase in user numbers this month, Meta's X competitor Threads is also rapidly building its platform. On Friday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri announced that Threads would begin testing AI-powered summaries of what people are discussing on the platform in the app's “Trending” section in the U.S. . This new addition seems similar to X's Stories feature, which uses Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok to summarize trending topics in the social network's Explore section. Threads also plans to test an expanded set of trending topics, the company said. Additionally, users will be…

Daricus Releford always wanted to be a founder. He ran a hot dog station in high school, started a chocolate-covered strawberry business in college that generated millions of dollars in sales, and then moved to Silicon Valley to pursue his dreams in technology. I did. Entrepreneurship just runs in his family, he told TechCrunch. “My grandfather was one of the first black hotel owners in America, and my mother was always starting businesses. I think it's in my blood,” he continued. So it's no wonder that no matter what tech job he takes, he always comes back to launching something…

Anthropic, a close rival of OpenAI, has agreed to raise an additional $4 billion from Amazon and make Amazon's cloud computing arm, Amazon Web Services (AWS), its primary location for training its flagship generative AI models. did. Anthropic also said it is working with Annapurna Labs, the chip manufacturing arm of AWS, to develop the next generation of its Trainium accelerator, AWS's custom-built chips for training AI models. “Our engineers will work closely with Annapurna's chip design team to extract maximum computational efficiency from the hardware, which we will use to train our state-of-the-art foundational models,” Anthropic said. I mentioned…

A research group set up by Britain's antitrust regulator has tentatively found that Apple's policies are “stymieing innovation in the browsers used to access the web on mobile phones.” While the report focuses substantially on Apple, it also focuses on its revenue-sharing agreement with Google, as both companies “receive significant revenue” from the use of Google Chrome on iOS. It points out that the “economic incentives to compete” will be reduced. The announcement comes after the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said Google should sell its Chrome browser after a judge ruled in August that the internet giant had an…

Hackers have breached the online course founded by public influencer and self-proclaimed misogynist Andrew Tait, leaking nearly 800,000 users' data, including thousands of email addresses and private user chat logs. The Daily Dot, which reported the news on Thursday, said hackers had accessed user data and posted “transgender flags, feminist fists, and Tate wearing an AI-generated rainbow flag” in the online course's chat room. It was reported that he sent a large number of emojis such as “Image”. , another one with an enlarged butt” and so on. The hacktivists provided the hacked data of course users to the Daily…

Apple is developing a new version of its voice assistant, Siri, that leverages advanced large language models (LLMs), according to sources cited by Bloomberg. This more conversational Siri is part of Apple's attempt to catch up in the AI ​​space, with competitors releasing impressive features like Google's Gemini Live that allow you to converse much more naturally than Siri. . The new assistant will reportedly completely replace the Siri interface that users currently rely on, and Apple plans to release the feature in spring 2026. This feature seems similar to OpenAI's Advanced Voice Mode, but you have access to all…

Nuclear power startup Kairos Power has received approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to begin construction of two test reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The permit marks a significant milestone for Kairos, which in October signed a deal with Google to provide 500 megawatts of power to its data centers. The fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor is a scaled-down version of what Kairos ultimately hopes to build to power Google starting in 2030. And while the new reactor is technically a testbed, Kairos intends to connect the plant to the power grid. spokesperson Ashley Lewis told TechCrunch. Each Hermes 2…

Zepto secures $350 million in fresh funding, third funding round in six months, as Indian quick-commerce startup strengthens position against competitors ahead of IPO expected next year did. Indian family offices, high-net-worth individuals and asset manager Motilal Oswal invested in the round, which maintains Zept's valuation at $5 billion. Motilal co-founder Raamdeo Agrawal, Mankind Pharma family office, RP-Sanjiv Goenka, Cello, Haldiram's, Sekhsaria, Kalyan, as well as celebrities Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar are backers of this new investment. , which is by far the largest scale. First round in India. The funding drive comes as Zept rushes to add Indian…

YouTube announced Thursday that its Dream Screens feature for Shorts can now create AI-generated video backgrounds. Until now, Dream Screen could only create image backgrounds. This new feature is made possible through the integration of Google DeepMind's AI video generation model Veo, which can create 1080p video clips in a variety of cinematic styles. Users can now use this feature to turn text prompts into AI video backgrounds. To access this feature, you need to go to the short camera, tap the “Green Screen” icon and select “Dream Screen”. From there, you can enter prompts like “Candy Landscape” or “Magical…