Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
WitnessAI, which intercepts employees’ use of custom generative AI models and applies safeguards, raised a $27.5M Series A co-led by GV and Ballistic Ventures — Generative AI makes stuff up. It can be biased. Sometimes it spits out toxic text. So can it be “safe”?
Sources: Humane is seeking a buyer for its business, after the rocky launch of its AI pin; a source says the startup is seeking a price of between $750M and $1B (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg:
Sources: Humane is seeking a buyer for its business, after the rocky launch of its AI pin; a source says the startup is seeking a price of between $750M and $1B — – Humane’s AI pin was billed as an alternative to smartphones — AI hardware product received poor reviews after its launch
Minnesota lawmakers reach a compromise with Uber and Lyft, setting a floor for drivers’ pay statewide at $1.28/mile and $0.31/minute, effective January 1, 2025 (Rebecca Bellan/TechCrunch)
Rebecca Bellan / TechCrunch:
Minnesota lawmakers reach a compromise with Uber and Lyft, setting a floor for drivers’ pay statewide at $1.28/mile and $0.31/minute, effective January 1, 2025 — Uber and Lyft drivers in Minnesota will see higher pay thanks to a deal between the state and the country’s two largest ride-hailing companies.
Microsoft will soon let businesses build custom Copilot AI agents to automate tasks, and unveils Team Copilot to help with tasks in Teams, Loop, and Planner (Tom Warren/The Verge)
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft will soon let businesses build custom Copilot AI agents to automate tasks, and unveils Team Copilot to help with tasks in Teams, Loop, and Planner — Microsoft will soon allow businesses and developers to build AI-powered Copilots that can work like virtual employees and perform tasks automatically.
Gordon Bell, who helped design several influential minicomputers at Digital Equipment Corporation, including the 12-bit PDP-8, died on May 17 at age 89 (Glenn Rifkin/New York Times)
Glenn Rifkin / New York Times:
Gordon Bell, who helped design several influential minicomputers at Digital Equipment Corporation, including the 12-bit PDP-8, died on May 17 at age 89 — It cost $18,000 when it was introduced in 1965, but it bridged the world between room-size mainframes and the modern desktop.
Generative AI music startup Suno raised $125M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Matrix, Founder Collective, and others (Michael Nuñez/VentureBeat)
Michael Nuñez / VentureBeat:
Generative AI music startup Suno raised $125M from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, Matrix, Founder Collective, and others — Suno, a trailblazing music AI startup, announced today that it has raised a staggering $125 million in its latest funding round …
Google is rolling out a new AI-powered ad format that shows shoppers how items of clothing would look on different skin tones and body types (Louise Matsakis/Wired)
Louise Matsakis / Wired:
Google is rolling out a new AI-powered ad format that shows shoppers how items of clothing would look on different skin tones and body types — A new breed of online ad allows brands to pay Google to offer shoppers AI-generated images that show how items of clothing would look on different skin tones and body types.
Microsoft announces the developer preview of Windows Volumetric Apps, giving access to an API that lets devs put Windows apps in 3D space on Meta Quest headsets (Sean Hollister/The Verge)
Sean Hollister / The Verge:
Microsoft announces the developer preview of Windows Volumetric Apps, giving access to an API that lets devs put Windows apps in 3D space on Meta Quest headsets — You can already beam your flat Windows desktop and its VR games onto your Meta Quest headset — but what if Windows could send HoloLens …
Microsoft announces the general availability of its Phi-3 models, including Phi-3-Silica, a 3.3B parameter model that will be embedded on all Copilot+ PCs (Ken Yeung/VentureBeat)
Ken Yeung / VentureBeat:
Microsoft announces the general availability of its Phi-3 models, including Phi-3-Silica, a 3.3B parameter model that will be embedded on all Copilot+ PCs — Microsoft is making more investments in the development of small language models. At its Build developer conference …
Coactive, which provides AI tools to categorize visual data, raised a $30M Series B co-led by Emerson Collective and Cherryrock Capital at a $200M valuation (Kenrick Cai/Forbes)
Kenrick Cai / Forbes:
Coactive, which provides AI tools to categorize visual data, raised a $30M Series B co-led by Emerson Collective and Cherryrock Capital at a $200M valuation — The startup has raised $30 million, quadrupling its valuation to $200 million, signaling investors’ interest in enterprise AI tools that aren’t generative in nature.
