Industry News
Leaked data exposes a Chinese AI censorship machine
One academic who reviewed the dataset said it was “clear evidence” that China, or its affiliates, wants to use AI to improve repression.
Bradley Tusk says he makes more money with ‘equity-for-services’ than he did as a traditional VC
Bradley Tusk, co-founder and managing partner at Tusk Venture Partners, told TechCrunch in today’s episode of Equity that VC as we know it is dead. And it has been for the last four years. “Maybe there’s some VC that I’ve never heard of that’s aw…
Fintech Mercury lands $300M in Sequoia-led Series C, doubles valuation to $3.5B
Digital banking startup Mercury has raised $300 million in primary and secondary funding at a $3.5 billion post-money valuation, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Wednesday. The valuation is more than double the startup’s valuation when it last ra…
Has GetReal cracked the code on AI deepfakes? $18M and an impressive client list says yes
The proliferation of scarily realistic deepfakes is one of the more pernicious byproducts of the rise of AI, and falling victim to scams based on these deepfakes is already costing companies millions of dollars — not to mention the implications t…
A new social app is fighting rage-bait
Sez Us, a social app founded by Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, is trying to build a platform without rage-bait. Rage-bait refers to any posts that are intended to stoke controversy. This might be an intentionally controversial political take, or it …
YouTube is changing how YouTube Shorts views are counted
YouTube is changing how it counts views on YouTube Shorts to give creators a deeper understanding of how their short-form content is performing, the company announced on Wednesday. Shorts views will now count the number of times a creator’s Short…
Waze removes Google Assistant from iOS due to ongoing issues
Since the integration of Google Assistant for Waze on iOS in 2020, iPhone users have faced ongoing issues that the company has struggled to resolve for “over a year,” Waze wrote in a post, apologizing for the “prolonged inconvenience.” …
Amazon’s Alexa Fund is now backing AI startups
Amazon started the Alexa Fund in 2015 to back early-stage voice startups. With the advent of large language models and Amazon launching Gen AI-powered Alexa+ along with a family of multimodal AI models, the fund now wants to broaden its scope and inves…
What’s next for ATProto, the protocol powering Bluesky and other apps
It’s getting easier to build new applications on ATProto, the protocol that powers Bluesky’s social network and a growing number of other apps. At ATmosphere, the ATProto community conference held over the weekend in Seattle, Bluesky CTO Pa…