Tech Meme

Cory Weinberg / The Information: Sources: Scale AI grew sales nearly 4X YoY to almost $400M in H1 2024 and had ~$980M in cash; the data labeling startup raised $1B at a $13.8B valuation in May  —  Helping artificial intelligence companies improve the accuracy of their large language models is turning into a giant business for Scale AI … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Rohan Goswami / CNBC: Collaboration software maker Smartsheet agrees to be acquired by Blackstone and Vista Equity Partners for ~$8.4B, or $56.50/share, set to close in January 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. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Paul Sawers / TechCrunch: GitHub says all enterprise cloud customers will be able to select an EU region for Azure, in the Netherlands or Sweden, to store all their code from 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 … Lees verder op Tech Meme

New York Times: Sources describe Meta’s efforts to de-emphasize political content across its family of apps, its reduction and reshuffling of election integrity staff, and more  —  In January 2021, after pro-Trump rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, Mark Zuckerberg announced a new priority for Meta … Lees verder op Tech Meme

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg: In a controversial move, Israel’s ISA clears AI startup Bridgewise to launch a chatbot that gives stock picking advice, slated to debut with a big Israeli bank  —  Other governments have raised alarms that artificial intelligence might destabilize financial markets. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Aaron Holmes / The Information: Sources: some key staff working on Microsoft’s distilled AI models trained on synthetic data, like Phi, have left the Microsoft AI unit led by Mustafa Suleyman  —  In case you missed it, my colleagues broke news yesterday about Anthropic’s attempt to draft off OpenAI’s pending fundraising, by looking to do its own funding round. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Aisha Counts / Bloomberg: Snap says it will use Google’s Gemini to help add new features to Snapchat’s 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 Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google plans to include the standalone Gemini app as standard in its 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. Lees verder op Tech Meme

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. Lees verder op Tech Meme

Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: Google updates Google Photos’ mobile video editor for Android and iOS, adding editing tools and AI presets that should 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” … Lees verder op Tech Meme