Amazon says that it has developed a new warehouse robot, Vulcan, that can “feel” some of the items it touches. The two-armed Vulcan, which can maneuver goods inside the storage compartments Amazon has in its warehouses, uses force sensors to help it know when it makes contact with an object. One arm rearranges items in a […]
New court filing shows that Meta execs agreed that Facebook was losing to TikTok
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Instagram head Adam Mosseri, and other Meta execs thought that TikTok was beating Meta at its own game. That’s according to a new filing in the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against the tech giant, published on Monday. The document, dated February 2022, includes conversations among a number of Meta […]
Uber-rival BluSmart investors propose resolution with $30M backing for its revival
A group of investors are considering a plan to inject another $30 million into BluSmart in a bid to revive the Indian cab-hailing startup that abruptly halted operations last month, TechCrunch has learned. The proposal from these existing investors has a catch: its contingent on BluSmart co-founder Anmol Singh Jaggi agreeing to resign. The proposed […]
OpenAI wants to team up with governments to grow AI infrastructure
OpenAI is launching a program, OpenAI for Countries, that the company says will enable it to build out the local infrastructure needed to better serve international AI customers. As a part of the new program, OpenAI will partner with governments to assist with efforts like building out data center capacity and customizing OpenAI’s products, including […]
ServiceNow acquires Data.World months after snatching up Moveworks
Enterprise workflow management platform ServiceNow on Wednesday announced its second AI-related acquisition this year. ServiceNow said that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Data.World, a cloud-native data catalog and data governance platform. Austin, Texas-based Data.World, now called Declan, was founded in 2015, and previously raised more than $130 million in venture financing from […]
Apple is looking to add AI search engines to Safari
Apple is looking at adding AI search engines from OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic into Safari, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. Eddy Cue, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Services, made the statement during his testimony in the U.S. Justice Department’s lawsuit against Alphabet. Cue’s disclosure was part of his testimony regarding Apple and Google’s estimated $20 billion-a-year […]
Figma releases new AI-powered tools for creating site, app prototypes, and marketing assets
Design company Figma today announced multiple features, including AI-powered site and web app creation, a way for marketers to create assets in bulk, and a new drawing tool. With this launch, the company is taking on other creative solutions such as Canva and Adobe, along with AI-powered website and prototype creators such as WordPress, Wix, […]
Carta abandons startup shutdown business, instead backs SimpleClosure’s $15M Series A
In February of 2024, equity management startup Carta revealed that it was getting into the startup winddown business with a new offering called Carta Conclusions. By December, the company had decided to “retire” that offering, according to a blog post. And now, SimpleClosure, a startup that has described itself as “the Turbo Tax of shutting […]
Microsoft adopts Google’s standard for linking up AI agents
Microsoft says that it’s embracing Google’s recently launched open protocol for allowing AI “agents” to communicate with each other. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it would bring support for Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) spec to two of its AI development platforms, Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Microsoft has also joined the A2A working group on […]
Amazon to invest $4B in Chile to launch AWS infrastructure region
Amazon is making a sizable investment to support new and existing Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers in Chile. The tech conglomerate announced on Wednesday that it will pour more than $4 billion into building an AWS infrastructure region of data centers in Chile by the end of 2026. The investment will go toward establishing three […]