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Category: Global IT News

Ram delays electric truck launch to 2026, bets on extended range Ramcharger

Stellantis is tapping the brakes on the all-electric Ram 1500 REV truck and will push its launch into 2026, the company said Wednesday, citing slowing industry demand for half-ton battery electric pickups. The automaker had originally planned to begin selling the electric truck to customers in the first half of 2025. The automaker will instead…

OpenAI may pay its nonprofit arm ‘billions of dollars’ in conversion to for-profit

OpenAI’s transition away from a for-profit corporation that’s governed by a nonprofit board is well underway — and the nonprofit could be compensated royally for it. That’s according to The New York Times, which reports that OpenAI is in discussions to pay the nonprofit billions of dollars for it to cede control. There’s pressure to…

YouTube says it will start cracking down on videos with clickbait titles in India

A lot of YouTube videos have flashy, misleading titles and thumbnails, such as “BREAKING NEWS” or “The president steps down,” to bait the user into watching the video, which has non-related content. YouTube said Wednesday that it is now cracking down on such videos — especially if videos with topics breaking news or current events…

Access bets people will pay thousands of dollars a year for guaranteed restaurant reservations

Once, not long ago, booking a table at a hot new restaurant didn’t entail a midnight dash to Resy. Truly, we didn’t know how good we had it then. Hours-long lines out the door are now the norm, not the exception, in major cities from New York to Los Angeles. One reason is that restaurants…

Virtuozzo Welcomes Founders Back to Drive Cloud Efficiency in 2025

Virtuozzo has built a partner network of over 700 solution providers across 85 countries that utilize the company’s variety of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), multi-cloud Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Kubernetes hosting, object storage, cloud data platform and other solutions. The company, which services an emerging demand for complex cloud computing without full reliance on the traditional…

YouTube to test a way for creators and celebrities to find AI-generated content using their likeness

YouTube is partnering with the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) to help celebrities, athletes, and creators identify content that uses their AI-generated likeness on the platform. The tool, which YouTube will begin testing early next year, will let these professionals submit requests for the removal of their AI-generated likeness. YouTube will first make the tool available for…

Felix Capital’s Julien Codorniou to join 20VC as general partner

Just a few weeks after 20VC announced its third investment vehicle, TechCrunch has learned from multiple sources that the relatively new VC firm based in London is gaining a new general partner. Julien Codorniou is leaving Felix Capital, where he has been a founding advisor since 2015 and a partner since 2021, to join 20VC…

Aave protocol developer secures $31 million for Lens, a high-performance blockchain for social apps

Avara, the company behind Aave, Lens and Family, is announcing a $31 million funding round led by Lightspeed Faction. With Lens, Avara is building a decentralized protocol that could serve as the infrastructure for social and consumer apps. This funding announcement comes a few weeks after Lens unveiled a completely overhauled version of its protocol,…

Twilio named a Leader in 2024-2025 IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Customer Data Platforms focused on B2C users

Twilio Segment is recognized for its strength in AI innovation, unified profiles and data management COMPANY NEWS: Twilio Inc. (NYSE: TWLO), the customer engagement platform that drives real-time, personalised experiences for today’s leading brands, today announced that it has been positioned in the Leaders Category of the IDC MarketScape for Worldwide Customer Data Platforms focused…

Vendor Dynamics To Reshape APAC Channel Expectations for 2025

The Australian channel is anticipating a more positive 2025 after a year marked by delayed decisions and extended sales cycles, but the big successes will be found by those channel organisations that can adjust to the changing expectations that major vendors have of their partners. “Most of the folks I’ve spoken to have said business…

WeTransfer’s free plan now has a monthly limit of 10 transfers

File transfer service WeTransfer is now limiting users to 10 transfers per month with its free plan. The company is already applying the new limit to users, as per a support page. At the same time, WeTransfer is adding some perks to the free plan, including increasing the overall file transfer limit from 2GB to…

A Wake-Up Call for Australia’s Telecom Sector: Lessons from the U.S. “Salt Typhoon” Hack

GUEST OPINION:   Recent revelations about “Salt Typhoon,” the worst telecom data breach in U.S. history, serve as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities inherent in modern telecommunications infrastructure. This state-sponsored cyber-attack, attributed to Chinese actors, not only compromised sensitive call metadata but also exposed the fragility of critical infrastructure systems. For Australian business executives, the warning…

AI is burying company web sites in search results, but Otterly.AI thinks it can help

Many sites saw their organic traffic decline in 2024, in big part due to the rise of AI-generated search results. Many queries no longer lead to click-throughs, and even when users click, it is hard for companies to get more context on searches made within apps like ChatGPT or Perplexity. The answer to this problem…

Why AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) will increasingly rely on unstructured data being more visible, organised, and accessible

GUEST OPINION:  As the modern organisation enters a new phase of technological evolution with the widespread move towards smarter systems based upon Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs), the volume and accessibility of data with which to feed these systems will become critical.

