Category: Apps
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‘Whatever you want Ben’: Inside Ben Horowitz’s cozy relationship with the Las Vegas Police Department
When Skydio, a young maker of drones in San Mateo, California, sent a customer proposal in 2023 to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, its chief of staff, Mike Gennaro, forwarded the email to VC Ben Horowitz. “Which deployment are you looking to do?” Horowitz wrote back. “Whatever you want, Ben,” Gennaro replied, according to…
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Benchmark, Index, others are in a wild unsolicited bidding war over Anysphere, maker of Cursor
There isn’t a shortage of AI-powered coding assistance startups. They include Augment, Codeium, Magic, and Poolside. However, Cursor has become one of the most popular. Its developer, Anysphere, has seen its revenue grow from $4 million annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in April to $4 million a month as of last month, according to a person…
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ChatGPT told 2M people to get their election news elsewhere — and rejected 250K deepfakes
Now that the election is over, the dissection can begin. As this is the first election in which AI chatbots played a significant part of voters’ information diets, even approximate numbers are interesting to think about. For instance, OpenAI has stated that it told around 2 million users of ChatGPT to go look somewhere else.…
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Upwind, an Israeli cloud cybersecurity startup, is raising $100M at a $850-900M valuation, say sources
Cybersecurity continues to command a lot of attention from enterprises looking for better protection from malicious hackers, and VCs want in on the action. In the latest example, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that Upwind — a specialist in assessing and securing cloud infrastructure — is closing in on a $100 million round at a…
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OpenAI loses another lead safety researcher, Lilian Weng
Another one of OpenAI’s lead safety researchers, Lilian Weng, announced on Friday she is departing the startup. Weng served as VP of research and safety since August, and before that, was the head of the OpenAI’s safety systems team. In a post on X, Weng said that “after 7 years at OpenAI, I feel ready…
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Murder trial for tech exec Bob Lee enters next phase
Roughly 19 months after the fatal stabbing of tech exec Bob Lee in San Francisco attracted the nation’s attention, the trial of the man accused of killing him, tech entrepreneur and consultant Nima Momeni, will soon enter its next phrase. It should be riveting, if the prosecution’s newly wrapped case against Momeni is any indication.…
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FBI says hackers are sending fraudulent police data requests to tech giants to steal people’s private information
The warning is a rare admission from the FBI about the threat from fake emergency data requests submitted by hackers with access to police email accounts. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. The FBI is warning that hackers are obtaining private user information — including emails and phone numbers —…
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AI-powered app integration platform UnifyApps grabs $20M from ICONIQ Growth
These days, it seems like every company either wants to or is already offering an AI product or service. For startups building an AI product in this space, it’s a really good time, but they aren’t without their challenges — the tech is still early, and though many companies are interested in trying generative AI…
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How AI startup Conflixis is protecting hospitals from corrupt doctors
After a career as a corruption investigator, Aaron Narva had an idea for a startup in the age of LLM AI: help hospitals identify risky behavior by doctors. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. After a career as an incident investigator with risk management firms like Kroll and FTI Consulting,…
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The Beatles’ AI-assisted track ‘Now and Then’ is nominated for two Grammy awards
The Beatles have been nominated for two Grammy awards this year, and no, we did not accidentally fall into a time warp back to the 1960s. The Beatles’ song “Now and Then,” refined with the use of AI and released last year, is up for Record of the Year and Best Rock Performance. So, the…