New AI models from Meta are making waves in technology circles.
Meta’s new Llama models have differently sized underlying datasets, with the Llama 3 8B model featuring eight billion parameters, and the Llama 3 70B model some seventy billion parameters.
The company’s new models, which were trained on 24,000 GPU clusters, perform well across benchmarks that Meta put them up against, besting some rivals’ models that were already in the market.
What matters for those of us not competing to build and release the most capable, or largest AI models, what we care about is that they are still getting better with time.
While Meta takes an open-source approach to AI work, its competitors are often prefer more closed-source work.
Read MoreExperience the Excitement: Meta Unleashes Revolutionary Llama 3 Designs to Supercharge Open-Source AI
It’s been more than a minute since Tesla went public, but the EV company was inescapable on TechCrunch this week.
From layoffs to pricing changes and more, it was a week dyed deeply in Tesla colors so we had to chat through the latest.
But that was just one element of what we got into on Equity this week.
We also dug into Mary Ann’s reporting about Ramp’s latest round — and up valuation — that fit neatly next to Rippling’s own impending fundraise.
Equity is back tomorrow with a special interview between Mary Ann and Notable Capital’s Hans Tung, so stay tuned!
Read MoreA Recap of Tesla’s Exciting Week and the Rise of Fintech
Powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz is promoting Jennifer Li to general partner after six years at the firm.
She’s being tapped to help invest the new $1.25 billion Infrastructure fund managed by longtime a16z general partner Martin Casado.
The Infrastructure fund is part of the fresh $7.2 billion that the Silicon Valley VC giant just raised.
Li has been an investing partner on the Infrastructure team for a while, which means she was already writing checks and taking board seats.
Plus she’s one of only four GPs on the Infrastructure team.
Read More“A16z Elevates Jennifer Li to Co-Lead $1.25B Infrastructure Fund Development”
Today, Webflow announced that it acquired Intellimize, a startup leveraging AI to personalize websites for unique visitors.
The majority of the Intellimize team — around 50 people — will join Webflow.
Vlad Magdalin, the CEO of Webflow, said Intellimize was a natural fit for Webflow’s first-ever acquisition because its product meets a need many Webflow customers share: personalizing and optimizing their websites.
Intellimize will continue to be sold standalone to non-Webflow customers, but it’ll increasingly link to — and integrate with — Webflow services.
— personalization product efforts at Webflow.
Read More“Webflow Enhances User Experience with Acquisition of Intellimize: Bringing AI-Powered Webpage Personalization”
Apple has removed the Meta-owned end-to-end encrypted messaging app WhatsApp from its App Store in China following a government order citing national security concerns, the news agency Reuters reported Friday.
Meta’s newer, Twitter-esque text-based social networking app, Threads, has also been pulled from the App Store for the same reason, it said.
But the AppleCensorship site, which tracks App Store removals, records both Signal and Telegram as having been “disappeared” from Apple’s mainland China App Store.
Last year another Twitter alternative, Jack Dorsey-backed Damus, was also pulled from Apple’s China App Store shortly after it had been approved.
Although quite a number evidently managed to do so, as Threads quickly landed in the top 5 on Apple’s China App Store last summer.
Read MoreChina Orders Apple to Remove WhatsApp and Threads from App Store
Last week, Meta started testing its AI chatbot in India across WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.
Meta confirmed that it is restricting certain election-related keywords for AI in the test phase.
When you ask Meta AI about specific politicians, candidates, officeholders, and certain other terms, it will redirect you to the Election Commission’s website.
But just like other AI-powered systems, Meta AI has some inconsistencies.
This week, the company rolled out a new Llama-3-powered Meta AI chatbot in more than a dozen countries, including the U.S., but India was missing from the list.
Read MoreMeta AI curtails political replies in India’s elections
That means there’s a market for a layer between companies and Large Language Models (LLMs) — something companies can use to pick LLMs easily without needing to commit for all time to one platform.
That’s the market Langdock is targeting with its chat interface that sits between LLMs and a company.
“Companies don’t want to have a vendor lock-in on just one of those LLM providers,” Lennard Schmidt, co-founder and CEO of Langdock, told TechCrunch.
In addition to the chat interface, the company also offers security, cloud and on-premises solutions.
In contrast, Langdock’s chat interface works for a broader range of use cases and can be used by any kind of staff.
Read More“LLM Solution: Langdock Secures $3M Investment from General Catalyst to Support Businesses in Escaping Vendor Dependency”
Tesla is recalling all 3,878 Cybertrucks that it has shipped to date, due to a problem where the accelerator pedal can get stuck, putting drivers at risk of a crash, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
Reports of problems with the Cybertruck’s accelerator pedal started popping up in the last few weeks.
Tesla said it first received a notice of one of these accelerator pedal incidents from a customer on March 31, and then a second one on April 3.
It also told NHTSA that it has started building Cybertrucks with a new accelerator pedal, and that it’s fixing the vehicles that are in transit or sitting at delivery centers.
While the Cybertruck only first started shipping late last year, this is not the vehicle’s first recall.
Read MoreCybertruck Accelerator Pedals Recalled by Tesla for Defects Causing Stalling
CRED has received the in-principle approval for payment aggregator license in a boost to the Indian fintech startup that could help it better serve its customers and launch new products and experiment with ideas faster.
The RBI has granted in-principle approval for payment aggregator licenses to several companies, including Reliance Payment and Pine Labs, over the past year.
Typically, the central bank takes nine months to a year to issue full approval following the in-principle approval.
Without a license, fintech startups must rely on third-party payment processors to handle transactions, and these players may not prioritize such mandates.
Obtaining a license allows fintech companies to process payments directly, reduce costs, gain greater control over payment flow, and onboard merchants directly.
Read MoreCRED, a Fintech Company, Receives In-Principle Consent for Payment Aggregator License
The tools would be part of a wider set of proposals Ofcom is putting together focused on online child safety.
Consultations for the comprehensive proposals will start in the coming weeks with the AI consultation coming later this year, Ofcom said.
AI researchers are finding ever-more sophisticated ways of using AI to detect, for example, deep fakes, as well as to verify users online.
It found that 32% of the kids reported that they’d seen worrying content online, but only 20% of their parents said they reported anything.
Among children aged 16-17, Ofcom said, 25% said they were not confident about distinguishing fake from real online.
Read More“Exploring the Possibility of AI for Safeguarding Youthful Internet Users in the UK”
