Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
Collaboration software maker Smartsheet agrees to be acquired by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners for $8.4B in cash, or $56.50/share, closing in early 2025 — Collaboration software maker Smartsheet announced Tuesday Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners will acquire it in an all-cash deal valuing the company at about $8.4 billion.
Spotify rolls out its AI Playlist feature in beta to Premium subscribers in the US, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, after launching in the UK and Australia (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Spotify rolls out its AI Playlist feature in beta to Premium subscribers in the US, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand, after launching in the UK and Australia — Spotify is expanding an AI feature that creates customized playlists from your text descriptions to additional English-speaking regions.
Portland-based Torq, which helps IT teams automate security workflows, raised a $70M Series C led by Evolution Equity Partners, for $192M in total funding (Kyle Wiggers/TechCrunch)
Kyle Wiggers / TechCrunch:
Portland-based Torq, which helps IT teams automate security workflows, raised a $70M Series C led by Evolution Equity Partners, for $192M in total funding — As the volume of cyberattacks grows, there’s increasing interest from the corporate sector in tech to help automate responses to breaches.
Logitech MX Creative Console review: the $200 control surface for apps like Lightroom is an affordable entry point, but pros may find the controls limiting (Steve Dent/Engadget)
Steve Dent / Engadget:
Logitech MX Creative Console review: the $200 control surface for apps like Lightroom is an affordable entry point, but pros may find the controls limiting — The quality and design are solid, but pros may find the controls limiting. — Last year, Logitech leaped into the content creator market …
Warner Bros. Discovery partners with Google to add its “caption AI”, built on Vertex AI, to Max to automatically generate captions for unscripted programming (Ryan Browne/CNBC)
Ryan Browne / CNBC:
Warner Bros. Discovery partners with Google to add its “caption AI”, built on Vertex AI, to Max to automatically generate captions for unscripted programming — Warner Bros. Discovery is partnering with Google to integrate the internet giant’s AI technology into its Max video streaming platform …
Google Photos rolls out an update to its mobile video editor for Android and iOS, adding editing tools and AI presets to make trimming and tweaking clips easier (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google Photos rolls out an update to its mobile video editor for Android and iOS, adding editing tools and AI presets to make trimming and tweaking clips easier — Features coming to Android devices include a new “Speed” tool for creating slo-mo or sped-up videos, a new “Auto enhance” …
WP Engine sends a “cease and desist” letter to Automattic to “retract false, harmful, and disparaging statements”, after Matt Mullenweg called it a “cancer” (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
WP Engine sends a “cease and desist” letter to Automattic to “retract false, harmful, and disparaging statements”, after Matt Mullenweg called it a “cancer” — WordPress hosting service WP Engine on Monday sent a cease-and-desist letter to Automattic …
GitHub says all enterprise cloud customers will be able to select an EU region to store all their code starting on October 29 (Paul Sawers/TechCrunch)
Paul Sawers / TechCrunch:
GitHub says all enterprise cloud customers will be able to select an EU region to store all their code starting on October 29 — GitHub will soon allow cloud customers to store their code data in the European Union (EU), part of a growing push in the technology realm to meet regulatory requirements …
Snap says it will use Google’s Gemini to help add new features to its chatbot, including translating menus, after starting to use Gemini earlier in 2024 (Aisha Counts/Bloomberg)
Aisha Counts / Bloomberg:
Snap says it will use Google’s Gemini to help add new features to its chatbot, including translating menus, after starting to use Gemini earlier in 2024 — – Snapchat first launched its AI-powered chatbot last year — Snap uses artificial intelligence models from OpenAI, Google
Google plans to include the standalone Gemini app as standard on Workspace Business, Enterprise, and Frontline plans from Q4, replacing the Gemini add-on (Jess Weatherbed/The Verge)
Jess Weatherbed / The Verge:
Google plans to include the standalone Gemini app as standard on Workspace Business, Enterprise, and Frontline plans from Q4, replacing the Gemini add-on — Google is making Gemini AI a core part of its Workspace productivity suite, which could see the chatbot adopted by millions more users.