Threads is testing a post scheduling feature

Meta’s social network Threads is experimenting with a feature that will let you schedule posts, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said. Users who will get to test this feature won’t be able to schedule replies. “We want to balance giving people more control to plan their Threads posts while still encouraging real-time conversations,” he said. People…

‘It’s dumb to IPO this year’: Databricks CEO explains why he’s waiting to go public

Databricks just closed one of the largest funding rounds ever, raising a staggering $10 billion in fresh capital. Naturally, technology investors were quick to ask what this means for the company’s highly anticipated IPO. During an event in San Francisco on Tuesday night, Databricks CEO Ali Ghodsi explained why he’s waiting until at least 2025…

India’s MobiKwik surges 82% in market debut

Shares in digital payments firm MobiKwik surged 82% to ₹507.5 ($6) on their first day of trading, as the Indian fintech company made its market debut amid fierce competition from larger rivals. The listing pushed MobiKwik’s market value to $464 million, well above its initial target of $250 million for the public offering. The valuation…

Salesforce plans to hire 2,000 people to sell its AI products

Cloud software giant Salesforce looks to hire thousands of new sales people to sell its AI tools to customers. The company plans to hire 2,000 new sales representatives, according to CNBC, which cited remarks from CEO Marc Benioff at a company event Tuesday. This doubles the hiring plans that Benioff told Bloomberg last month. Benioff…

OpenAI says it has no plans for a Sora API — yet

OpenAI says it has no plans to release an API for Sora, its AI model that can generate reasonably realistic videos when provided with a text description or reference image. During an AMA with members of OpenAI’s dev team, Romain Huet, head of developer experience at OpenAI, said that a Sora API isn’t in the…

Grubhub to pay $25M for ‘deceptive’ practices against customers, drivers

Grubhub will pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul over unlawful practices, including misleading customers about delivery costs, deceiving drivers about potential earnings, and listing restaurants on its platform without their permission. The agencies claim that Grubhub hid the true cost of its delivery…

AI boom masks fundraising struggles for non-AI startups

Earlier this year, IVP general partner Tom Loverro, proclaimed that the post-pandemic downturn is over, and companies that made it this far should prioritize growth over cost-cutting. Yet, the companies still struggling to raise their next round of financing at a higher valuation or survive altogether could still be in the thousands, according to Brian…

Bob Lee verdict: Cash App creator’s killer found guilty of second-degree murder

A San Francisco jury has found Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing of Bob Lee, the Cash App creator and former CTO of Block, according to NBC News Bay Area on Tuesday. The jury found Momeni not guilty of first-degree murder, meaning jurors decided the murder of Lee was not premeditated. Lee…

Bridgy Fed, a project to connect the open social web, is now becoming a nonprofit

Bridgy Fed, which is working to connect the social network Bluesky with the wider fediverse (aka the open social web), which includes sites like Mastodon and others, will be the first app incubated within a new nonprofit called A New Social. The organization, announced Tuesday, aims to bring together developers, researchers, startups, and industry leaders…

Cash App creator Bob Lee’s killer found guilty of second-degree murder

A San Francisco jury has found Nima Momeni guilty of second-degree murder in the stabbing death of Bob Lee, the Cash App creator and former CTO of Block, according to NBC News Bay Area on Tuesday. The jury found Momeni not guilty of first-degree murder, meaning jurors decided the murder of Lee was not premeditated.…

This fintech processed $1B in payments through word-of-mouth

Welcome to TechCrunch Fintech! This week, we’re diving into: P.S. We’re taking time off for the holidays! TechCrunch Fintech scribe Mary Ann Azevedo will be back in your inbox on January 7. ❄️ The big story How stablecoin technology can power billions in cross-border transactions Juicyway is an African fintech that’s leveraging stablecoin technology to…

Grammarly acquires productivity startup Coda, brings on new CEO

Grammarly is acquiring productivity startup Coda, the company announced on Tuesday. As part of the deal, Coda’s CEO and co-founder Shishir Mehrotra will become the new CEO of Grammarly. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition will help turn Grammarly’s AI assistant into an “AI productivity platform” thanks to the addition…

OpenAI brings its o1 reasoning model to its API — for certain developers

OpenAI is bringing o1, its “reasoning” AI model, to its API — but only for certain developers to start. Starting today, o1 will begin rolling out to devs in OpenAI’s “tier 5” usage category, the company said. To qualify for tier 5, developers have to spend at least $1,000 with OpenAI and have an account…

