Devs expect tech vendors to supply software development kits, or SDKs, alongside their products to make it easier to create apps using those products. But many vendors only offer APIs, which are simply protocols that enable software components to communicate with each other. Alex Rattray, the founder of Stainless, thinks AI can assist, here. Stainless
Month: December 2024
It’s a cruel reality that only about 3% of the world’s water is fresh, and of that, only a fraction is readily available. Yet as the world’s arid regions encounter intensifying droughts, more people are eyeing the other 97% that’s sloshing around in the oceans. Islands, cities, and water districts have been using desalination to
Attention, players. You are about to compete in a new challenge—but first, do you know how to speak Korean? In preparation for Season Two of “Squid Game,” one of Netflix’s most popular Korean thriller series, the streaming giant announced on Tuesday that it has teamed up with the language learning app Duolingo to help viewers
WordPress hosting company Automattic said Monday that it is acquiring WPAI, a startup that builds AI solutions for WordPress, at an undisclosed price. WPAI has some products such as CodeWP, a tool to use AI to create WP Plugins; AgentWP, an AI assistant for WordPress site builders; and WP Chat, which is an AI-powered chat
X, the Elon Musk-owned social network previously known as Twitter, quietly added a new image generator to its Grok assistant this past Saturday. Then, it removed it. Now, it’s bringing it back — and officially announcing it. The image generator, called Aurora, was developed by Musk’s AI company, xAI, and trained on billions of examples from the
Spotify has officially discontinued Car Thing, its in-car streaming device, with all units now disabled, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Earlier today, an X user noticed that their Car Thing is indeed no longer functioning, displaying a message that it’s “no longer operational,” along with a reminder of the refund terms valid until January 14,
Alexis Conneau thinks a lot about the movie “Her.” For the last several years, he’s obsessed over trying to turn the film’s fictional voice technology, Samantha, into a reality. Conneau even uses a picture of Joaquin Phoenix’s character in the movie as his banner on Twitter. Conneau’s X/twitter banner (Image Credit: X) With ChatGPT’s Advanced
Do we really need another social media app for college students? With the looming TikTok ban in the U.S., a new app called Connyct seems to think so. Connyct closely resembles the popular short-form video app, providing all the features you would expect, such as a personalized content feed, private chatting, as well as video
It appears that users in the EU and UK won’t get access to Sora — OpenAI’s video generation model — at launch. A newly published help page on OpenAI’s website listing the supported regions for Sora “on web and mobile” omits all EU countries. On the page, OpenAI notes that accessing Sora outside the territories
Famm, the discovery platform for queer-owned brands, was created by BIPOC queer married couple Cat Perez and Marianna Di Regolo to help users find LGBTQ-owned businesses. Now it’s launching a new social networking app for LGBTQ+ professionals and business owners to connect and collaborate. Famm Connect, now available on iOS and Android devices, includes common
In winter 2025, a comparative literature class at UCLA will feature a textbook, homework assignments, and TA resources generated by AI. The class in question is a survey of literature from the Middle Ages to the 17th century, while the materials are generated by Kudu — an “evolved” textbook platform founded by Alexander Kusenko, a
Apple is looking to make its Vision Pro mixed reality device more attractive to gamers and game developers, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The Vision Pro has been pitched as more of a productivity and media consumption device than something aimed at gamers, due in part to relying on eye and
Notable Silicon Valley startup accelerator Y Combinator held a Demo Day for its inaugural Fall cohort this week. The 95 startups in this latest batch looked quite similar to recent YC cohorts in the sense that it includes many AI startups. If I did my math right, 87% of the startups in this batch are
The influential accelerator Y Combinator made a splash in Africa in 2020 when it shined its light on the market and began to accept startups from the region into its cohorts. The move was huge: in this nascent market, startups especially rely on programs like these to find their feet and connect with investors, and
AI agent startup /dev/agents announced a massive $56M seed round, putting the company’s valuation at a whopping $500 million. The amount is impressive given the company won’t have a first version of its product available until at least early next year. The reason behind investors’ trust, however, becomes a bit clearer when you consider the
