It’s something Apple is striving to answer with its own take on the category, Apple Intelligence, which was officially unveiled this week at WWDC 2024.
Apple Intelligence is a more bespoke approach to generative AI, built specifically with the company’s different operating systems at their foundation.
It’s a very Apple approach in the sense that it prioritizes a frictionless user experience above all.
The operating systems also feature a feedback mechanism into which users can report issues with the generative AI system.
This should function the same with all external models Apple partners with, including Google Gemini.
French AI startup Mistral is introducing new AI model customization options, including paid plans, to let developers and enterprises fine-tune its generative models for particular use cases.
Mistral has released a software development kit (SDK), Mistral-Finetune, for fine-tuning its models on workstations, servers and small datacenter nodes.
For developers and companies that prefer a more managed solution, there’s Mistral’s newly launched fine-tuning services available through the company’s API.
Compatible with two of Mistral’s models for now, Mistral Small and the aforementioned Mistral 7B, Mistral says that the fine-tuning services will gain support for more of its models in the coming weeks.
Lastly, Mistral is debuting custom training services, currently only available to select customers, to fine-tune any Mistral model for an organization’s apps using their data.
It was while sourcing manufacturing equipment for Tesla factories that Will Drewery drew inspiration for Diagon, a startup that helps manufacturers procure equipment.
Companies in fields like automotive and aerospace can identify qualified suppliers from Diagon’s network of equipment suppliers, system integrators and service providers.
East Coast originsThe journey to Diagon for Drewery, who spent most of his career as an equipment buyer, started in Pittsburgh.
“This is why I felt the market needs a Diagon,” Drewery said.
“Now we are developing tools that help customers find suppliers better or help them interpret and summarize quotes better,” Drewery said.
After considering a few ideas, they decided to go after what they saw as a largely unaddressed market: Tools to help small businesses secure U.S. government contracts.
“The federal contracting community has seen a shrinking of the small business industrial base for much of the past decade,” Doherty told TechCrunch.
It’s also expensive for them to bid on contracts — if they don’t win, they may run out of cash.”As a result of labyrinthine systems and mountains of paperwork, finding and bidding for U.S. federal contracts is a laborious process.
To attempt to give these small businesses a boost, Goltser, Mason and Doherty founded GovDash, a platform that provides workflows to support government contract capture, proposal, development and management processes.
New York-based, six-employee GovDash currently works with around 30 federal contractors across the U.S., Doherty said, and is “nearly” cash-flow positive.
Meta-owned social network Threads is finally testing a “Recent” filter to sort search results by the latest.
“We’re starting to test this with a small number of people, so it’s easier to find relevant search results in real-time,” he said in a reply to a user.
A user part of the test posted that they could see “Top” and “Recent” filters on the search results screen.
They noted that the “Recent” filter isn’t strictly chronological, but it shows the latest posts better than the “Top” filter.
Earlier this year, the company accidentally rolled out the option to sort search results by the latest.
UK-based legaltech company Lawhive, which offers an AI-based in-house ‘lawyer’ through a software-as-a-service platform targeted at small law firms, has raised £9.5 million ($11.9M) in a seed round to expand the reach of AI-driven services for ‘main street’ law firms.
To date, most legaltech startups that are deploying AI have concentrated on the big, juicy market of ‘Big Law’ — meaning large, either country-wide or global, law firms that are keenly pushing AI into their workflows.
These include Harvey (US-based; raised $106M); Robin AI (UK-based; raised $43.4M); Spellbook (Canada-based; raised $32.4M).
Lawhive targets its platform at small law firms or solo lawyers running their own shop.
That’s a very small number of big law firms in the US in the UK.
Checkr, a 10-year-old startup that offers employee background checks and was last valued at $5 billion in April 2022, has laid off 382 employees as companies are not significantly hiring talent.
TechCrunch exclusively learned that Checkr conducted the layoffs across all departments and different levels on Tuesday.
“In response to economic conditions that have impacted companies’ hiring, we made the difficult and painful decision to reduce the size of our team.
This will allow us to operate more efficiently and ensure the long-term health of our business,” a Checkr spokesperson said in the statement.
The job cuts — which affected 32% of the company’s workforce — came nearly two years after Checkr announced the acquisition of Inflection, the startup behind GoodHire, a background-checking platform for small- and mid-sized businesses.
It’s easy to assume the e-commerce ship has sailed when you consider we have giant platforms like Shopify, Woocommerce, and Wix dominating the sector.
E-commerce platform, ikas, has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round as it seeks to expand its operations into new markets in Europe.
The company currently operates in Turkey and Germany, and says its platform simplifies store management for companies that want to have a digital presence.
Also investing in ikas is Re-Pie Asset Management, which has grocery delivery startup Getir in its portfolio as well.
The round saw participation from ikas’ existing investor Revo Capital, best known as the first institutional investor in Getir, Param, Midas and Roamless.
Hoping to stall a ban, TikTok says it generated $14.7B for US small businesses last yearAs U.S. lawmakers weigh a possible TikTok ban, the ByteDance-owned short-form video app released an economic impact report on Thursday.
In it, the company touts the platform generated $14.7 billion for small- to mid-size businesses (SMBs) last year, and a further $24.2 billion in total economic activity, supported through small business’s use of TikTok.
In addition, it says that over 7 million U.S. businesses rely on TikTok and that 224,000 jobs were supported by small business activity on the platform in 2023.
In March, a bill that could ban TikTok passed in the House of Representatives.
The Trump administration had previously sought to ban TikTok, calling it a national security risk, but Trump now opposes a ban, saying that Meta would benefit.
Agility Robotics on Thursday confirmed that it has laid off a “small number” of employees.
The well-funded Oregon-based firm says the job loss is part of a company-wide focus on commercialization efforts.
Ultimately, however, those efforts were placed on the back burner, as the company shifted focus to understaffed warehouses.
Two years ago this month, the company announced a $150 million Series B. Amazon notably participated in the round by way of its Industrial Innovation Fund.
Last month at Modex, Agility showcased updates to Digit’s end effectors designed specifically for automotive manufacturing workflows.
