Adobe brings Firefly AI-powered Generative Remove to Lightroom

Adobe announced on Tuesday the addition of a Generative Remove feature for Lightroom. Built atop Firefly, the gen AI feature makes it possible to seamlessly edit objects out of photos. The feature arrives on Tuesday as early access. Adobe says the feature is up to the task, regardless of how …...Read More

Sonos finally made some headphones

Sonos recently teased that it was set to announce its “most requested product ever.” If you guessed headphones, congratulations. The firm maintains a devoted fanbase, and many people were no doubt eager to see what it would look like were it to apply its expertise to the category. The answer …...Read More

Special mud helps XGS Energy get more power out of geothermal wells

Young geothermal energy wells can be like budding prodigies, each brimming with potential to outshine their peers. But like people, most decline with age. In California, for example, the amount of electricity generated by geothermal power plants declined by 15% between 2001 and 2018, partly because existing wells degraded. “The …...Read More

Pinecone launches its serverless vector database out of preview

Pinecone, the vector database startup founded by Edo Liberty, the former head of Amazon’s AI Labs, has long been at the forefront of helping businesses augment large language models (LLMs) with their own data. Most recently, though, the company completely rearchitected its product to launch Pinecone Serverless, which frees its …...Read More

Porsche invests in battery startup South 8 to boost cold-weather EV performance

All cars suffer when the mercury drops, but electric vehicles suffer more than most as heaters draw more power and batteries charge more slowly as the liquid electrolyte inside thickens. Drivers in Chicago found this out the hard way last January after many Teslas failed to charge during a deep …...Read More

Data-labeling startup Scale AI raises $1B as valuation doubles to $13.8B

Scale AI, a company that provides data-labeling services for training machine learning models, has raised a $1 billion Series F round from a slew of big-name institutional and corporate investors including Amazon and Meta. The raise, which constitutes a mix of primary and secondary funding, comes amid a boom in …...Read More

Meta, Match, Coinbase and others team up to fight online fraud and crypto scams

Hosting scams on your platform is bad for business, which is why on Tuesday, a group of major tech companies including Match Group, Meta, Coinbase and others are jointly launching a new coalition to take on online fraud across dating apps, social media and crypto. The new coalition, Tech Against …...Read More

EU Council gives final nod to set up risk-based regulations for AI

It’s a wrap: European Union lawmakers have given the final approval to set up the bloc’s flagship, risk-based regulations for artificial intelligence. In a press release confirming the approval of the EU AI Act, the Council of the European Union said the law is “ground-breaking,” and that “as the first …...Read More

Vitesse, a payments and treasury management platform for insurers, raises $93M to fuel US expansion

U.K. fintech Vitesse has closed a $93 million Series C round of funding led by investment giant KKR. KKR said it’s making the investment through its Next Generation Technology Growth Fund III, a $3 billion fund it closed last year. Founded out of London in 2013, Vitesse is the handiwork …...Read More

Zen Educate raises $37M and acquires Aquinas Education as it tries to address the teacher shortage

Zen Educate, an online marketplace that connects schools with teachers, has raised $37 million in a Series B round of funding. The raise comes amid a growing teacher shortage crisis both sides of the pond, with a recent report from ADP Research Institute noting that the global pandemic exacerbated the …...Read More