Author: TechBrunch
Space startup SpinLaunch is raising money again, and sources told TechCrunch that it was considering raising an even more ambitious amount earlier this year. The company closed an $11.5 million round, out of a planned $25 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. SpinLaunch confirmed the funding to TechCrunch, but declined to comment on the amount raised. The last time it raised $71 million in Series B was in 2022. But people with knowledge of the company's plans told TechCrunch that the company began talking to investors about nine months ago and expected to raise…
Marketplaces for review-based software and services are beginning to reach their sell-by date. User-generated reviews on sites like G2 and Capterra (one of Gartner's three software directories) have often been accused of being paid for by software vendors. In fact, 8 out of 9 reviews on the first page of G2 reviews on HubSpot are labeled “Incentivized Reviews.” Born from the AI pioneers behind Jukedeck, Stackfix has raised $3 million in seed funding to use AI to test and review software on behalf of humans, bringing a high level of transparency and independence to the process. This is a startup…
Is the grass greener next door? I'm not sure, but I'm sure the sky is bluer. It's been two years since Elon Musk bought Twitter (now known as X) and people started setting up shop on alternative platforms. Mastodon, Post, Pebble (two of which are no longer in operation), and Spill have been mentioned as potential replacements, but with the exception of Meta's Threads, few companies have achieved the speed of growth that Bluesky achieved. As of December 2024, Bluesky has over 24 million users. Its growth has been attributed to several policy changes in X, including a heavily criticized…
Spotify's annual Wrapped feature is coming soon, but it's been hugely popular over the years, giving listeners a fun, personalized summary of how they listen to their music. As a result, many companies are seizing the opportunity to create similar year-in-review experiences that provide users with a summary of their habits, preferences, and interactions over the past year. Here are some platforms and websites that mimic the Spotify Wrapped concept. amazon music Amazon Music has a new Spotify Wrapped knockoff this year called “2024 Delivered,” which provides users with an overview of their listening statistics, including top artists, songs, and…
Two U.S. data brokers have entered into two lawsuits with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which accused the companies of illegally tracking millions of people near sensitive locations such as medical facilities and military bases. As part of the settlement, they agreed not to collect private location data of Americans. Two settlements announced Tuesday would prohibit Virginia-based Gravy Analytics and Georgia-based Mobilewalla from collecting and retaining sensitive and detailed location data on people. are. The agreement accuses two data brokers (who collect vast amounts of people's personal information and sell millions of identifiable location data points, including where people have…
Earlier this year, there was widespread concern about how generated AI could be used to interfere in global elections to spread propaganda and disinformation. As far back as the end of the year, Meta shared that the technology had a limited impact across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, and claims that such concerns were not widespread, at least on its platform. The company said its findings were based on key elections in the US, Bangladesh, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, the EU parliament, France, the UK, South Africa, Mexico and Brazil. “While there have been confirmed or suspected uses of AI in this…
There are many services that allow you to create lists to track and discover new books, movies, and songs, but these lists often end up in silos. Former Squarespace employee Alfonso Cobo wants to combine all kinds of lists into one, and he's using Hyperist to do just that. Cobo said the ethos behind the creation of Hyperist is that people online often ask for recommendations on everything from skin care routines, books, restaurants to movies. “People on social media were asking for all kinds of recommendations, but suggestions were hard to keep track of and there was no way…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. 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. That growth has propelled OpenAI itself into becoming one of the most-hyped companies in recent memory. And its latest partnership with Apple for its upcoming generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, has given the company another significant bump in the AI race. 2024 also saw the release of GPT-4o, OpenAI’s new flagship omni…
Google's video generator is coming to a few more customers, specifically Google Cloud customers. Google announced Tuesday that Veo, an AI model that can generate short video clips from images and prompts, will be available in private preview for customers using Vertex AI, Google Cloud's AI development platform. Google says the launch will enable one of its customers, Quora, to integrate Veo into its Poe chatbot platform, and another customer, Oreo owner Mondelez International, will be able to integrate Veo into its Poe chatbot platform. It will be possible to create marketing content with agency partners. “We created Poe to…
If yurt founder Ben Van Lew had better eyes, he might have followed in his family's footsteps and joined the Air Force. “My whole family was in the Air Force. They were all pilots,” he said, later admitting, “My vision wasn't that far.” Instead, he's supporting the military in a very Silicon Valley way. The idea is to create an AI integration platform that can be deployed within high-security enterprises. “We are the first in the Pentagon's secret network,” he said. His goal is to become the Pentagon's primary AI-powered chat assistant (separate from the AI chatbot the Pentagon itself…