Amazon’s upgraded digital assistant powered by generative AI, Alexa+, has rolled out to over 100,000 users, CEO Andy Jassy said on the company’s earnings call Thursday. While that’s a far cry from the 600 million Alexa devices out there, the company is making some progress on the rollout of Alexa+, which was first unveiled in…
Apple CEO Tim Cook commented on the impact of President Trump’s tariffs during Thursday’s second-quarter earnings call with investors. While the iPhone maker saw only “limited impact” from tariffs in the March quarter, Cook said Apple couldn’t forecast what that would mean for the coming quarter. However, if things remained the same, the company estimates…
Bench, the accounting and tax startup that was bought in a fire sale last December, has conducted a round of significant layoffs, it confirmed to TechCrunch. Bench didn’t specify how many people were affected, but one person who works there estimated that Bench was eliminating dozens of positions – that’s a big chunk of the…
‘Tis the week for small AI models, it seems. On Thursday, Ai2, the nonprofit AI research institute, released Olmo 2 1B, a 1-billion-parameter model that Ai2 claims beats similarly-sized models from Google, Meta, and Alibaba on several benchmarks. Parameters, sometimes referred to as weights, are the internal components of a model that guide its behavior….
Startup May Mobility plans to deploy its autonomous vehicles on the Uber platform by the end of 2025, starting in Arlington, Texas, as part of a multi-year partnership. The tie-up with Uber offers May a chance to grow beyond offering shuttles within campuses and planned communities, while Uber adds May Mobility to its growing roster…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 was a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership…
MoviePass, the startup that made its mark with its movie theater subscription service, has always been known for shaking things up, and its latest venture is no exception. The company announced on Thursday the beta launch of Mogul, a new daily fantasy entertainment platform designed specifically for the Hollywood industry. To understand what Mogul is,…
World, the biometric ID company best known for its eyeball-scanning Orb devices, on Wednesday announced several partnerships aimed at driving sign-ups and demonstrating the applications of its tech. World is partnering with Match Group, the dating app conglomerate, to verify the identities of Tinder users in Japan using World’s identity verification system. Additionally, World has…
WhatsApp now has more than 3 billion people using it every month, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg noted during the company’s Q1 results conference call on Wednesday. Founded in 2009 and acquired by Facebook for $19 billion in 2014, WhatsApp remains free to use and doesn’t serve any ads. The app reached the 2 billion monthly…
In 2013, Tatyana Marynich and Anastasiya Khamiankova opened the doors to Imaguru, a startup hub in Minsk, Belarus that would go on to launch some of Eastern Europe’s most prominent tech success stories. A decade later, they’ve been sentenced ‘in absentia’ to a combined 23 years in prison by Belarusian authorities. Their property has been…
