Author: GT

Waymo plans to voluntarily issue a software recall with federal safety regulators related to how its robotaxis operate around school buses, the Alphabet-owned company told TechCrunch. The voluntary software recall will be filed early next week, according to the company. Waymo said as soon as the issue was identified it updated its software on November 17. The company contends this update has meaningfully improved performance to a level better than human drivers in this important area. Software recalls have become more common in the age of modern passenger vehicles — and now robotaxis — in which operations are handled by software. These updates,…

Aaru, a startup that provides near-instant customer research by using AI to simulate user behavior, has raised a Series A led by Redpoint Ventures, according to three people familiar with the deal. The funding round included different valuation tiers, these people said. Although some equity was acquired at a $1 billion valuation, a lower valuation for other investors resulted in a blended valuation below $1 billion, according to people familiar with the deal. Multi-tier valuations within the same round are an unusual mechanism in venture capital, but investors say they are becoming increasingly common for desirable AI startups in the…

Yoodli, an AI-powered communication training startup, has reached a valuation of more than $300 million — more than triple its level six months ago — as it builds technology meant to assist people rather than replace them with machines. The valuation increase follows Yoodli’s $40 million Series B round, led by WestBridge Capital with participation from Neotribe and Madrona. It comes after a $13.7 million Series A round announced in May, bringing the startup’s total funding to nearly $60 million. As AI tools spread into workplaces and fuel fears of automation, Yoodli positions itself differently. The four-year-old, Seattle-based startup uses…

Mike Winkelmann, the digital artist known as Beeple, has placed himself at the center of the pack — literally — with his latest viral installation at Art Basel Miami Beach, and there’s still time to see it through Sunday. His “Regular Animals” project features $100,000 robotic dogs outfitted with hyper-realistic heads resembling Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos, alongside art legends Pablo Picasso and Andy Warhol. The robot dogs roam a plexiglass pen, capturing images through chest-mounted cameras that are processed by AI and then essentially pooped out, according to the WSJ. Of the prints produced, 256 include QR…

Amazon Web Services’ annual tech conference AWS re:Invent has wrapped. And the singular message, amid a deluge of product news and keynotes, was AI for the enterprise. This year it was all about upgrades that give customers greater control to customize AI agents, including one that AWS claims can learn from you and then work independently for days. Amazon CTO Dr. Werner Vogels capped off the final night with a keynote aimed at lifting up developers and assuaging any fears that AI is coming for engineering jobs. AWS re:Invent 2025, which runs through December 5, started with a keynote from…

The Chicago Tribune filed a lawsuit against AI search engine Perplexity on Thursday alleging copyright infringement. The suit, seen by TechCrunch, was filed in a federal court in New York. The Tribune alleges that its lawyers contacted Perplexity in mid-October asking if the AI search engine was using its content, according to the complaint. Perplexity’s lawyers replied it did not train models with the Tribune’s work but that it “may receive non-verbatim factual summaries,” the lawsuit claims. The Tribune’s lawyers, however, argue that Perplexity is delivering Tribune content verbatim. Interestingly, the newspaper’s lawyers are also calling out Perplexity’s retrieval augmented…

In its latest retreat from India’s crowded online retail market, Walmart-backed fintech giant PhonePe has wound down its Pincode e-commerce app and will shift the business toward B2B services for offline merchants. On Thursday, PhonePe founder and group CEO Sameer Nigam said operating a consumer-facing quick-commerce app had become a distraction from the company’s core focus on small retailers. The company instead wants to concentrate on helping stores “achieve operational efficiency, improved margins and visibility,” he said, citing this as its primary objective. PhonePe launched Pincode in April 2023 as a major push into e-commerce, building it on the Indian…

The Sizewell A and B nuclear power stations, operated by Electricite de France SA (EDF), in Sizewell, UK, on Friday, Jan. 26, 2024. Photographer: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesBloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesThe U.K. was the birthplace of commercial nuclear energy, but now generates just a fraction of its power from it — big investments are underway to change that.The country once had more nuclear power stations than the U.S., USSR and France — combined. It was a global producer until 1970 but hasn’t completed a new reactor since Sizewell B in 1995.Today, the country takes the crown not for being a leader in…

Six years ago at a StrictlyVC event in San Francisco, I asked Sam Altman how OpenAI, with its complicated corporate structure, would make money. He said that someday, he’d ask the AI. When everyone snickered, he added, “You can laugh. It’s all right. But it really is what I actually believe.” He wasn’t kidding. Sitting again in front of an audience, this time across from Max Hodak, the co-founder and CEO of Science Corp., I can’t help but remember that moment with Altman. Pale-complexioned Hodak, wearing jeans and a black zip-up sweatshirt, looks more like he’d fit in at a…

In one of the most groundbreaking deals the streaming world has ever seen, Netflix announced on Friday its acquisition of Warner Bros. with an enterprise value of $82.7 billion.  This agreement involves both HBO Max and the HBO studio, marking one of the largest mergers in Hollywood’s history. By making this move, Netflix is not just solidifying its top position but also significantly enhancing its content library, gaining access to well-known franchises such as DC Comics, “Game of Thrones,” and “Harry Potter.” While Netflix boasted over 300 million paying subscribers in January, HBO Max, in combination with Discovery+, currently has…