After consumer protection scrutiny dialed up on fast-fashion giant Shein in the European Union on Wednesday, the bloc’s executive announced Thursday that it’s sent a fresh request for information to the ecommerce platform under the Digital Services Act (DSA), a pan-EU online governance framework Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Modern Synthesis’s fibers can be manipulated in ways that simple plant fibers cannot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Both startups and big tech companies have aggressively used AI to help developers write code or learn programming better. People have used chatbots to prepare for different scenarios in life, like interviews. Tech assessment platform CodeSignal, which introduced a learning platform for technical subjects with AI assistants last year, launched soft skill courses on its platform Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices...
On a clear spring evening in Michigan, the stars aligned — just not in the way Upfront Ventures partner Nick Kim expected. He’d just led a $9.5 million seed round for OurSky, a software platform for space observational data, and was eager to see what its telescope partner PlaneWave Instruments could do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Norway-based browser maker Opera on Tuesday launched a new browser called “Opera Air,” which focuses on mental well-being and mindfulness with features like break reminders, breathing exercises, soundscapes, and binaural beats for better focus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
People often use multiple apps for notes, schedule management, and to-dos. But why not combine them all in one app? That’s the ethos behind Hero, an all-in-one productivity app with an AI assistant (of course!). The iOS app was developed by former Meta employees Brad Kowalk and Seung W. Lee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As of Sunday in the European Union, the bloc’s regulators can ban the use of AI systems they deem to pose “unacceptable risk” or harm. February 2 is the first compliance deadline for the EU’s AI Act, the comprehensive AI regulatory framework that the European Parliament finally approved last March after years of development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apple CEO Tim Cook said DeepSeek’s AI models represent “innovation that drives efficiency” on an earnings call on Thursday while fielding questions from analysts about the iPhone maker’s ambitions around AI. “In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The Meta-owned company said the campaign was linked to Israeli spyware maker Paragon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI as part of a broader partnership that could see the Japanese conglomerate spend more than $40 billion on AI initiatives with the Microsoft-backed startup, according to Financial Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Web-based party games are making a comeback, now with the infusion of generative AI. Among the startups joining the trend, the current forecast looks good for one startup, Little Umbrella, which leverages AI for its social party games. The company announced on Thursday its $2 million seed funding round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
When it comes to the world of cybersecurity, identity is often thought of as a “perimeter” around an organization. So many breaches begin through techniques like password theft, phishing, and credential stuffing; ergo, securing the identities of not only users, but also applications and machines, is the key to securing the whole system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Martin Fengler knows a lot about the weather. Fengler got his Ph.D. in mathematics, focused on numerical weather prediction, before working for Meteomedia AG, a network of weather stations in Switzerland and Germany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI dev platform Hugging Face has partnered with third-party cloud vendors including SambaNova to launch Inference Providers, a feature designed to make it easier for devs on Hugging Face to run AI models using the infrastructure of their choice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Audio streaming company Spotify said Tuesday that it paid $10 billion to the music industry last year. The company added that it has given nearly $60 billion in industry payouts since its inception. This is another effort from Spotify to dispel reports that the company doesn’t reward artists properly for their work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Replacing inexpensive fossil fuels is a tall hurdle, but Lydian thinks it has cracked the problem Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Since Chinese AI company DeepSeek released an open version of its reasoning model R1 at the beginning of this week, many in the tech industry have been making grand pronouncements about what the company achieved, and what it means for the state of AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
LG Electronics is betting on robotics as its next big growth driver. The South Korean electronics company said on Friday that it has agreed to acquire an additional 30% stake in Bear Robotics, a California-based startup it previously backed that is building AI-powered server robots for restaurants. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Flip is a social commerce app that lets shoppers become creators. They can share honest reviews and earn cash based on engagement on the platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Streaming service Plex has long since grown beyond its original focus of being a home for personal media to offer a more comprehensive solution for discovering, streaming, and sharing content across services, including Plex’s own ad-supported free TV and movies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is launching so-called “strategic market status” (SMS) investigations into the mobile ecosystems of Apple and Google. The investigations constitute part of the new Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) which passed last year and came into effect in January. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A four-year-old London startup backed by Peter Thiel has raised a $55 million Series B round as it sets about “fixing the broken clinical trial industry.” The announcement comes as artificial intelligence is shaping up to revolutionize drug discovery and development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Truecaller for iOS has been updated with live caller ID support for its premium iPhone users. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
French startup Karmen has secured a small funding round so that it can improve its instant financing products. The company offers short-term loans to small companies facing a working capital crunch. It’s a €9 million equity-and-debt round ($9.4 million at today’s exchange rates) with Seventure Partners buying a stake in the small startup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Friend, a startup creating a $99, AI-powered necklace designed to be treated as a digital companion, has delayed its first batch of shipments until Q3. Friend had planned to ship devices to pre-order customers in Q1. But according to co-founder and CEO Avi Schiffman, that’s no longer feasible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Top LLMs performed poorly on a high-level history test, a new paper has found. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Leading AI developers, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, are threading a delicate needle to sell software to the United States military: make the Pentagon more efficient, without letting their AI kill people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A new AI orchestration startup from the founders of Lithuanian unicorn Nord Security is setting out to help enterprises put their AI projects into production, with an initial focus on bringing greater visibility, security and adaptability to large language models (LLMs). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Climate tech may have had a down year in 2024, but new data also shows a maturing sector with larger deal sizes. Venture investment in the climate tech sector was down 7% to $12.9 billion, $1 billion shy of 2023’s tally, according to data in a new PitchBook report. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google has agreed to purchase 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide removal credits from Indian startup Varaha. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
