Author: Art Ryan

Perplexity is launching a $200-per-month subscription plan for its power users, the company announced in a blog post Tuesday. The plan, Perplexity Max, offers unlimited access to the startup’s spreadsheet and report generation tool, Labs, as well as early access to new features, including Perplexity’s forthcoming AI-powered browser, Comet. Max subscribers will also get priority access to any Perplexity services using the latest frontier models, such as OpenAI o3-pro and Claude Opus 4. With the launch of Max, Perplexity became the latest AI provider to offer a hyper-premium subscription tier to capitalize on its power users. OpenAI was the first to do so with…

A study from the London School of Economics and Systemiq suggests it’s possible to cut global carbon emissions without giving up modern comforts—with AI as our ally in the climate fight. According to the duo’s research, smart AI applications in just three industries could slash greenhouse gas emissions by 3.2-5.4 billion tonnes each year by 2035. In contrast to much of what we’ve heard, these reductions would far outweigh the carbon that AI itself produces. The study, ‘Green and intelligent: the role of AI in the climate transition,’ doesn’t just see AI as a tool for small improvements. Instead, it could help transform our entire…

Businesses intending to use AI do not have to rely on cloud-based tools like Chat-GPT, which tend to require uploading or sharing sensitive data. Instead, it is now possible to install and run private AI models locally, ensuring all data remains private and secure. There are several open-source tools available for those looking to experiment with locally-running AI models, all of which prioritise data privacy, cost-effectiveness, and ease of deployment, therefore ensuring they are suitable for varying levels of technical expertise. Private AIs for business experimentation LocalAI LocalAI is an open-source platform developed as a drop-in alternative for OpenAI’s API, allows…

Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab will lay off nearly 4% of its workforce, the company said on Wednesday, in the latest job cuts as the tech giant looks to rein in costs amid hefty investments in artificial intelligence infrastructure. The company, which had about 228,000 employees worldwide as of June 2024, had announced layoffs in May, affecting around 6,000 workers. It was planning to cut thousands of jobs, particularly in sales, Bloomberg News reported last month. The Windows maker had pledged $80 billion in capital spending for its fiscal year 2025. However, the soaring cost of scaling its AI infrastructure has weighed on its…

Surge AI, a data-labeling firm that competes with Scale AI, has hired advisors to raise as much as $1 billion in the first capital raising in the firm’s history, sources told Reuters, as it seeks to capitalize on growing user demand amid Scale AI’s recent customer exodus. The company, founded by former Google and Meta engineer Edwin Chen, is targeting a valuation of over $15 billion, sources said, cautioning that the talks are still in early stages and the final number could be higher. The funding would be a mix of primary and secondary capital that provides liquidity for the…

Intel’s (INTC.O), opens new tab new chief executive is exploring a big change to its contract manufacturing business to win major customers, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters, in a potentially expensive shift from his predecessor’s plans. The new strategy for Intel’s foundry business would mean offering outside customers a newer generation of technology, the people said. That next-generation chipmaking process, analysts believe, will be more competitive against Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (2330.TW), opens new tab in trying to land major customers such as Apple (AAPL.O), opens new tab or Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab. Shares of Intel fell as much as 5% on Wednesday…

The CEO of German medical technology firm Brainlab said on Tuesday that geopolitical uncertainties had prompted the decision to put on hold its planned initial public offering, adding that business in the last quarter looked positive. “We have to recognise that the current geopolitical uncertainties continue to have a significant impact on the international capital markets,” wrote Rainer Birkenbach in an internal memo seen by Reuters, adding that at this time, an IPO did not offer optimal conditions for the company. Source: https://www.reuters.com/

The English Premier League and Microsoft (MSFT.O), opens new tab on Tuesday announced a five-year partnership where the cloud giant will infuse its artificial intelligence Copilot into the league’s digital platforms to provide quick facts and statistics about matches. Audiences and fans will be able to learn about Premier League clubs, players, matches through an AI companion powered by Microsoft’s Copilot which can pull information from over 30 seasons of stats, 300,000 articles and 9,000 videos, they said. AI has strongly resonated with sports leagues and sports entertainment companies as they look to streamline the vast troves of data to attract larger…

Two Chinese artificial intelligence chip startups are seeking to raise a combined 12 billion yuan ($1.65 billion) in initial public offerings, hoping U.S. curbs on advanced chip sales to China will boost local demand for their products, their filings show. Beijing-based Moore Threads plans to raise 8 billion yuan, while Shanghai-based MetaX seeks 3.9 billion yuan, according to their IPO prospectuses filed on Monday. Both companies intend to list on Shanghai’s STAR Market, the tech-focused board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. Their fundraising plans underscore growing efforts by Chinese chipmakers to capitalise on Beijing’s push to develop domestic champions in…

Over the past month, Zuckerberg personally led an aggressive talent raid, floating offers for startups including OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence (SSI) and courting prospects directly on WhatsApp with million-dollar pay packages.Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reorganised the company’s artificial intelligence efforts under a new division called Meta Superintelligence Labs, according to a source on Monday, June 30. The division will be headed by Alexandr Wang, former CEO of data labeling startup Scale AI. He will be the chief AI officer of the new initiative at the social media giant, the source said. The high-stakes push follows senior staff…

