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Category: Global IT News

These tech companies are donating to LA wildfire relief efforts

Numerous tech companies have pledged millions in donations to help LA recover from wildfires that caused widespread devastation and forced thousands to evacuate the region. Those offering aid include YouTube/Google, Meta, Snap, Amazon, Netflix, and Sony.  Here’s an overview of what each company is doing to aid relief efforts in the region: YouTube and Google:…

OpenAI is bankrolling Axios’ expansion into four new markets

OpenAI is getting into the local news game. Newsletter-based media organization Axios announced a partnership with OpenAI on Wednesday. As part of this three-year deal, the AI giant will fund Axios’ expansion of its local newsletters into four new cities: Pittsburgh; Kansas City, Missouri; Boulder, Colorado; and Huntsville, Alabama. While OpenAI has inked content-sharing and…

Tesla to split $100M award for electric truck charging corridor in Illinois

Tesla, along with three other industry partners, quietly backed an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency application that won $100 million in funding to build electric truck charging stations across the state, TechCrunch has learned. The award was the biggest given out by the Biden Administration’s Federal Highway Administration last week in the second round of what’s…

Biden administration adds 14 additional Chinese firms to trade blacklist

Days after pushing for sweeping AI chip export restriction, the Biden administration has added an additional 14 Chinese companies to its restricted trade list. This brings the full list up to 25 names, according to reporting from The Associate Press. Sophgo is, perhaps, the highest profile addition. An entity of Bitmain, the firm sparked international…

How to stream Donald Trump’s Inauguration Day 2025

Donald Trump will take the presidential oath of office on Friday in front of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., once again. The event takes place at noon ET and is expected to attract considerable attention from both supporters and opponents. How to stream Trump’s inauguration You can watch the inauguration live with cable or…

AI researcher François Chollet founds a new AI lab focused on AGI

François Chollet, an influential AI researcher, is launching a new startup that aims to build frontier AI systems with novel designs. The startup, Ndea, will consist of an AI research and science lab. It’s looking to “develop and operationalize” AGI. AGI, which stands for “artificial general intelligence,” typically refers to AI that can perform any…

Trump’s DOT pick wants EV owners to pay to use roads

Sean Duffy, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the U.S. Department of Transportation, thinks owners of electric vehicles should pay to use roads.  “How to do that, I think, is a little more challenging,” Duffy said at his confirmation hearing Wednesday before the Senate Commerce Committee.  The former Republican lawmaker is correct that it would…

This Week in AI: Will Biden’s AI actions survive the Trump era?

Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. If you want this in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. This week was something of a swan song for the Biden administration. On Monday, the White House announced sweeping new restrictions on exporting AI chips — restrictions that tech giants, including Nvidia, loudly criticized. (Nvidia’s business…

Concentrix and IRONSCALES Partner to Combat AI Deepfake Threat

Email security vendor IRONSCALES and Fortune 500 technology services provider Concentrix have partnered to combat the rising threat of AI-generated deepfakes. Channel Insider spoke with executives at both companies to learn more about why businesses need to prepare for deepfake threats and how their partnership bolsters their customers’ protection. Deepfakes becoming more sophisticated as sheer…

Bluesky is getting its own photo-sharing app, Flashes

More good news for those looking to exit Meta’s social app ecosystem in favor of a more open alternative: An independent developer is building a photo-sharing app for Bluesky called Flashes. The soon-to-launch app is powered by the same technology that underpins Bluesky, the AT Protocol, and has been built using code from the developer’s…

Why traditional loyalty programs are failing to meet modern customer expectations

GUEST OPINION: Retailers are under increasing pressure to retain customers as purchasing behaviour continues to evolve. While competitive pricing remains important, loyalty is more likely to be built on emotional connections that are strengthened by loyalty programs that offer more than just points and discounts, delivering truly personalised, value-driven experiences.

