The German automaker announced Monday at CES 2024 in Las Vegas plans to add an AI-powered chatbot into all Volkswagen models equipped with its IDA voice assistant.
The AI-based chatbot, which is based on software company Cerence’s Chat Pro product, will roll out in the second quarter, starting with Europe.
For now, Volkswagen models in the United States won’t have the feature.
The voice assistant is activated with the “Hello IDA” wake word or by pressing the button on the steering wheel.
The response will come through the IDA voice assistant so drivers may not even know when ChatGPT is and is not in use.
Waymo is about to start testing its driverless passenger vehicles on the highway later this month, a critical milestone for the company that, if successful, will unlock expanded commercial operations.
Bringing its autonomous cars to the highway is just the latest in a series of big steps for Waymo, especially in the Phoenix area.
Just a few months before that, Waymo made its autonomous vehicles available in the Uber app.
The GM autonomous vehicle subsidiary recently slashed a quarter of its staff and pushed out a number of executives after a crash in October where one of its robotaxis dragged a pedestrian.
Last year, the company backed away from its autonomous trucking effort in order to focus more on ride-hailing.
Venture debt has its merits.
That’s why it’s interesting that startup finance company Arc Technologies is choosing now to take on the $30 billion venture debt industry with a venture debt marketplace for Silicon Valley.
There’s a larger pool of debt capital that’s now available to these companies because they’re stronger and more resilient.
That’s what Arc is solving with its Arc Capital Markets debt marketplace.
“We want to help founders and CFOs weather the ongoing storm in the venture capital funding route and ensure that they’re continuing to grow efficiently with minimal dilution.”
The once popular third-party podcast app Castro has seemingly shut down, after earlier saying that it was “actively seeking a new home” for its product.
Concerns over Castro’s future, and the fate of the indie podcast app industry as a whole, have broadened in recent years as Spotify entered the market to compete with Apple Podcasts.
That move influenced the exits of other smaller podcast apps, which included the sale of Pocket Casts to a collective of radio broadcasters, including NPR and BBC Studios.
Satellite radio provider and Pandora owner SiriusXM also bought the podcast app Stitcher in 2020 for $325 million.
Another request for comment from Casto owner Tiny was not returned as of the time of writing, but we’ll update if more information is provided.
Health in her HUE, a digital health app that focuses on reducing health disparities for women of color, announced that raised a $3 million Seed round today, led by Seae Ventures.
The company is being built during a precarious time for women’s health, where women of color, especially Black women, still face medical discrimination.
Health in her HUE says it has nearly 13,000 members with 1,300 health providers across 60 specialties, from therapy to chiropractic.
Wisdom, who remains CEO, says the company will use its Seed round to expand its products and programs.
Others that participated in this seed round include Johnson & Johnson Impact Ventures, HBCU Founders Fund, Stanford Impact Fund, and Morgan Stanely Inclusive Ventures Labs.
Aside from a brief on-again-off-again thing with Nokia, Withings has been quietly establishing itself as a home health powerhouse in recent years.
The “multiscope,” as the company has deemed it, is designed to give patients easy access to vitals during teleconference health calls.
It’s kind of a supercharged digital thermometer that also serves as an electrocardiogram, oximeter and stethoscope, giving your healthcare provider more insight into what’s going on with you in real time.
“While convenient and cost-effective, remote visits lacked the ability for health professionals to carry out the routine checks they perform in person.
That audio can also be sent to the healthcare provider via an app.
But a prominent customer is now accusing Carta of misusing sensitive information that startups entrust to the company in pursuit of its own goals.
The claim is raising wider questions about how Carta operates, even as Carta argues the incident was isolated.
Feeling betrayed by Carta, Saarinen wrote on LinkedIn, “This might be the end of Carta as the trusted platform for startups.
Ward also said the email to the Linear investor is not something that Carta condones.
The cap table business and the CartaX (private stock liquidity) business are separate business units with separate teams and leadership.
It’s an opportunity to take advantage of the brief Sunday morning news lull before the deluge kicks into full effect Monday.
Tomorrow is, after all, when Samsung will host its CES 2024 press conference along with other big names like Sony and LG.
“In&Out Flip is a technology that can provide a new alternative for consumers who prefer bar-shaped smartphones due to the thickness of foldable products,” the company said in a release.
As for testing the tech, Samsung apparently utilized the device in temperatures ranging from -4-degrees up to 140-degrees Fahrenheit.
The technology appears on the Rollable Flex, as well as the Flex Hybrid, the latter of which combines it with a sliding display.
In October, Box unveiled a new pricing approach for the company’s generative AI features.
Instead of a flat rate, the company designed a unique consumption-based model.
Each user gets 20 credits per month, good for any number of AI tasks that add up to 20 events, with each task charged a single credit.
If the customer surpasses that, it would be time to have a conversation with a salesperson about buying additional credits.
Spang says, for starters, that in spite of the hype, generative AI is clearly a big leap forward, and software companies need to look for ways to incorporate it into their products.
And Invoxia is going all out by releasing a new smart collar called Invoxia Minitailz that is suitable for both cats and dogs.
The company said that this gadget is an upgrade from last year’s Invoxia Smart Dog Collar, which measured both location and biometrics like the heart rate of your dog.
The Minitailz just weighs around 36 grams as compared to last year’s Smart Dog Collar which weighed at 130g.
Plus, it can be fitted to almost any existing cat or dog collar through an adjustable ring.
Invoxia’s Minitailz smart pet tracker for dogs goes on sale today and the cat version will be available in March 2024.
