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Reddit Takes a Stand Against AI Crawlers
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Reddit recently announced changes to its Robots Exclusion Protocol, also known as its robots.txt file. This update is part of a larger negotiation between AI companies and content owners.
The robots.txt file communicates to third parties how a website can be crawled, such as allowing Google to crawl for search results. However, when it comes to AI, the value exchange is less clear. Websites attract clicks and eyeballs, but AI companies hoover up content without sending traffic or compensating the owners.
By changing its robots.txt file and continuing to rate limit and block unknown bots and crawlers, Reddit appears to be preventing practices criticized in the case of Perplexity AI.
Watch the video to learn more and share your thoughts in the comments!
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FCC Proposes Rule to Unlock All Phones After 60 Days
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A new proposal by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) aims to make it easier for consumers to unlock their phones from their carriers. The proposed rule would require carriers to unlock all devices just 60 days after purchase.
Currently, mobile phones purchased from a carrier are generally locked to that carrier until the contract is up or the phone is paid off. While there have been improvements to the process over the years, it's still not clear to all consumers when and how they can unlock their phone and take it to the carrier of their choice.
The proposed rule, announced by FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, would provide clear, nationwide mobile phone unlocking rules. Carriers would be required to provide unlocking services 60 days after activation. This would give consumers the freedom to decide when to change service to the carrier they want, without being stuck with a device that is locked to a particular carrier.
However, the proposed rule may conflict with current phone and wireless markets. Many consumers still opt for two-year contracts to lock in the price and get other benefits. Additionally, phones are often paid for in installment plans, which could affect how the proposed rule is implemented.
The FCC will publish the full document and open up commentary on the proposed rule in July. It's likely that there will be some opposition from mobile providers, but the goal of the rule is to offer consistency and transparency in mobile phone unlocking.
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MagicSchool Aims to Help Teachers and Students Use AI Properly in the Classroom
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The debate over the adoption of generative AI tools like ChatGPT in education continues. While some see them as a helpful resource, others are concerned about their potential misuse. However, some startups believe that AI in the classroom is inevitable and are building products to meet this emerging market opportunity.
One such startup, MagicSchool AI, has recently raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Bain Capital Ventures. The company, founded by Adeel Khan, is building generative AI tools for educational environments. Initially, MagicSchool focused on tools for educators, but it has since expanded to develop tools for students as well.
Khan, a former teacher, was inspired to create MagicSchool after experimenting with ChatGPT in 2022. He realized the potential of generative AI to assist educators and students, but also recognized the need for more user-friendly and customized tools. MagicSchool's products aim to help teachers with lesson planning, test writing, and course materials, while also providing students with AI-powered learning resources.
The company's approach is to use sophisticated prompting and output customization to make its tools more accessible and effective for educators. MagicSchool works with various AI models, including those from OpenAI and Anthropic, and conducts AB tests to determine the most effective approaches.
Convincing teachers and schools to adopt MagicSchool's products was not easy, however. Initially, there was fear and skepticism about the use of AI in education. But as society and industry have become more comfortable with AI, MagicSchool has seen growing interest in its products.
MagicSchool's founder believes that AI can help teachers save time, brainstorm ideas, and supplement their teaching. The company's goal is to provide educators with the tools they need to effectively integrate AI into their teaching practices.
From Teacher to AI Entrepreneur
Adeel Khan's journey to creating MagicSchool began when he was a teacher. He worked with Teach for America and later founded his own charter high school, DSST: Conservatory Green High School. During a career break, Khan started exploring the potential of generative AI in education, which led him to create MagicSchool.
Khan's experience as a teacher and educator has been instrumental in shaping MagicSchool's products and approach. He has worked closely with educators to develop tools that meet their needs and provide real value in the classroom.
MagicSchool's recent funding round will be used to expand its product offerings, sign on more customers, and hire additional talent. The company's investors, including Adobe Ventures and Common Sense Media, believe that MagicSchool is well-positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for AI-powered educational tools.
w product family will be unveiled later this year and enter in full production in 2025."
The challenge will be shipping its AI chips at scale — and competing against the countless others in the AI chip race. Many rivals have formidable backing; a report finds that VC-backed chip startups have raised nearly $5.3 billion in just 175 deals so far this year.
The reward could be substantial, however. According to Statista and Market.us data, the AI chip market might gross as much as $67 billion in revenue by 2027. Axelera has little chance of unseating entrenched vendors like Nvidia anytime soon, if ever. But nabbing even a fraction of the market would be a meaningful win.
"The funding supports our mission to democratize access to AI, from the edge to the cloud," Del Maffeo said, adding that Axelera has "tens" of enterprise customers. "By expanding our product lines beyond the edge computing market, we are able to address industry challenges in AI inference and support current and future AI processing needs."
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**Startup Battlefield 200 Partners with Leading Cloud Computing Firm**
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A leading startup event has joined forces with a top cloud computing company to support innovative startups from around the world. This partnership will highlight the most promising startups at a major tech conference, taking place in San Francisco from October 28-30.
The collaboration is built on a shared vision of fostering innovation. The cloud computing firm is dedicated to helping startups scale faster and smarter through robust infrastructure, advanced AI capabilities, and global networks. This aligns with the goals of the startup event, which aims to spotlight and nurture the next wave of industry disruptors.
The startup event has a rich history of propelling early-stage companies to stardom, with notable alumni such as Dropbox, Mint, and Trello. This year, the event will showcase 200 startups, selected for their innovative potential and diverse industry representation.