Google raises the price of Workspace plans, includes its AI features for free

Google announced on Wednesday that all AI features in Gmail, Docs, Sheets, and Meet are now available to Workspace customers at no extra charge, though the plan will see a $2 per month increase per user.  This change simplifies access to Workplace AI tools, including email summaries, automated note-taking, chatting with the Gemini bot, and…

Concur Travel becomes the first booking tool to offer ISO 14083-assured emissions data

COMPANY NEWS: The new Concur Travel has achieved a significant milestone by becoming the first online booking tool to integrate emissions calculations assured to the new ISO 14083 standard. This development made possible through its partnership with Thrust Carbon, marks a big step forward in providing accurate and consistent emissions data for customers at the…

As Gen Z job applicants balloon, companies are turning to AI agent recruiters

According to some of the latest statistics, employers are swamped by job applications. In the UK alone, employers running graduate training schemes received an average of 140 applications for each job in 2024, 59 per cent more than in 2023, according to the Institute of Student Employers. And despite some trepidations amongst a few recruiters,…

OpenAI tests letting users sign up for ChatGPT with only a phone number

OpenAI has begun testing a feature that lets new ChatGPT users sign up with only a phone number — no email required. As spotted by software engineer Tibor Blaho, the feature, which is available in beta in the U.S. and India, lets users create an account for ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot platform, by providing their…

Rockfish is helping enterprises leverage synthetic data

For years, Vyas Sekar would call up Muckai Girish, an old friend from undergrad, to talk through potential startup ideas and get Girish’s opinion. The two usually talked through an idea and ended the conversation at that. When Sekar called Girish with an idea involving synthetic data in early 2022, the conversation didn’t just end…

LinkedIn adds free AI tools for job hunters and recruiters

If you’ve ever applied or thought of applying for a job via LinkedIn, you’ll know that the experience can be immediately disheartening: Openings that look interesting typically can see hundreds or thousands of applications in a matter of hours — data that LinkedIn, a social network for the world of work, proudly exposes in its…

Microsoft’s newest Copilot plan for business is pay-as-you-go

Microsoft is launching a pay-as-you-go plan for corporate customers that bundles together several, but not all, of the company’s existing AI-powered productivity features for Microsoft 365. The new plan, Copilot Chat — not to be confused with Microsoft’s Copilot Business Chat or GitHub Copilot Chat — is underpinned by OpenAI’s GPT-4o AI model and lets…

Hinge’s new AI feature determines if your prompt response is too basic 

Hinge today launched a new AI-powered feature called “Prompt Feedback,” which aims to improve your dating profile by analyzing how you answer prompts and assessing if it needs to be more specific or authentic.  Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o mini, Prompt Feedback evaluates each response and offers personalized advice tailored to help you share interesting details…

Creator of Gas and tbh makes an app for disappearing photos via iMessage

Nikita Bier, creator of popular apps like the anonymous polling app tbh (acquired by Facebook) and the anonymous compliments app Gas (acquired by Discord), has created a new app called Explode, which focuses on disappearing messages on iMessage. Explode works as a mini app for Apple’s Messages app. It helps you send disappearing messages to…

Synthesia snaps up $180M at a $2.1B valuation for its B2B AI video platform

As the world continues to work through how to handle the explosion of deepfake content online, it seems that not all AI-created videos are stirring controversy. Synthesia, a London startup building products around highly realistic AI avatar technology, says it’s a big hit with enterprises, with some 60,000 of them — 1 million users —…

SEC sues Elon Musk for allegedly failing to disclose Twitter acquisition on time

The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk on Tuesday over an alleged securities violation relating to his acquisition of Twitter, now called X. The SEC claims Musk failed to disclose his 5% ownership stake of Twitter in a timely manner, violating federal securities law, according to a complaint filed in federal…

Nvidia backs MetAI, a Taiwanese startup that creates AI-powered digital twins

Nvidia has been doubling down on the opportunity to build robotics and other industrial AI applications, with the launch of its Omniverse platform, and most recently Mega, an Omniverse Blueprint framework to create digital twins to operate these applications. It’s also investing in digital twin startups to get the effort off the ground. Taiwan’s MetAI…

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

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 supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership…

