Europe must get much better at scaling startups. That’s the prognosis of the European Union’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, who’s on the cusp of taking up her second five-year term steering the bloc of some 449 million people — with a December 1 start date now locked in. Giving a speech to the European […]
Perplexity, the AI-powered search engine, wants to get into hardware — kinda sorta. Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s founder and CEO, posted on X on Monday that he was considering making a “simple, under $50” device to “reliably answer” questions “voice to voice.” He promised that Perplexity would “definitely” sell such a device if the post got […]
High-quality data may be the key to high-quality AI. With studies finding that dataset curation, rather than size, is what really affects an AI model’s performance, it’s unsurprising that there’s a growing emphasis on dataset management practices. According to some surveys, AI researchers today spend much of their time on data prep and organization tasks. […]
Electric passenger boat startup Candela has topped off its most recent raise with another $14 million, the company announced Thursday, and has sold the first of its ferries in the U.S. — bound for Lake Tahoe. Candela makes a series of all-electric hydrofoiling watercraft, meaning the body of the boat rises above the surface of […]
As promised, startup accelerator Y Combinator’s imminent Demo Day will be happening in person. In fact, YC seems to have kicked off the IRL return of Demo Day at the end of the long Thanksgiving weekend, with an in-person Alumni Demo Day on Sunday for the Fall 2024 class of startups. Squad founder (and later […]
AI’s surging power demand has put several Big Tech firms at risk of blowing through their climate commitments. But Amazon has partnered with Orbital, an AI startup, to test a new material that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere — and they’re using an AWS data center as a first site. One of carbon capture’s […]
Arzooo, an Indian startup that sought to bring “the best of e-commerce” to physical stores, has sold its assets in a distressed sale to Moksha Group. The deal comes after Arzooo engaged with several startups, including Bengaluru-headquartered Udaan, exploring potential merger opportunities, according to people familiar with the matter. Arzooo provided a digital bridge to […]
Creator marketplace startup Agentio, which has built an automated platform for YouTubers to sell their ad slots to brands, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark with participation from returning investors Craft Ventures and AlleyCorp. With the new funding, the startup aims to scale its marketplace for YouTubers and bolster its […]
More than 100 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 […]
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 […]