Here are MIT Technology Review’s best-performing stories of 2024
China’s next cultural export could be TikTok-style short soap operas
Alibaba staff offers glimpse into life of building LLM in China
Chinese tech companies are gathering all sorts of resources and talent to narrow their gap with OpenAI, and experiences for researchers on both sides of the Pacific Ocean can be surprisingly similar. A recent X post from an Alibaba researcher offers a rare glimpse into the life of developing large language models at the ecommerce […]
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Shadowfax speeds ahead with $100M funding as instant delivery boom fuels growth
Shadowfax, one of the largest logistics service providers to hyper-local and on-demand delivery businesses in India, has raised $100 million in a new funding round as it clocks an yearly growth of over 35%. TPG NewQuest led Shadowfax’s Series E financing round, which includes some secondary transactions, the startup said on Tuesday. TechCrunch reported last […]
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COTU Ventures launches $54M fund for pre-seed and seed startups in MENA
Dubai-based early-stage venture capital firm COTU Ventures is announcing that it has raised $54 million for its inaugural fund to support startups in the Middle East from pre-seed to seed stages. With a final close achieved last year, COTU Ventures, which identifies and backs founders from the inception to post-product launch, invests between $500,000 to […]
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The Supreme Court could decide the fate of content moderation — or it could punt
The Supreme Court is considering the fate of two state laws that limit how social media companies can moderate the content on their platforms. In oral arguments on Monday, the justices grappled with a thorny set of questions that could reshape the internet, from social networks like Facebook and TikTok to apps like Yelp and […]
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Inkitt, a self-publishing platform using AI to develop bestsellers, books $37M led by Khosla
Everyone has a story in them, as someone famous once said. A startup called Inkitt believes that it can use AI to turn the strongest of these into blockbusters and to build a new “Disney” for the 21st century around that content. Now, it’s raised $37 million in aid of that ambition. The startup’s eponymous […]
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FAA completes investigation into SpaceX’s second fiery Starship test
The Federal Aviation Administration has concluded its review of SpaceX’s investigation of the second Starship launch in November, with the regulator saying Monday that it accepted the “root causes and 17 corrective actions” identified by the company. While this means the investigation is now closed, SpaceX must implement all the corrective actions and apply for […]
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The Ring car camera appears to be finished, doomed by an unclear target market
Once upon a time, gadgets knew what they were truly for. Toaster? Brown thy bread. Smartphone? Connect thy user. But the Ring Car Camera? Ever since its launch it found itself in a bit of an identity crisis. After three and a half years, Amazon’s page for the camera now says that “we don’t know […]
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