Nintendo Switch 2 could be announced this week: The rumors (and facts) so far

With CES 2025 finally in the rearview, it’s time to move on to the next round of big hardware announcements. Rumors have emerged over the last few weeks, pointing to an imminent announcement for the next-generation of Nintendo’s wildly successful hybrid Switch console. In particular, word from industry stalwart Eurogamer (among others) pegs a January…

Intel spins off its corporate venture arm, Intel Capital, into a standalone fund

Intel says that it plans to spin off its corporate venture arm, Intel Capital, into a standalone fund, with Intel as an “anchor investor.” In a press release on Tuesday, Intel said that the move will “[enable] greater autonomy” and “the flexibility to attract external capital.” Intel expects Intel Capital to begin operating independently in…

Meta execs obsessed over beating OpenAI’s GPT-4 internally, court filings reveal

Executives and researchers leading Meta’s AI efforts obsessed over beating OpenAI’s GPT-4 model while developing Llama 3, according to internal messages unsealed by a court on Tuesday in one of the company’s ongoing AI copyright cases, Kadrey v. Meta. “Honestly… Our goal needs to be GPT-4,” said Meta’s VP of Generative AI, Ahmad Al-Dahle, in…

DJI Flip is a $439, fully foldable camera drone

Four short months after introducing the truly palm-size Neo, DJI is back with another pint-sized consumer drone. The Flip continues the drone giant’s interest in foldable form factors, with a quartet of propeller guards that essentially stack up, for maximum portability. The new Flip continues to blur the lines in DJI’s existing consumer portfolio, combing…

Substack rolls out livestreaming for all publishers

After testing live video features in the fall, newsletter platform Substack announced on Tuesday that it is now making livestreaming available to all publishers. This new feature allows creators to engage with their viewers and collaborate with other publishers.  The introduction of livestreaming indicates that Substack is following in the footsteps of other platforms like…

TikTok users’ attempted migration to Chinese app RedNote isn’t going too well

American TikTok users have been thumbing their collective noses at the U.S. government’s decision to ban TikTok by spitefully joining another Chinese social media app, Red Note (aka Xiaohongshu), sending it to the top of the U.S. App Store on Monday. Unfortunately, many of those who already made the transition have faced problems with having…

CBRE buys remainder of co-working company Industrious at an $800M valuation

Real estate giant CBRE announced Tuesday that it is acquiring the rest of co-working startup Industrious, in which it already had a sizable investment, at a valuation of over $800 million. Founded in 2013, New York-based Industrious raised a total of $522 million in funding from investors including Riverwood Capital and Fifth Wall Ventures. Its last…

Biden administration opens up federal land to AI data centers

With less than a week left in office, President Joe Biden is not done leaving his mark on the AI industry. President Biden issued an executive order on Tuesday that will allow private sector AI companies to lease federal sites owned by the Department of Defense and Department of Energy in order to build AI…

ChatGPT now lets you schedule reminders and recurring tasks

Paying users of OpenAI’s ChatGPT can now ask the AI assistant to schedule reminders or recurring requests. The new beta feature, called tasks, will start rolling out to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Pro users around the globe this week. With tasks, users can set simple reminders with ChatGPT such as, “Remind me when my passport…

Meta to cut roughly 5% of its workforce based on performance

Meta is reducing its workforce by about 5% through performance-based terminations, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday. The company plans to hire new people to fill the roles, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an internal memo to staff. “I’ve decided to raise the bar on performance management and move out low-performers faster,” Zuckerberg said in the note. “We…

Apple joins consortium to help develop next-gen AI data center tech

Apple has joined a consortium creating next-gen technology to link together chips in AI data centers. The consortium, the Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium, is developing a standard called UALink, which connects the AI accelerator chips found within a growing number of server farms. As of Tuesday, Apple is a member of the consortium’s board, along…

A 24-year-old who exited his first company to Coinbase raises $3M for his next venture

At 24 years old, Pryce Yebesi already has one exit: selling his crypto invoicing company Utopia Labs to Coinbase for an undisclosed amount.  Some founders don’t just have one company in them. On Monday, Yebesi announced the launch of his new company, Open Ledger, which embeds automated accounting software into products that enterprises and small…

