Technology

When Russia invaded her home country of Ukraine, UK-based tech entrepreneur Irra Ariella Khi, cofounder of Zamna — set up a fundraising page to directly support people inside Ukraine. Khi’s father (aged 70) and godmother (aged 82) are both in Ukraine, as are her stepsister and her children. Khi then temporarily stepped back from her […]

What happened when this entrepreneur put her startup on hold to help Ukraine, and told VCs to donate by Mike Butcher originally published on TechCrunch

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. Google’s new AI can hear a snippet of song—and then keep on playing A new AI system can create natural-sounding speech and music after being prompted with a few seconds of audio. AudioLM,…

Hello, and welcome back to The Checkup! I’m back home in London after last week’s trip to the Swiss Alps to meet millionaires who want to live forever. Alas, I brought more than suspect supplements home with me—I’ve been out of action with a virus for the last few days. I can’t really blame my…

A new AI system can create natural-sounding speech and music after being prompted with a few seconds of audio. AudioLM, developed by Google researchers, generates audio that fits the style of the prompt, including complex sounds like piano music, or people speaking, in a way that is almost indistinguishable from the original recording. The technique…

The fund raised will be utilized to strengthen its position in the market and invest in brand building, growing the private label portfolio, offline retail, technology, and marketing and sales-driven strategies

Wildfires have become an ever-increasing threat as houses are built closer together and the growing impacts of climate change wreak havoc on natural landscapes. Entrepreneurs, in response, have started to develop tech meant to minimize the scale and damage of these natural disasters. Convective Capital is a new VC firm looking to back them. Bill […]

Convective Capital’s $35 million answer to the increasing threat of wildfires by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

A Kenya-based venture studio with a focus on tourism, Purple Elephant Ventures (PEV), has raised $1 million pre-seed funding to build the next generation of startups that use technology to modernize the tourism sector. Investors participating in this round include Klister Credit Corp., a Canadian investment firm, The Untours Foundation, and a number of angel […]

Purple Elephant Ventures, Kenya’s tourism-focused startup studio, raises $1M pre-seed funding by Annie Njanja originally published on TechCrunch

I Was There When is an oral history project that’s part of the In Machines We Trust podcast. It features stories of how breakthroughs and watershed moments in artificial intelligence and computing happened, as told by the people who witnessed them. In this episode we meet one of the world’s greatest chess players, Garry Kasparov.…

Michigan, long the automotive manufacturing capital of the United States, is now getting pumped with investment both publicly and privately to build out a series of battery manufacturing plants that will power the wave of electric vehicles coming to market. The demand for domestically produced batteries has reached new peaks after the passage of the […]

Michigan is becoming the center of US battery manufacturing by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

The last five years have seen large innovations throughout drug development and clinical trial life cycles—from finding a target and designing the trial, to getting a drug approved and launching the drug itself. The recent use of mRNA vaccines to combat covid-19 is just one of many advances in biotech and drug development. Whether in…