February 9, 2025

Web and Technology News

Cybersecurity startup Ordr nabs $40M to monitor connected devices for anomalies

In 2015, there were approximately 3.5 billion internet of things (IoT) devices in use. Today, the number stands around 35 billion, and is expected to eclipse 75 billion by 2025. IoT devices range from connected blood pressure monitors to industrial temperature sensors, and they’re indispensable. Yet every device increases an organization’s attack surface, along with […]

Perceptron: Risky teleoperation, Rocket League simulation, and zoologist multiplication

Research in the field of machine learning and AI, now a key technology in practically every industry and company, is far too voluminous for anyone to read it all. This column, Perceptron (previously Deep Science), aims to collect some of the most relevant recent discoveries and papers — particularly in, but not limited to, artificial intelligence […]

Mintlify taps AI to automatically generate documentation from code

Mintlify, a startup developing software to automate software documentation tasks, today announced that it raised $2.8 million in a seed round led by by Bain Capital Ventures with participation from TwentyTwo Ventures and Quinn Slack, Sourcegraph’s co-founder. CEO Han Wang says that the proceeds will be put toward product development and doubling Mintlify’s core, three-person […]

One AI raises $8M to curate business-specific NLP models

Whether to power translation to document summarization, enterprises are increasing their investments in natural language processing (NLP) technologies. According to a 2021 survey from John Snow Labs and Gradient Flow, 60% of tech leaders indicated that their NLP budgets grew by at least 10% compared to 2020, while a third said that spending climbed by […]

Amazon flexes its retail muscle with a brick-and-mortar clothing store

Signaling its ambitions to make a dent in the apparel market, Amazon today opened its first physical clothing store, Amazon Style, in the Greater Los Angeles Area. Offering a twist on the traditional experience, visitors to the Glendale, California shop at The Americana At Brand use an app to scan codes on displayed items from […]

AI chip startup Sima.ai bags another $30M ahead of growth

As the demand for AI-powered apps grows, startups developing dedicated chips to accelerate AI workloads on-premises are reaping the benefits. A recent ZDNet piece reaffirms that the AI edge chip market is booming, fueled by “staggering” venture capital financing in the hundreds of millions of dollars. EdgeQ, Kneron, and Hailo are among the dozens of […]

Aive automatically generates different video ad formats for all platforms

If you’re working for an advertising agency or you’re in charge of a brand, editing and exporting a video ad that works across all social and web platforms can be a lengthy and time consuming task. French startup Aive speeds up the process quite drastically as it can automatically generate all formats and all durations […]

Aive automatically generates different video ad formats for all platforms

If you’re working for an advertising agency or you’re in charge of a brand, editing and exporting a video ad that works across all social and web platforms can be a lengthy and time consuming task. French startup Aive speeds up the process quite drastically as it can automatically generate all formats and all durations […]

Copilot, GitHub’s AI-powered coding tool, will be free for students

Last June, Microsoft-owned GitHub and OpenAI launched Copilot, a service that provides suggestions for whole lines of code inside development environments like Microsoft Visual Studio. Available as a downloadable extension, Copilot is powered by an AI model called Codex that’s trained on billions of lines of public code to suggest additional lines of code and […]

Microsoft brings support for Arm-based AI chips to Windows

Today at Build 2022, Microsoft unveiled Project Volterra, a device powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform that’s designed to let developers explore “AI scenarios” via Qualcomm’s new Snapdragon Neural Processing Engine (SNPE) for Windows toolkit. The hardware arrives alongside support in Windows for neural processing units (NPUs), or dedicated chips tailored for AI- and machine learning-specific […]

Hugging Face collaborates with Microsoft for new AI-powered Azure service

Fresh off a $100 million funding round, Hugging Face, which provides hosted AI services and a community-driven portal for AI tools and data sets, today announced a new product in collaboration with Microsoft. Called Hugging Face Endpoints on Azure, Hugging Face co-founder and CEO Clément Delangue described it a way to turn Hugging Face-developed AI […]

