Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review. This week had two major events from OpenAI and Google. OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new model, GPT-4o, which has voice and vision capabilities that can turn ChatGPT into a virtual assistant seemingly aspiring to be “Her.” Hot off …...Read More
OpenAI and Google lay out their competing AI visions
Expedia says two execs dismissed after ‘violation of company policy’
Expedia says Rathi Murthy and Sreenivas Rachamadugu, respectively its CTO and senior vice president of core services product & engineering, are no longer employed at the travel booking company. In a statement shared with Bloomberg and elsewhere, Expedia said Murthy and Rachamadugu are “no longer employed at Expedia Group” due …...Read More
With AI startups booming, nap pods and Silicon Valley hustle culture are back
When Jeffrey Wang posted Monday to X asking if anyone wanted to go in on an order of fancy-but-affordable office nap pods, he didn’t expect the post to go viral. He said so many others wanted in, he could have ordered over 100 units. “I had way too many people …...Read More
VCs and the military are fueling self-driving startups that don't need roads
A new crop of early-stage startups — along with some recent VC investments — illustrates a niche emerging in the autonomous vehicle technology sector. Unlike the companies bringing robotaxis to city streets, these startups are taking their tech off-road. Two recent entrants — Seattle-based Overland AI and New Brunswick-based Potential …...Read More
Sagetap looks to bring enterprise software sales into the 21st century
When the founders of Sagetap, Sahil Khanna and Kevin Hughes, started working at early-stage enterprise software startups, they were surprised to find that the companies they worked at were trying to sell their innovative tech through old-school methods like repeated cold emails and calls. Khanna, a former product marketer, and …...Read More
This Week in AI: OpenAI moves away from safety
Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own. By the way, …...Read More
Adobe comes after indie game emulator Delta for copying its logo
After Apple loosened its App Store guidelines to permit game emulators, the retro game emulator Delta — an app 10 years in the making — hit the top of the App Store’s charts. But the increased attention also brought the threat of legal action, as Adobe targeted Delta for sporting …...Read More
Meta's latest experiment copies BeReal and Snapchat's core ideas
Meta is once again taking on its competitors by developing a feature that borrows concepts from others — in this case, BeReal and Snapchat. The company is developing a feature for Instagram called “Peek” that would allow users to post authentic pictures that can only be viewed once. While Snapchat …...Read More
Startups Weekly: It's the dawning of the age of AI - plus, Musk is raging against the machine
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. We’ve been drowning in AI news this week. Google’s I/O set the pace: At its keynote, the word “AI” came up …...Read More
Indiebio's SF incubator lineup is making some wild biotech promises
IndieBio’s Bay Area incubator is about to debut its 15th cohort of biotech startups; here are a few we took special notice of, making some major, bordering on ludicrous, claims that could pay off in a big way. Biotech has been creeping out in recent years to touch adjacent industries, …...Read More
