Amazon is working on letting Alexa mimic any voice after hearing less than a minute of audio, as a way to “make the memories last” of deceased family members
Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) wants to give customers the chance to make Alexa, the company's voice assistant, sound just like their grandmother — or anyone else.
Sources: the metaverse, not securing elections, is now Mark Zuckerberg's top priority; Meta has ~60 people focused on elections, down from 300 in 2020
Mark Zuckerberg, who once said securing elections was “the most important thing,” has shifted Meta's focus to the metaverse.
An in-depth look at the LUNA and UST fallout, as Do Kwon says he has been “devastated” but has “great confidence in our ability to build back even stronger”
Luna's relaunch might be the ultimate act of chutzpah by the South Korean entrepreneur
Instagram begins testing tools to verify ages, starting with 17 or under, using either Yoti's facial analysis tech, photo IDs, or adults vouching for users
Meta's new policy will make it tougher for teens to update to adult accounts. But they can still lie about their age in the first place
Coinbase plans to shut down its standalone, trader-focused Pro service by the end of 2022 and replace it with Advanced Trade across its main app and website
The standalone service will be replaced by Advanced Trade, a feature within the main Coinbase app.
Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell says she does not support the bipartisan privacy bill, a significant blow to long-stalled federal protections for user data
Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell said she's not close to supporting a major proposal, dealing a significant blow to efforts to revive the long-stalled bill
Cerebras says its “wafer-scale” chip set a record for the largest natural language processing AI model trained on a single device, at up to 20B parameters
Democratizing large AI Models without HPC scaling requirements. — Cerebras, the company behind the world's largest accelerator chip …
The Senate's $52B US chip production bill, passed in June 2021, has been bogged down over unrelated disputes, like climate provisions, delaying the funds
Proponents are racing to salvage a bipartisan measure that would provide $52 billion for domestic chip production
Singapore's fintech policy chief says the country will be “brutal and unrelentingly hard” on “any market bad behaviour” in the crypto industry
Stance marks shift in rhetoric from city-state that had courted digital currency companies
Spotify replaces its Concert Hub with a Live Events Feed, populated by Ticketmaster, AXS, DICE, Eventbrite, See Tickets, and other partners
Spotify has expanded its old Concert Hub and added more features to make it easier to find information and tickets for live events in your location.
Meta rebrands Facebook Pay as Meta Pay; Mark Zuckerberg says Meta is working on an interoperable “wallet for the metaverse” that will have “proof of ownership”
Also, the Meta Pay rebrand is here — Mark Zuckerberg announced on Wednesday that Facebook Pay …
A profile of Changpeng Zhao, who built Binance into the largest crypto exchange, as he navigates a regulatory crackdown in a brutal crypto winter
During the first few months of this year—back when buying digital tokens named after dog memes was still seen, at least in some of the most … Tweets: @muyaoshen , @mattysino , @mhbergen , @sidcoins , ...
Brave says its search engine had 411.7M queries in May, up ~5,000% since its June 2021 launch, and launches Goggles, which lets users customize searches
Brave Search, the browser developer's privacy-centric Internet search engine, is celebrating its first anniversary after surpassing 2.5 billion queries …
Mountain View-based Sanas, which develops a call center voice AI that changes users' accents in real time, raised a $32M Series A led by Insight Partners
A startup called Sanas has built voice AI to change accents, now it's raised $32M from GV and others
A hacktivist claims DALL-E-like Craiyon, formerly DALL-E mini, generated portraits of brown-skinned women in saris almost every time he ran a blank request
The images represent a glitch in the system that even its creator can't explain. — Like most people who are extremely online … Tweets: @mtrc , @nilchristopher , @sub8u , @flitteronfraud , and @anupk...
Indian digital payments company Pine Labs acquires Setu, which develops banking APIs, for an estimated $70M-$75M in cash and equity
Digital payments service provider Pine Labs has acquired application programming interface (API)-based infrastructure company Setu in a cash-and-equity deal in the range of $70-75 million.
Crypto broker Voyager Digital says its exposure to Three Arrows Capital consists of 15,250 bitcoin and $350M USDC, and “may issue a notice of default” to 3AC
CoinDesk : Source: PR Newswire .
Seeking to regain relevance, screenshots show Clubhouse is testing private rooms, internally called Houses, to encourage friendlier social interactions
Clubhouse, the voice chat app that captured the attention of Hollywood and Silicon Valley early in the pandemic, is experimenting … Tweets: @tariqkrim , @ashleyrcarman , @ashleyrcarman , @ashleyrcarma...