Participants in the startup event receive valuable exposure, networking opportunities, and the chance to compete for a $100,000 equity-free prize. Beyond these tangible benefits, the event fosters an environment where cutting-edge ideas can flourish and the seeds of future industry leaders can be planted.
More information about the startup event can be found here.
About the Tech Conference
The tech conference is where innovation meets opportunity. Whether you're a budding founder with a revolutionary idea, a seasoned startup looking to scale, or an investor seeking the next big thing, the event offers unparalleled resources, connections, and expert insights to propel your venture forward. Over 10,000 startup leaders will attend this year's event on October 28-30 in San Francisco. Learn more here.
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Just in Time for the Debates, Meta Fixes Bug Impacting Users' Political Content Settings on Instagram and Threads
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Meta has resolved a bug that led users to believe the company had altered their political content settings without their consent. The issue affected users on both Instagram and Threads, seemingly resetting users' content settings to the default, which limits the amount of political content users see from people they don't follow.
On Wednesday, Meta confirmed it was investigating the problem and working on a fix. Later that evening, Meta Communication Director Andy Stone announced in a Threads post that the issue had been resolved. Stone explained that Meta hadn't changed people's political content settings on the backend; it only appeared to have done so. This made it seem like people's selections had been reset in the settings, "even though no change had actually been made," Stone wrote on Threads.
The company didn't share more information about how the bug came to be in the first place, but Stone encouraged users to check to ensure their settings now reflect their preferences.
You can do so from Instagram's Settings, where you'll scroll down to "Content Preferences" and then select "Political content." From here, you can choose whether or not you want to limit political content from people you follow. The setting affects suggestions that appear in Explore, Reels, Feed Recommendations, and Suggested Users, the page explains, and it also applies to Threads.
The fact that Meta even has a political content setting demonstrates the power of algorithmically-driven social apps, where content is shown based on many factors, instead of simply being a reverse-chronological feed of people users have opted to follow. Other startups like Bluesky and other federated networks are looking to new models for how content on social platforms should be moderated or blocked. Bluesky, for instance, lets users build their own feeds and subscribe to moderation services. However, the app's 5.9 million-plus user base is nowhere near as large as Threads' 170 million monthly active users, or Instagram's over 2 billion monthly users.
The new control was first announced earlier this year. It serves as a way to distance Meta from blame when it comes to the power its apps have to influence people — something Meta didn't want to be accused of in the lead-up to the U.S. elections.
The move is not surprising, given the tech giant has faced criticism from both sides of the U.S. political spectrum, having been accused by Republicans of censoring free speech and by Democrats of being too soft on misinformation and disinformation. Only weeks after its X competitor Threads launched, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg with questions about the app's content moderation policies.
Later, Meta announced it would no longer "proactively" recommend political content, leading to a creator backlash.
Fortunately, for those using Instagram and Threads, the bug was addressed ahead of Trump and Biden's first political debate 2024 on Thursday night.
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Rondo Energy's Funding Reveals a New Path Beyond the Climate Startup "Valley of Death"
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Outside of AI, few startups have drawn venture investments like climate tech. Climate tech startups, especially those building hardware, face a particular challenge when trying to move beyond the prototype or pilot phase and start selling finished products to customers.
A new deal involving Rondo Energy, which makes thermal energy batteries, suggests a new way forward: Philanthropic grants. The company's thermal energy batteries can store searing heat for up to 18 hours.
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Climate tech startups like Rondo face a particular challenge when trying to move beyond the prototype or pilot phase and start selling finished products to customers. This has been dubbed the "commercial valley of death" or the "first-of-a-kind" problem. Venture investors hesitate to commit at this stage because a lot of the technical risk has already been sorted, meaning returns won’t be as high. On the other hand, infrastructure investors, who would normally underwrite projects of that scale, aren’t forthcoming because first-of-a-kind plants are considered too risky.
The folks at Breakthrough Energy Ventures aren’t immune, either. In addition to its venture arm, the organization also has a growth-stage platform, Catalyst, which helps promising venture-funded companies cross the valley of death. This week, it announced a deal that could serve as a template for others.
Along with the European Investment Bank, Catalyst announced that it would provide €75 million in project finance to install three of Rondo’s thermal batteries. One goal of the financing is to prove that the startup’s product can replace fossil fuels in a range of industries. But it’s the nature of the transaction that may ultimately have a broader impact.
While the European Investment Bank’s portion of the financing is a loan, Catalyst’s is a grant. Now, grants aren’t atypical in climate tech, but they’re usually made earlier when the core science or technology has yet to be proven. Here, Catalyst is hoping to use its grant to help Rondo tackle a later-stage concern: Customer adoption.
This is a commercial-scale application and deployment. There are no tests here. It’s just the fact that has never been done before," Mario Fernandez, head of Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, said.
The three customers involved in the deal, a chemical plant, a combined heat and power plant, and a food and beverage factory, were willing to bear the risk of adding a new technology to their operations, but they weren’t necessarily interested in paying for the privilege to do so. Infrastructure investors didn’t want to front them the money, either — at least not yet.
Catalyst’s hope here is that Rondo’s three installations will prove to infrastructure investors that projects like these are sound investments and the risks surrounding them are sufficiently characterized. Ideally, the new projects won’t just unlock financing for future Rondo installations, but provide a roadmap for other investors and startups working with similar technologies.
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Startups Scramble to Assess Fallout from Evolve Bank Data Breach
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On Wednesday, Evolve Bank and Trust, a financial institution popular with fintech startups, announced that it had been the victim of a cyberattack and data breach that could have affected its partner companies as well.
