AI2 Incubator, spun out of the Allen Institute for AI in 2022, has secured a windfall $200 million in compute that startups going through its program can take advantage of to accelerate early development.
“Our community of hundreds of AI practitioners are desperate for compute,” said managing director Jacob Colker.
A million dollars of dedicated compute goes a long way for pre-seed startups, which is where AI2 focuses (we’ve covered WellSaid Labs, Xnor.ai, and others from their program).
Colker suggested it would cover most compute needs even for companies developing new foundation models.
They’ve helped build more than 30 startups and last year raised a $30 million fund to continue the work.
Apple says it plans to make it easier for customers to switch to Android as a result of the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which went into force today.
This solution is not yet available, but Apple is committing to having it ready by fall 2025, the company says.
On this front, Apple’s Data & Privacy website is being updated to allow users to export their App Store data to authorized third parties, the document says.
Today, would-be Android users can use Google’s “Switch to Android” iOS app to migrate important content, like contacts, calendars, photos, videos, messages, and more to a new Android device.
It’s unclear if Apple’s new solution will address these areas as Apple hasn’t yet said what, specifically, it aims to improve.
Uber Eats is adding a live location sharing capability to help couriers find customers in difficult-to-find locations, including public places such as campus courtyards, parks, and playgrounds.
Uber Eats is available in over 11,000 cities across six continents.
Uber Eats stops sharing the location once the order is delivered.
The company hopes its new live location sharing feature will help solve a major challenge that many couriers face, especially in the warmer months when people are spending more time outdoors, ordering food for birthdays and other events.
“We’re thrilled to bring location sharing to Uber Eats and help consumers ensure greater reliability with every delivery they receive,” Divya Dalapathi, Director of Product Management at Uber, said in a statement.
Instagram has quietly added a secret emoji game that you can access in your DMs.
To access the hidden game, all you have to do is open up a DM chat, send an emoji, and then click on it.
The game saves your high score, so you can come back to it at any time to try to beat your previous high score.
Your high score is saved across your DMs, so you don’t have to go back to the first emoji that you sent when activating the game.
An Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch in an email that the company is always working on new ways to make “Instagram feel more fun,” which is why it rolled out the game.
Spotify has revealed plans to increase subscription fees in France, in response to a new tax directed at music-streaming services operating in the country.
While all the impacted companies are opposing the new law, Spotify has been the most vociferous, largely due to the fact it is the biggest player in the country.
The company wrote in a blog post today:“With the creation of this new tax, Spotify would be required to give approximately two-thirds of every euro it generates to music to rights holders and the French government.
What’s perhaps the most telling part of this whole episode is how important France is to Spotify in terms of market traction.
With regards to France, Spotify is conveying as much — if not more — grievance with the new tax as it did with Uruguay, yet it has given no indication that it will exit the country.
Catalan startup Showee, which is building smart showers with accessibility in mind, is one such company.
Here’s a video showing how it works:More than the hardware, Showee won awards and praise for the social impact it’s trying to make.
The company’s CTO, Eloi Mirambell, admitted that the smart shower’s price will have to go down before it has a real chance at B2C.
The startup says its shower uses 50% less water than a regular shower.
In its FAQ, the startup says that all shower units are sold out, but Showee will be available again starting April 2024.
Kurs Orbital, a startup founded by Ukrainian space industry veterans, has closed a new tranche of funding to accelerate the commercialization of its satellite servicing technology.
The two-year-old company aims to unlock a new era for human activities in space by enabling capabilities like satellite relocation and inspection, de-orbiting and space debris removal.
Unlike other firms developing in-space servicing tech, Kurs Orbital’s module will be able to attach to “non-cooperative” targets, or target spacecraft that aren’t fitted with any hardware in advance.
On-orbit servicing has gained attention in recent months after the failure of a handful of high-cost, high-profile satellite missions.
We believe that one of the next big steps in space will be multimodality, as we know it on Earth.
In an e-mail exchange, Babylon Micro-Farms CEO Alexander Olesson tells me “we’ll have these in every school and apartment one day.” It’s a nice vision, and really the level of belief/commitment required to run a startup – particularly in a field as oft-fraught at vertical farming.
With a price point of $6,500, howver, the STEM Garden isn’t likely arriving in too many homes in the near term.
Virginia-based Babylon Micro-farms has long distinguished itself from much of the vertical farming world with its focus on smaller spaces and the new system further shrinks that footprint.
Where previous models were focused on higher ed, the STEM Garden is specifically tackling K-9, which tends not to have as deep pockets.
The STEM garden is up for pre-order starting today and will start shipping to classes in Q2.
A South Korean startup called QuotaLab is on a quest to follow in the footsteps of Carta, the cap table management company that’s used by a host of startups and investors in the U.S.Carta started life as “eShares” in 2012 as a cap table management service that startups could use to issue equity to their investors and employees.
Today, its stable of offerings has expanded to include everything from valuation and equity management, to bookkeeping, risk assessment and brokerage services.
A Y Combinator alum, QuotaLab also started off as an equity management service (called QuotaBook) for startups and investors in South Korea.
It also offers investment management such as investments, returns, asset changes, markdowns, valuations, accounting, e-approvals and risk management,” Choi added.
According to Choi, the equity management market has many sides you can tackle.
At the moment, large organizations often employ “business intelligence” (BI) tools to figure out what the heck is going on inside their operations.
Essentially, BI tools connect to a business database and use SQL to create visualizations and build out BI dashboards.
There are huge companies involved in this space: Tableau (owned by Salesforce), Power BI (owned by Microsoft), Looker (owned by Google), and QuickSight (owned by Amazon) to name just a handful.
And how is this marketing campaign performing.” He said other players in the market target data users, whereas Fluent targets the business market, not data.
For example, Metabase is an open-source analytics and business intelligence application that allows users to create dashboards more easily.
