For years, Silicon Valley and Wall Street have questioned Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to invest tens of billions of dollars into Reality Labs. This week, Meta’s wearables division unveiled a prototype of its Orion smart glasses, a form factor the company believes one day could replace the iPhone. That idea sounds crazy… but maybe a little […]
Meta offers a glimpse through its supposed iPhone killer: Orion Read More »
ChatGPT maker OpenAI’s next funding round, said to be around $6.5 billion, could close as soon as the end of next week. That’s according to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, which also reveals that OpenAI’s rumored conversion from a nonprofit org into a for-profit company is now a virtual certainty. Investors in
OpenAI’s $6.5B funding round may close as soon as next week Read More »
The U.K.s’ antitrust authority has concluded that Amazon’s partnership and equity investment in AI startup Anthropic can’t be investigated under current merger rules due to the size and scope of the deal. The U.K. Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) announcement comes six months to the day after news emerged that Amazon had completed a $4
Amazon dodges antitrust scrutiny in UK over Anthropic investment Read More »
AI video generators need to believe that filmmakers will use their models in the production process. Otherwise why exist? To jump-start the new AI film ecosystem, Runway has set aside $5 million in cash and more in service credits to fund up to 100 original films. If you’re an AI-curious director, now’s your chance to
Runway earmarks $5M to fund up to 100 films using AI-generated video Read More »
Departures might be dominating the week’s OpenAI-related headlines. But comments on AI bias from Anna Makanju, the company’s VP of global affairs, also grabbed our attention. Makanju, speaking on a panel at the UN’s Summit of the Future event on Tuesday, suggested that emerging “reasoning” models such as OpenAI’s o1 have the potential to make
As OpenAI boasts about its o1 model’s increased thoughtfulness, a small, self-funded startup Nomi AI is building the same kind of technology. Unlike the broad generalist ChatGPT, which slows down to think through anything from math problems or historical research, Nomi niches down on a specific use-case: AI companions. Now, Nomi’s already-sophisticated chatbots take additional
Nomi AI wants to make the most emotionally intelligent chatbots on the market Read More »
Google on Thursday announced new updates to its AI note-taking and research assistant, NotebookLM, allowing users to get summaries of YouTube videos and audio files and even create sharable AI-generated audio discussions, as the search giant aims to broaden the use cases and reach of the tool, which was originally launched as a project at
We’re thrilled to announce that the agenda for our dedicated AI Stage presented by Google Cloud to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is complete and ready to go! It joins fintech, SaaS, and space as the other industry-focused stages — all under one big roof. We couldn’t possibly host TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 without a huge deep dive
Announcing the final agenda for the AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 Read More »
OpenAI’s chief research officer, Bob McGrew, and a research VP, Barret Zoph, have left the company hours after OpenAI’s CTO, Mira Murati, announced she would be departing. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed the two latest resignations in a post on X Wednesday evening, along with transition plans. “Mira, Bob, and Barret made these decisions independently
OpenAI’s chief research officer has left Read More »
Following the abrupt departure of OpenAI’s CTO, Mira Murati, CEO Sam Altman is reportedly poised to receive equity in the company for the first time as OpenAI moves away from its longstanding nonprofit structure. Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter, reports that OpenAI plans to restructure into a for-profit benefit corporation — similar to
Sam Altman reportedly poised to get equity in OpenAI for the first time Read More »