Scale AI’s new leader said the data-labeling startup remains independent from Meta Platforms Inc. despite the social media giant taking a 49% stake just weeks ago, and is focused on expanding its business. Interim Chief Executive Officer Jason Droege said Meta, a customer since 2019, won’t receive special treatment even after its $14.3 billion investment. “There’s no preferential access that they have to anything,” Droege said Tuesday in an interview, one of his first since taking the interim CEO role in mid-June. “They are a customer, and we will support them like we do our other customers, that’s the extent…

After 13 years of deploying robots into its warehouses, Amazon reached a new milestone. The tech behemoth now has 1 million robots in its warehouses, the company announced Monday. This one millionth robot was recently delivered to an Amazon fulfillment facility in Japan. That figure puts Amazon on track to reach another landmark: Its vast network of warehouses may soon have the same number of robots working as people, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal. The WSJ also reported that 75% of Amazon’s global deliveries are now assisted in some way by a robot. TechCrunch reached out to Amazon for…

The social platform X will pilot a feature that allows AI chatbots to generate Community Notes. Community Notes is a Twitter-era feature that Elon Musk has expanded under his ownership of the service, now called X. Users who are part of this fact-checking program can contribute comments that add context to certain posts, which are then checked by other users before they appear attached to a post. A Community Note may appear, for example, on a post of an AI-generated video that is not clear about its synthetic origins, or as an addendum to a misleading post from a politician. Notes become…

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has raised $10 billion in debt and equity, Morgan Stanley confirmed on Monday. In a post on X, the financial giant said xAI had raised $5 billion in debt and another $5 billion in a separate strategic equity transaction. “The combination of debt and equity reduces the overall cost of capital and substantially expands pools of capital available to xAI. The proceeds will support xAI’s continued development of cutting-edge AI solutions, including one of the world’s largest data center [sic] and its flagship Grok platform,” Morgan Stanley wrote. xAI did not immediately return a request for…

Grammarly announced Tuesday the acquisition of email client Superhuman in a push to build out its AI for its productivity suite. Neither companies provided details about the financial terms of the deal. Superhuman was founded by Rahul Vohra, Vivek Sodera, and Conrad Irwin. The company raised more than $114 million in funding from backers including a16z, IVP, and Tiger Global, with its last valuation at $825 million, according to data from venture data analytics firm Traxcn. “With Superhuman, we can deliver that future to millions more professionals while giving our existing users another surface for agent collaboration that simply doesn’t exist anywhere…

On Monday, Clio, a 17-year-old Canadian law firm management software company, announced that it has agreed to acquire vLex, a 26-year-old legal data intelligence platform, in a $1 billion cash-and-stock deal. The announcement comes about a year after Clio’s massive $900 million funding round, which nearly doubled the Vancouver, British Columbia-based company’s valuation from $1.6 billion in 2021 to $3 billion. vLex, which was largely bootstrapped until it was purchased by private equity firm Oakley Capital in 2022, has been a highly sought-after asset, according to Jack Newton, CEO and founder of Clio. Harvey, the AI-native legal tech startup, attempted…

Cloudflare, a cloud infrastructure provider that serves 20% of the web, announced Tuesday the launch of a new marketplace that reimagines the relationship between website owners and AI companies — ideally giving publishers greater control over their content. For the last year, Cloudflare has launched tools for publishers to address the rampant rise of AI crawlers, including a one-click solution to block all AI bots, as well as a dashboard to view how AI crawlers are visiting their site. In a 2024 interview, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince told TechCrunch these products were laying a foundation for a new type of marketplace in…

The European Commission has seen a flood of interest from companies looking to help create AI Gigafactories across Europe. Brussels has been virtually swamped with proposals for new AI Gigafactories. 76 expressions of interest have been submitted, covering 60 potential sites across 16 EU countries. The response has clearly energised officials who see it as vindication of their strategy to position Europe as a serious player in the global AI race. These aren’t just token gestures either; the proposals come from serious industry players. Major European data centre operators, telecom giants, power companies and global tech firms have all expressed interest in…

One of the most significant (yet less flashy) considerations of the new wave of generative AI tools is the copyright implications of such, both in terms of usage (can you own the rights to an AI-generated work?) and generation (are AI projects stealing artists’ work?). And both, at least at present, fall into somewhat awkward legal territory, because copyright laws, as they exist, haven’t been designed to cater to AI content. Which means that, technically, it remains difficult to prosecute, on either front. Today, Meta has had a big court win on this front, with a federal judge ruling that Meta…

Dutch car navigation firm TomTom announced on Monday that it was cutting 300 jobs, approximately 10 per cent of its workforce, to stem financial losses and “embrace artificial intelligence”. The Amsterdam-based company was an early pioneer of digital navigation in cars but has struggled in the age of Apple and Google Maps. This week, TomTom announced in a statement that it was “realigning its organisation … as it embraces artificial intelligence”, resulting in “organisational changes”. These changes would affect “certain roles in the units working on our application layer and in our sales and support functions, resulting in a reduction…