WhatsApp is adding a way to turn selfies into stickers

WhatsApp is adding new features including creating new stickers from selfies, sharing sticker packs, and adding new camera effects. Stickers and camera effects are good engagement ploys to keep users interacting with their contacts. The chat app added the ability to create custom stickers from photos last year. Now, the company is adding an option…

OpenAI quietly revises policy doc to remove reference to ‘politically unbiased’ AI

OpenAI has quietly removed language endorsing “politically unbiased” AI from one of its recently published policy documents. In the original draft of its “economic blueprint” for the AI industry in the U.S., OpenAI said that AI models “should aim to be politically unbiased by default.” A new draft, made available Monday, deletes that phrasing. When…

With $30 million in new funding, SEEQC thinks chips are key to building useful quantum computing

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang may have said that “very useful quantum computers” are probably still 20 years away, but his company is also hedging its bets beyond classical chips with investments and partnerships in that very space. Now one of the companies that Nvidia partners with in quantum development is announcing funding. SEEQC, a quantum…

Aurora takes feds to court over safety rules as it nears self-driving truck launch 

Aurora Innovation is taking federal safety regulators to court in a case that could have far-reaching implications for self-driving truck companies operating in a regulatory environment designed around humans. The fight centers around the rather commonplace practice of placing physical warning triangles around semi trucks stopped along highways. The court denied Aurora’s request to be…

EV startup Harbinger’s obsession with simplicity fuels $100M Series B

It’s not an easy time to raise money for an electric vehicle startup, especially given how many have failed or are close to failing. But Los Angeles-based Harbinger has pulled it off by taking an hyper-focused approach to electrifying commercial trucking.  The reward is a $100 million Series B, co-led by early Tesla investor Capricorn…

Decentralized Instagram alternative Pixelfed launches mobile apps

Pixelfed, a decentralized alternative to Instagram, has launched its official mobile apps. The service today runs on the same ActivityPub protocol that powers an open source X alternative Mastodon, a YouTube competitor PeerTube, and other decentralized social apps, including now Meta’s Threads and Flipboard (plus its newer app, Surf), that are part of a growing…

Brad Perriott Joins SentinelOne as Area Vice President, Australia and New Zealand

SentinelOne (NYSE: S), a global leader in AI-powered security, today announced that Brad Perriott has joined its team as Area Vice President, Australia and New Zealand. In this role, the technology-industry veteran will lead a  regional team of sales representatives and spearhead the company’s efforts to expand and accelerate adoption of SentinelOne’s market-leading cybersecurity platform amongst…

Massachusetts senator seeks to extend deadline for TikTok ban

Senatory Ed Markey (D-Mass.) is planning to introduce legislation to extend the TikTok ban deadline by 270 days. TikTok has warned of a looming shutdown in just five days, but the new legislation, officially called the Extend the TikTok Deadline Act, would give TikTok more time to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance, if approved by Congress. TikTok…

OpenAI’s AI reasoning model ‘thinks’ in Chinese sometimes and no one really knows why

Shortly after OpenAI released o1, its first “reasoning” AI model, people began noting a curious phenomenon. The model would sometimes begin “thinking” in Chinese, Persian, or some other language — even when asked a question in English. Given a problem to sort out — e.g. “How many R’s are in the word ‘strawberry?’” — o1…

Kayak founder returns with Steppin, an app that locks you out of social media until you go for a walk

App stores are filled with different services that are designed to help you cut down on your screen time and count your steps. A new iOS app called Steppin combines these two ideas to help users do both at the same time to bridge the gap between physical and mental health.  Steppin blocks your social…

Thoras helps companies reach reliability without overspending on cloud costs

For years, twin sisters Nilo Rahmani and Jen Rahmani swapped stories — and commiserated — over the pain points they were facing in their respective engineering jobs. Nilo told TechCrunch that a frequent topic of conversation was about frustrations over the reliability platforms they were using at work. When they noticed the reliability landscape starting…

UK’s CMA slaps Google Search and its 90%+ market share with an antitrust investigation