The incident, according to the company's statement, involved "the data and personal information of some Evolve retail bank customers and financial technology partners' customers."
When reached, Evolve's communications chief Thomas Holmes said that the incident involves "a known cybercriminal organization." "It appears these bad actors have released illegally obtained data, on the dark web," said Holmes, declining to comment further.
The cybercriminals responsible for the breach appear to be the notorious ransomware gang LockBit, which posted data allegedly stolen from Evolve on its dark web leak site.
Evolve lists a series of companies on its site as partners that rely on the banking giant to offer some of their financial and lending services. To understand the impact of the Evolve breach on these companies, several companies were reached out to, including Affirm, Airwallex, Alloy, Bond, Branch, Dave, EarnIn, Marqeta, Mastercard, Melio, Mercury, Prizepool, Step, Stripe, Tabapay, and Visa.
None of the companies, except for Affirm and EarnIn, responded to the request for comment.
Affirm spokesperson Matt Gross said that the company is investigating the incident and "will communicate directly with any impacted consumers as we learn more." Affirm also alerted its customers in a post, writing that the Evolve breach "may have compromised some data and personal information" of Affirm customers. The company also said that it's safe to use its card and Money Accounts, and that its investigation into the impact of the breach is still ongoing.
EarnIn spokesperson Stephanie Borman said that the company is "aware of this incident and monitoring it closely."
Another Evolve partner, the fintech startup Mercury, said on X that the Evolve breach impacted records associated with the company, "including some account numbers, deposit balances, business owner names, and emails."
As more affected companies come forward, the true impact of the Evolve breach on "some Evolve retail bank customers and financial technology partners' customers" — as the company put it — will likely become clearer.
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Evolve has made headlines recently for other matters related to its fintech partnerships. On June 14, the Federal Reserve ordered Evolve Bank "to bolster its risk management programs around fintech partnerships as well as anti-money laundering laws."
According to a statement by the Fed, examinations conducted in 2023 found that Evolve "engaged in unsafe and unsound banking practices by failing to have in place an effective risk management framework for those partnerships" with financial technology companies.
The bank has also been associated with the meltdown of banking-as-a-service startup Synapse, which provided a service that allowed others — mainly fintechs — to embed banking services into their offerings. When Synapse filed for bankruptcy this year and an attempted rescue acquisition of its assets by TabaPay fell through, the company pointed blame at its partner bank, Evolve — a saga that continues to play out.
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Axelera Lands New Funds as the AI Chip Market Heats Up
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The generative AI boom is driving the demand for AI chips, which are purpose-built to train and run generative AI models. As a result, major players, from venture capitalists to startups, are scrambling to get in on the ground floor.
Masayoshi Son of SoftBank is reportedly looking to raise $100 billion for a chip initiative that would compete with tech giant Nvidia. Meanwhile, OpenAI is said to be in talks with investment firms to launch an AI chip-making venture.
AI chip startup Axelera has kept a relatively low profile but has won over backers, including Samsung, by focusing on a niche within the burgeoning AI chip market: chips that run AI on edge devices.
"There's no denying that the AI industry has the potential to transform a multitude of sectors," said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, co-founder and CEO of Axelera. "However, to truly harness the value of AI, organizations need a solution that delivers high-performance and efficiency while balancing cost."
Axelera, headquartered in the Netherlands with a workforce of around 180 people across offices in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and the UK, designs AI-running chips and systems for applications like security, retail, automotive, and robotics. It supplies these to partners manufacturing B2B edge computing and internet of things products.
Axelera was borne out of an effort led by Del Maffeo and a group at Imec, the Belgium-based technology lab, along with Evangelos Eleftheriou and a group of Zurich-based IBM researchers to build a highly efficient AI chip architecture. The founding team incubated much of Axelera within Bitfury Group, a blockchain company specializing in Bitcoin hardware.
The defining characteristics of Axelera's AI hardware stack are the instruction set architecture (ISA) RISC-V and in-memory computing.
ISAs are a technical specification at the foundation of chips that describe how software controls the chip's hardware. Chip designers typically license an existing ISA from a large chipmaker such as Arm or Intel, but RISC-V presents an open, no-royalties-attached alternative. As for in-memory computing, it refers to running calculations in a system's RAM to reduce the latency introduced by storage devices.
Axelera isn't the first to try its hand at an in-memory and/or RISC-V-based architecture for AI chips. Other companies, such as NeuroBlade, are developing chips that combine both compute and memory into a single hardware block for data processing. MemVerge, GigaSpaces, Hazelcast, and H2O.ai also offer in-memory hardware solutions for AI and data analytics applications.
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Axelera has attempted to differentiate itself by delivering both chip hardware and software to manage and deploy AI models to that hardware. And from all appearances, the strategy appears to be working for it.
Axelera announced that it closed a $68 million Series B funding round that brings its total raised to $120 million. Contributors to the round included the European Innovation Council Fund, Innovation Industries Strategic Partnership Fund, Invest-NL, and Samsung Catalyst Fund.
The new cash will be put toward expanding to new markets ahead of full production of Axelera's flagship Metis AI platform in H2 2024. Axelera also has an eye on the data center chip market, with preliminary plans to fund R&D of chips aimed at high-performance compute use cases.
"Metis entered in full production in Q2 and will be delivered in volume in Q3," Del Maffeo said. "Axelera AI is now developing a new generation of products for computer vision, large language models, and large multimodal models. This ne[...]
