TechCrunch Industry News

A new startup founded by a former Google DeepMind scientist is exiting stealth with $50 million in funding. Latent Labs is building AI foundation models to “make biology programmable,” and it plans to partner with biotech and pharmaceutical companies to generate and optimize proteins. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Information security company CyberArk has acquired identity access and governance platform Zilla Security in a deal worth up to $175 million. Founded in 1999, Boston-based CyberArk specializes in access management, including privileged access security which helps organizations protect sensitive data and critical infrastructure from external (and internal) threats. Learn more about your ad choices....

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s chatbot platform, may not be as power-hungry as once assumed. But its appetite largely depends on how ChatGPT is being used, and the AI models that are answering the queries, according to a new study Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

E-commerce startups built around food continue to gobble up funding as investors look for sticky consumer concepts that can scale without breaking the bank. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

HR giant Workday is launching a new way for enterprises to keep track of all of their AI agents in one place. It’s also launching a few more AI agents of its own, for good measure. Silicon Valley-based Workday announced on Tuesday the release of Workday Digital Workforce Management, which is meant to help customers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In a statement on Tuesday, Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI startup Anthropic, called the AI Action Summit in Paris this week a “missed opportunity,” and urged the AI industry — and government — to “move faster and with greater clarity.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Security experts say the ‘draconian’ order would have global ramifications that make this a privacy ‘emergency for us all’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ride-hail giant Lyft plans to bring fully autonomous robotaxis, powered by Mobileye, to its app “as soon as 2026” in Dallas, with more markets to follow, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The news comes a day before Lyft shares its fourth-quarter and full-year 2024 earnings report Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A number of startups are racing to make vehicle inspections faster, easier, and cheaper. Self Inspection, a startup based in San Diego, thinks it has them all beat with its AI-powered service — and now it has convinced outside investors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

France’s public investment bank announced that it plans to invest as much as €10 billion (around $10.3 billion at current exchange rates) in the artificial intelligence ecosystem in France. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As cancer rates in the West, and globally, tack upwards due to lifestyle and environmental pollution, so does the need for the nuclear isotopes used in detecting those cancers in a medical setting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After consumer protection scrutiny dialed up on fast-fashion giant Shein in the European Union on Wednesday, the bloc’s executive announced Thursday that it’s sent a fresh request for information to the ecommerce platform under the Digital Services Act (DSA), a pan-EU online governance framework Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Modern Synthesis’s fibers can be manipulated in ways that simple plant fibers cannot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Both startups and big tech companies have aggressively used AI to help developers write code or learn programming better. People have used chatbots to prepare for different scenarios in life, like interviews. Tech assessment platform CodeSignal, which introduced a learning platform for technical subjects with AI assistants last year, launched soft skill courses on its platform Learn more about you...

On a clear spring evening in Michigan, the stars aligned — just not in the way Upfront Ventures partner Nick Kim expected. He’d just led a $9.5 million seed round for OurSky, a software platform for space observational data, and was eager to see what its telescope partner PlaneWave Instruments could do.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Norway-based browser maker Opera on Tuesday launched a new browser called “Opera Air,” which focuses on mental well-being and mindfulness with features like break reminders, breathing exercises, soundscapes, and binaural beats for better focus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

People often use multiple apps for notes, schedule management, and to-dos. But why not combine them all in one app? That’s the ethos behind Hero, an all-in-one productivity app with an AI assistant (of course!). The iOS app was developed by former Meta employees Brad Kowalk and Seung W. Lee. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As of Sunday in the European Union, the bloc’s regulators can ban the use of AI systems they deem to pose “unacceptable risk” or harm. February 2 is the first compliance deadline for the EU’s AI Act, the comprehensive AI regulatory framework that the European Parliament finally approved last March after years of development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apple CEO Tim Cook said DeepSeek’s AI models represent “innovation that drives efficiency” on an earnings call on Thursday while fielding questions from analysts about the iPhone maker’s ambitions around AI. “In general, I think innovation that drives efficiency is a good thing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Meta-owned company said the campaign was linked to Israeli spyware maker Paragon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI as part of a broader partnership that could see the Japanese conglomerate spend more than $40 billion on AI initiatives with the Microsoft-backed startup, according to Financial Times. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Web-based party games are making a comeback, now with the infusion of generative AI. Among the startups joining the trend, the current forecast looks good for one startup, Little Umbrella, which leverages AI for its social party games.  The company announced on Thursday its $2 million seed funding round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When it comes to the world of cybersecurity, identity is often thought of as a “perimeter” around an organization. So many breaches begin through techniques like password theft, phishing, and credential stuffing; ergo, securing the identities of not only users, but also applications and machines, is the key to securing the whole system.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...

Martin Fengler knows a lot about the weather. Fengler got his Ph. D. in mathematics, focused on numerical weather prediction, before working for Meteomedia AG, a network of weather stations in Switzerland and Germany. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI dev platform Hugging Face has partnered with third-party cloud vendors including SambaNova to launch Inference Providers, a feature designed to make it easier for devs on Hugging Face to run AI models using the infrastructure of their choice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices