Houston family creates 'Autistic by Nature' brand
A local family turns an autism diagnosis into a cool and educational business venture.
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TechCrunchVenture orgs form alliance to standardize data collection
Seven venture capital and startup organizations focused on diversity within tech have announced the Diversity Data Alliance, a commitment to standardizing the way that data is collected and shared. Data transparency remains a pressing issue within venture for people looking to better track where and to whom money is allocated. Many firms already privately compile background information on their founders, but that data can be skewed when publicly shared without insight into how the data was collected.
- Yahoo Finance
Stock market today: Stocks eye record highs as cooler inflation revives Fed rate cut hopes
Stocks edged higher on Wednesday as investors digested fresh readings on inflation and consumer spending.
- TechCrunch
Weka raises $140M as the AI boom bolsters data platforms
In a 2022 survey by Great Expectations, an open source data benchmarking platform, 77% of organizations said they were concerned about their data quality. On Wednesday, Weka, a platform for building data pipelines that handle a range of data sources, types, and sizes, announced that it raised $140 million in a two-part ($100 million and $40 million) Series E round led by Valor Equity Partners, with participation from Nvidia, Norwest Venture Partners, Micron Ventures, Qualcomm Ventures, Hitachi Ventures and others. The oversubscribed round values Weka at $1.6 billion post-money, double the company's previous valuation.
- Yahoo Life Shopping
I test kitchen gear for a living and the Instant Pot Vortex is my fave air fryer — grab one for $50 off
With nearly 15,000 five-star ratings, it's a bona fide Amazon hit — snap it up on sale while you can.
- TechCrunch
Uber has a new way to solve the concert traffic problem
Uber is taking a shuttle product it developed for commuters in India and Egypt and converting it for an American audience. The ride-hail and delivery giant announced Wednesday at its annual Go-Get event in New York City that it will launch a shuttle service in certain U.S. cities this summer. Uber Shuttle in the U.S. will repurpose the technology and business model that Uber has built to help commuters in emerging markets where there's a public transportation gap.
- Yahoo Life Shopping
This is the shampoo that 'grew back' Sharon Stone's hair after a stroke
With amino acids, high-grade vitamins and peptides, the Augustinus Bader formula promises shiny, healthy hair.
- Yahoo News
Trump hush money trial: What we've learned from the Stormy Daniels and Michael Cohen testimony so far
Here are some of the key highlights, revelations and dramatic moments from the combined 16 and a half hours that the prosecution’s star witnesses spent on the witness stand.
- TechCrunch
Portuguese VC firm Shilling launches €50M opportunity fund to back growth-stage startups
It seems like it was only yesterday (well, seven years ago!) that I was honing in on the rapid development of Portugal’s growing startup and investment scene. Today comes further proof that Portugal is stretching its wings as one of Europe’s freshest and hungriest tech ecosystems: Venture firm Shilling has launched a €50 million fund to support growth-stage startups in its own portfolio and also — crucially — to invest in startups everywhere else. The VC arm of Portuguese private equity firm Draycott SCR, Shilling is best known for being an early-stage investor in startups like Talka, Unbabel, Bizay, Uniplaces and Best Tables (acquired by TripAdvisor in 2015).
- TechCrunch
Restaurant365 orders in $175M at $1B+ valuation to supersize its food service software stack
The U.S. restaurant industry is expected to pass $1 trillion in sales for the first time this year, despite wider economic pressures on consumers. Now Restaurant365, a startup building tech to manage those businesses, has raised a hot $175 million to capitalize on that growth. The funding is being led by ICONIQ Growth, with KKR and L Catterton also participating, all existing backers of the company.
- TechCrunch
LanceDB, which counts Midjourney as a customer, is building databases for multimodal AI
Chang She, previously the VP of engineering at Tubi and a Cloudera veteran, has years of experience building data tooling and infrastructure. LanceDB makes money by selling fully managed versions of its open source software with added features such as hardware acceleration and governance controls -- and business appears to be going strong.
