Author: GT

Sesame, a conversational AI startup and smart glasses maker, has raised a $250 million Series B round and is opening up its beta to a select group of testers, the company announced Tuesday. The startup, headed by former Oculus co-founder and CEO Brendan Iribe and Ankit Kumar, former CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working to create a personal AI agent that interacts with users using a natural-sounding human voice. The company plans to embed the personal AI agent into lightweight eyewear designed to be worn throughout the day and which users can interact with via voice. The startup first…

LangChain raised $125 million at a $1.25 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. TechCrunch reported in July that the provider of a popular open source framework for building AI agents was raising fresh funds at a valuation of at least $1 billion. The deal was led by IVP, as we previously reported. New investors CapitalG and Sapphire Ventures joined in, as did existing investors Sequoia, Benchmark, and Amplify. LangChain began in 2022 as an open source project founded by machine learning engineer Harrison Chase. The startup was an early darling of the AI era, solving problems that made building…

As the entertainment industry reckons with when and how to use generative AI in filmmaking, Netflix is leaning in. In its quarterly earnings report released on Tuesday afternoon, Netflix wrote in its letter to investors that it is “very well positioned to effectively leverage ongoing advances in AI.” Netflix isn’t planning to use generative AI as the backbone of its content but believes the technology has potential as a tool to make creatives more efficient. “It takes a great artist to make something great,” Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos said on Tuesday’s earnings call. “AI can give creatives better tools to…

Samsung Galaxy XR HeadsetCourtesy: SamsungIt’s been more than 17 years since the modern smartphone era began with the launch of the iPhone, and tech companies have been obsessed with trying to disrupt it ever since.The most common approach is mixed reality XR headsets: computerized goggles that put all of your apps and other digital content right in front of your face.Samsung is the latest to take on the category with the Galaxy XR. Samsung will start selling it on Tuesday night for $1,800, about half the price of Apple’s Vision Pro. Early adopters will also get a suite of digital…

Periodic Labs, a new startup by one of OpenAI’s most respected researchers, Liam Fedus, and his former Google Brain colleague, Ekin Dogus Cubuk, came out of stealth last month with an enormous $300 million seed round. It was led by Andreessen Horowitz, with Felicis cutting the first check in, and included a who’s who of angels and other top VCs.  The startup began when Fedus had a conversation with Cubuk (whose friends call him Dogus) about seven months ago. Cubuk was one of Google Brain’s foremost machine learning and material science researchers. After endless Silicon Valley takes on how generative AI would…

Apple has rolled out a new feature that makes it easier to customize Liquid Glass to your liking. Now users will be able to set the appearance of Liquid Glass to either Clear or Tinted, with the help of a new setting included in the latest beta update of its mobile and desktop operating systems. The addition indicates Apple is listening closely to user feedback in these early days of the iOS 26, iPadOS 26, and macOS 26 public launches. Apples likes to push through more significant changes, but it will often offer a fallback option for those who have…

In a region long defined by fragmented enterprise systems, outdated compliance tools, and HR software that rarely talks to finance, Cercli is building a unified alternative for MENA businesses with AI at its core. The Dubai-based startup, founded by ex-Careem operators Akeed Azmi and David Reche, has announced an oversubscribed $12 million Series A round led by European VC Picus Capital. Cercli today looks slightly different from the company that raised a $4 million seed round last year. It is rebuilding a Rippling-like stack for the MENA region but making it AI-native from the ground up. Over the past year, that bet…

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesMeta said Tuesday that it formed a joint venture agreement with Blue Owl Capital in a deal worth $27 billion to fund and develop the social media company’s massive Hyperion data center in rural Louisiana.As part of the deal, the asset management firm will own 80% of the joint venture, while Meta will retain a 20% stake and oversee the construction and property management services of the data center,…

For most enterprise companies, AI is either a promise that has yet to deliver or a security risk. The effort of Lithuania’s most famous entrepreneur duo to solve that conundrum has garnered attention — and funding. Just months after Nexos.ai came out of stealth with an $8 million funding round led by Index Ventures, Nord Security co-founders Tomas Okmanas and Eimantas Sabaliauskas have closed a €30 million Series A (approximately $35 million) for this new startup — a platform that helps companies adopt AI tools securely by acting as a middleman between employees and AI systems. In Okmanas’ view, “the…

Netflix missed the earnings target set by stock market analysts during the video streamer’s latest quarter, a letdown that the company blamed on a tax dispute in Brazil.The results announced Tuesday broke Netflix’s six-quarter streak of posting a profit that eclipsed analysts’ projections.The Los Gatos, California, cited an unexpected $619 million expense tied to the Brazilian tax dispute for the earnings shortfall while hailing its lineup of distinctive TV series and films for keeping its audience engaged and delivering a mix of subscriber fees and increased ad sales that helped it deliver revenue that matched analyst forecasts.Investors, though, weren’t placated…