London-based payments services startup SumUp raised €295M equity and €295M debt at an €8B valuation; a January 2022 report said its target was as high as €20B
London-based payment-services group had earlier hoped to raise funds at €20bn pricetag
Microsoft report details Russian cyberattacks across 42 countries beyond Ukraine since the war began, with a 29% success rate and mainly targeting NATO allies
including many that have not been covered in detail (or at all) by mainstream press https://twitter.com/... Catalin Cimpanu / @campuscodi : Microsoft has published an overview report of Russia's “cybe...
London-based BNPL service Playter raised $55M in equity and debt led by Adit Ventures and Fasanara Capital, following a $1.7M seed in March 2022
Europe has no shortage of ‘buy now, pay later’ startups and a quick search is revealing. Berlin-based fintech startup Mondu has taken …
Google revamps News, elevating local news and fact checks; News returns to Spain after 7.5 years citing the country adopting EU copyright rules in November 2021
Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette :
Evinced, which helps companies build accessible websites and apps, raised a $38M Series B led by Insight Partners, with Microsoft's M12 and others participating
Startup Evinced Inc., which helps companies build accessible websites and mobile apps, has raised a $38 million funding round led by Insight Partners.
India-based Cashify, a marketplace for selling and buying used smartphones and other gadgets, has raised a $90M Series E, bringing its total funding to $130M+
Cashify, a marketplace for gadgets trade-ins and buybacks in India, has raised $90 million in a new financing round as it looks …
Sources: eight buyout offers taking Toshiba private value the deal at up to ~$22B, a 27% premium on its stock; Toshiba had two offers that would keep it public
Valve's Steam Deck makes a brilliant case against walled gardens by running Arch Linux and allowing software from anywhere, unlike every major game console
Jared Newman / Fast Company :
Sources: Comcast and Google have emerged as the top contenders to help Netflix develop an ad-supported tier, and Netflix has discussed ad partnerships with Roku
Wall Street Journal :
Boston-based JobGet, a job marketplace for recruiters and hourly workers, raised a $52M Series B, comprising $40M in equity and $12M in debt
LinkedIn, now with more than 830 million users, has carved out a place for itself as a hub for the world of professional workers …
eBay acquires NFT marketplace KnownOrigin for an undisclosed sum; DappRadar: KnownOrigin enabled $7.8M in digital collectible trade volume since its 2018 launch
Oliver Knight / CoinDesk :
In its first annual report, Meta's Oversight Board says the company has made some progress but needs to improve transparency about its content removal systems
Spotify tests Community, a feature that lets mobile users see their friends' streaming activity in real time and which playlists their friends recently updated
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch :
A look at Alibaba's plans to expand into South Asia as its Chinese operations sputter, including through its Daraz unit in Pakistan, acquired for $194M in 2018
Financial Times : Tweets: @rencapman , @dreyerchina , and @b_parkyn Tweets: Charlie Robertson / @rencapman : South Asia smartphone penetration forecast to boom - Bangladesh from 41% to 62% 2020-25, P...
Shopify expands NFT integrations for merchants, including letting their customers unlock special products, perks, and experiences by purchasing NFTs
Tel Aviv-based Jackpot, which is developing an app and website to make buying US state lottery tickets easier, raised a $35M Series A led by Accomplice
Jessica Golden / CNBC :
MasterClass, which offers celebrity-taught online classes, lays off ~120 employees, or 20% of its team; sources: MasterClass was valued at $2.75B in May 2021
Natasha Mascarenhas / TechCrunch :
A US judge requested data from British and Chinese government agencies about TikTok, WeChat, and Telegram to help Meta defend itself in its FTC antitrust suit
Malathi Nayak / Bloomberg :
Tokyo-based LegalForce, which uses AI to screen contracts for loopholes and risks, raised a $101M Series D led by Vision Fund 2 and says it has 2,000 clients
Mia Tsuchida / Bloomberg :
Ghana-based Fido, which offers financial tools and loans to individuals and businesses via its mobile app, raised a $30M Series A led by Fortissimo Capital
Annie Njanja / TechCrunch :
Analysis: Brightwheel, HiMama, and other popular daycare apps lack 2FA and have privacy-compromising features like trackers not disclosed in privacy policies
Courier, which provides tools to send and build notifications across multiple channels including email, web, text, and mobile, raised a $35M Series B led by GV
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Deno, the company behind a JavaScript, TypeScript, and WebAssembly runtime based on Rust and the V8 JavaScript engine, raised a $21M Series A led by Sequoia
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch :
Appsmith, which offers low-code tools to build enterprise apps, raised a $41M Series B led by Insight Partners and says 7K+ companies use its tools every month
Shopify's new AI commerce stack
Their VP of Product digs into just-launched products to help entrepreneurs and developers build with the latest AI.
Email fatigue is real: Here's how smart email tools help you regain control
Picture this: It's Monday morning. You walk into the office feeling energized and ready to take on the week.
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data
Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Box data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.