Google joins $90M investment into Cassava to bolster Africa’s digital infrastructure

With cloud spend continuing to surge, tech companies are scrambling to meet demand for the necessary infrastructure, with the growing need for AI compute only adding fuel to the fire. By way of example, Microsoft and BlackRock have created a $30 billion fund to support new data centers and energy infrastructure for the burgeoning AI…

Google says customers can use its AI in ‘high-risk’ domains, so long as there’s human supervision

Google has changed its terms to clarify that customers can deploy its generative AI tools to make “automated decisions” in “high-risk” domains, like healthcare, so long as there’s a human in the loop. According to the company’s updated Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy, published on Tuesday, customers may use Google’s generative AI to make “automated…

UK consults on opt-out model for training AIs on copyrighted content

The U.K. government is consulting on an opt-out copyright regime for AI training that would require rights holders to take active steps if they don’t want their intellectual property to become free AI training fodder. The rise of generative AI models that are trained on vast quantities of data has brought intellectual property concerns to…

Cavelo CEO on Bringing Data & Security Platform Exclusively Through Channel

Data asset discovery and classification vendor Cavelo was founded in 2020 to alleviate budgetary and skill restrictions that keep businesses from securing their organizations. In 2024, the company shifted to focus entirely on operating through the channel with MSP, MSSP, and VAR relationships. Channel Insider spoke with Cavelo CEO James Mignacca to learn more about…

Video: The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly Of AI With ABM Technology Group

In Part 2 of this interview, Zac Paulson, Director of Product and Strategy at ABM Technology Group, explains to Channel Insider: Partner POV host Katie Bavoso the unfortunate trend of clients accepting a cybersecurity strategy and related solutions only after they’ve had a breach or close call. He says it’s driven his business to not…

Code Assist, Google’s enterprise-focused coding assistant, gets third-party tools

Google on Tuesday announced support for third-party tools in Gemini Code Assist, its enterprise-focused AI code completion service. Code Assist launched in April as a rebrand of a similar service Google offered under its now-defunct Duet AI branding. Available through plug-ins for popular dev environments like VS Code and JetBrains, Code Assist is powered by Google’s Gemini…

Slip Robotics snags $28M for its bots that can load a truck in five minutes

Drop by any given loading dock and a buzz of forklifts — loaded up with goods — can be spotted maneuvering in and out of truck trailers. This logistical dance can take up to an hour to fill a trailer, leaving truck drivers in idle limbo. The founders of Atlanta-based Slip Robotics say they’ve developed…

SoundCloud introduces a cheaper plan for artists

Music streaming platform SoundCloud announced Tuesday that it is introducing a new, cheaper paid plan for artists simply called Artist, while renaming its Next Pro plan to Artist Pro. The new basic tier will cost $39 per year and put some limits on features like track amplification, distribution, monetization, and AI mastering. Artists subscribing to…

FTC bans hidden junk fees in short-term lodging, live-event ticket prices

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission passed a rule on Tuesday banning hidden “junk fees” for live events, hotels, and vacation rentals. The agency says the new rule prohibits “bait-and-switch pricing,” and other practices that hide total prices and bury junk fees in the live-event ticketing and short-term lodging industries, noting that these “unfair and deceptive”…

Shein must cede Indians’ data, control of local ops to re-enter India

Shein must surrender all data of Indian customers and control of its local operations to its partner, Reliance Retail, and keep operations fully local to re-enter the Indian market, according to new government disclosures that reveal how the apparel and accessories retailer secured a rare exception to India’s ban on Chinese-linked apps. In a parliamentary…

Wyebot Partners With Zebra Technologies To Automate WiFi Intelligence

Network automation vendor Wyebot announced recently it has joined the Zebra PartnerConnect program. The partnership will bring Wyebot’s Wireless Intelligence Platform to Zebra customers and give Wyebot access to Zebra’s portfolio, along with training, marketing, sales, and technical benefits. “As a PartnerConnect member, Wyebot now has access to industry-leading solutions, training and tools that will…

Popular LatAm digital payment service AstroPay launches multi-currency wallet

AstroPay has been around since 2009. The bootstrapped company currently has 320 employees and is profitable. And yet, it’s not a name that comes up often in startup news. The company originally started its life as a payment service provider focused on Latin America — an alternative payment method that you would find next to the…