The Competition and Markets Authority — the U.K.’s antitrust watchdog — is wasting no time in lodging its first official investigation of 2025 under its new rules that came into effect this month. It’s looking into the market dominance of Google in Search, including the new work it’s doing in AI search as well as…

Bioptimus raises $41M to develop a ‘GPT for biology’

A fledgling French AI startup has raised $41 million to develop a foundational AI model for biology. Just as OpenAI’s ChatGPT has taken the world by storm for a super-smart generative AI tool capable of natural language conversation in text form, Bioptimus is taking that concept but training its model specifically for downstream biological applications…

How Barcelona became an unlikely hub for spyware startups

Barcelona’s mix of affordable cost of living and quality of life has helped create a vibrant startup community — and become a hotbed for the creation of surveillance technologies. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

How to scale AI in Australia’s financial services industry

The Australian financial services (FSI) industry has been at the forefront of innovation, driven by rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). While several industries have also been on this journey, FSIs have shown the strongest appetite for AI-led solutions. This is further fuelled by the industry’s highly proactive regulatory environment and dynamic financial market.

As TikTok faces a US shutdown, here are some alternative apps to check out

TikTok has warned of a looming shutdown in just six days, as the Supreme Court is currently weighing the law that would ban the app. So we thought it’s time to take a look at other platforms that may be able to fill the TikTok-shaped hole in our lives.  The law gives TikTok parent company…

Robinhood agrees to pay $45M in SEC settlement

Robinhood has agreed to fork out $45 million to settle an investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission over several alleged violations, reported the Wall Street Journal on Monday. The settlement is being made via two of Robinhood’s brokerage units. One of the violations relates to Robinhood’s November 2021 confirmation that it was hacked “with…

The CIA’s first CTO, Nand Mulchandani, prepares for the Trump administration

In April 2022, the CIA decided to swipe right on Nand Mulchandani, appointing him as its first-ever Chief Technology Officer. It was a good look for the CIA. Mulchandani, who previously served as the CTO and acting director of the Defense Department’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, is something of a rare breed in Washington. Before…

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are slamming Meta over its fact-checking policy

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have joined the ranks of those displeased with Meta’s changes to fact-checking and have released a statement saying that the changes “directly underminds free speech.”  “Meta’s changes to its ‘Hateful Content Policies’ do not protect free expression but instead foster an environment where abuse and hate speech silence and threaten…

Top New York VC Ben Lerer says more mid-sized VC firms are heading for failure

Ben Lerer, managing partner of one of New York’s most prestigious seed-stage venture firms, Lerer Hippeau, shared some predictions with Fortune’s Leo Schwartz. He believes venture firms will continue to see a bifurcation as money pours mostly into top funds like Thrive and a16z, as well as into smaller more bespoke funds.  “Where you go…

A new campaign aims to safeguard social media from billionaires using Bluesky’s underlying tech

As Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg continue to reshape the social media space, a group of international tech entrepreneurs and advocates has launched a campaign to protect social media from the control and influence of billionaires. The initiative, Free Our Feeds, aims to protect Bluesky’s underlying technology, the AT Protocol, and leverage it to create…

‘Free Our Feeds’ campaign aims to billionaire-proof Bluesky’s tech

As Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg continue to reshape the social media space, a group of international tech entrepreneurs and advocates has launched a campaign to protect social media from the control and influence of billionaires. The initiative, Free Our Feeds, aims to protect Bluesky’s underlying technology, the AT Protocol, and leverage it to create…

Raspberry AI raises $24M from a16z to accelerate fashion design

The world of fashion is moving at a faster pace each year. Most retailers introduce new styles each season, and fast-fashion companies like Shein, H&M and Zara update their collections continuously.  To keep pace with the rapid demand for new styles, brands and manufacturers have been turning to tech to accelerate their design process. Raspberry…

A 24-year-old who exited his first company to Coinbase, raises $3M for his next venture

At 24 years old, Pryce Yebesi already has one exit: selling his crypto invoicing company Utopia Labs to Coinbase for an undisclosed amount.  Some founders don’t just have one company in them. On Monday, Yebesi announced the launch of his new company, OpenLedger, which embeds automated accounting software into products enterprises and small businesses already…

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