July 4, 2025

The Download: India’s AI independence, and predicting future epidemics

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. Inside India’s scramble for AI independence Despite its status as a global tech hub, India lags far behind the likes of the US and China when it comes to homegrown AI. That gap…

Technology

Foundamental closes $85M fund for early-stage construction tech startups

December 13, 2022

The trillion-dollar construction industry is often tarred with the inefficiency brush, accused of failing to move with the times and ignoring digitization in favor of legacy tools. But there is plenty of evidence that things are changing, with countless startups raising large sums of cash to help the construction industry modernize. Venture capital (VC) funding in […]

Foundamental closes $85M fund for early-stage construction tech startups by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Ngrok, a service to help devs deploy sites, services and apps, raises $50M

December 13, 2022

Ask Alan Shreve why he founded Ngrok, a service that helps developers share sites and apps running on their local machines or servers, and he’ll tell you it was to solve a tough-to-grok (pun fully intended) infrastructure problem he encountered while at Twilio. As an engineer there, Shreve was developing on webhooks — automated messages […]

Ngrok, a service to help devs deploy sites, services and apps, raises $50M by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Decentralized discourse: How open source is shaping Twitter’s future

December 13, 2022

Six weeks on from Elon Musk’s $44 billion Twitter takeover, few words can fully encapsulate events as they have unfolded in the period since. “Chaotic” or “farcical” come pretty close, though, with mass layoffs, u-turns, ultimatums, resignations, crowdsourced ban-reversals, advertiser standoffs, picking fights with Apple, and a revamped verification system that has everyone and their uncle […]

Decentralized discourse: How open source is shaping Twitter’s future by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

The Download: AI objectification, and SBF charged

December 13, 2022
This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology. The viral AI avatar app Lensa undressed me—without my consent When Melissa Heikkilä, our senior AI reporter, tried the new viral AI avatar app Lensa, she was hoping to get results similar to…

Zappi raises $170M for its AI-based market research platform

December 13, 2022

Fundraising may be drying up for some segments of the tech industry at the moment, but one area that continues to get a lot of attention is AI and specifically startups that are using it to build out revenue-generating businesses. Today, a startup called Zappi, which has built a market research platform that utilizes AI […]

Zappi raises $170M for its AI-based market research platform by Ingrid Lunden originally published on TechCrunch

Microsoft to sunset Soundscape 3D audio app and open-source the code

December 13, 2022

Microsoft is sunsetting an experimental research project that uses audio-based technology to help visually-impaired people navigate and gain a stronger awareness of their surroundings. However, the company also revealed that it will release the code under an open source license for other developers to use. The technology giant first debuted Soundscape back in 2017, essentially […]

Microsoft to sunset Soundscape 3D audio app and open-source the code by Paul Sawers originally published on TechCrunch

Image-generating AI can copy and paste from training data, raising IP concerns

December 13, 2022

Image-generating AI models like DALL-E 2 and Stable Diffusion can — and do — replicate aspects of images from their training data, researchers show in a new study, raising concerns as these services enter wide commercial use. Co-authored by scientists at the University of Maryland and New York University, the research identifies cases where image-generating […]

Image-generating AI can copy and paste from training data, raising IP concerns by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Vic.ai raises $52M, shows that automating accounting processes can be profitable

December 13, 2022

AI is an imperfect technology, but one task at which it excels is identifying patterns in vast amounts of data. That’s perhaps why a number of startups have sprung up in recent years offering AI-powered products aimed at automating accounting tasks, like redacting sensitive info in paperwork and filing forms across different departments. Simply put, […]

Vic.ai raises $52M, shows that automating accounting processes can be profitable by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch