Month: September 2024

Attendees of the giant, annual Dreamforce conference in San Francisco love being the butt of the joke. Last year, Seth Myers entertained them during a 40-minute set that poked fun at the tech industry’s liberal use of self-affirmations. “You are achieving, you are amplifying, you are accelerating,” Myers said. “‘Architect?’ I saw ‘architect’ used as
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I recently adopted a kitten from a local animal shelter. The modern, well-staffed three-story facility relies almost entirely on donations to operate. It’s just one of the 1.8 million nonprofits in the U.S. that need to continually solicit contributions from donors to maintain its services. But Virtuous founder and CEO Gabe Cooper says that many
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UPchieve, the free, 24/7 online tutoring and college counseling app for low-income students, announced Thursday it’s giving teachers in Title 1 middle schools and high schools a new tool to ensure their students get the academic support they need. The new offering, called “UPchieve for Teachers,” allows teachers to offer 1:1 support to their students.
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In a world where innovation knows no borders, a new trend is rising in the tech ecosystem: national-interest startups. From aerospace and defense to critical infrastructure, these firms are ensuring that innovation directly supports national growth, security, and prosperity. As we approach an inflection point in Silicon Valley’s evolution, the question arises: Can startups rebuild
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Launching a new product is challenging, but doing it in a space dominated by tech giants requires bold innovation, sharp strategy, and the ability to scale quickly. TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 — taking place at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30 — brings together three experts who are doing just that, while simultaneously addressing
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Like its rival, Google, Amazon has launched an AI-powered video generator — but it’s only for advertisers at the moment, and somewhat limited in what it can do. Today at its Accelerate conference, Amazon unveiled Video generator, which turns a single product image into video showcases of that product after some amount of processing. The
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Runway, a startup developing AI video tools, including video-generating models, has partnered with Lionsgate — the studio behind the “John Wick” and “Twilight” franchises — to train a custom video model on Lionsgate’s movie catalog. Lionsgate vice chair Michael Burns said in a statement that the studio’s “filmmakers, directors and other creative talent” will get
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Fal.ai, a dev-focused platform for AI-generated audio, video, and images, today revealed that it’s raised $23 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Black Forest Labs co-founder Robin Rombach, and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. It’s a two-round deal. $14 million of Fal’s total came from a Series A tranche led by Kindred Ventures.
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The main attraction of YouTube’s Made On YouTube event on Wednesday morning was, you guessed it, artificial intelligence. The company announced that it is integrating Google DeepMind’s AI video generation model, Veo, into YouTube Shorts, letting creators generate high-quality backgrounds as well as six-second clips. At Google’s I/O 2024 developer conference, Veo was unveiled as
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Workday announced on Tuesday that it’s acquiring Evisort, an AI-powered contract management platform, for an undisclosed amount. In a statement, Terrance Wampler, group general manager at Workday, said that Evisort’s tech will enable Workday to add a range of AI-powered document processing tools to its existing finance and HR software. “Evisort will help us deliver
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Al Gore has enjoyed a very successful career, including as a U.S. senator, U.S. Vice President, U.S. presidential nominee, and even Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2007 for “informing the world of the dangers posed by climate change.” This past May, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his lifetime of service. What
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AWS’ weird AI-powered keyboard experiment, DeepComposer, is no more. In a blog post today, the company announced it’s shutting down the five-year-old DeepComposer, a physical MIDI piano and AWS service that let users compose songs with the help of generative AI. “After careful consideration, we have made the decision to end support for AWS DeepComposer,”
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We’re incredibly excited to announce the final agenda for our dedicated Fintech Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. It joins Space, SaaS, AI and Builders as the other industry-focused stages — all under one big roof. As the fintech industry evolves, new opportunities abound for founders, investors, and customers. Areas such as mobile banking, global payroll, digital
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