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Illumex is Using GenAI to Ease the Pain of Getting Good Data into LLMs
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By now, it's clear how crucial it is to have quality data for use by large language models (LLMs), but getting data ready for the models has been an early challenge for companies, an opening that represents an opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur.
Enter Illumex, a two-year-old Israeli startup founded by the former VP of AI at Sisense. The startup is using GenAI to put the data into a ready state for LLMs. Today, the company announced a $13 million investment.
Inna Tokarev-Sela, founder and CEO of Illumex, recognized this data readiness problem years ago and started Illumex with the goal of making it easier for organizations to organize data in an automated way.
"We automatically associate the business logic of an organization, automatically mapping it to data, and we bring the relevant data to the questions which business users have," Tokarev-Sela said.
The company is combining a number of technologies to achieve this, including generative AI, graph databases, and relational databases, pulling all this information together into what Tokarev-Sela calls a data fabric, which companies can access to train LLMs and for other purposes.
She sees the company as part of a continuum of the AI workflow, not simply getting data ready for the models, but also building applications based on this data, and ultimately deploying them with the goal of making it easier for end users to interact with and get what they need from the data Illumex is providing for them.
"We connect to all the systems, like different business applications and different business data sources, like databases, warehouses, data lakes, CRM, support systems, SAP enterprise financial systems, and so on. So that provides us coverage of all data description and all logic and workflow description tightly coupled automatically in this knowledge graph," she said.
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She says that this enables customers to get an inventory of their entire data landscape. "We provide an understanding of the semantics of the whole data landscape, like semantifying the whole stack, if you will, and then deploying generative AI with a high degree of accuracy and precision and context awareness," she said.
What's more, Illumex integrates with existing enterprise communications tools like Teams, Slack, and Google Meet, so they are not forcing users to figure out a new way to work inside Illumex. The startup has customers using the platform, including highly regulated companies like financial services and pharmaceuticals.
The company currently has 30 employees and will be hiring with the new influx of capital. As a woman founder, Tokarev-Sela said she is trying to create a parent-friendly company, and reports that they are female-majority. "When you actually see the demographics of the company, it's very different from the slogans. At Illumex, we actually walk the walk," she said.
The $13 million investment was led by Cardumen Capital, Amdocs Ventures, and Samsung Ventures with participation from ICI Fund, Jibe Ventures, Iron Nation Fund, Ginnosar Ventures, Icon Fund, Today Ventures, and unnamed industry angels.
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SoftBank Forms AI Healthcare Joint Venture in Japan with Tempus
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SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son announced on Thursday that the Japanese tech giant has established a joint venture in Japan with Chicago-based health tech company Tempus. The partnership, named SB Tempus, aims to develop AI-powered personalized medical services by analyzing data in Japan.
The company plans to start with oncology, as cancer remains the leading cause of death in Japan. Son's father passed away last year due to the disease, which has driven his ambition to improve cancer treatment.
This move highlights Son's broader focus on AI. During a press conference, he outlined his vision for AI applications in various sectors, including medicine. SoftBank's ties with Tempus precede this JV news, as it invested $200 million in Tempus in April, just before Tempus's Nasdaq debut earlier this month.
Tempus, founded by serial entrepreneur and billionaire Eric Lefkofsky in 2015, uses genomic testing and data analysis to help doctors make informed treatment decisions. The company competes with industry peers, including Foundation Medicine and Guardant Health.
SB Tempus will bring Tempus's data-driven medical technology to Japan, providing genomic testing, medical data aggregation and analysis, and AI insights for personalized treatments and therapies. Both companies have made a substantial investment in this venture, with SoftBank and Tempus holding a 50% stake each. SoftBank will inject 30 billion yen, equivalent to around $188 million, into the JV.
SB Tempus will start operations in August and plans to offer three medical services to hospitals using AI to analyze personal medical data within the year. The JV company will collect and analyze patient genetic data from Japanese hospitals and universities, using the data to train AI patterns for patients in Japan. The company will provide hospitals with processed data for clinical use, and the AI offerings will suggest the best treatment for patients.
Son stated that only about 1% of patients in Japan have experience with genomic testing, compared to approximately 30% in the U.S. He aims to reach the same level as the U.S. and expand to other diseases, such as neuropsychology, radiology, and cardiology.
The announcement comes after Son's public appearance last Friday at the group's annual meeting, where he discussed his vision for a world featuring Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI). He also mentioned that SoftBank's past investments were "just a warm-up" for his ambition to create an era of AI.
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TikTok to Challenge Amazon Prime Day with Its Own Sales Event in July
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TikTok is gearing up to challenge Amazon's Prime Day event in July. The social network announced on Thursday that TikTok Shop is holding a "Deals For You Days" sales event in the U.S. starting on July 9.
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The announcement comes a few days after Amazon revealed that its annual Prime Day sales will take place on July 16 and 17. The historical success of Prime Day has led to other retailers, both large and small, co-opting the day to run competing sales. Now you can count TikTok among those doing the same.
TikTok says the sales event will offer deals on fashion and beauty products, backyard entertainment essentials, decor, summer reading bestsellers, and more. Like Amazon's Prime Day sales, TikTok Shop will offer exclusive deals on select products. The sales event will offer exclusive sales on products from L'Oréal Paris, Maybelline New York, NYX Professional Makeup, Our Place, Too Faced, and Zwilling USA.
