Rocket Lab is exploring possible applications for a satellite constellation that they would build, launch and operate in-house, similar to SpaceX’s Starlink business, as a way of generating recurring revenue, an executive said this week. “If you look to where we ultimately want to go, in a lot of ways we want to emulate what…
After disclosing better-than-expected financial results in its fourth quarter earnings report, U.S.-based Coinbase has big plans. The second largest crypto exchange told its investors that intends to lean heavily on its work with the popular USDC stablecoin this year, lever its recently launched layer-2 blockchain Base as a way to experiment with and improve blockchain…
It doesn’t take much to get GenAI spouting mistruths and untruths. This past week provided an example, with Microsoft’s and Google’s chatbots declaring a Super Bowl winner before the game even started. The real problems start, though, when GenAI’s hallucinations get harmful — endorsing torture, reinforcing ethnic and racial stereotypes and writing persuasively about conspiracy theories.…
Bending Spoons, the owner of popular apps and services like Evernote and Meetup, announced today that it has raised $155 million in a new equity financing round at a $2.55 billion post-money valuation. Durable Capital Partners led the round with existing investors, such as Baillie Gifford, Cox Enterprises, NB Renaissance, NUO Capital, and StarTIP (controlled…
The global venture capital market is enduring a long period of limited exits. Startups are staying private longer, M&A is quiet in part due to sharpened regulatory oversight, and the IPO market remains frozen. This means many historical venture deals are slowly rotting on the vine, in IRR terms. The crypto market is no different,…
Researchers at Amazon have trained the largest ever text-to-speech model yet, which they claim exhibits “emergent” qualities improving its ability to speak even complex sentences naturally. The breakthrough could be what the technology needs to escape the uncanny valley. These models were always going to grow and improve, but the researchers specifically hoped to see…
This is a transcript of the latest episode of Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast. New episodes of Equity air every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Listen above or read below to catch up on our Wednesday show, in which we talk through the week’s leading startup and venture capital news. Transcript 0:10 Hello and welcome back to…
KTrust, a Tel Aviv-based security startup, is taking a different approach to Kubernetes security from many of its competitors in the space. Instead of only scanning Kubernetes clusters and their configurations for known vulnerabilities, KTrust is taking a more proactive approach. It deploys an automated system that tries to hack into the system. This allows…
Andrej Karpathy, a widely respected research scientist, announced today that he has left OpenAI. This is the second time Karpathy has left the top AI firm and his departure is not because of any event, issue or drama, he said. Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI, initially left the company to join Tesla in 2017.…
In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI firm launched by Siri’s co-founder, called GamePlanner.AI. The deal valued the secretive startup at around $200 million, according to reports. Though the hosting company didn’t telegraph its plans for GamePlanner at the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky today shared a high-level overview of Airbnb’s larger plans…
