Month: November 2024

The wide availability of tools to build generative AI has led to a Cambrian explosion of startups in the space. Plentiful capital hasn’t hurt, either — nor has the declining cost of the requisite technical infrastructure. In fact, one of the flashiest applications of generative AI, generative video, risks becoming oversaturated. Labs such as Genmo,
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An investment vehicle backed by Oyo’s founder, Ritesh Agarwal, has proposed to inject another $65.1 million into the Indian hospitality startup, according to notices to shareholders that were reviewed by TechCrunch. The investment, through Redsprig Innovation Partners, would value the SoftBank-backed company at $3.8 billion, according to terms shared in a notice to shareholders. While
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In the wake of the U.S. 2024 presidential election, one fact became clear: Disinformation proliferated online at a startling rate, shaping Americans’ views about each candidate as well as a diverse set of topics, including public health, climate change, and immigration. Generative AI – with its ability to produce deepfakes in seconds and its propensity to
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Blizzard Entertainment first released World of Warcraft in November 2004, so The New York Times celebrated the anniversary by outlining the many ways we can still see the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game’s influence’s 20 years later. For one thing, while multiplayer games and early social networks such as MySpace already existed, WoW provided a
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What’s the best gift you can get someone? Why, the gift of travel, of course. The next best is something to enhance the travel experience. As fun and enlightening as seeing new places is, the whole part of getting there can detract from the overall experience, especially for those who find themselves traveling a lot
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As the influencer economy grows, startups like Passionfroot, Agentio, and One Impression, along with social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are trying to build marketplaces to connect brands with creators. Miami-based startup Influur is banking on two unique aspects of its platform: quick response from creators and financial tools to ensure they are paid
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Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has once again teased the company’s long-delayed HiFi or “super premium” tier, a higher-qualify subscription offering the streaming service first announced in 2021 and then failed to roll out. In the company’s third-quarter earnings call with investors on Wednesday, the exec suggested that such a product was still on the way,
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Bluesky is continuing to blow up. The Twitter-like service and alternative to Elon Musk’s X, has now surpassed 16 million users after seeing rapid growth in the days following the U.S. presidential election. While many are leaving X over the service’s increasing right-wing leanings and Musk’s campaigning for Trump, others are unhappy with other changes
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For all its promise as a climate-friendly fuel, hydrogen hasn’t had much luck. It lost the battle over personal transportation to battery electric vehicles, and for industrial users, it remains far more expensive than natural gas. That’s in part because natural gas can flow through sprawling networks of pipelines. Hydrogen doesn’t, which means buyers either
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Startup inspiration can strike anywhere. But for Atlas.co*, a freemium browser-based, real-time mapping tool that’s being built by an Oslo, Norway-based team of (initially student) engineers, the realization that there might be a business opportunity in competing with expensive legacy mapping software hit the founders during class. “When we took introduction class to GIS [geographic
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Reliance and Disney have completed their landmark Indian media merger, creating an $8.5 billion entertainment powerhouse in the country’s streaming and television markets. The deal, proposed in February, brings together Disney’s Star India with Reliance-controlled Viacom18 under a joint venture that will control about 85% of India’s streaming market and roughly half of television viewership
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