Author: GT

A raft of voice-based hardware devices have emerged, aimed at companionship, productivity, or personal growth. These include card-shaped devices from Plaud and Pocket; pendants from Friend, Limitless, and Taya; and a wristband from Bee, which is now part of Amazon. Now, two former Meta employees who worked on interface design have launched Sandbar, a startup that has created a ring called Stream for similar purposes. The company calls the ring “a mouse for voice” because it can take notes, help you interact with an AI assistant, and let you control music. Sandbar’s CEO, Mina Fahmi, has an extensive background in…

Cybersecurity is a massive sector, but startups in the category are more likely to be acquired than go public. Even Wiz, which for a time held the title of the fastest-growing startup, abandoned its IPO ambitions when it agreed to sell to Google earlier this year. In the past few years, there have been scant few significant cybersecurity listings: SentinelOne IPO’d in 2021, Rubrik did so last year, and Netskope went public in September. Armis, a nine-year-old cybersecurity startup based out of San Francisco, intends to follow in these companies’ footsteps. The company said on Wednesday that it has raised a $435 million pre-IPO round…

Over the last year, Google has added multiple AI-powered features to Maps to improve discovery and enable users to ask questions about places. Now the company is upgrading the app with Gemini to let users ask its AI bot questions while driving, improve navigation, and perform more tasks. While driving, users can now ask Gemini to answer questions about places of interest on their route, return results about other topics (like sports or news), and even perform tasks like adding events to their calendar. You can ask multiple questions in a conversation, too; for example, “Is there a budget-friendly restaurant…

If you look at how AI deals are conducted these days, it seems AI companies and their investors are imitating the circle of life. Only, it’s a circle of profit that ensures the money eventually comes back to their own coffers. Case in point: SoftBank, which is investing tens of billions into OpenAI and committing dozens more to build AI data centers and infrastructure, just launched a joint venture with the ChatGPT maker in Japan that will localize and sell the AI company’s enterprise tech to companies in the country. And the first customer of this joint venture is going…

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney is calling Google’s proposal in its antitrust settlement with the Fortnite maker a “comprehensive solution” that “genuinely doubles down” on Android’s vision of being an open platform. The companies on Tuesday reached a settlement that sees the search giant agreeing to Android app store reforms that include lowering fees and enabling more competition. Under the new proposal, which still requires the judge’s approval, Google will allow Android app developers to point users to alternative payment mechanisms inside their apps and through external web links. It also caps the fees Google is able to charge developers…

When Nvidia announced its Rubin series of GPUs in March, it also dropped a bomb: Racks built with the Ultra version of the chip, which is expected to be released in 2027, could draw up to 600 kilowatts of electricity. That’s nearly twice as much juice as some of the fastest EV chargers can deliver today. As data center racks become that power hungry, one of the biggest hurdles will be figuring out how to keep them cool. One startup thinks stacks of metal are the answer. Alloy Enterprises has developed a technology that turns sheets of copper into solid…

The University of Pennsylvania confirmed on Tuesday that a hacker stole university data as part of last week’s data breach, during which alumni and other affiliates received suspicious emails from official university email addresses. “We got hacked,” the message from the hackers read. “We love breaking federal laws like FERPA (all your data will be leaked),” the message added. “Please stop giving us money.” While Penn initially told TechCrunch that the email was “fraudulent,” the university has now confirmed the hacker’s claim that data was taken during the breach. “On October 31, Penn discovered that a select group of information…

Robinhood CEO and co-founder Vlad Tenev.CNBCRobinhood beat Wall Street expectations for the third quarter on Wednesday, extending a hot streak that has made it one of the biggest large-cap U.S. tech stocks this year.Here is how Robinhood’s results compared to Wall Street estimates, according to analysts surveyed by LSEG:Earnings per share: 61cents vs. 53 cents expectedRevenue: $1.27 billion vs. $1.19 billion expectedRevenue doubled year-over-year, while net income climbed to $556 million, or 61 cents per share, up significantly from the same quarter last year, when the company posted net income of $150 million, or 17 cents per share.Transaction-based revenue, which…

Snap shares climbed as much as 25% on Wednesday after the company issued its third-quarter earnings, reporting revenue that beat analysts expectations and a $500 million stock repurchase program.Here is how the company did compared with Wall Street’s expectations:Earnings per share: Loss of 6 cents. That figure is not comparable to analysts’ estimates.Revenue: $1.51 billion vs. $1.49 billion expected, according to LSEG Global daily active users: 477 million vs. 476 million expected, according to StreetAccountGlobal average revenue per user (ARPU): $3.16 vs. $3.13 expected, according to StreetAccountSnap also announced that it is partnering with the startup Perplexity AI, which “will integrate its conversational search directly…

The Motion Picture Association (MPA) has sent Meta a cease-and-desist letter demanding that it stop using the term “PG-13,” as first reported by The Wall Street Journal. Last month, Meta announced that teens on Instagram would, by default, only see content that adheres to PG-13 movie ratings. Two weeks later, the MPA sent Meta a cease-and-desist letter, asserting that Meta’s claim that content on teen Instagram accounts would follow PG-13 guidelines is “literally false and highly misleading.” The company states that its movie-rating system can’t be compared to Meta’s content restrictions, which it says “appear to rely heavily on artificial…