During the sales event, brands and merchants will participate in content challenges for short videos and LIVE shopping events, where they can interact with their followers and share their favorite products and bestsellers. The LIVE events will offer discounts on popular products in real-time.
TikTok has been betting big on its e-commerce efforts and is aiming to grow the size of its U.S. business tenfold to as much as $17.5 billion this year. With this upcoming deals event, TikTok is looking to take on one of the largest sales events in the U.S. It's worth noting that while this specific event appears to be targeting Amazon, TikTok Shop is also looking to take on fellow Chinese-owned companies Temu and Shein, both of which have become popular in the U.S.
Last year, it was reported that TikTok was expected to amass around $20 billion in global gross merchandise value in 2023, and that the majority of the sales were seen in Southeast Asia. TikTok is now invested in bringing that success to the U.S.
TikTok's ambitions for its e-commerce product aren't surprising, as social commerce sales are expected to increase in the next few years. According to forecasts, social commerce sales are expected to more than double to $144.5 billion by 2027 from $67 billion in 2023.
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As Battery Startups Struggle, Sila Secures $375M in New Funding
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Amid a challenging environment for battery startups, Sila has raised $375 million to complete the construction of a U.S. factory that will scale its next-generation battery technology for customers like Mercedes-Benz and Panasonic by the end of 2025.
Sila, formerly known as Sila Nanotechnologies, is set to finish construction of its Moses Lake, Washington plant in the first quarter of next year, where the company will begin mass producing its branded Titan Silicon anode material.
The all-equity Series G round – led by existing investors Sutter Hill Ventures with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, Coatue, Perry Creek Capital, and others – comes as other electric vehicle battery companies struggle to get products to market and stay afloat.
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Earlier this year, Ionic Materials shuttered its doors, and Umicore slashed its guidance on a projected EV sales slump. Freyr Battery, a startup that joined the public markets in 2021 by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, has also failed to ramp up production for its next-gen battery.
“It’s obviously a very tough market out there for late-stage growth, anything with high capex and anything with EVs,” Sila founder and CEO Gene Berdichevsky said. “But we’ve got a great technology, we’re scaling, we’re on track with our factory, and this gets us through getting cars on the road, which is really the milestone that everybody in the world wants to see.”
Sila’s ability to raise such a large round in a challenging environment could be seen as a vote of confidence for the company’s approach to battery chemistry and its ability to scale production. Berdichevsky, who was the seventh employee at Tesla before founding Sila in 2011, has said that it’s not enough to get the science right if you can’t do it in a way that’s fundamentally scalable.
That’s especially true in a world where hundreds of thousands of EVs are slated to come to market over the next few years, and automakers are increasingly looking for ways to end their reliance on China for critical battery materials.
Sila’s answer has been to replace the graphite in a lithium-ion battery’s anode with silicon, a material that can be produced anywhere rather than mined and processed in specific regions. Using silicon allows for a more local supply chain for critical battery materials and also makes for a denser, cheaper battery cell that can help EVs charge faster, Berdichevsky says. And by only switching out one component of the battery, cell makers don’t have to drastically change their production processes.
The anode is a key battery component that stores lithium when a battery is charging. Its counterpart, the cathode, stores lithium when the battery is discharged. The lithium moves back and forth between charge and discharge through an electrolyte liquid, and something called a separator keeps them from short-circuiting.
Berdichevsky says that by replacing graphite with silicon, Sila’s products today have a 20% to 25% increase in energy density.
“And in the future, we see that going up to about a 40% increase in energy density without changing anything else in the battery,” he said.
In a statement, Sila noted that future releases of Titan Silicon will also drive recharge times to less than 10 minutes and lower the cost of batteries.
Sila has been delivering its Titan Silicon to auto customers for years from its headquarters in Alameda, California, but only enough to bring the tech to test vehicles.
The Moses Lake facility allows for a scale and manufacturing standard for automotive series production, Berdichevsky says. From there, automakers will stil[...]
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Zuckerberg Criticizes Closed-Source AI Competitors for Trying to 'Create God'
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Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has expressed his disapproval of closed-source AI competitors, stating that they are attempting to "create God." In a recent interview, Zuckerberg emphasized the importance of open-source AI, allowing multiple people to work on AI tools and create diverse experiences.
"I don't think that AI technology is something that should be hoarded and that one company gets to use it to build whatever central, single product that they're building," Zuckerberg said. "I find it a pretty big turnoff when people in the tech industry talk about building this 'one true AI.'"
Zuckerberg believes that this approach is unrealistic and that multiple AIs will be created to cater to different interests. He also announced that Meta is testing its AI Studio software, which will enable creators to build AI avatars that can interact with users through Instagram's messaging system.
When referring to companies that build closed AI platforms, Zuckerberg stated that he doesn't believe this is the best approach for creating experiences for people. "You want to unlock and unleash as many people as possible trying out different things," he said.
Zuckerberg's comments come after reports emerged that Meta had attempted to negotiate with Apple to integrate its AIs into operating systems, but was rejected due to concerns over Meta's privacy practices.
In the interview, Zuckerberg also discussed the progress of Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses, which he believes will eventually converge with full holographic displays. He envisions a future where people will use smart glasses to take photos, ask questions to AI, and send messages, making smartphones less necessary.
"I think that's gonna happen with glasses, too," Zuckerberg said. "It's not like we're going to stop having phones. It's just that it's going to stay in your pocket, and you'll take it out when you really need to do stuff with it."
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In testing, Directo reached 115,000 users and now includes nearly 200,000 hospitality brands that each has at least one property in its database of inventory. Combined, that represents millions of properties and rooms around the world.
