How Paladin’s drones helped Asheville during Hurricane Helene
When Hurricane Helene hit Asheville, North Carolina in September, the city’s police department reached out to public safety drone startup Paladin for help. The startup’s 30-member team jumped into action working nights and through the weekend to assist Asheville’s police department with locating people and dropping off supply. Asheville was a
Read moreBoston Dynamics teams with TRI to bring AI smarts to Atlas humanoid robot
Boston Dynamics and Toyota Research Institute (TRI) Wednesday revealed plans to bring AI-based robotic intelligence to the electric Atlas humanoid robot. The collaboration will leverage the work that TRI has done around large behavior models (LBMs), which operate along similar lines as the more familiar large language models (LLMs) behind
Read moreMistral releases new AI models optimized for laptops and phones
French AI startup Mistral has released its first generative AI models designed to be run on edge devices, like laptops and phones. The new family of models, which Mistral is calling “Les Ministraux,” can be used or tuned for a variety of applications, from basic text generation to working in
Read moreLightmatter’s $400M round has AI hyperscalers hyped for photonic datacenters
Photonic computing startup Lightmatter has raised $400 million to blow one of modern datacenters’ bottlenecks wide open. The company’s optical interconnect layer allows hundreds of GPUs to work synchronously, streamlining the costly and complex job of training and running AI models. The growth of AI and its correspondingly immense compute
Read moreTreehouse uses AI to help electricians install tech like EV chargers and heat pumps more cheaply
The startup seeks to reduce inefficiencies for electricians, including from site visits while quoting jobs. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.
Read moreAmazon Kindle finally gets color
It’s a big week in Kindle land. Along with refreshes to the base Kindle, Paperwhite, and Scribe, the company is introducing something many of us never expected in a devoted e-reader: color. Earlier this year, Amazon’s chief e-reader competitor, Kobo, introduced the $220 Libra Colour, which leverages color e-ink. The
Read moreAmazon revamps Kindle line with faster page turns, AI, and a new green color
Amazon’s Kindle line seems to go longer and longer between updates. While e-readers aren’t quite the consumer electronics darlings they once were, however, the retail giant is still invested in the category. After all, according to estimates, Amazon controls more than 80% of the U.S. market. Along with the long-awaited
Read moreFable adds cognitive and hearing impairments to its accessibility tools with $25M round
Fable has gained a reputation as the go-to startup for helping companies build digital products that are more accessible to people with disabilities. After raising $25 million in new funding, the Toronto-based startup is now expanding the communities it supports and working to make AI training data more inclusive. Fable
Read moreKenya’s Octavia gets $3.9M seed to remove carbon from air
As calls for urgent climate action persist, technologies to help remove the heat-trapping greenhouse gases from the atmosphere are also emerging globally. In Africa, Octavia Carbon, a Direct Air Capture (DAC) startup is leading the efforts. Octavia, founded in Kenya two years ago, builds DAC machines that it uses to
Read moreLong careers in luxury fashion led to a $17M raise for this supply chain platform
The retail sector needs Inventory planning to maintain margins and meet demand. This is getting harder because there are now many distribution channels, more complex supply chains, and shorter sales cycles. Mid-market retailers and premium brands have less firepower than the retail giants and tend to rely on legacy software.
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