~techmeme | Bookmarks (1014)

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Voyage AI, which helps companies build RAG systems, raised a $20M Series A from CRV, Snowflake, Databricks, and others, bringing its total funding to $28M  —  AI tends to make things up.  That's unappealing to just about anyone who uses it on a regular basis, but especially to businesses …

Filipe Espósito / 9to5Mac: Sources: the iPhone SE 4, coming in spring 2025, will have Apple's first 5G modem, the iPhone 15's rear camera, and an A18 and 8GB of RAM for Apple Intelligence  —  Apple has been working on a new generation of the iPhone SE, and a recent Bloomberg report revealed that it should be introduced …

Google Developers Blog: Google releases Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B, a smaller and faster 1.5 Flash variant with a 50% lower price, 2x higher rate limits, and lower latency on small prompts  —  Today, Gemini 1.5 Flash-8B, our latest Flash variant, is production-ready and comes with:  —  Developers can access gemini-1.5-flash-8b …

Katrina Manson / Bloomberg: The US and Microsoft seize 107 websites used by Russian intelligence agents and their proxies in the US operating under Star Blizzard, a group active since 2016  —  - Russian group Star Blizzard targeted civil society, US says  — Group has conducted election influence operations in UK

Maxwell Zeff / TechCrunch: OpenAI launches canvas, a ChatGPT interface with a workspace for writing and coding projects, similar to Anthropic's Artifacts, in beta for Plus and Team users  —  OpenAI introduced a new way to interact with ChatGPT on Thursday: an interface it calls “canvas.”

Rachel Metz / Bloomberg: How Sam Altman concentrated his power as OpenAI's CEO since he was fired and rehired 11 months ago; source: Altman is not looking to hire a CTO for now  —  Five years ago, OpenAI was a scrappy startup run by a handful of executives, with a heavy emphasis on research.

Emma Roth / The Verge: Google rolls out ads in AI Overviews for when a user's question has a “commercial angle”, and identifies the ads with a “sponsored” header, on mobile in the US  —  Google is rolling out ads in AI Overviews, which means you'll now start seeing products in some of the search engine's AI-generated summaries.

Emma Roth / The Verge: Google updates Lens to let users take a video and use their voice to search, showing an AI Overview and search results, rolling out to Search Labs on mobile  —  If you can't capture what you want to search for with just a picture, Google Lens will now let you take a video — and even use your voice...

Aisha S Gani / Bloomberg: Zepz, the money transfer service formerly called WorldRemit and valued at $5B in 2021, raised $267M to fund an expansion in its core African markets and beyond  —  - Zepz, formerly WorldRemit, did not disclose its new valuation  — Firm is in ‘no rush’ to join the public markets, investor says

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Google rolls out AI-organized Search results in the US on mobile, showing users AI-aggregated pages of content from forums, articles, YouTube videos, and more  —  Google will begin to show ads in AI Overviews, the AI-generated summaries it supplies for certain Google Search queries …

Sebastiaan de With / Lux: In-depth iPhone 16 Pro camera review: overall image and quality of life improvements, but Camera Control and advanced Photographic Styles are standout features  —  For the first “Desert Titanium” iPhone, we took over 1000 photos and videos in the desert.  Take a deep dive into what's new — and why it's close to the last of its kind.

Financial Times: Google DeepMind is developing an AI research assistant for scientists; BioNTech's InstaDeep unveils a Llama 3.1-based AI assistant for experimental biology  —  Artificial intelligence used to help researchers plan experiments and better predict outcomes  —  Google DeepMind and BioNTech …

Kai Nicol-Schwarz / Sifted: London-based Dexory, which builds autonomous robots for warehouses, raised a $80M Series B led by DTCP, taking its total equity funding to $120M  —  Generative AI has changed the game for autonomous technology, says founder and CEO Andrei Danescu  —  Dexory, a UK-based startup building autonomous robots …

Krystal Hu / Reuters: Resolve AI, which is building AI tools to help software engineers troubleshoot and fix production issues, raised a $35M seed led by Greylock  —  Resolve AI, a startup aiming to automate software operations, has raised $35 million in seed funding from investors led by Greylock …

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai / TechCrunch: How the FBI and Mandiant caught hacker Jesse Kipf, who sold access to systems he broke into and hacked Hawaii's death registration system to fake his own death  —  Jesse Kipf was a prolific hacker who sold access to systems he hacked, had contacts with a notorious cybercrime gang …

Danial Azhar / Reuters: Oracle plans to invest over $6.5B in Malaysia to set up a public cloud region, its first in the country and third in Southeast Asia, after two in Singapore  —  Oracle (ORCL.N) plans to invest more than $6.5 billion to set up its first public cloud region in Malaysia, the company said on Wednesday …

The Economic Times: Sources: Peak XV cut its $2.85B fund by $465M, or ~16%, over a year after its Sequoia split, with most of the reduction coming in its growth-stage allocation  —  Venture capital firm Peak XV Partners, formerly Sequoia Capital India, has pared the size of its $2.85 billion fund by 16% …

Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat: Nvidia details LLM family NVLM 1.0, which can handle vision and language tasks while enhancing text-only capabilities and is led by the 72B-parameter NVLM-D-72B  —  Nvidia has released a powerful open-source artificial intelligence model that competes with proprietary systems from industry leaders like OpenAI and Google.

Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch: Numa, which uses AI to automate tasks for auto dealerships and has 600 customers in the US and Canada, raised a $32M Series B led by Touring Capital and Mitsui  —  Sometimes, a pivot ends up being the smartest decision company leaders can make.  See Netflix's pivot from DVDs to streaming …

Kyle Orland / Ars Technica: Open-source Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx has been removed from GitHub, and its team has reportedly ceased development after Nintendo contacted its creator  —  GitHub removal comes months after a Nintendo lawsuit took down the Yuzu emulator.  —  Popular open source Nintendo Switch emulator Ryujinx …

Gali Weinreb / Globes Online: Nym, which helps US health care providers automate the medical coding process, raised a $47M growth investment led by PSG, bringing its total raised to $92M  —  Nym has automated the entire US healthcare medical coding process to deliver a faster, more cost-effective solution that outperforms traditional manual coding.

Wired: Pig butchering operations that are offshoots of the Southeast Asian activity have emerged in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and West Africa  —  Scamming operations that once originated in Southeast Asia are now proliferating around the world, likely raking in billions of dollars in the process.

TechCrunch: Sources: 11x.ai, which makes AI sales reps, raised a ~$50M Series B led by a16z at a ~$350M valuation; source: a $24M Series A earlier in 2024 valued it at $90M  —  11x.ai, a startup that develops AI-powered sales development bots, has secured roughly $50 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch has learned.

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is planning a new iPad mini, possibly for 2024, and nearing production of an iPhone SE without a home button and iPad Air models for early 2025  —  - New SE will use modernized design to entice budget shoppers  — Company also preparing iPad mini for this year, Air for 2025