They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and Google seems to agree. On Tuesday, the company added a feature to its AI-powered Gemini chatbot that the company is calling Canvas. Similar in concept to OpenAI’s identically-named Canvas tool for ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Artifacts,...
Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by former Okta exec Alex Salazar and former Redis engineer Sam Partee, has raised $12 million from Laude Ventures. Laude is the new fund launched in 2024 by Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski, the UC Berkeley computer scientist who also co-founded Databricks....
AI coding assistants are becoming wildly popular, with the vast majority of respondents in GitHub’s latest poll saying that they’ve adopted AI tools in some form. Y Combinator partner Jared Friedman recently claimed that a quarter of YC’s W25 startup batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI....
In a brief message Tuesday morning on Threads, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company’s “open” AI model family, Llama, hit 1 billion downloads. That’s up from 650 million downloads as of early December 2024 — a ~53% increase over a roughly three-month period. Llama,...
It’s time to make your voice heard. After receiving an overwhelming amount of applications for speakers at TechCrunch Sessions: AI, we have chosen six incredible finalists. TC Sessions: AI takes place on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley — and you have the...
According to a report, AI startup Anthropic is working on voice capabilities for its AI-powered chatbot, Claude. The company’s chief product officer, Mike Krieger, told the Financial Times that Anthropic plans to launch experiences that allow users to talk to Anthropic’s AI models. “We are...
During a health-focused event in New York on Tuesday, Google announced that it’s developing a collection of “open” AI models for drug discovery called TxGemma. The AI models, which Google said will be released through its Health AI Developer Foundations program later this month, can...
A new iOS social wellness app called Exist wants to help middle-aged consumers connect and build meaningful communities with one another as they navigate their lives and the stresses that come with it. The app describes itself as the edgier cousin of Calm or Headspace,...
Google on Tuesday announced new products and features aimed at healthcare use cases, including improved overviews in Google Search for health queries, medical records APIs, and new health-focused “open” AI models. In Search, Google says it’s using AI and ranking systems to expand “knowledge panel”...
So-called “vibe coding” with LLM-driven tools like Cursor Composer — a term coined by renowned computer scientist Andrej Karpathy — describes a hands-off approach to writing code using Gen AI models, and it has really taken off recently. According to Y Combinator, one quarter of...
Y Combinator-backed Nigerian food procurement startup Vendease has changed its employee pay structure and is seeking fresh capital, TechCrunch has learned. This is after laying off 44% of its workforce — around 120 employees —last month, marking its second round of job cuts in five...
U.S. President Trump’s wide-ranging tariff hikes are already resulting in growth forecasts being cut amid other uncertainty — actions that will inevitably impact the technology sector, too. Today, however, one food e-commerce startup, GrubMarket, is announcing a new equity round of $50 million on a...
Google’s parent company Alphabet is again in advanced talks to acquire cloud cybersecurity startup Wiz, a person familiar with the deal told TechCrunch. The two companies were close to securing a deal at a $23 billion valuation last summer, but the transaction failed to materialize. ...
Liam Fedus, OpenAI’s VP of research for post-training, is leaving the company to found a materials science AI startup. The Information initially reported Fedus’ plans. In a statement on X, Fedus confirmed the report and added a few additional details. “My undergrad was in physics...
Intel’s new CEO Lip-Bu Tan seems ready to get right to work to turn around the struggling company. The semiconductor giant’s new executive is considering sweeping changes for the company’s chip manufacturing and AI strategies, according to Reuters, including: cutting middle management staff and revamping...
It’s gloves off in one of the more tense rivalries in the world of startups. HR company Rippling Monday morning announced a lawsuit against Deel, another big player in the same space. The dramatic 50-page complaint alleges racketeering, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair...
While the rapid pace of funding has slowed, many fintechs are continuing to see growth and expand their teams. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
Flexport accuses Freightmate of being the product of "theft, not ingenuity" in its lawsuit against the startup. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has acquired Hotshot, a startup working on AI-powered video generation tools along the lines of OpenAI’s Sora. Aakash Sastry, Hotshot’s CEO and co-founder, announced the news in a post on X on Monday. “Over the past 2 years we’ve built...
OpenAI will soon begin testing a way for business customers to connect apps like Slack and Google Drive to ChatGPT. OpenAI plans to start beta testing a new feature called ChatGPT Connectors, according to a document viewed by TechCrunch. ChatGPT Connectors will allow ChatGPT Team...
Artificial intelligence continues stirring things up in chemistry. To wit: YC-backed Cambridge, U.K.-based ReactWise is using AI to speed up chemical manufacture — a key step in bringing new drugs to market. Once a promising drug has been identified in the lab, pharma firms need...
Last week, at the Abundance Summit in Los Angeles, billionaire entrepreneur Travis Kalanick gave attendees a rare glimpse into his vision for the future of his newest company, CloudKitchens. While today the eight-year-old L.A.-based outfit is known for a growing real estate portfolio that it...
We’ve been blown away by the overwhelming response to speak at TechCrunch Sessions: AI on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley. After thorough consideration, we’ve selected six standout finalists. The power to choose who will take the stage and share their AI expertise...
Palmetto has developed a virtual view of how every residential building in the U.S. was built. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
Roblox announced Monday that it’s launching the first iteration of its 3D model, dubbed “Cube,” to allow creators to create 3D objects using generative AI. The company also launched an open-source version so anyone off the platform can build on it. Announced last year at...
GTC, Nvidia’s biggest conference of the year, starts this week in San Jose. We're on the ground covering all the major developments. CEO Jensen Huang will give a keynote address focusing on — what else? — AI and accelerating computing technologies, according to Nvidia. We’re expecting...
Thousands of US Department of Agriculture employees, including food inspectors and disease-sniffing-dog trainers, remain out of work, leaving food to rot in ports and pests to proliferate....
A lot of the focus in generative AI up to now has been on text-based interfaces used to generate text, images and more. The next wave appears to be voice, and it’s rolling in fast. In the latest development, Google today announced that it would...
Google is doubling down on building out its AI business in the U.K., and on Monday morning in London, the CEO of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian appeared alongside customers BT and WPP to spell out some of its plans....
Users on social media have discovered a controversial use case for Google’s new Gemini AI model: removing watermarks from images, including from images published by Getty Images and other well-known stock media outfits. Last week, Google expanded access to its Gemini 2.0 Flash model’s image...