Author: precious

Meta is set to acquire chip startup Rivos with the aim of accelerating its autonomous chip development and ultimately reduce its reliance on Nvidia’s GPUs. The social media giant will be buying Rivos, a Santra Clara-based chip startup known for building and designing chips on the RISC-V architecture, an open-source set and alternative to chip designs from Arm, Intel, and AMD. This architecture allows Rivos to develop both custom CPUs and GPUs accelerators that are optimized for large-scale AI training and inference. Its programmable, energy-efficient server solutions also support today’s LLM demands and future AI innovations. Meta’s acquisition of Rivos…

The intersection where creativity and technology meet has taken another leap forward with OpenAI’s latest release of Sora 2, a cutting-edge AI model that generates realistic videos with native audio and sound effects. Termed OpenAI’s “flagship and audio generation model,” Sora 2’s strength lies in its ability to generate physically accurate scenes complete with natural lighting, continuous object motion, and environment-consistent and aware cacophony. Unlike previous models like Sora 1 which was only limited to visuals, Sora 2 incorporates dialogue, ambient noises, and sound effects. These sound effects may include footsteps, glass breaking, or water splashes that are mirrored and…

OpenAI has rolled out its new video generation model, Sora 2, with a controversial update that allows it to freely use copyrighted material unless the content and right owners explicitly disallow it. This ethical detail has stirred a storm within the entertainment industry, pitting the innovations of AI creators against the legal and ethical boundaries of copyright law. Unlike earlier AI tools requiring explicit permission from copyright owners, Sora 2 was initially released without that option. By default, the new AI-powered video generation model was designed to openly use protected content and generate videos featuring copyrighted characters and other protected…

Amazon is architecting and building home-based hardware that listens, understands, and proactively responds to its users, with the latest introduction of a new generation of smart home devices that are powered by cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI). These latest suites of devices are built around Amazon’s enhanced Alexa+ AI assistant, combining advancements in custom AI chips, sensor fusion, and smart integration to create an ambient experience that feels intuitive, personalized, and all-round connected. What’s New On The Smart Home Front? Amazon launched four distinct Echo devices designed for seamless Alexa+ interaction, each equipped with custom-designed silicon chips AZ3 and AZ3 Pro,…

Vibranium Labs, a New York-based startup founded by a veteran team from top tech companies, has secured $4.6 million in seed funding to launch Vibe AI, an autonomous AI engineer designed to monitor, diagnose, and fix IT incidents around the clock. This AI-powered technology aims to reduce outages and downtime caused particularly by vibe-coding errors, by acting as a reliable, 24/7 teammate that is in charge of accelerating incident resolution. In industries where every minute of downtime costs millions, like in finance, healthcare, defense, and retail, Vibranium’s Vibe AI offers a transformative solution to an increasingly urgent problem – how…

Construction sites are notoriously complex environments where keeping track of progress and quality is both crucial and challenging. Track3D, a company specializing in AI-powered construction monitoring, recently raised $10 million in Series A funding round to expand its Reality Intelligence platform that provides real-time insights into construction project status. This capital infusion, led by Ironspring Ventures with co-lead Zacua Ventures, aims to bring a new level of accuracy and transparency to an industry ripe for transformation. Transforming The Construction Landscape With AI Construction projects often involve multiple stakeholders, tight deadlines, and costly risks when progress is halted or errors go…

India-based AI fintech startup Oolka has successfully raised $7 million in a seed funding round, setting the stage to redefine how millions of Indians would manage their personal credit and finances. The seed round was led by Lightspeed India and Z47, with participation from 8i Ventures and other influential angel investors from India’s startup ecosystem. Unlike typical apps that offer static credit scores, Oolka leverages its agentic artificial intelligence to provide dynamic, real-time assistance, making credit management more accessible, actionable, and human-centered for the nearly two million users it serves in India. Founded just last year by Utkrishta Kumar, a…

OpenAI’s introduction of the Instant Checkout feature in ChatGPT is an audacious play to place shopping in the hands of AI agents, with users now having easy access to shop just about anything through the AI-powered chatbot. This has blurred the once-sharp boundaries between chat, advice, and commerce. Agentic Commerce: The Technology Behind This Feature The technology behind this breakthrough is the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP), a collaborative system OpenAI developed with Stripe. ACP was designed to help AI agents, users, and businesses alike to interact securely and efficiently. OpenAI says they’ll be open-sourcing the tech to allow more e-commerce…

Apple is calling on the European Union to take a closer look at the Digital Markets Act (DMA), warning that the act is causing delays in rolling out new features to users in Europe and creating significant security risks. The DMA, which originally came into force in March 2024, aims to regulate the major “gatekeeper” tech platforms by requiring them to allow third-party app stores, alternative payments, and interoperability with non-native devices. In April this year, the EU under the DMA ordered Apple to open up its strictly controlled iOS ecosystem to competitors for “interoperability,” granting device makers and app…

Europe’s digital watchdogs have turned their spotlight once again on three of the world’s biggest tech companies – Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Under the European Union’s Digital Services Act, a sister regulation to the Digital Markets Act, these tech giants have been asked to show exactly how they protect users from the increasing wave of online financial scams that have cost European consumers billions each year. Annually, Europeans are reported to lose over €4 billion to scams involving fake banking apps, fraudulent search results, and phony listings. It is because of the pervasiveness of these scams that the EU sent…