Tech

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 our sources. Fal didn’t respond …

After earlier this year launching a marketplace that allows websites to charge AI bots for scraping their content, web infrastructure provider Cloudflare is pushing for increased regulation in the AI sector. The company’s chief executive Matthew Prince says he’s in London to speak with the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), where he’s proposing stricter rules on how Google should …

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 future.  Gates cut Breakthrough’s lobbying …

I’ve often joked that I would love to have a pet if only animals did not need to poop and eat smelly, wet mush from a can. I want a fuzzy pal to hang out with all day, but then I’ll hear that my friend spent $500 at the vet because their cat nibbled on a leaf, and the illusion …

Google announced on Tuesday that Google Fi, its telecommunications service, is getting several new updates, including AI noise filters and RCS web messaging. The tech giant says calls will now use AI-enhanced audio to reduce background noise and improve voice clarity, even when speaking to someone on a landline or older device. The company says the update should allow for …

Google Chrome and Apple’s Safari currently dominate the web browser market, with Chrome holding a significant share due to the tech giant’s ongoing innovations, particularly in integrating generative AI into its search functionalities.  However, users seeking alternatives will find a variety of browsers aiming to challenge these industry giants. To help navigate the competitive landscape of the browser wars, we’ve …

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 to buildings that offered flexible …

OpenAI announced Tuesday the launch of its AI-powered browser, ChatGPT Atlas, a major step in the company’s quest to unseat Google as the main way people find information online. The company says Atlas will first roll out on macOS, with support for Windows, iOS, and Android coming soon. OpenAI says the product will be available to all free users at …

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 eligible creators received emails this …

Meta on Tuesday introduced new scam detection features for its messaging apps, WhatsApp and Messenger, as part of its broader initiative to crack down on online scams that target older people. The company said it will begin to show warnings in WhatsApp when users try to share their screen during calls, and it will flag possible scam messages in Messenger, …