artificial intelligence

200 VCs wanted to get into Lumen Orbit’s $11M seed round

Lumen Orbit, a startup looking to build data centers in space, was able to close its recent seed round in mere days amid intense investor interest. The Redmond, Washington-based company closed on a $11 million seed round at a $40 million valuation, confirming prior TechCrunch reporting that the company had raised a competitive double-digit round […]

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Automattic acquires WPAI, a startup that creates AI solutions for WordPress

WordPress hosting company Automattic said Monday that it is acquiring WPAI, a startup that builds AI solutions for WordPress, at an undisclosed price. WPAI has some products such as CodeWP, a tool to use AI to create WP Plugins; AgentWP, an AI assistant for WordPress site builders; and WP Chat, which is an AI-powered chat

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The four startups from YC’s Fall batch that enterprises should pay attention to

Notable Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator held a Demo Day for its inaugural Fall cohort this week. The 95 startups in this latest batch looked quite similar to recent YC cohorts in the sense that it includes many AI startups. If I did my math right, 87% of the startups in this batch are

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LatAm startup Vambe sees ARR skyrocket after pivot to conversational AI

When Nicolás Camhi, Matías Pérez Pefaur and Diego Chahuán (pictured above, left to right) launched Vambe last year, they were building a CRM for debt collection. But despite gaining traction, they soon realized that their customers were not as interested in their debt collection product as the WhatsApp AI agents Vambe had built to facilitate

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Meta says AI content made up less than 1% of election-related misinformation on its apps

At the start of the year, there were widespread concerns about how generative AI could be used to interfere in global elections to spread propaganda and disinformation. Fast forward to the end of the year, Meta claims those fears did not play out, at least on its platforms, as it shared that the technology had

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Uber is building a fleet of gig workers to label data for AI models

Uber is expanding its fleet of gig workers and creating a new category: AI annotation and data labeling. The ride-hailing company has started hiring contractors for a new AI and data labeling division called Scaled Solutions. These workers complete projects for Uber’s internal business units but are also serving outside customers including self-driving vehicle company

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AI helps India’s Meesho cut customer call costs by 75%

Softbank-backed Meesho has rolled out what it claims to be India’s first generative AI-powered voice bot among e-commerce firms for customer support, paring down some expenses by 75%. The Bengaluru-based e-commerce startup, which serves 160 million customers in India, said Tuesday its AI bot currently handles 60,000 customer calls daily in English and Hindi. The

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Fondo wants to mitigate the US’ accountant shortage with its AI bookkeeping service

Despite all the talk of doom and gloom about the economy, entrepreneurship is actually on the rise in the U.S.: In 2024, an average of 430,000 new business applications were submitted every month, marking a 50% rise from 2019. But the number of accountants these new businesses will need to maintain their books, file taxes

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Taking a cue from X, Threads tests AI-powered summaries of trending topics

As the Twitter-like social network Bluesky sees a significant surge in users this month, Meta’s own X competitor Threads has been rapidly building out its platform. On Friday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced that Threads will start testing AI-powered summaries of what people are discussing on the platform in the app’s “Trending now” section in

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