The startup itself was co-founded by digital nomad and co-CEO Marina Guastavino, CTO Julian Toledo, and Sofia Canepa (Growth and Product Development). Becerril wasn't able to join full-time until a couple of months ago due to his other obligations following the sale of his prior company.
Directo has $1 million in pre-seed funding from French VC firm Kima Ventures; Calafia, an angel group of Global Female Tech Leaders; travel specialist fund Derive Ventures; and 26 travel industry veterans.
Italy, completing its ‘Southern Europe’ thesis.
“We’ll have a significant share of our investments in Spain, but, within Southern Europe, Italy is greatly overlooked. Rome and Milan are catching up. We’re very excited about it,” said Linares.
Plus Partners arrives at a time when VCs are dialling up their attention on Southern Europe.
Yellow, a new VC firm created by Oscar Pierre and Sacha Michaud (the founders of Glovo), as well as Adam Lasri (a former investor for VC giant Atomico), recently put their bets on the region, with a €30M fund raised in less than five months.
Furthermore, Spanish VC Kfund raised $75M to fund tech projects earlier this year.
According to a Dealroom report on the Spanish tech ecosystem, the combined enterprise value of Spanish startups surpassed €100 billion in 2023. It also found venture investment into Spanish startups held up last year, with €2.2B raised across some 850 funding rounds.
The annual “State of European Tech” report for 2023 found Spain’s ecosystem to be in fourth place overall and had the highest number of startup fundings last year.
Lastly, the European Investment Bank’s venture capital arm also backed a new fund in Spain this year which aims to invest €1B ($1.1B) in growth-stage tech startups.
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YouTube Premium Upgrade Adds Smart Downloads and Picture-in-Picture Mode for Shorts
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YouTube is introducing several new features for its Premium users, including smart downloads and support for picture-in-picture mode for Shorts. Additionally, the platform is expanding its "Jump Ahead" feature to help users navigate through videos more efficiently.
The video streaming platform already allows background play and picture-in-picture mode for long-form videos, enabling users to consume content while browsing other apps. Now, this feature is being extended to Shorts, starting with Android users.
The "Jump ahead" button allows users to skip to the most interesting parts of a video. When users tap on the button, YouTube jumps to the best parts of the video, which are identified using a combination of viewer data and machine learning. This feature has been in testing since last month and is now being rolled out to all Android users in the U.S., with an iOS rollout scheduled for the next few weeks.
Furthermore, YouTube is adding new experimental features for a limited time. One of these features is a conversational AI tool that allows users to ask the chatbot questions related to the video or request suggested content. The company had first tested this feature last year and is now bringing it back for Android users in the U.S.
Another feature is smart download support for Shorts. This means that, based on users' recent Shorts viewing history, YouTube will automatically download some short videos for offline viewing.
YouTube has over 100 million paid users worldwide, and these new features are expected to enhance their viewing experience.
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Amazon Consolidates Amazon Clinic into One Medical Brand
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Amazon has announced that it is folding its Amazon Clinic telehealth service into its primary care business, One Medical. The company explained that this move is aimed at simplifying its primary care offering for customers. As a result, the service has been rebranded to Amazon One Medical Pay-per-visit, and now offers more affordable per-visit pricing.
Customers can pay $49 for a video call visit or $29 to text message a doctor. This move may impact startups with similar services, such as Carbon Health, Galileo, and Summer Health, among others.
Under the One Medical brand, Amazon is offering customers two options: a telehealth service for over 30 common conditions, or a paid membership to get on-demand virtual care and next-day in-person appointments at the more than 150 One Medical primary care offices across the U.S. The membership costs $9 per month or $99 per year for Prime members and $199 per year for all other customers.
The pay-per-visit service is a convenient option for customers who don't live near an Amazon One Medical physical office or already have a primary care provider, but need fast and easy access to address a one-off condition. Customers don't need insurance, and FSA/HSA payment is accepted.
Amazon has increased its investment in healthcare in recent years, including the nearly $4 billion acquisition of One Medical. Amazon launched Clinic in 2022 as a virtual health storefront for customers to pay for one-time telehealth care services. That same year, Amazon shut down its employee-focused virtual primary care business, Amazon Care, which attempted to blend telehealth and in-person medical services for workers.
Meanwhile, other large companies are pulling back from the space. In April, Walmart shut down its health center and virtual care service.
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Meta Starts Testing User-Created AI Chatbots on Instagram
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Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will begin to surface AI characters made by creators through Meta AI studio on Instagram. The test will begin in the U.S.
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In a post, Zuckerberg noted that these chatbots will be clearly marked as AI to inform users.
"Rolling out an early test in the US of our AI studio so you might start seeing AIs from your favorite creators and interest-based AIs in the coming weeks on Instagram. These will primarily show up in messaging for now, and will be clearly labeled as AI," he said.
Zuckerberg noted that it worked with creators like the meme account Wasted and technology creator Don Allen Stevenson III to roll out early versions of creator-made chatbots.
Meta first announced its AI studio last year at its developer conference to let businesses build custom chatbots.
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ChatGPT: Everything You Need to Know About the AI-Powered Chatbot
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ChatGPT, an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. Initially designed to boost productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts, it has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies.
The growth of ChatGPT has propelled OpenAI into becoming one of the most-hyped companies in recent memory. Its latest partnership with Apple for its upcoming generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, has given the company another significant bump in the AI race.
