Jessica Mathews / Fortune:
How GM is scrambling to save Cruise, which has become a liability after one of its automated vehicles hit and dragged a pedestrian 20 feet in October 2023 — October 2 was a quiet night on the streets of San Francisco. It was moderately cloudy, and Fleet Week activities had just begun at Sunset Library.
Google updates its accessibility apps: Lookout, to use a phone to recognize objects, a text-free mode in Look To Speak, and adds Maps wheelchair data on desktop (Mariella Moon/Engadget)
Mariella Moon / Engadget:
Google updates its accessibility apps: Lookout, to use a phone to recognize objects, a text-free mode in Look To Speak, and adds Maps wheelchair data on desktop — It’s also making wheelchair information on Google Maps available on desktop. — Google has updated some of its accessibility apps …
Google launches a Gemini add-on for educational institutes via Workspace, available in Gemini Education and Education Premium tiers in English for users over 18 (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)
Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch:
Google launches a Gemini add-on for educational institutes via Workspace, available in Gemini Education and Education Premium tiers in English for users over 18 — Google introduced a ton of new Gemini-related products at its Google I/O developer conference recently, and its Education suite is also getting an AI boost.
Israel-based Agora, which develops real estate investment management software, raised a $34M Series B, bringing its total funding to $63M (Marina Temkin/TechCrunch)
Marina Temkin / TechCrunch:
Israel-based Agora, which develops real estate investment management software, raised a $34M Series B, bringing its total funding to $63M — Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. His family was involved in all types of real estate projects …
Sony Music sends letters to 700+ AI companies, developers, and music streaming platforms warning over the “unauthorized use” of Sony’s content in training AI (Daniel Thomas/Financial Times)
Daniel Thomas / Financial Times:
Sony Music sends letters to 700+ AI companies, developers, and music streaming platforms warning over the “unauthorized use” of Sony’s content in training AI — Music group representing Adele and Beyoncé contacts more than 700 companies to prohibit use of content
Server CPU designer Ampere announces that its AmpereOne chip family will grow to 256 cores by next year; Ampere will work with Qualcomm on cloud AI accerlators (Dean Takahashi/VentureBeat)
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Server CPU designer Ampere announces that its AmpereOne chip family will grow to 256 cores by next year; Ampere will work with Qualcomm on cloud AI accerlators — Server CPU designer Ampere Computing announced its AmpereOne chip family will grow to 256 cores by next year.
Disney, Fox, and WBD unveil the name of their sports streaming venture: Venu Sports, whose debut is planned for fall 2024 (Todd Spangler/Variety)
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Disney, Fox, and WBD unveil the name of their sports streaming venture: Venu Sports, whose debut is planned for fall 2024 — “We are excited to officially introduce Venu Sports, a brand that we feel captures the spirit of an all-new streaming home where sports fans outside …
Hugging Face, which is “profitable, or close to profitable”, commits $10M in free shared GPUs to help small developers, academics, and others create AI apps (Kylie Robison/The Verge)
Kylie Robison / The Verge:
Hugging Face, which is “profitable, or close to profitable”, commits $10M in free shared GPUs to help small developers, academics, and others create AI apps — Hugging Face, one of the biggest names in machine learning, is committing $10 million in free shared GPUs to help developers create new AI technologies.
Vercel, which develops the Next.js framework, raised a $250M Series E led by Accel at a $3.25B valuation, and says it recently exceeded $100M in annual revenue (Anna Tong/Reuters)
Anna Tong / Reuters:
Vercel, which develops the Next.js framework, raised a $250M Series E led by Accel at a $3.25B valuation, and says it recently exceeded $100M in annual revenue — Vercel, a software startup that provides a platform for building cloud-based web applications, on Thursday said it has raised $250 million …
Blackstone agrees to buy a majority stake in Israeli enterprise software company Priority Software, which has 17K clients and 500+ staff, at an $800M valuation (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg:
Blackstone agrees to buy a majority stake in Israeli enterprise software company Priority Software, which has 17K clients and 500+ staff, at an $800M valuation — – Deal values enterprise software company at $800 million — Transaction is latest in a string of Israeli tech deals
