Kyle Wiggers, Author at TechCrunch

CloudPay, a payroll services provider, lands $120M in new funding

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 22:20:26 +0000

In 1996, two companies, Patersons HR and Payroll Solutions, formed a venture called CloudPay to provide payroll and payments services to enterprise clients. CloudPay grew quietly over the next several decades, adding workflow automation features to maintain pace with upstart rivals. It’s still growing, CFO Andy Thomson assures TechCrunch. Thomson claims that CloudPay is handling […]

OpenAI finds that GPT-4o does some truly bizarre stuff sometimes

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 19:34:29 +0000

OpenAI’s GPT-4o, the generative AI model that powers the recently launched alpha of Advanced Voice Mode in ChatGPT, is the company’s first trained on voice as well as text and image data. And that leads it to behave in strange ways sometimes — like mimicking the voice of the person speaking to it or randomly […]

OpenAI adds a Carnegie Mellon professor to its board of directors

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 19:00:00 +0000

OpenAI has announced a new appointment to its board of directors: Zico Kolter. Kolter, a professor and director of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon, predominantly focuses his research on AI safety. This makes him an “invaluable technical director for [OpenAI’s] governance,” OpenAI writes in a post on its official blog. AI safety has […]

This Week in AI: OpenAI’s talent retention woes

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 17:05:00 +0000

Hiya, folks, welcome to TechCrunch’s regular AI newsletter. This week in AI, OpenAI lost another co-founder. John Schulman, who played a pivotal role in the development of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot platform, has left the company for rival Anthropic. Schulman announced the news on X, saying that his decision stemmed from a desire to deepen […]

Mechanical Orchard, led by ex-Pivotal CEO, scores $50M round led by Alphabet’s GV

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:43:55 +0000

Digital transformation — the process of transforming outdated apps and processes with cloud technologies and digital workflows — can be a risky undertaking. In 2023, Harvard Business Review reported that while 89% of large companies have a digital and AI transformation underway, they’ve only captured 31% of the expected revenue uplift and 25% of anticipated […]

Napkin turns text into visuals with a bit of generative AI

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Napkin wants to use generative AI to make turning text into visualizations as easy as clicking on a button and customizing the results.

Database startup Neon nabs a Microsoft investment

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

In a sign that big tech companies are ready and willing to shell out cash for database tech, Neon, a startup building an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres, on Wednesday announced that Microsoft’s venture arm M12 led a $25 million strategic investment in its business. The capital will go toward R&D, Neon co-founder […]

Amazon upgrades its AI image generator

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 19:43:54 +0000

Amazon has released an upgraded version of its in-house image-generating model, Titan Image Generator, for AWS customers using its Bedrock generative AI platform. Simply called Titan Image Generator v2, the new model brings with it several new capabilities, AWS principal developer advocate Channy Yun explains in a blog post. Users can “guide” the images they […]

Hyperspace is using ‘domain-specific computing’ to accelerate database searches

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Hyperspace, a Tel Aviv-based startup, says its custom cloud instances for database searches can dramatically speed up queries.

German computer scientists raise $30 million to help companies make sense of their data

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 12:00:00 +0000

It’s not easy for organizations to become data-driven, despite the aspirations many have to get there. Even orgs with data analytics teams often struggle to make effective use of their data. According to a recent Gartner survey, fewer than half of data and analytics leaders say their teams are effective in providing value to their […]

OpenAI co-founder Schulman leaves for Anthropic, Brockman takes extended leave

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 06 Aug 2024 02:23:00 +0000

John Schulman, one of the co-founders of OpenAI, has left the company for rival AI startup Anthropic. In addition, OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman is taking an extended leave — through the end of the year — after nine years at the company to “relax and recharge,” the company confirmed. Peter Deng, a product […]

Secretaries of state urge X to stop its Grok chatbot from spreading election misinformation

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 23:35:37 +0000

Grok — not to be confused with the homophonic AI startup Groq that this morning raised over $600 million — has been spreading false information about Vice President Kamala Harris on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter. That’s according to an open letter penned by five secretaries of state and addressed to Tesla, […]

Google loses massive antitrust case over search, will appeal ruling

Kyle Wiggers, Rebecca Bellan — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 20:27:00 +0000

Google will appeal a U.S. District Court judge’s opinion Monday that found the technology giant acted illegally to maintain a monopoly in online search. The decision from Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is a major defeat for Google that could alter the way it does business […]

OpenAI tempers expectations with less bombastic, GPT-5-less DevDay this fall

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 20:09:05 +0000

Last year, OpenAI held a splashy press event in San Francisco during which the company announced a bevy of new products and tools, including the ill-fated App Store-like GPT Store. This year will be a quieter affair, however. On Monday, OpenAI said it’s changing the format of its DevDay conference from a tentpole event into […]

Announcing the agenda for the AI Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024

Devin Coldewey, Kyle Wiggers, Richard Smith — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 18:20:00 +0000

We’re so excited to announce that we’ve added a dedicated AI Stage presented by Google Cloud to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. It joins Fintech, SaaS and Space as the other industry-focused stages — all under one big roof. We couldn’t possibly host TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 without a huge deep dive on all things artificial intelligence. So, […]

YouTuber files class action suit over OpenAI’s scrape of creators’ transcripts

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 16:17:52 +0000

By collecting this data, OpenAI "profited significantly" from the creators' work, the complaint alleges.

AI chip startup Groq lands $640M to challenge Nvidia

Kyle Wiggers — Mon, 05 Aug 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Groq, a startup developing chips to run generative AI models faster than conventional processors, said on Monday that it has raised $640 million in a new funding round led by Blackrock. Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI and Samsung Catalyst Fund also participated. The tranche, which brings Groq’s total raised to over $1 billion […]

Many safety evaluations for AI models have significant limitations

Kyle Wiggers — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 18:00:00 +0000

Despite increasing demand for AI safety and accountability, today’s tests and benchmarks may fall short, according to a new report. Generative AI models — models that can analyze and output text, images, music, videos and so on — are coming under increased scrutiny for their tendency to make mistakes and generally behave unpredictably. Now, organizations […]

FTC and Justice Department sue TikTok over alleged child privacy violations

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 20:12:22 +0000

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department are suing TikTok and ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, with violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The law requires digital platforms to notify and obtain parents’ consent before collecting and using personal data from children under the age of 13. In a press release issued […]

OpenAI pledges to give U.S. AI Safety Institute early access to its next model

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 05:48:56 +0000

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that OpenAI is working with the U.S. AI Safety Institute, a federal government body that aims to assess and address risks in AI platforms, on an agreement to provide early access to its next major generative AI model for safety testing. The announcement, which Altman made in a post on […]