Not even the people inventing AI always know what it’s good for besides writing emails. But there are seed-stage companies, like Y Combinator grad and 2024 Disrupt Battlefield participant Nowadays, that are doing something mind-blowingly useful with AI. Nowadays uses LLM AI to automatically plan large, expensive events. Using its own database of 400,000 global
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. The week after Thanksgiving is usually rich in announcements, and this year was no exception. Blame it on the holiday season, but we would even go as
Google’s video generator is coming to a few more customers — Google Cloud customers, to be precise. On Tuesday, Google announced that Veo, its AI model that can generate short video clips from images and prompts, will be available in private preview for customers using Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s AI development platform. Google says that
Over a hundred colleges and high schools are turning to a new AI tool called Nectir, allowing teachers to create a personalized learning partner that’s trained on their syllabi, textbooks, and assignments to help students with anything from questions related to their coursework to essay writing assistance and even future career guidance. The company announced
MobiKwik, an Indian financial services startup, has cut the size of its planned IPO for the third time, setting a price band of ₹265-₹279 ($3.1-$3.3) that values it at $250 million — down sharply from its last private valuation of $924 million in 2021. The Gurugram-based fintech, backed by Peak XV and ADIA, is seeking
Amazon Music announced on Tuesday the launch of 2024 Delivered, a new personalized yearly recap feature inspired by Spotify’s popular Wrapped experience. The feature delivers a summary of your listening habits, including your top artists, songs, genres, and more. To see your 2024 Delivered, open the Amazon Music app on your iOS or Android device
A startup with founders who previously served in the German military has created a product akin to an Amazon Firestick for legacy defense equipment, complete with a software stack. ARX Robotics claims its system can turn old equipment into AI-driven devices, such as autonomous-driving trucks. Back in June this year ARX raised a €9 million
OpenAI finally released the full version of o1, which gives smarter answers than GPT-4o by using additional compute to “think” about questions. However, AI safety testers found that o1’s reasoning abilities also make it try to deceive humans at a higher rate than GPT-4o — or, for that matter, leading AI models from Meta, Anthropic,
Turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B food tech startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA) a $30 million Series B funding round. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its production capacity by around 7.5x. The round fast follows
Celeb greetings app Cameo is pivoting to creators with a new product called CameoX. The company became a pandemic hit, as people stuck at home marked various celebrations, like birthdays and graduations, with celebrity shout-outs. It became a tech unicorn valued at $1 billion, but as life returned to normal, Cameo was hit with multiple
Ladder, an Austin, Texas-based fitness startup that makes a popular strength-training app, is accusing Peloton of ripping off its work with the launch of Peloton’s new Stength+ app, which exited beta on Wednesday. After receiving feedback from Peloton’s beta testers that the app looked, felt, and functioned much like Ladder’s own, the company says it
xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, has raised $6 billion, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Valor Equity Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz were expected to contribute to the round, along with Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar’s sovereign-wealth fund. The new cash
Recycling today kind of sucks. People are generally confused about what can be recycled and where. As a result, only about 32% of eligible waste actually gets recycled. It would be a lot easier if people could dump everything into one bin and let the waste management companies deal with it, but that’s proven to
Google said Thursday it is introducing multiple updates for Pixel and Android devices as part of the December feature drop. These features include new Gemini extensions, an updated Pixel Screenshots app, expressive captions, and accessibility enhancements. Android Google is introducing new Gemini extensions, including Spotify, Messaging, Calling, and Smart Home. This will enable users to
Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine, is expanding its publisher program, with the LA Times, Adweek, Mexico News Daily, and a dozen other news outlets signing up. Publishers will share in revenue generated by ads on Perplexity, and receive metrics to track their content’s performance — as long as they don’t withdraw. “We would not be
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