The Download: Europe vs Chinese EVs, and making AI vision less biased

September 26, 2023
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. Europe is working to slow down the global expansion of Chinese EVs Earlier this month, the European Commission announced it is launching an anti-subsidy investigation into electric vehicles coming from China.  The move…

Onchain leverage trading platform Avantis Labs raises $4M seed round led by Pantera Capital

September 26, 2023
Avantis Labs, a decentralized finance (DeFi) derivatives ecosystem, has raised $4 million in a seed funding round led by Pantera Capital, the company’s co-founder and CEO Sehaj Singh exclusively told TechCrunch. Founders Fund, Coinbase’s Base Ecosystem Fund and Modular Capital also invested in the round. The capital will be used to grow its flagship product […]

Erudit raises $10M to monitor workplaces for ‘misalignment’

September 26, 2023
Employee surveillance is on the rise. According to one poll, searches for staff monitoring software rose by 75% in March 2020 compared with the 2019 monthly average — and demand remained strong in 2021 and 2022. It’s a spike mostly attributable to the shift during the pandemic to hybrid work. A 2022 Microsoft survey found […]

What’s changed since the “pause AI” letter six months ago?

September 26, 2023
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. Last Friday marked six months since the Future of Life Institute (FLI), a nonprofit focusing on existential risks surrounding artificial intelligence, shared an open letter signed by famous people such as Elon Musk,…

Sequoia backs PartyKit to power real-time multiplayer collaboration for any app

September 26, 2023
If a company wants to offer in-app messaging or voice calls, they don’t have to develop the infrastructure themselves when there’s something like Twilio at their disposal. Likewise, if they want to support payments there’s Stripe, or for maps there’s the mighty Google. But what if a developer is tasked with building real-time multiplayer collaboration […]