Author: TechBrunch
Andrej Karpathy, a widely respected research scientist, today announced his retirement from OpenAI. This is the second time Karpathy has left a top AI company, and he said his departure was not due to any incident, issue or drama. Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI, left in 2017 to join Tesla. He left Tesla where he led the Autopilot team in 2022, and almost he returned to OpenAI. one year ago. Karpathy also has a huge following on social media and his YouTube, where he posts thought-provoking writing about the emerging universe and videos explaining the inner workings of AI.…
foundry group, an 18-year-old venture firm with approximately $3.5 billion in assets under management, has quietly decided to shut down and not raise any more funds. The move was unexpected considering the company announced a $500 million fund last year. Boulder, Colorado-based Foundry first announced on January 19 that its current fund would be its last. The venture firm has been investing since 2007 and announced a $500 million fund, according to Crunchbase. Foundry 2022 — 8th time — May 2023. Over the years, Foundry hasCo-founder and partner Seth Levine said the firm has invested in more than 200 companies…
In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI company called GamePlanner.AI, started by the co-founder of Siri. The deal reportedly values the secretive startup at about $200 million. Although the hosting company didn't call out its plans for GamePlanner at the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky today shared an overview of Airbnb's larger AI plans, saying, “Application layer He said that he plans to accelerate this. Utilizing AI, he builds one of the “most innovative AI interfaces ever created.” Hyperbole aside, Chesky said Airbnb doesn't consider itself an AI infrastructure company, meaning it won't build its own large-scale language…
Airbnb is gradually eliminating cleaning fees in an effort to make pricing more transparent. Airbnb said in its earnings call today that cleaning fees have been eliminated or lowered for about 300,000 properties since the company began showing guests comprehensive prices when they book a property. Now, nearly 40% of his active listings no longer charge cleaning fees. For customers, these cleaning fees have been a long-standing complaint. You might find a great deal on a vacation rental on Airbnb, only to proceed to checkout only to find yourself charged a cleaning fee of hundreds of dollars at the last…
Grocery delivery giant Instacart announced today that it will lay off approximately 250 employees, or approximately 7% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring. Instacart CEO Fiji Simo said in a letter to investors that the layoffs will allow the company to streamline the way it operates. The company announced layoffs at the same time as announcing its fourth quarter results. “Today, we made the difficult decision to part with approximately 250 talented team members,” Simo wrote. “This will allow us to restructure our company, flatten our organization, and focus on the most promising initiatives that we believe…
Software testing is difficult. Even with the right people in place, things don't always go as planned, especially when executed at scale. In his 2020 study for Electric Cloud, 58% of developers said software bugs are caused by testing infrastructure and process issues rather than design flaws. Unsurprisingly, the market for software testing solutions is huge, with some estimates pegging it at $55.98 billion. There are many vendors in this space, from startups like Qase, EvaluAgent, and Codegen to established companies like Azure and AWS. But new entrant Antithesis believes this could create a buzz. Today, the antithesis that has…
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,…
Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product strategy after installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, TechCrunch has learned. Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back investments in a number of products, including VPN, Relay, and, somewhat surprisingly, Online Footprint Scrubber, which was released just a week ago. Mozilla also plans to shut down Hubs, the 3D virtual world it launched in 2018, and reduce its investment in the mozilla.social Mastodon instance. The layoffs affect approximately 60 employees. Bloomberg previously reported on the layoffs. The company said in an internal memo that…
TikTok is testing a new dedicated space for LIVE creators to interact with subscribers, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Tuesday. This new space, called “Subspace,” is in early testing and is designed to help creators increase community engagement while providing additional benefits to subscribers. I discovered a new addition: X User Jonah Manzanowho posted a screenshot of the feature. Creators can use this space to post topical threads and create polls to chat and interact with subscribers. LIVE creators can already interact with viewers through chat during live broadcasts, but the new service is a way for creators to…
Phantom, a heavily used cryptocurrency wallet in the Solana ecosystem, has more than tripled its active user base over the past year, CEO and co-founder Brandon Millman tells TechCrunch exclusively. Millman said Phantom will reach 3.2 million monthly active users (MAUs) in January 2024, up 220% from 1 million a year ago and 463.5% more than the 167,000 installs in the same period. It reportedly recorded 941,000 installs. “These numbers are essentially our peak” and exceed usage and metrics from the previous crypto bull market in 2021 and early 2022, he added. “The Jito and Jupiter airdrops were a huge…