Author: Becky Anderson
Anthropic, a San Francisco startup often cast as an independent player in the AI race, has deeper ties to Google than previously known. Court documents recently obtained by The New York Times reveal that Google owns a 14% stake in the company and is set to pour another $750 million into it this year through a convertible debt deal. In total, Google’s investment in Anthropic now exceeds $3 billion. Despite having no voting rights, board seats, or direct control over the company, Google’s backing raises questions about how independent Anthropic really is. As AI startups increasingly rely on funding from…
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna says that, despite the Trump administration’s attacks on globalism, global trade isn’t dead. In fact, he thinks that the U.S.’s key to growth will be embracing an international exchange of goods. “So, I actually am a firm believer — I think it goes all the way back to the economists who studied global trade in the 1800s — and I think their perspective was, every 10% increase in global trade leads to a 1% increase in local GDP,” Krishna said during an onstage interview at SXSW on Tuesday. “So, if we want to really optimize even…
Flower Labs, a Y Combinator-backed startup, on Tuesday launched a preview of its distributed cloud platform for serving AI models, called Flower Intelligence. Mozilla is already using it to power the upcoming Assist summarization add-on for its Thunderbird email client. What makes Flower Intelligence unique, Flower Labs said in a post on X, is that it can drive on-device AI mobile, PC, and web apps that automatically hand off to a private cloud when needed (with a user’s permission). Apps default to an AI model running locally for speed and privacy but switch to Flower’s cloud when they require extra…
The intersection of robotics and AI continues to attract attention from investors and Big Tech alike. The latest indicator? Dexterity, a startup specializing in industrial robots with “human-like” finesse, has raised $95 million at a post-money valuation of $1.65 billion, per Bloomberg. The investment, which includes backing from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sumitomo Corp., highlights the growing demand for machinery powered by AI and comes amid a wave of excitement from companies like Meta and Apple, which are reportedly exploring investments into AI-powered humanoid robots, and startups like humanoid robot makers Figure AI and Apptronik that have recently secured enormous…
Mark Cuban talks AI, says it’s ‘never the answer,’ it’s a tool Tech investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban is bullish on AI, saying that entrepreneurs today should be learning everything they can about the new technology. However, he cautioned that although AI could take the place of mentor, in terms of answering questions, it shouldn’t be relied on as a solution. “AI is never the answer. AI is the tool. Whatever skills you have, you can use AI to amplify them,” he said. “A lot of creative people think, well, AI is gonna write all the scripts,” said. “AI doesn’t…
Speaking at the SXSW conference in Austin, tech investor and entrepreneur Mark Cuban shared his thoughts on how AI technology can help small businesses outperform their competition. In short, he told the crowd that AI was not the answer, in and of itself; it’s meant to serve as an aid that can help entrepreneurs by making it easier to get started growing their businesses and answering questions along the way. Cuban suggested that today’s entrepreneurs should spend “every waking minute learning about AI” because of its potential. “There’s so much changing that rapidly,” he said, adding that it’s different for…
Last year, Hugging Face, the AI dev platform, launched LeRobot, a collection of open AI models, datasets, and tools to help build real-world robotics systems. On Tuesday, Hugging Face teamed up with AI startup Yaak to expand LeRobot with a training set for robots and cars that can navigate environments, like city streets, autonomously. The new set, called Learning to Drive (L2D), is more than a petabyte in size, and contains data from sensors that were installed on cars in German driving schools. L2D captures camera, GPS, and “vehicle dynamics” data from driving instructors and students navigating streets with construction…
Ahead of a May deadline to finalize guidance for providers of general purpose AI (GPAI) models on complying with provisions of the EU AI Act, a third draft of the Code of Practice was published on Tuesday. The Code has been in development since last year, and this draft is expected to be the last. A website has also been launched with the aim of boosting the Code’s accessibility. Written feedback on the latest draft should be submitted by March 30, 2025. The bloc’s risk-based rulebook for AI includes a subset of obligations that apply only to the most powerful…
Poolside co-founder and CEO Jason Warner didn’t mince words: He thinks that most companies looking to build foundation AI models should instead focus on building applications. Poolside is an AI-powered software development platform. Warner told the audience at the HumanX AI conference in Las Vegas on Monday that he doesn’t think anyone who doesn’t think intelligence is the most important commodity in the world — on par with electricity — should be building a foundation model. “If you’re one of those people, if you want to take one side of the fence, you’re a printing press for cash unlike anything…
DeepSeek’s founder Liang Wenfeng is in no hurry to get investment from outsiders, the WSJ reported Monday. DeepSeek is one of the hottest AI startups in the world right now after the Chinese AI company took Silicon Valley by storm with its latest model earlier this year. Unlike DeepSeek’s AI model provider counterparts, who regularly announce mega-rounds filled with prominent investors, Liang hasn’t announced any fundraises, despite lots of VC interest. Rumors about its supposed investors have even fueled (baseless) rallies in some Chinese stocks. DeepSeek’s founder doesn’t want to lose control An analysis of Chinese corporate records by TechCrunch…