Technology

Alphabet’s Waymo has issued its second round of layoffs this year, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Combined with the initial cuts in January, the self-driving technology company has let go of 8% or 209 employees of its workforce. The layoffs — mostly engineering roles — are part of a broader organizational restructure that follows a […]

Waymo cuts 200 employees after second round of layoffs by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

Roku struck a deal with creator company Jellysmack to launch new content featuring 17 popular YouTube and TikTok creators like Brad Mondo, Lauren Riihimaki (LaurDIY), Emmy Cho (Emmymade), Karina Garcia and more. The company announced yesterday that it’s launching two free, ad-supported TV (FAST) channels, “Hello Inspo” and “Mysteria,” to The Roku Channel’s Live TV […]

Free, ad-supported creator content comes to The Roku Channel by Lauren Forristal originally published on TechCrunch

To coincide with the rollout of the ChatGPT API, OpenAI today launched the Whisper API, a hosted version of the open source Whisper speech-to-text model that the company released in September. Priced at $0.006 per minute, Whisper is an automatic speech recognition system that OpenAI claims enables “robust” transcription in multiple languages as well as […]

OpenAI debuts Whisper API for text-to-speech transcription and translation by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

To call ChatGPT, the free text-generating AI developed by San Francisco-based startup OpenAI, a hit is a massive understatement. As of December, ChatGPT had an estimated over 100 million monthly active users. It’s attracted major media attention and spawned countless memes on social media. It’s been used to write hundreds of ebooks in Amazon’s Kindle […]

OpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT, plus dedicated capacity for enterprise customers by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Sesamm, a French startup that helps financial firms and corporates adhere to their ESG goals by using natural language processing (NLP) to generate insights from digital content, has raised €35 million ($37 million) in a round of funding to expand internationally. Despite a growing backlash against ESG efforts from some politicians and vocal executives, companies […]

Sesamm bags $37M to give corporates ESG insights using natural language processing by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

The U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee voted in favor of a bill that could give President Joe Biden the ability to ban TikTok. This bill, known as the Deterring America’s Technological Adversaries (DATA) Act, was introduced Friday by Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), then fast-tracked to a vote on Wednesday, which passed 24-16; all Democrats […]

Proposed bill would give Biden the power to ban TikTok by Amanda Silberling originally published on TechCrunch

With the market turning so dramatically in 2022, it’s no surprise that many startups are now believed to be raising down rounds. This week alone, it was reported that Varo was raising a $50 million equity round led by Warburg Pincus at a “significantly” lower valuation. According to Fintech Business Weekly, the struggling neobank would […]

Varo, Stripe said to be raising new funds at much lower valuations by Mary Ann Azevedo originally published on TechCrunch

Chainlink, a web3 services platform, is launching a self-service, serverless platform to help developers connect their decentralized applications (dApps) or smart contracts to any Web2.0 API, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The new platform, Chainlink Functions, also lets builders run customizable computations on Web 2.0 APIs within minutes through its network, Kemal El Moujahid, chief […]

Chainlink’s new platform lets web3 projects connect to Web 2.0 systems like AWS and Meta by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch