Brian Heater / TechCrunch:
LA-based Aerodome, which uses autonomous drones to help first responders get a view of problems like crimes and fires, raised a $21.5M Series A led by CRV — If you’ve spent any time in Los Angeles, you’re no doubt aware that police helicopters are a permanent fixture in the skies above.
Istanbul-based Colendi, which provides digital banking services, raised a $65M Series B at a $700M valuation from Citi Ventures and others (Inci Ozbek/Bloomberg)
Inci Ozbek / Bloomberg:
Istanbul-based Colendi, which provides digital banking services, raised a $65M Series B at a $700M valuation from Citi Ventures and others — – Digital banking startup raised $65 million in Series B round — Colendi targets $1 billion valuation in new investment round
Truecaller partners with Microsoft’s Azure AI Speech to let its AI Assistant users create an AI version of their voice to answer calls based on a recorded clip (Emilia David/The Verge)
Emilia David / The Verge:
Truecaller partners with Microsoft’s Azure AI Speech to let its AI Assistant users create an AI version of their voice to answer calls based on a recorded clip — Caller ID company Truecaller will let users create an AI version of their voice to answer calls.
Google Pay now lets users see their card benefits and perks before selecting a card, use BNPL on more sites, and fill in card details through biometrics or PIN (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)
Sarah Perez / TechCrunch:
Google Pay now lets users see their card benefits and perks before selecting a card, use BNPL on more sites, and fill in card details through biometrics or PIN — Google Pay is rolling out a number of updates that capitalize on its integrations with other Google products, like Android and the Chrome browser.
Praktika, which lets users create personalized AI-powered avatars to make learning a language feel more natural, raised a $35.5M Series A led by Blossom Capital (Mike Butcher/TechCrunch)
Mike Butcher / TechCrunch:
Praktika, which lets users create personalized AI-powered avatars to make learning a language feel more natural, raised a $35.5M Series A led by Blossom Capital — Most apps that help you learn languages feature a user experience that has you selecting options or swiping away wrong answer cards …
Steve Kramer, the political consultant who admitted to commissioning the deepfake robocall of Biden, has been indicted in New Hampshire and faces five counts (Alex Seitz-Wald/NBC News)
Alex Seitz-Wald / NBC News:
Steve Kramer, the political consultant who admitted to commissioning the deepfake robocall of Biden, has been indicted in New Hampshire and faces five counts — Steve Kramer, the Democratic consultant whom NBC News first linked to the robocall impersonating the president, is facing five counts in New Hampshire.
Documents and sources: OpenAI hired an actress to create ChatGPT’s Sky voice months before Sam Altman contacted Scarlett Johansson (Nitasha Tiku/Washington Post)
Nitasha Tiku / Washington Post:
Documents and sources: OpenAI hired an actress to create ChatGPT’s Sky voice months before Sam Altman contacted Scarlett Johansson — A different actress was hired to provide the voice for ChatGPT’s ‘Sky,’ according to documents and recordings shared with the Washington Post.
Leaked OpenAI docs show aggressive tactics toward ex-employees and contradict leadership’s comments about being unaware of provisions about equity cancellation (Kelsey Piper/Vox)
Kelsey Piper / Vox:
Leaked OpenAI docs show aggressive tactics toward ex-employees and contradict leadership’s comments about being unaware of provisions about equity cancellation — On Friday, Vox reported that employees at tech giant OpenAI who wanted to leave the company were confronted with expansive and highly restrictive exit documents.
Portland-based Hydrolix, a data lake service that offers a repository for log data, raised a $35M Series B led by S3 Ventures, bringing its total raised to $68M (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Portland-based Hydrolix, a data lake service that offers a repository for log data, raised a $35M Series B led by S3 Ventures, bringing its total raised to $68M — In 2008, Marty Kagan, who’d previously worked at Cisco and Akamai, co-founded Cedexis, a (now-Cisco-owned) firm developing observability tech for content delivery networks.
The US House passes the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21, which would create a regulatory framework for digital assets (André Beganski/Decrypt)
André Beganski / Decrypt:
The US House passes the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21, which would create a regulatory framework for digital assets — Dubbed the Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21, the measure was approved by the House of Representatives with a 279-136 vote.