- Yahoo Sports
Commanders coach Dan Quinn addresses his throwback shirt featuring headdress feathers: 'A great lesson'
The franchise declined comment to multiple media outlets about the shirt prior to Quinn's statement.
- TechCrunch
LearnLM is Google's new family of AI models for education
Google says it has developed a new family of generative AI models "fine-tuned" for learning: LearnLM. A collaboration between Google's DeepMind AI research division and Google Research, LearnLM models — built on top of Google's Gemini models — are designed to "conversationally" tutor students on a range of subjects, Google says. LearnLM is already powering features across Google products, including in YouTube, Google's Gemini apps, Google Search and Google Classroom.
- Yahoo News
New Yahoo News/YouGov poll: With Trump's trial underway, most Americans now believe he falsified records to hide hush money payment
The survey also shows a dip in the former president’s favorable rating — from 45% in March to 41% today.
- TechCrunch
Maad raises $3.2M seed amid B2B e-commerce sector turbulence in Africa
Maad, a B2B e-commerce startup based in Senegal, has secured $3.2 million debt-equity funding to bolster its growth in the western Africa country and to explore fresh opportunities in the wider Francophone region. The seed round was led by Ventures Platform, with participation from Seedstars International Ventures, Reflect Ventures, Oui Capital, Launch Africa, Voltron Capital and Alumni Ventures.
- Engadget
Android's Circle to Search can now help students solve math and physics homework
Google has unveiled a new Circle to Search capability at I/O 2024.
- TechCrunch
Google's generative AI can now analyze hours of video
Gemini, Google’s family of generative AI models, can now analyze longer documents, codebases, videos and audio recordings than before. During a keynote at the Google I/O 2024 developer conference Tuesday, Google announced the private preview of a new version of Gemini 1.5 Pro, the company’s current flagship model, that can take in up to 2 million tokens. Beyond being able to analyze large files, models that can take in more tokens can sometimes achieve improved performance.
- TechCrunch
From Miles Grimshaw to Eva Ho, venture capitalists continue to play musical chairs
When Keith Rabois announced he was leaving Founders Fund to return to Khosla Ventures in January, it came as a shock to many in the venture capital ecosystem — and not just because Rabois is a big name in the industry. It was surprising because unlike in many other fields, venture capitalists don't traditionally move around very much — especially those who reach the partner or general partner level as Rabois had.
- TechCrunch
Paris-based VC firm Blisce launches climate tech fund with a target of $160M
Blisce has become the latest VC firm to launch a fund dedicated to climate tech, for which it plans to raise as much as €150 million (about $162 million). The firm is hiring investor Pierre-Edouard Berion to lead the fund, and Lucie Basch, the co-founder of Too Good To Go, is going to support the fund as a venture partner. If you aren’t familiar with Blisce, the VC firm is based in Paris, has an office in New York and is better known as the investment vehicle of Alexandre Mars (pictured above).
- TechCrunch
OpenAI's ChatGPT announcement: Watch the GPT-4o reveal and demo here
OpenAI's livestreamed GPT announcement event happened at 10 a.m. PT Monday, but you can still catch up on the reveals. The company described the event as “a chance to demo some ChatGPT and GPT-4 updates.” As it turned out, the announcement was a new model called GPT-4o -- the "o" stands for "omni"-- which offers greater responsiveness to voice prompts, as well as better vision capabilities.
- TechCrunch
OpenAI Startup Fund raises additional $5M
The OpenAI Startup Fund, a venture fund that invests in early-stage AI companies and has recently transferred legal control from Sam Altman to Ian Hathaway, has closed on an additional $5 million, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The fresh funds were raised from two investors who transferred the capital into a special purpose vehicle, a legal entity associated with the OpenAI Startup Fund: OpenAI Startup Fund SPV III, L.P. This is the third time the OpenAI Startup Fund has raised an SPV.