Fei-Fei Li, the Stanford professor many deem the “Godmother of AI,” has raised $230 million for her new startup, World Labs, from backers including Andreessen Horowitz, NEA, and Radical Ventures. World Labs is valued at over $1 billion, and the capital was raised over two rounds spaced a couple of months apart, TechCrunch reported in […]
Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs comes out of stealth with $230M in funding Read More »
Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator will expand the number of cohorts it runs each year from two to four starting in 2025, Bloomberg reported Thursday. Y Combinator president Garry Tan told the site that approximately the same number of companies will go through YC each year, despite the change. This means each cohort will
Y Combinator expanding to four cohorts a year in 2025 Read More »
On Thursday, cybersecurity giant Fortinet disclosed a breach involving customer data. In a statement posted online, Fortinet said an individual intruder accessed “a limited number of files” stored on a third-party shared cloud drive belonging to Fortinet, which included data belonging to “less than 0.3%” of its customers. The company said that the incident “did
Fortinet confirms customer data breach Read More »
Human children generally learn to tie their shoes by age 5 or 6. Robots, on the other hand, have been working on the problem for decades. In a new paper, Google DeepMind researchers showcase a method for teaching robots to perform a range of dexterous tasks, including tying a shoe, hanging a shirt, and even
Google DeepMind teaches a robot to autonomously tie its shoes and fix fellow robots Read More »
The White House says several major AI vendors have committed to taking steps to combat nonconsensual deepfakes and child sexual abuse material. Adobe, Cohere, Microsoft, Anthropic OpenAI, and data provider Common Crawl said that they’ll “responsibly” source and safeguard the datasets they create and use to train AI from image-based sexual abuse. These organizations —
White House extracts voluntary commitments from AI vendors to combat deepfake nudes Read More »
In a development that will surprise few, former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann’s climate/crypto/carbon-credit startup Flowcarbon appears to be in the process of curling up to die, Forbes reported today. Buyers of its “Goddess Nature Token,” pitched as the first step in putting carbon credits on the blockchain, have reportedly been contacted about receiving refunds over
Adam Neumann’s crypto comeback company is reportedly refunding investors Read More »
Rufus, Amazon’s recently launched, shopping-focused chatbot, is getting ads soon. That’s according to a changelog published by Amazon this week (first spotted by AdWeek), which states that sponsored ads could soon start appearing in placements for Rufus users in the U.S. Ads will be shown based on Amazon search and conversational context, Amazon says, and
Amazon starts testing ads in its Rufus chatbot Read More »
OpenAI is reportedly in talks with investors to raise $6.5 billion in new funding, valuing the startup at $150 billion, according to Bloomberg and the Financial Times. That’s significantly higher than OpenAI’s previously reported valuation from earlier this year, $86 billion, and far higher than any other AI startup today. The funding round will reportedly
OpenAI reportedly in talks to raise at $150B valuation Read More »
Cornell University researchers this week unveiled tiny “metasheet” robots capable of transforming into pre-determined shapes and crawling around when electricity is applied. Along with biological organisms, the robots were inspired kirigami, a variation of origami wherein objects are cut in addition to folded. The “metasheet” bit of the name, meanwhile, is based on the word
These sub-1mm robots morph and crawl with an electric zap Read More »
Google co-founder and ex-Alphabet president Sergey Brin said he’s back working at Google “pretty much every day” because he hasn’t seen anything as exciting as the recent progress in AI — and doesn’t want to miss out. Brin revealed the tidbit in an interview during the All-In Summit in L.A. this week. Last year, several
Sergey Brin says he’s working on AI at Google ‘pretty much every day’ Read More »
