Author: Becky Anderson

On Thursday French large language model (LLM) developer Mistral launched a new API for developers who handle complex PDF documents. Mistral OCR is an optical character recognition (OCR) API that can turn any PDF into a text file to make it easier for AI models to ingest. LLMs, which underpin popular GenAI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, work particularly well with raw text. So companies that want to create their own AI workflow know that it has become extremely important to store and index data in a clean format so that this data can be reused for AI processing. Unlike most…

Intangible, now backed by $4 million in seed funding, offers an AI-powered creative tool that allows users to create 3D world concepts with text prompts to aid creative professionals across a variety of industries. The company’s mission is to make the creative process accessible to everyone, including professionals such as filmmakers, game designers, event planners, and marketing agencies, as well as everyday users looking to visualize concepts. For instance, everyday users could generate home design and small art projects using the tool. With its new fundraise, Intangible plans a June launch for its no-code web-based 3D studio, it says. Leading…

Private search engine DuckDuckGo is leaning further into the generative AI opportunity. The non-tracking search engine has been dabbling with expanding the role of AI assistance in its product for the past year, including launching a chatbot-style interface last fall — available at Duck.ai. In a blog post Thursday, the company said the service is now exiting beta. It’s also now simply called Duck.ai, replacing the longer, mouthful name DuckDuckGo AI Chat. Users of Duck.ai can dip into AI models developed by the likes of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta via a chatbot-style interface that sees their search queries handled in…

Faireez, which aims to bring “5-star hotel-style housekeeping” to multifamily buildings, is emerging from stealth with $7.5 million in seed funding, the startup told TechCrunch exclusively. Founded in 2023, New York-based Faireez’s goal is to make the cleaning services it offers as customized as possible. It offers a subscription model where each building is assigned a dedicated housekeeper — called a fairy — who provides “consistent, personalized service” to every subscribed resident.  Faireez gives residents of multifamily properties such as high-rise apartments or condos a way to book cleaning appointments through its website or app. Interestingly, users can book based…

There seems to be a new, more impressive AI model every week. Given the rapid pace, how can founders best position themselves to build on top of this technology? At TechCrunch Sessions: AI, on June 5 in Zellerbach Hall at UC Berkeley, we’ll host a panel on “How Founders Can Build on Existing Foundational Models” to answer some existential questions facing AI startups. We’re thrilled to have leaders from Google DeepMind, Cohere, and Twelve Labs — three companies at the forefront of AI model development — to help us answer some of these questions. Attendees can hear straight from the…

A day after quietly removing Biden-era AI policy commitments from its website, Anthropic submitted recommendations to the White House for a national AI policy that the company says “better prepare[s] America to capture the economic benefits” of AI. The company’s suggestions include preserving the AI Safety Institute established under the Biden administration, directing NIST to develop national security evaluations for powerful AI models, and building a team within the government to analyze potential security vulnerabilities in AI. Anthropic also calls for hardened AI chip export controls, particularly restrictions on the sale of Nvidia H20 chips to China, in the interest…

As AI companies race to improve the accuracy of large language models (LLMs) and apps built on top of them, a startup that has emerged as a key partner in that effort is announcing a significant round of funding. Turing, which works with armies of engineers to contribute code to AI projects — including assisting in the building of LLMs for OpenAI and others, as well as creating generative AI apps for enterprises — has secured a $111 million Series E round, doubling its valuation to $2.2 billion.  Turing currently generates around $300 million in ARR (annualized revenue run rate),…

Late last March, OpenAI announced a “small-scale preview” of an AI service, Voice Engine, that the company claimed could clone a person’s voice with just 15 seconds of speech. Roughly a year later, the tool remains in preview, and OpenAI has given no indication as to when it might launch — or whether it’ll launch at all. The company’s reluctance to roll out the service widely may point to fears of misuse, but it could also reflect an effort to avoid inviting regulatory scrutiny. OpenAI has historically been accused of prioritizing “shiny products” at the expense of safety, and of…

AI agents are marching across the world of IT, and on Thursday a startup called Crogl is debuting its contribution to the field: an autonomous assistant that helps cybersecurity researchers analyze daily network alerts to find and fix security incidents. The assistant — described by Crogl’s CEO and co-founder Monzy Merza as an “Iron Man suit” for researchers — has been in deployment already with a number of large enterprises and organizations. Alongside launching the product out of private beta today, the startup also said that it has raised $30 million in funding.  The funding is coming in two tranches:…

With the release of new AI models that are better at coding, developers are increasingly using AI to generate code. One of the newest examples is the current batch coming out of Y Combinator, the storied Silicon Valley startup accelerator. A quarter of the W25 startup batch have 95% of their codebases generated by AI, YC managing partner Jared Friedman said during a conversation posted on YouTube. Friedman said that this 95% figure didn’t include things like code written to import libraries but took into consideration the code typed by humans as compared to AI. “It’s not like we funded…