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Alive and Kicking: Tesla Semi Charging Corridor Project Survives Biden Administration Funding Snub

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Combined with around $24 million of its own money, Tesla wanted to build nine electric semi-truck charging stations between Laredo, Texas and Fremont, California. “The project will help create a hydrogen corridor from southern California to Texas,” the Department of Transportation wrote in a statement in January. “Funding hydrogen stations will go down as purely wasted money,” Patel told TechCrunch this week. While he no longer speaks on behalf of Tesla, he also criticized funding hydrogen infrastructure when he was still with the company. Despite all this, the Tesla Semi program is still slowly attracting customers.

“Revamp Your Startup with Zypsy’s $100,000 Design Services for a 1% Equity Share”

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Design firm Zypsy will do $100,000 worth of work for 1% equity for early-stage startupsZypsy, a design firm with a track record of helping early-stage startups, has launched a new and somewhat unique venture investment program. Instead startups will pay by issuing Zypsy 1% equity of their companies via a SAFE (Simple Agreement for Future Equity). Zypsy has already added five startups to the first cohort of the design capital program (alphabetical order):Pilot projects with over 25 startups for three yearsThe six-year-old design company has worked with more than 25 startups. “They are ‘cash-based clients, not an ‘equity-based portfolios’ like five companies we mentioned in the first design capital program,” he said. In 2023, Zypsy raised $3 million to establish Design Capital.

“Unleashing Futuristic Opportunities: Join the ScaleUp Startups Program at Disrupt 2024 for Series A-B Companies”

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Maximize your team’s impact at DisruptWith four conference passes included, ScaleUp Startup Exhibitors can make the most of all three days of the event. Access to the TechCrunch Disrupt press list. Upon intent to participate, the ScaleUp Exhibitor Packages are $3,500 and, if your startup is accepted, that fee is non-refundable. The ScaleUp Startups Exhibitor Program is for Series A to B startups with $35 million or less in funding and costs $3,500 to participate if accepted. Book your package now to become a ScaleUp Startup Exhibitor at Disrupt and unlock unparalleled opportunities for growth and visibility.

Expanding capabilities: OpenAI’s enhancement of personalized model training initiation

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OpenAI is expanding a program, Custom Model, to help enterprise customers develop tailored generative AI models using its technology for specific use cases, domains and applications. “Dozens” of customers have enrolled in Custom Model since. As for custom-trained models, they’re custom models built with OpenAI — using OpenAI’s base models and tools (e.g. Fine-tuned and custom models could also lessen the strain on OpenAI’s model serving infrastructure. Alongside the expanded Custom Model program and custom model building, OpenAI today unveiled new model fine-tuning features for developers working with GPT-3.5, including a new dashboard for comparing model quality and performance, support for integrations with third-party platforms (starting with the AI developer platform Weights & Biases) and enhancements to tooling.

X introduces feature to post Community Notes in India before upcoming elections

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Weeks before the national elections in India, Elon Musk-owned X said it is rolling out support for posting Community Notes — the company’s crowd-sourced fact-checking program — in the key overseas market. The first set of contributors from India will start posting notes from today and more will be accepted over time, X said. Community Notes now active on India! Over time, the company has allowed members from different countries to start posting Community Notes to provide local context better. India was one of the last major markets where Community Notes had not previously expanded.

“Introducing the $20M Generative AI Accelerator Program by Google.org”

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Google.org, Google’s charitable wing, is launching a new program to help fund nonprofits developing tech that leverages generative AI. Called Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI, the program is to be funded by $20 million in grants and include 21 nonprofits to start, including Quill.org, a company creating AI-powered tools for student writing feedback, and World Bank, which is building a generative AI app to make development research more accessible. “Generative AI can help social impact teams be more productive, creative and effective in serving their communities,” Annie Lewin, director of global advocacy at Google.org, said in a blog post. But there remain significant barriers for nonprofits looking to build their own AI solutions or adopt third-party products — chiefly cost, resources and time. Nonprofit accelerator Fast Forward said that this year, more than a third of applicants for its latest class were AI companies.

Chiyo, the Food-as-Medicine Startup, Raises $3M to Support Postpartum Moms’ Nutrition Needs

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Once the baby is born, the nutrition guessing game continues on what foods are ideal for postpartum and nursing. The product roadmap is evolving, too, extending from the postpartum program to eventually serve the full women’s health journey. The 40-days postpartum program, which includes three meals per day, starts at $69 per day. “For example, we started with the first 40-days postpartum program. Other participants in the round include Ingeborg, Union Heritage Ventures, Peterson Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Palette Ventures, and The Helm.

Utilizing Advanced Linguistic Models for Autonomous Error Recovery in Home Robotics

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Even when some or all of those are addressed, there remains the question of what happens when a system makes an inevitable mistake. We can’t, however, expect consumers to learn to program or hire someone who can help any time an issue arrives. Thankfully, this is a great use case for LLMs (large language models) in the robotics space, as exemplified by new research from MIT. “LLMs have a way to tell you how to do each step of a task, in natural language. It’s a simple, repeatable task for humans, but for robots, it’s a combination of various small tasks.

“Unstoppable Momentum: Solana’s Memecoin Craze, Backpack’s Beta Triumph, and Starbucks’ NFT Program Shutdown”

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Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction. Hello and welcome back to the TechCrunch Crypto newsletter. This week in web3Crunching numbersThis week the crypto market prices were lower, but still relatively strong compared to previous months. Bitcoin was down 6.5% on the week at $67,300 and 32% higher on the month, at the time of publication. This kickstarted her career in web3, data and AI solutions.