Microsoft expands Azure OpenAI Service with fine-tuning features and more

Late last year, Microsoft announced the launch of Azure OpenAI Service, a fully managed, enterprise-focused product designed to give businesses access to AI lab OpenAI’s technologies with added governance features. Initially invite-only as a part of Azure Cognitive Services, the service allows access to OpenAI’s API through the Azure platform for applications like language translation […]

Microsoft’s new Power Apps feature turns sketches into apps

Showcasing its investments in AI, Microsoft today announced Power Apps Express Design, a new feature in the company’s no-code/low-code Power Apps service that can convert an uploaded PDF, PowerPoint, Figma design files, screenshots, or hand-drawn sketch into a working app (after some fiddling). Unveiled at Build 2022, Microsoft said that Express Design employs “industry-leading” AI […]

Microsoft claims its new tools make language models safer to use

Timed to align with Build 2022, Microsoft today open-sourced tools and data sets designed to audit AI-powered content moderation systems and automatically write tests highlighting potential bugs in AI models. The company claims that the projects, AdaTest and (De)ToxiGen, could lead to more reliable large language models (LLMs), or models akin to OpenAI’s GPT-3 that […]

When big AI labs refuse to open source their models, the community steps in

Benchmarks are as important a measure of progress in AI as they are for the rest of the software industry. But when the benchmark results come from corporations, secrecy very often prevents the community from verifying them. For example, OpenAI granted Microsoft, with which it has a commercial relationship, the exclusive licensing rights to its […]

Fetcher raises $27M to automate aspects of job candidate sourcing

Reflecting the growing investor interest in HR technology startups, Fetcher, the talent acquisition platform formerly known as Scout, today closed a $27 million Series B funding round led by Tola Capital with participation from G20 Ventures, KFund, and Accomplice. The new money — $7 million in debt and $20 million in equity — brings the […]

Fetcher raises $27M to automate aspects of job candidate sourcing

Reflecting the growing investor interest in HR technology startups, Fetcher, the talent acquisition platform formerly known as Scout, today closed a $27 million Series B funding round led by Tola Capital with participation from G20 Ventures, KFund, and Accomplice. The new money — $7 million in debt and $20 million in equity — brings the […]

Everstream Analytics secures new cash to predict supply chain disruptions

Everstream Analytics, a supply chain insights and risk analytics startup, today announced that it raised $24 million in a Series A round led by Morgan Stanley Investment Management with participation from Columbia Capital, StepStone Group, and DHL. CEO Julie Gerdeman said that the new money would be used to “propel technology innovation” and “further global […]

Heartex raises $25M for its AI-focused, open source data labeling platform

Heartex, a startup that bills itself as an “open source” platform for data labeling, today announced that it landed $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures. Unusual Ventures, Bow Capital, and Swift Ventures also participated, bringing Heartex’s total capital raised to $30 million. Co-founder and CEO Michael Malyuk said that […]

Heartex raises $25M for its AI-focused, open source data labeling platform

Heartex, a startup that bills itself as an “open source” platform for data labeling, today announced that it landed $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Redpoint Ventures. Unusual Ventures, Bow Capital, and Swift Ventures also participated, bringing Heartex’s total capital raised to $30 million. Co-founder and CEO Michael Malyuk said that […]

Glean aims to help employees surface info across sprawling enterprise systems

At enterprises of a certain size, keeping track of data including apps, employees, and projects becomes increasingly challenging. According to McKinsey, employees spend 1.8 hours every day — 9.3 hours per week, on average — searching for and gathering information. The veracity of metrics like these has been challenged over the years. But it’s reasonable […]

Glean aims to help employees surface info across sprawling enterprise systems

At enterprises of a certain size, keeping track of data including apps, employees, and projects becomes increasingly challenging. According to McKinsey, employees spend 1.8 hours every day — 9.3 hours per week, on average — searching for and gathering information. The veracity of metrics like these has been challenged over the years. But it’s reasonable […]