In 2024, OpenAI released GPT-4o, its new flagship omni model for ChatGPT. GPT-4o is now the default free model, complete with voice and vision capabilities. However, after demoing GPT-4o, OpenAI paused one of its voices, Sky, after allegations that it was mimicking Scarlett Johansson's voice in "Her."
OpenAI is facing internal drama, including the sizable exit of co-founder and longtime chief scientist Ilya Sutskever as the company dissolved its Superalignment team. OpenAI is also facing a lawsuit from Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers, including the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune, for alleged copyright infringement, following a similar suit filed by The New York Times last year.
Here's a timeline of ChatGPT product updates and releases, starting with the latest:
June 2024
OpenAI Delays ChatGPT's New Voice Mode
OpenAI planned to start rolling out its advanced Voice Mode feature to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in late June, but it says lingering issues forced it to postpone the launch to July. OpenAI says Advanced Voice Mode might not launch for all ChatGPT Plus customers until the fall, depending on whether it meets certain internal safety and reliability checks.
ChatGPT Releases App for Mac
ChatGPT for macOS is now available for all users. With the app, users can quickly call up ChatGPT by using the keyboard combination of Option + Space. The app allows users to upload files and other photos, as well as speak to ChatGPT from their desktop and search through their past conversations.
Apple Brings ChatGPT to Its Apps, Including Siri
Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it is bringing ChatGPT to Siri and other first-party apps and capabilities across its operating systems. The ChatGPT integrations, powered by GPT-4o, will arrive on iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia later this year, and will be free without the need to create a ChatGPT or OpenAI account. Features exclusive to paying ChatGPT users will also be available through Apple devices.
House Oversight Subcommittee Invites Scarlett Johansson to Testify About 'Sky' Controversy
Scarlett Johansson has been invited to testify about the controversy surrounding OpenAI's Sky voice at a hearing for the House Oversight Subcommittee on Cybersecurity, Information Technology, and Government Innovation. In a letter, Rep. Nancy Mace said Johansson's testimony could "provide a platform" for concerns around deepfakes.
ChatGPT Experiences Two Outages in a Single Day
ChatGPT was down twice in one day: one multi-hour outage in the early hours of the morning Tuesday and another outage later in the day that is still ongoing. Anthropic's Claude and Perplexity also experienced some issues.
You can find more information about ChatGPT and its updates on the official website.
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Directo Turns a TikTok Travel Hack into a Deal-Finding Chrome Extension
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A travel hack that went viral on TikTok teaches users how to save money on hotels and Airbnbs by booking directly with the properties themselves. Now, a new startup, Directo, is helping travelers find those same deals with the help of a Chrome extension that points users to the property's website, where they'll often find discounted rates since the property doesn't have to pay commission on those sales.
Across social media, creators and influencers post variations of a money-saving hack that teaches users how to find a cheaper way to book a room or a home stay. This often involves using reverse image search on photos of the listing to find the property's website — something that can be particularly useful when booking longer stays where the savings can really add up.
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Of course, booking directly may have its risks. You may not have the same travel assurances and protections compared with bigger websites, like Booking.com, Expedia, or Airbnb. But when travelers are looking at savings in the hundreds of dollars or more, they often opt to take their chances.
The idea for Directo came about from watching this emerging behavior among Gen Z users and realizing that it could be better automated, while also adding in some safety protections of its own, says co-founder and co-CEO Pierre Becerril.
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"What we're doing is we're trying to work with professional inventory that uses great software — so at least you know that this part is secured," said Becerril, whose background is in the travel industry, after participating in a hackathon inspired him to join the tech industry. Most recently, the Madrid-based, third-time founder sold his startup Transparent, a software company focused on the vacation rental market, to Lighthouse, where he worked before starting Directo.
Becerril explains that many hotel sites today run what he calls "very good tech" and feature powerful booking engines, but they aren't the first place users go to book. Instead, consumers tend to go to online aggregators and larger websites where they can search across a wider inventory of listings.
"The big websites like Expedia, Booking.com, and Airbnb have the monopoly for search and distribution," Becerril said. "It's a pity because they charge commission and you can go book direct on these great websites where there's no commission — and maybe some perks."
Some savvy travelers already figured this out, finding they could avoid the extra fees and cleaning charges on Airbnbs by booking from the property's website itself, which they found using a reverse image search.
The Chrome extension works on a variety of top travel sites, like Airbnb, Booking.com, VRBO, Expedia, and Abritel, with more being added in the future. It identifies the properties where you can book directly with a yellow-and-black "D" icon. Those where users reported getting a good deal will also feature a cheers emoji of hands clapping. If users report the deals aren't great, Directo can take that information to the hotels and use that to try to negotiate for a voucher or discount for its customers.
"It's a little bit like Honey," says Becerril, referring to the deal-finding browser add-on.
Also like Honey, the extension is free to use by consumers, who can download it from the Chrome Web Store. The startup generates revenue by selling a subscription to hotels that can improve their connectivity with Directo by pushing special deals to its users and members. These funds are currently being reinvested in marketing to grow its consumer install base.
[...]
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As Spain Launches Its Latest VC Fund, Southern Europe Appears to be on a Roll
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While startup valuations have plummeted since the bull run of 2021-2022, a factor that's hit the European startup ecosystem particularly hard, there's one region of Europe where the correction has slightly worked in its favor: the South.
Evidence for this was apparent during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this year, as time and time again, investors from Northern Europe were scouting startups on the 'Iberian peninsula' (Spain and Portugal). These young companies bring a killer combination which investors love: significantly lower operating costs and far less punchy valuations.
