Pinecone launches its serverless vector database out of preview

May 21, 2024

Pinecone, the vector database startup founded by Edo Liberty, the former head of Amazon’s AI Labs, has long been at the forefront of helping businesses augment large language models (LLMs) with their own data. Most recently, though, the company completely rearchitected its product to launch Pinecone Serverless, which frees its customers from having to think […]

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Special mud helps XGS Energy get more power out of geothermal wells

May 21, 2024

Young geothermal energy wells can be like budding prodigies, each brimming with potential to outshine their peers. But like people, most decline with age. In California, for example, the amount of electricity generated by geothermal power plants declined by 15% between 2001 and 2018, partly because existing wells degraded. “The history of geothermal has been […]

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Sonos finally made some headphones

May 21, 2024

The market play is clear from the outset: The $449 headphones are firmly targeted at an audience that would otherwise be purchasing the Bose QC Ultra or Apple AirPods Max.

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Five ways criminals are using AI

May 21, 2024
Artificial intelligence has brought a big boost in productivity—to the criminal underworld.  Generative AI provides a new, powerful tool kit that allows malicious actors to work far more efficiently and internationally than ever before, says Vincenzo Ciancaglini, a senior threat researcher at the security company Trend Micro.  Most criminals are “not living in some dark…

The Download: how to test AI, and treating paralysis

May 21, 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. AI models can outperform humans in tests to identify mental states Humans are complicated beings. The ways we communicate are multilayered, and psychologists have devised many kinds of tests to measure our ability…

Porsche invests in battery startup South 8 to boost cold-weather EV performance

May 21, 2024

All cars suffer when the mercury drops, but electric vehicles suffer more than most as heaters draw more power and batteries charge more slowly as the liquid electrolyte inside thickens. Drivers in Chicago found this out the hard way last January after many Teslas failed to charge during a deep freeze. One startup, South 8 […]

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Data-labeling startup Scale AI raises $1B as valuation doubles to $13.8B

May 21, 2024

Scale AI, a company that provides data-labeling services for training machine learning models, has raised a $1 billion Series F round from a slew of big-name institutional and corporate investors including Amazon and Meta. The raise, which constitutes a mix of primary and secondary funding, comes amid a boom in AI venture capital megarounds, with […]

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