Category: Uncategorized

Syndicate One is a debut investment firm out of Belgium that has raised a €6.5 million fund to back Belgian founders and startups. While the amount is small, the significance is that it is the first Belgian fund to have the support of all four of the federal regions of the country. This, in a… Read more

With disinformation on the rise, especially given the explosion of AI, companies are just as vulnerable to its effects as individuals. Refute is a London-based startup that detects and responds to disinformation on behalf of these commercial entities. It’s now raised a £2.3 million ($2.9 million) pre-seed round led by UK investors Playfair and Episode 1.… Read more

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Thursday launched an investigation into Character.AI and 14 other technology platforms over child privacy and safety concerns. The investigation will assess whether Character.AI — and other platforms that are popular with young people, including Reddit, Instagram and Discord — conform to Texas’ child privacy and safety laws. The investigation… Read more

Microsoft has announced the newest addition to its Phi family of generative AI models. Called Phi-4, the model is improved in several areas over its predecessors, Microsoft claims — in particular math problem solving. That’s partly the result of improved training data quality. Phi-4 is available in very limited access as of Thursday night: only… Read more

Meta is open sourcing a method to watermark AI-generated videos. Called Meta Video Seal, the company says it’s robust against compression and edits. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Read more

Gemini is Google’s long-promised, next-gen generative AI model family. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Read more

Roundabouts. They trapped Clark Griswold in National Lampoon’s European Vacation and now they’ve tripped up a Waymo robotaxi. A video is circulating on social media showing a Waymo robotaxi going round and round on a roundabout — as if it is stuck in a loop. A Waymo spokesperson told TechCrunch there were no passengers onboard… Read more

Late-stage deals in space have been on the decline this year, but one notable exception is Fleet Space Technologies’ $100 million Series D.  The Adelaide, Australia-based startup raised the new funding to accelerate the development of ExoSphere, a platform to enable real-time mineral prospecting from space. The company currently has two satellites in low Earth… Read more

Cap table management firm Carta is under fire from some founders who say cancelling their subscriptions is too hard. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Read more

Zoox co-founder and CTO Jesse Levinson told the crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 that he didn’t think Tesla would launch a robotaxi ride-hailing service in California (or anywhere else) next year, despite what Elon Musk had claimed. The “fundamental issue is they don’t have technology that works,” he said at the time. But it seems that… Read more