Once upon a time, in a galaxy not so far away (this one, in fact), a few internet rebels decided that they were tired of the corporate overlords controlling their online lives. Thus, the fediverse was born — an attempt to wrest control of microblogging services, such as Twitter and its ilk, away from centralized…
On Wednesday, Evolve Bank and Trust, a financial institution that’s popular with fintech startups, announced that it had been victim of a cyberattack and data breach that could have affected its partner companies as well. The incident, according to the company’s statement, involved “the data and personal information of some Evolve retail bank customers and…
AI “agents” are generative AI models that can perform actions autonomously, like copying info from an email and pasting it into a spreadsheet, and have been hailed as productivity superchargers. That might be a bit premature, given models’ tendency to make mistakes. But at least a few founders (and analysts and investors) seem convinced that…
Last week, the U.S. government announced an unprecedented ban on selling in the United States any software made by the Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky. Just days after the ban’s announcement, some American companies that are official Kaspersky resellers — or managed service provider (MSP) partners — say they have been left confused, angry and worried…
French startup Dust has raised a $16 million Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital. With Dust, companies can create custom AI assistants and share them with their employees so that they can work more efficiently. But what’s interesting with Dust is the differences with other companies working on enterprise agents or AI assistants…
Swipewipe, a U.S.-based photo management app that went viral among the Gen Z crowd, thanks in part to TikTok, is being acquired. French mobile app publisher and developer MWM is bringing the app in-house, after previously working with Swipewipe’s indie developer, Adam O’Kane, to grow the app’s usage. The acquisition allows Swipewipe’s founder to take…
The generative AI boom is driving the demand for AI chips, which are purpose-built to train and run generative AI models. And major players, from VCs to startups, are scrambling to get in on the ground floor. SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son is reportedly looking to raise $100 billion for a chip initiative that would compete with…
You can now more easily use ChatGPT on your Mac computer. OpenAI’s popular AI chatbot is available to all macOS users, the company announced on Tuesday. The app was first announced ahead of Apple’s WWDC 2024 in June, where the companies jointly announced integrations between OpenAI’s chatbot and Apple’s operating systems for iPhone, iPad and…
What is AI good for? Automating repetitive tasks for the very busy people running small businesses, reckons Berlin-based startup Synthflow, which is announcing a $7.4 million seed round for its SME-focused no code platform for AI voice assistance. Since being founded around spring last year, the startup has now banked a total of $9.1 million,…
Sometimes the most successful startup ideas come from people building tools to solve their own needs. Such was the case with Dafydd Stuttard, a security expert who goes by Daf. Nearly two decades ago, living in the small market town of Knutsford in Cheshire in the northwest of England, Daf was working as a security…