Nuon helps companies deploy their software into their customers’ cloud accounts

Jon Morehouse launched PowerTools in 2019 to help companies ship static sites and serverless apps to their cloud accounts on providers like AWS and Azure. When a customer asked him if they could use PowerTools to deploy their software into one of their customer’s cloud accounts, Morehouse was skeptical. Morehouse told TechCrunch that after that…

CyberArk Unveils Breakthrough Open-Source Tool That Helps Organisations Safeguard Against AI Model Jailbreaks

CyberArk (NASDAQ: CYBR), the global leader in identity security, announced the launch of FuzzyAI, a cutting-edge open-source framework that has jailbroken every tested AI model. Fuzzy AI helps organisations identify and address AI model vulnerabilities, like guardrail bypassing and harmful output generation, in cloud-hosted and in-house AI models.  FuzzyAI’s fully extensible framework is available as open-source…

Pineapple on pizza is delicious — and if you disagree, you can’t log in to WordPress.org

There are few matters in life that divide a room more than the prudence of putting pineapple on pizza. But if you’re of the persuasion that tropical fruit has no place on a pie, you’ll have to swallow a bitter pill — if you want to access the WordPress.org developer portal and forum, at least.…

Dragos Industrial Ransomware Analysis: Q3 2024

GUEST RESEARCH:  Dragos’s Industrial Ransomware Analysis Report Q3 2024  revealed that the ransomware threat ecosystem remained highly active, driven by the emergence of new groups, rebranding of existing entities, the expansion of initial access broker (IAB) operations, and the proliferation of illicitly traded tools. Operators demonstrated a growing ability to adapt to disruptions, leveraging technological advancements…

Remote enables USDC crypto payouts for contractors

Getting paid in cryptocurrencies may sound like a bad idea, but this could be an actually useful feature for international contractors. Remote, the company that lets you hire people and manage contractors all around the world, is introducing crypto payouts on Tuesday. Companies based in the U.S. can start paying their contractors with stablecoins in…

Boomi Boosts Data Management Capabilities With Acquisition of Modern Data Integration Provider Rivery

Boomi, the intelligent integration and automation leader, today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Rivery, a modern data integration provider that offers cutting-edge Change Data Capture (CDC) for real-time, efficient data movement. Rivery’s skilled data management team will join Boomi, strengthening the company’s ability to deliver world-class solutions to customers and accelerate its trajectory as…

While some account-to-account payments players falter, Volume raises fresh cash

Online merchants can usually pay up to 8% of every sale on an item to companies like PayPal, Apple Pay, and Stripe — and those costs are usually passed to consumers. So-called ‘account-to-account’ or ‘A2A’ payments can cut transaction fees to below 1%, saving merchants and consumers quite a bit of cash. The difficulty has been…

Meta to set up $50M privacy payment scheme to settle Australian proceeding

Meta has agreed to a $50 million payment program to settle a long-running proceeding in Australia related to misuse of information for political ad targeting, the country’s information watchdog OAIC announced Tuesday. The settlement concerns the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, when data on millions of Facebook users was exfiltrated without their knowledge or consent by…

HR professionals confident AI will improve organisational productivity and performance

But survey highlights industry concerns about regulatory changes, risks of bias, accuracy and discrimination HR professionals are overwhelmingly confident AI will boost productivity and performance but many are concerned about data and security, the latest research from the Australian HR Institute (AHRI) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) shows.

Kakao Mobility hit with $10.5M antitrust fine for limiting rivals’ access

South Korea’s antitrust watchdog has fined Kakao Mobility, the ride-hailing unit of Korean tech firm Kakao, $10.5 million (KRW 15.1 billion) for limiting competitors’ access to its taxi app — lowering the penalty from an initial fine of $50.3 million (KRW 72.4 billion) as the earlier sanction was based on an overestimated calculation of the…

Kris Day Joins SentinelOne as Senior Vice President and General Manager Asia Pacific and Japan

COMPANY NEWS :  SentinelOne (NYSE: S), a global leader in AI-powered security, today announced the appointment of  Kris Day as Senior Vice President  and General Manager for Asia Pacific and Japan. Based in Singapore, Day is a proven leader with an extensive track record of broad-based achievement.  At SentinelOne, he will focus on charting the company’s go-to-market and growth…

Agave, the startup behind Find the Cat, finds $18M

A startup out of Turkey that has built a hit casual mobile game where you have to find cats in Where’s Wally-style drawings of increasing complexity has found something else: $18 million in funding. Agave Games, the creator of Find the Cat, will be using the Series A to build out the team and to…

Alphabet-backed Indian lender files for IPO

Alphabet’s CapitalG-backed Aye Finance, a lender focused on India’s micro, small, and medium enterprises, is seeking to raise $171 million from its initial public offering, it disclosed in a filing Tuesday. The offering comprises a $104 million fresh share issue and a $67 million secondary sale by existing investors, with proceeds aimed at expanding the…

