Cherryrock Capital raises new $172M fund from all-star investors to back diverse founders

February 20, 2025

Cherryrock Capital, founded by ex-TaskRabbit CEO Stacy Brown-Philpot, announced Wednesday the closing of its $172 million Fund I with an all-star limited partner list that includes JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, MassMutual, Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal Ventures, Reid Hoffman, Mellody Hobson, and Sheryl Sandberg.  Brown-Philpot told Bloomberg that the fund actually closed in January.  The firm launched […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Figure’s humanoid robot takes voice orders to help around the house

February 20, 2025

Figure founder and CEO Brett Adcock Thursday revealed a new machine learning model for humanoid robots. The news, which arrives two weeks after Adcock announced the Bay Area robotics firm’s decision to step away from an OpenAI collaboration, is centered around Helix, a “generalist” Vision-Language-Action (VLA) model. VLAs are a new phenomenon for robotics, leveraging […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Instagram’s new ad format lets creators get paid for testimonials in comments

February 20, 2025

Instagram is introducing a new way for creators to work with brands to make money by recommending products. On Thursday, Meta introduced an addition to its Partnership Ads called Testimonials, which allows creators to get paid via written endorsements, shared as comments on the brand’s social media posts and advertisements. The new ad format is […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

Spotify partners with ElevenLabs to expand its library of AI-narrated audiobooks

February 20, 2025

On Thursday, Spotify announced that it now accepts audiobooks narrated using ElevenLabs’ AI voice technology. Given that ElevenLabs is currently among the most recognized AI audio providers, this new partnership is expected to boost the quantity of AI-narrated audiobooks on the platform. To upload an audiobook narrated by AI, authors need to download the file […]

© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.