The U.K. is forging ahead with plans to make the act of creating sexually explicit “deepfake” images a specific criminal offence. A deepfake refers to manipulated media, often video or audio, created using AI to make someone appear to say or do something they didn’t. The U.K. had already made sharing — and the threat […]
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Dutch semiconductor giant NXP on Tuesday said it plans to acquire TTTech Auto, an Austrian company specializing in safety software for autonomous vehicles, in an all-cash transaction valued at $625 million. TTTech Auto spun out of TTTech Group in 2018, with some $78 million in backing from the likes of AUDI, Samsung and GE Ventures. […]
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Online spending rose 3% to a record $1.2 trillion globally over the holiday period, with U.S.-sales, specifically, growing 4% to $282 billion. That’s according to a new report from Salesforce, which aggregated data from across its various cloud services, including Agentforce, Commerce Cloud, Marketing Cloud, and Service Cloud, to garner insights into spending activity spanning […]
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The U.K’s competition authority already has a lot on its plate in terms of tackling Big Tech’s growing reach across the technological spectrum, but closer to home it’s dealing with a different kind of anti-competitive threat — one it reckons AI is well-equipped to address. As per a Financial Times’ report this week, the Competition […]
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Thomson Reuters has acquired tax automation company SafeSend in an all-cash transaction valued at $600 million. Founded in 2008, Ann Arbor, Michigan-based SafeSend serves a cloud-based platform designed to streamline the processing and sharing of sensitive financial documents. This includes tools for delivering tax returns, gathering e-signatures, collecting payments, automating workflows, meeting compliance obligations, and […]
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It has been a busy year in the private equity realm, with countless big-money acquisitions unfolding. The take-private space specifically has seen some sizable transactions, with private equity firms spearheading more than a dozen billion-dollar deals for public tech companies. London-headquartered Permira was a key protagonist, joining Blackstone to acquire European online classifieds group Adevinta […]
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On November 15, Peter Wang posted a message requesting ideas for a new incubator and fund to support experimental projects built on the burgeoning Bluesky/AT Protocol ecosystem. Four weeks later, Skyseed emerged with an initial commitment of $1 million. This turnaround, a speed underscored by the fact that the fund doesn’t even have a website […]
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The newest online-only school greenlighted by the Arizona State Board for Charter Schools comes with a twist: The academic curriculum will be taught entirely by AI. Charter schools — independently operated but publicly funded — typically get greater autonomy compared to traditional public schools when it comes to how subjects are taught. But Unbound Academy’s […]
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With cloud spend continuing to surge, tech companies are scrambling to meet demand for the necessary infrastructure, with the growing need for AI compute only adding fuel to the fire. By way of example, Microsoft and BlackRock have created a $30 billion fund to support new data centers and energy infrastructure for the burgeoning AI […]
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There are few matters in life that divide a room more than the prudence of putting pineapple on pizza. But if you’re of the persuasion that tropical fruit has no place on a pie, you’ll have to swallow a bitter pill — if you want to access the WordPress.org developer portal and forum, at least. […]
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The European Union is forging ahead with plans for a constellation of internet satellites to rival Elon Musk-owned Starlink, after signing a €10.6 billion ($11.1 billion) deal to launch nearly 300 satellites into low- and medium-Earth orbits by 2030. The bloc wants the space tech to boost its digital sovereignty by providing secure comms to […]
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Open source might be the building blocks of the modern software stack, but companies building businesses off the back of open source software face a perennial struggle between keeping their community happy and ensuring that third parties don’t abuse the permissions afforded by the license. Many companies have launched with lofty open source ambitions, only […]
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AI training data has a big price tag, one best-suited for deep-pocketed tech firms. This is why Harvard University plans to release a dataset that includes in the region of 1 million public-domain books, spanning genres, languages, and authors including Dickens, Dante, and Shakespeare, which are no longer copyright-protected due to their age. The new […]
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Gigs, a platform that makes it easier for any company to become a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), has raised $73 million in a Series B round of funding. The announcement comes as countless companies have added mobile networking services to their product lineup this past year, including neobanks such as Nubank (a Gigs customer) […]
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Bad news for anyone out there who still uses Skype: the Microsoft-owned phone and messaging platform has quietly stopped letting users top-up accounts with credit and buy Skype phone numbers. Instead, Skype is locking into SaaS mode: it’s pushing users to take monthly subscriptions for regional and global Skype-to-phone plans, for a set monthly fee, […]
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Anybotics has closed its Series B round at $110 million, some 18 months after announcing it had raised a $50 million Series B.
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Anyone who’s followed the fortunes of MySQL and MariaDB these past 15 years will probably remember SkySQL, another brand that once existed within that same database ecosystem and, a year ago, became a stand-alone company once more. That company today announced it has raised its first outside funding — a $6.6 million seed round — […]
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Aqemia, a French startup that’s meshing “quantum-inspired physics” with machine learning to find new drugs, has raised $38 million in a fresh round of funding led by San Francisco-based VC firm Cathay Innovation. This is Aqemia’s second fundraise of the year — it announced a €30 million ($31.5 million) raise back in January — and […]
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A U.S. breast-screening program claims to demonstrate the potential benefits of using artificial intelligence (AI) in mammography screening, with women who paid for AI-enhanced scans 21% more likely to have cancer detected. DeepHealth, an AI firm owned by radiology giant RadNet, presented its findings at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America […]
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Not everyone agrees on what an “AI agent” actually is, but they are all still the rage. At a broad level, these so-called “agents” promise to go several steps beyond a mere chatbot, making decisions and taking actions on people’s behalf. Some might help you do your online shopping; others might make factories more efficient […]
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