December 19, 2024

The Download: digital twins, and where AI data really comes from

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. Digital twins of human organs are here. They’re set to transform medical treatment. Steven Niederer, a biomedical engineer at the Alan Turing Institute and Imperial College London, has a cardboard box filled with…

Industry Ventures raises a $900M fund for investing in small, early-stage VCs and their breakout startups

July 2, 2024

The venture fundraising trend in 2024 is fairly clear by now: Large, established VC firms are continuing to attract capital from limited partners, while smaller, newer funds are finding it more difficult to raise.  But Industry Ventures’ latest fundraise should offer a dash of good news for emerging managers. On Tuesday, the 24-year-old firm announced […]

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The Download: mind-controlled prosthetics, and the price of AI training data

July 2, 2024
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. People can move this bionic leg just by thinking about it  What’s new: When someone loses part of a leg, a prosthetic can make it easier to get around. But most prosthetics are…

Indian edtech Unacademy cuts another 250 jobs

July 2, 2024

Indian edtech giant Unacademy is laying off about 250 employees, the latest in a series of layoffs since the reopening of schools across the country after the pandemic. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, valued at $3.4 billion in its last funding in 2021, is cutting 100 jobs in core roles (marketing, business and product) and 150 in […]

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Apple adds support for new languages across lock screen, keyboard and search on iOS 18

July 2, 2024

Apple unveiled iOS 18 last month at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC). Since then, the company has released two developer betas in the last few weeks with extended support for multiple new languages across the lock screen, Siri, keyboard, and search on iOS 18. With the new update, you can now customize the lock screen […]

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AI companies are finally being forced to cough up for training data

July 2, 2024
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. The generative AI boom is built on scale. The more training data, the more powerful the model.  But there’s a problem. AI companies have pillaged the internet for training data, and…

Anthropic looks to fund a new, more comprehensive generation of AI benchmarks

July 1, 2024

Anthropic is launching a program to fund the development of new types of benchmarks capable of evaluating the performance and impact of AI models, including generative models like its own Claude. Unveiled on Monday, Anthropic’s program will dole out grants to third-party organizations that can, as the company puts it in a blog post, “effectively […]

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Senators urge Synapse’s owners, partners, and VC backers to restore customers’ access to their money

July 1, 2024

A group of senators has banded together to urge Synapse’s owners and bank and fintech partners to “immediately restore customers’ access to their money.” As part of their demands, the senators implicated both the partners and investors of the company as being responsible for missing customer funds. In a letter shared publicly on Monday, U.S. […]

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