LangChain raised $125 million at a $1.25 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. TechCrunch reported in July that the provider of a popular open source framework for building AI agents was raising fresh funds at a valuation of at least $1 billion. The deal was led by IVP, as we previously reported. New investors…
As the entertainment industry reckons with when and how to use generative AI in filmmaking, Netflix is leaning in. In its quarterly earnings report released on Tuesday afternoon, Netflix wrote in its letter to investors that it is “very well positioned to effectively leverage ongoing advances in AI.” Netflix isn’t planning to use generative AI…
Sesame, a conversational AI startup and smart glasses maker, has raised a $250 million Series B round and is opening up its beta to a select group of testers, the company announced Tuesday. The startup, headed by former Oculus co-founder and CEO Brendan Iribe and Ankit Kumar, former CTO of AR startup Ubiquity6, is working…
Fal.ai, a startup that hosts image, video, and audio AI models for developers, has closed a new round valuing the company at over $4 billion, four people familiar with the deal said. The company raised approximately $250 million, two of the people said. Major investors in the round are Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia, according to…
Back in March, Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy organization disbanded its energy policy team, cutting dozens of staffers. Now, some of them have founded a new organization, the nonprofit Clean Economy Project. Similar to Breakthrough Energy, the organization is betting that clean energy can beat fossil fuels on cost, if not today then in the near…
Codi, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup founded by Christelle Rohaut and Dave Schuman, is launching what it hails as the first AI-powered platform to fully automate office management. Codi was founded in 2018, in a pre-pandemic world, with a mission to help companies find flexible office spaces. It was more of a marketplace, as TechCrunch previously reported, that matched companies…
YouTube revealed on Tuesday that its likeness detection technology has officially rolled out to eligible creators in the YouTube Partner Program, following a pilot phase. The technology allows creators to request the removal of AI-generated content that uses their likeness. This is the first wave of the rollout, a YouTube spokesperson informed TechCrunch, adding that…
Earlier this year, a developer was shocked by a message that appeared on his personal phone: “Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone.” “I was panicking,” Jay Gibson, who asked that we don’t use his real name over fears of retaliation, told TechCrunch. Gibson, who until recently built surveillance technologies for Western…
Two years after revamping its developer programs and pricing, X is expanding the closed beta of a pay-per-use plan for its API to more developers. The social network is accepting applications from developers who want to be a part of the program, the company’s developer account wrote in a post on X. “We are expanding…
Airbnb announced new features today that will help users connect with fellow travelers while participating in the same activity. The company is also improving search by suggesting properties that you might have missed due to your filters, and has redesigned the Maps view to let you search for points of interest such as nearby landmarks,…