Nubank leads $250M round in African digital bank Tyme at $1.5B valuation

Tyme Group, a South African-born fintech operating in the African country and the Philippines, has secured $250 million in a Series D round, pushing its valuation to $1.5 billion. The funding was led by Nu Holdings (which owns NuBank), Latin America’s most valuable fintech, which invested $150 million for a 10% stake. M&G Catalyst Fund…

Hexa, the startup studio behind Aircall and Swan, unveils its next batch of startups

Hexa, a Paris-based startup studio that has launched dozens of B2B software companies, is sharing a list of its next batch of projects that are soon going to become independent startups. Hexa originally started its life in 2011 as eFounders, a startup studio focused on B2B software-as-a-service products. Hexa usually comes up with the ideas…

Mark Zuckerberg says Threads now has 100M daily active users

Meta’s X rival Threads is growing steadily with more than 100 million people using the service daily, the company’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Monday. Zuckerberg also noted that Threads now has 300 million monthly active users, up from 275 million monthly active users in November. While Meta has regularly released updated numbers about monthly active…

Waymo robotaxis are coming to Tokyo in 2025

Waymo will begin testing its autonomous vehicle technology in Tokyo in early 2025, the first time the Alphabet company’s robotaxis have driven on public roads outside the U.S. The move to Japan is part of Waymo’s so-called “road trips,” a development program that involves bringing and testing its technology in a variety of cities —…

Jay Z’s Marcy Venture Partners merges with investment arm of Pendulum Holdings

Jay Z’s venture capital firm, Marcy Venture Partners, has merged with another Black-owned investment firm, Pendulum Holding’s investment arm Pendulum Opportunities, to form MarcyPen Capital Partners, a MarcyPen spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. The newly formed MarcyPen Capital Partners has $900 million in assets under management, according to Pitchbook.  MarcyPen’s spokesperson declined to comment further on…

iRobot co-founder’s new home robot startup hopes to raise $30M

Colin Angle, one of the co-founders of Roomba maker iRobot, is raising cash for a home robotics venture. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reveals that Angle’s new company, Familiar Machines & Magic, is trying to raise $30 million. So far, it has raised $15 million from a group of eight investors.…

TuSimple drama heats up ahead of pivotal shareholder meeting

TuSimple co-founder and former CEO Xiaodi Hou is on a war path in the lead up to Friday’s annual shareholder meeting that will decide the makeup of the company’s board of directors.  Over the past several weeks, Hou has sued TuSimple for control of his voting rights, demanded the company immediately liquidate and return all…

OpenAI brings its AI-powered web search tool to more ChatGPT users

ChatGPT Search, OpenAI’s AI-powered web search experience, is now live for all ChatGPT users — with several new features in tow. By default, ChatGPT will automatically determine which questions to route through ChatGPT Search, or users can tap a new “Search the web” icon in the ChatGPT interface. ChatGPT Search shows summarized answers from different…

Google experiments with a new image generator that remixes three images into one creation

Google Labs, Google’s experimental arm, is testing a new image generator called Whisk. This tool allows people to prompt with images instead of text, allowing them to remix a photo by altering the subject, scene, and style. Whisk uses Google’s image-generation model, Imagen 3, to combine three images: one for the subject, another for the…

YouTube creators can now allow third-party companies to train AI models on their content

Google says that it’ll soon begin to allow YouTube creators and rightsholders to let third-party companies including OpenAI, Apple, and Meta to use their videos to train AI models. “Over the next few days, creators and rights holders can choose to allow third-party companies to use their content to train AI models directly in Studio…

YouTube will now let creators opt out of third-party AI training

YouTube on Monday announced it will give creators more choice over how third parties can use their content to train their AI models. Starting today, creators and rights holders will be able to flag for YouTube if they’re permitting specific third-party AI companies to train models on the creator’s content. From a new setting within…

YouTube will now let creators opt into third-party AI training

YouTube on Monday announced it will give creators more choice over how third parties can use their content to train their AI models. Starting today, creators and rights holders will be able to flag for YouTube if they’re permitting specific third-party AI companies to train models on the creator’s content. From a new setting within…

Meta updates its smart glasses with real-time AI video

Meta’s Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are getting several new AI-powered upgrades, including the ability to have an ongoing conversation and translate between languages. Ray-Ban Meta owners in Meta’s early access program for the U.S. and Canada can now download firmware v11, which adds “live AI.” First unveiled this fall, live AI lets wearers continuously converse…

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