Micro1, a three-year-old startup that helps AI companies find and manage human contractors for data labeling and training, has raised a $35 million Series A funding round that values the company at $500 million. The round was led by O1 Advisors, a venture capital firm co-founded by Dick Costolo and Adam Bain, the former CEO […]
Micro1, a competitor to Scale AI, raises funds at $500M valuation Read More »
When Seth Winterroth left his job at GE Ventures to help launch Eclipse Ventures in 2015, robotics was on his mind. Or more specifically, the number of early-stage robotics startups that were struggling to launch due to lack of interest. “These are teams that had just finished their postdocs at Waterloo, or CMU, or MIT,
We are entering a golden age of robotics startups — and not just because of AI Read More »
OpenAI announced Thursday it reached a non-binding agreement with Microsoft, its largest investor, on a revised partnership that would allow the startup to convert its for-profit arm into a public benefit corporation (PBC). The transition, should it be cleared by state regulators, could allow OpenAI to raise additional capital from investors and, eventually, become a
OpenAI secures Microsoft’s blessing to transition its for-profit arm Read More »
One of the headlining features of Apple’s new AirPods Pro 3 was the ability to translate incoming audio in real time, but it seems the feature won’t work in the European Union at launch. On its official page detailing the features available on iOS 26, the company said EU residents or those with EU Apple
Apple’s new live translation feature for AirPods won’t be available in the EU at launch Read More »
Perplexity, the AI-powered search startup that competes with Google by providing conversational answers to user queries, has secured $200 million in new capital at a $20 billion valuation, The Information reported. The fresh funding comes just two months after the company raised $100 million at an $18 billion valuation, according to a July report in
Perplexity reportedly raised $200M at $20B valuation Read More »
There’s been great interest in what Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab is building with its $2 billion in seed funding and the all-star team of former OpenAI researchers who have joined the lab. In a blog post published on Wednesday, Murati’s research lab gave the world its first look into one of its projects: creating
Thinking Machines Lab wants to make AI models more consistent Read More »
Anthropic reported a service outage impacting APIs, Console, and Claude earlier this afternoon. Users on GitHub and Hacker News noted issues with Claude at around 12:20 ET, with Anthropic releasing a status update eight minutes later, noting that its APIs, Console, and Claude AI were down. As press time, the company said it had implemented
Anthropic reports outages, Claude and Console impacted Read More »
Synthetic speech is no longer the stuff of science fiction. From audiobooks and dubbing to gaming and avatars, AI-generated voice is breaking into the mainstream — and Mati Staniszewski, CEO and co-founder of ElevenLabs, is helping lead the charge. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, he’ll take the stage to talk about what it takes to make
Exploring the future of voice AI with Mati Staniszewski at Disrupt 2025 Read More »
In the wake of Anthropic’s $1.5 billion copyright settlement, the AI industry is coming to terms with its training data problem. There are as many as 40 other pending cases that seek damages for unlicensed data — including one that takes Midjourney to court for creating images of Superman. Without some kind of licensing system,
RSS co-creator launches new protocol for AI data licensing Read More »
As AI is increasingly helping hackers to launch mass-scale email attacks, former Google security leaders have joined forces to build autonomous AI agents that aim to stop phishing, malware, and business email compromise threats before they ever reach user inboxes. That is the mission behind AegisAI, a new email security startup that has just emerged
Google’s former security leads raise $13M to fight email threats before they reach you Read More »
