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Amazon’s Alexa Fund is now backing AI startups
Amazon started the Alexa Fund in 2015 to back early-stage voice startups. With the advent of large language models and Amazon launching Gen AI-powered Alexa+ along with a family of multimodal AI models, the fund now wants to broaden its scope and invest more in AI startups. In a blog post Amazon shared with TechCrunch…
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What’s next for ATProto, the protocol powering Bluesky and other apps
It’s getting easier to build new applications on ATProto, the protocol that powers Bluesky’s social network and a growing number of other apps. At ATmosphere, the ATProto community conference held over the weekend in Seattle, Bluesky CTO Paul Frazee offered attendees a glimpse of what’s ahead for the protocol’s development and how those will help…
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Krisp is using AI to help Indians sound like Americans on calls
Audio startup Krisp on Wednesday said it is launching a new feature that uses AI to change a user’s accent during calls. The company is initially rolling out support for changing Indian English accents to U.S. English. The startup says the accent conversion process preserves the speaker’s voice and only switches phonemes to match American…
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The TikTok ban is losing support among Americans, study says
Americans’ support for a TikTok ban is declining, according to a study from the Pew Research Center. This survey of over 5,000 U.S. adults found that just 34% of respondents supported banning the short form video app. When Pew ran a similar study in 2023, 50% of adults supported the TikTok ban. Over the same…
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Amazon launches personalized shopping prompts as part of its generative AI push
Amazon continues to infuse AI into its shopping tools to encourage customers to make more purchases. The company announced on Wednesday a new feature called “Interests,” aimed at creating a more personalized and conversational search experience. With the new feature, customers can enter tailored prompts in the search bar, reflecting their interests, preferences, and even…
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Countdown: 5 days left to save up to $320 on TechCrunch All Stage passes
The clock is ticking — less than a week left until TechCrunch All Stage ticket prices go up! Save over $300 on founder and investor passes before March 31 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Founders, accelerate your path. Investors, empower their rise. On July 15, join 1,200 founders and VCs at SoWa Power Station in Boston,…
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Google fixes Chrome zero-day security flaw used in hacking campaign targeting journalists
Kaspersky attributed the hacks to an espionage campaign targeting journalists and employees at educational institutions.
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Rivian spins out a new micromobility startup called Also with $105M from Eclipse
Before RJ Scaringe founded Rivian in 2009, he had micromobility on his mind. More than a decade later, his musings took root in a small skunkworks program inside Rivian that set out to answer one question: Could the company’s technology be condensed down into something smaller and more affordable than its electric vans, trucks, and SUVs?…
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Cloud veterans launch ConfigHub to fix ‘configuration hell’
A trio of cloud industry leaders have launched a new company with the mission of modernizing software configuration data management. Emerging from stealth today with $4 million in funding, ConfigHub is the handiwork of CEO Alexis Richardson, founder of cloud-native container management platform Weaveworks; CTO Brian Grant, former Google software engineer and original lead architect…
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AI’s coming to the classroom: Brisk raises $15M after a quick start in school
It’s virtually impossible today to determine when a student’s writing has been composed using ChatGPT or another GenAI tool, and it can be a nightmare to disprove incorrect accusations. An AI edtech startup called Brisk has built a tool that could at least help teachers identify some of the telltale signs, and it’s now announcing…