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1 week ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo |Mary Ann Azevedo |Kirsten Korosec |Anthony Ha
“We are in a period of what I’ll call fintech maximalism,” says Chemistry founder and GP Mark Goldberg.
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1 week ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo |Mary Ann Azevedo |Kirsten Korosec |Anthony Ha
Skip to content Jan 18, 2024 32 Min Featured Some areas of this page may shift around if you resize the browser window. Be sure to check heading and document order....
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1 week ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo |Kirsten Korosec |Anthony Ha |Maxwell Zeff
Meta dropped three new models over the weekend: Scout, Maverick, and the still-training Behemoth, billed as the next evolution of “open-ish” AI. But instead of excitement, the response was mostly shrugs. Critics called the release underwhelming, saying it lacked the edge expected in today’s breakneck AI race. Meta’s clear attempt to claw back some attention quickly turned messy.
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2 weeks ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
Rippling’s latest lawsuit reads less like a legal filing and more like the plot of a corporate espionage thriller, complete with secret crypto payments, an alleged mole, and a fake Slack channel trap. This week, the HR tech startup publicly named the employee at the center of its case against its rival Deel, claiming the company paid him not-exactly-life-changing sums to spy from the inside.
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3 weeks ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
Six years ago, while researching for a college entrepreneurship competition, Valentina Agudelo identified a troubling gap in breast cancer survival rates between Latin America and the developed world: women in her native Colombia and the rest of South America are dying at higher rates due to late detection. Today, Agudelo is the co-founder and CEO of Salva Health, and recently took home the top prize at TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield.
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3 weeks ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
OpenAI is reportedly nearing completion of a massive $40 billion funding round, with SoftBank leading the way. But this week, it wasn’t just the company funding news making headlines — its new image generator went live in ChatGPT, with capabilities including the ability to turn ordinary images into Studio Ghibli-style animation stills. While AI-generated art often sparks philosophical debates, this tool has been getting buzz for its visually impressive results.
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1 month ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo |Mary Ann Azevedo |Maxwell Zeff |Anthony Ha
“The enthusiasm into AI actually carries over into everything, which effectively impacts all startups,” said AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli when asked if investors remain as excited about emerging startups outside of AI. According to Kohli, AI startups make up nearly 40% of the startups on AngelList’s platform.
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1 month ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
California’s most controversial AI safety bill of 2024 might be dead, but its author isn’t backing down. State Senator Scott Weiner is back with SB 53, a new AI bill that strips away the most debated parts of last year’s failed legislation while keeping key whistleblower protections and a public cloud computing initiative called CalCompute. With the AI industry and even the federal government shifting away from AI safety regulation in favor of innovation, will the bill gain any traction?
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1 month ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo
“Silicon Valley is not a necessary and sufficient condition for success — it’s just one option,” says Ryan Hinkle, challenging the long-held belief that the Bay Area is the ultimate startup hub. Hinkle is a managing director at Insight Partners, the giant New York-based venture capital firm that invests in tech worldwide. It has $90 billion in assets under management and just raised a new $12.5 billion fund.
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1 month ago | 
techcrunch.com | Theresa Loconsolo |Anthony Ha |Kirsten Korosec |Maxwell Zeff
Optifye.ai, a Y Combinator-backed startup, sparked massive social media backlash this week after its demo went viral. The video, which shows how the company’s AI-powered cameras track factory workers in real-time, quickly caught fire online, with criticism flooding in on X and Hacker News. In the clip, a supervisor calls out an underperforming worker, sparking a wider conversation about surveillance, workers’ rights, and the growing role of AI in the workplace.