Further evidence of this 'Southern trend' arrives with news that a new Venture Capital fund, Plus Partners, is being launched by Enrique Linares, one of the co-founders of breakout European unicorn letgo, along with Oriol Juncosa, a veteran of the Barcelona VC scene. While Plus Partners hasn't released a figure for the launch of their new fund, the rumor is it will be in the $30M-$50M range.
Looking at the fund's co-founders, Linares led letgo, a used goods marketplace, to become the first Spanish startup to achieve unicorn status, attracting investment from Accel, Insight Partners, and Prosus, among others. Prior to letgo, he co-founded Captalis, a fintech company with a significant presence in LatAm.
While Juncosa started his VC career at Nauta Capital in Barcelona and went on to co-found the early-stage VC firm Encomenda Smart Capital. He then became CFO of Carto, a data visualization SaaS company based in the US and Spain, which has raised over $100M. As an investor/shareholder, he's invested in more than 75 startups — such as Carto, Cobee (which exited to Pluxee), Holded, and Housfy, among others.
So what's the Plus Partners thesis? It will concentrate on 'health and nutrition', 'finance and property', and 'future of work and productivity', per Juncosa. The fund will focus on pre-seed and seed-stage startups in Southern Europe with a significant percentage of them coming from Spain.
Juncosa said the fund is backed by founders and former C-Level execs drawn from companies including Carto, Luzia, Kantox, Redpoints, and Typeform, among others.
He said he thinks Spain and Portugal sorely need more professionally run VC funds because too many early-stage investors, especially non-professional Angels and family offices, tended to “do more harm than good” in the nascent tech scene there, because they either blew-up valuations excessively or entered rounds on punitive terms to the founders.
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“The big news in Spain for me is that we have role models. Also, the tech community in Spain and Portugal is extremely open, everybody’s happy to support everybody,” he said.
Which country does the new fund think is ‘hotter’ in terms of startups? “I would say, overall, we have three great entrepreneurial cities in Barcelona, Madrid, and Lisbon. If you went back 10 years, Barcelona was the biggest tech city. But Lisbon and Madrid have played catch-up very well. Now, entrepreneurs have a choice of where they want to set up their company.”
Linares reiterated that Southern Europe is now “packed” with entrepreneurs who are role models for new startup founders, emphasizing: “We have a lot of talent and founders can internationalize very successful startups from here.”
“Barcelona and Madrid are on a par with each other as ecosystems, but Valencia is growing,” he added. “There is a summit in October that is called Valencia digital Summit. We were speakers last year and it was fantastic. I was very surprised. It was my first time there.”
The fund will also look at startups coming out of[...]
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Reliance Jio Kicks Off Indian Telecom Price Hike
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India's largest telecom operator, Reliance Jio, has initiated a price hike in the country's wireless market, raising some of its plans by more than 20%. This move is expected to be followed by other operators in the industry.
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The revised pricing structure, effective July 3, sees Jio's entry-level Rs 155 ($1.87) plan, offering 2GB of data and unlimited calls, increase to Rs 189. Similarly, a plan providing 1GB of daily data usage will rise from Rs 209 to Rs 249. Jio is also raising prices of its two-month, three-month, annual, postpaid, and data add-on plans.
Akash Ambani, Chairman of Reliance Jio, stated that the new move is a "step in the direction of furthering industry innovation and driving sustainable growth through investments in 5G and AI technology." Despite the price hike, Jio's offering remains among the world's most affordable.
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Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone-Idea, and BSNL-MTNL dominate the Indian wireless market. Jio commanded more than 40% of the market as of April, with its nearest rival, Airtel, at 33.1%.
Analysts have been forecasting a significant shift in the industry's pricing strategy for months. The consensus view projected an increase of 15-25%, a move seen as crucial for stabilizing and growing average revenue per user. The price hike will underscore the sector's transition from a focus on market share acquisition to sustained monetization, analysts said, coming as operators near the completion of their 5G coverage rollouts. Indian telecom operators spent more than $20 billion in buying 5G airwaves alone. They have been scrambling to find ways to make more money. Last year, they proposed that tech firms pay the telecom companies for network usage.
Indian consumers are likely to accept the price increases because, as Bank of America eloquently put it, there's "a lack of alternatives/improving stickiness of data offerings."
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Character.AI Now Allows Users to Talk with AI Avatars Over Calls
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Character.AI, a startup backed by a16z, has announced that it is now allowing users to talk to AI characters over calls. The feature currently supports multiple languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.
The company tested the calling feature ahead of its public launch and reported that more than 3 million users had made over 20 million calls during that time. Character.AI believes that calls with AI characters can be useful for practicing language skills, giving mock interviews, or adding them to the gameplay of role-playing games.
Users can initiate calls with a user-generated AI character directly with a tap of a button. The company has designed the feature to provide a smooth calling experience with reduced latency. Additionally, users can switch between calling and texting seamlessly, as well as stop the AI from talking through a "Tap to interrupt" option.
Earlier in March, Character.AI launched Character Voices, which allows users to hear the characters speak in one-on-one chats. The company reported that there are over 1 million voices in the app's library, thanks to users creating their own voices.
The new calling feature comes at a time when some users are complaining about their characters' changing personalities. In response to these complaints, the startup explained that it didn't make any major changes, but some users could have been part of a test and noticed behavioral differences in characters because of that.
Meanwhile, Google is reportedly working on its own customized chatbot platform to take on Character.AI and Meta.
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