Author: precious

Sesame, the conversational AI startup founded by Oculus veterans, has secured $250 million in a Series B funding round and simultaneously opened access to the beta version of its voice-first AI app on iOS. This achievement marks a step forward in Sesame’s mission of bringing highly expressive, natural-sounding voice AI technology to everyday users, while also setting the stage for the company’s future producing smart glasses hardware. The funding round, led by Sequoia Capital and Spark Capital, brings Sesame’s total valuation to over $1 billion, reflecting investor confidence in the company’s approach to building emotionally intelligent AI-powered voice assistants. Sesame’s…

LangChain has officially entered unicorn status, raising $125 million in a Series B funding round at a valuation of $1.25 billion. The San-Francisco-based startup has quickly risen from an open-source project to becoming a major player in the AI agents development space.  Founded just three years ago by Harrison Chase and Ankush Gola, LangChain’s innovative framework was built to enable large language models (LLMs) to function beyond text generation, allowing them to interact with the world by calling APIS, searching the web, accessing databases, and performing multi-step workflows. This Series B funding round was led by IVP, with major contributions…

Microsoft is developing a new reality in Windows 11 with the recent introduction of “Hey Copilot,” a voice-activated AI assistant that brings hands-free AI interaction to every Windows PC. This launch, powered by artificial intelligence, aims to redefine how people work, create, and navigate their computers. Now, Windows 11 users can now say “Hey Copilot” to wake their AI assistant without lifting a finger as long as it has been activated in the settings. The Copilot assistant listens through a visually indicated microphone interface, ready to assist with tasks ranging from searching files to troubleshooting software. The tech is also…

Google has officially ended its Privacy Sandbox initiative, retiring 10 major technologies due to low adoption and limited value. The Privacy Sandbox tech was a six-year program designed to replace third-party cookies with privacy-preserving alternatives.  Instead of pushing new tracking alternatives to replace third-party cookies, Google will now focus on strengthening Chrome’s core privacy protections, preserving user choice and supporting cross-browser industry standards. This shift comes after six years of development and mixed industry reactions. Google’s Privacy Sandbox aimed to create privacy-first advertising tools but unfortunately faced technical shortcomings and competitive criticism. The tech was built to offer a middle…

Big numbers may dominate headlines, but a scene unfolding in Visakhapatnam, southern India, holds the potential to reshape both national infrastructure and the global AI landscape. Google, through its parent company Alphabet, is committing $15 billion over the period of five years, from 2026 to 2030, to build its largest artificial intelligence (AI) hub outside of the United States.  Beyond the sheer scale of the $15 billion investment, this project highlights the partnership and larger ambitions of Google and India to strengthen the world’s most populous country’s standing in the global AI ecosystem and usher in a new era of…

OpenAI’s next major update in ChatGPT has invited controversy, even long before its launch. Starting December 2025, and marking a sharp turn from the AI giant’s previous cautious stance on explicit content, the company will roll out an update that allows verified adult users generate erotica content. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in an X post explains the principle behind the update as a “treat adult users like adults” thing. However, critics and users alike see this update as risky on the part of OpenAI, as they’d be massively contributing to the erosion of public trust, a rise in sexual harassment,…

Anthropic has yet again pushed the boundaries of AI-powered coding capabilities by releasing the latest model in its Claude family, Claude Sonnet 4.5. This model boasts of autonomous features that enable it to operate independently for extended periods.  “Claude Sonnet 4.5 is the best coding model in the world. It’s the strongest model for building complex agents. It’s the best model at using computers. And it shows substantial gains in reasoning and math,” was what Anthropic said in the press release announcing the launch of the model.  On industry-standard benchmarks like the SWE-bench verified, Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores an impressive…

Legal AI startup Eve has joined the unicorn club after securing $103 million in a Series B funding round, reaching a $1 billion valuation. For the San Francisco-based company, it is a big upgrade as the company is contributing to the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) into plaintiff litigation management. Founded in 2020, Eve’s AI-powered plaintiff management platform leverages advanced large language models (LLMs) to automate complex legal workflows that are traditionally burdensome for plaintiff law firms. This funding round was led by Spark Capital, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Menlo Ventures. From intake assessment…

Anthropic has updated its policy to start using user conversations with its Claude AI chatbot for training future models. Chats from Claude Free, Pro, and Max users, as well as coding sessions on Claude Code, will now be incorporated by default into the company’s data training pipeline, unless users opt out through a newly introduced privacy toggle. This update means that anonymized and de-identified conversations will help improve Claude’s accuracy, safety, and responsiveness. Previously, Claude users’ chat data wasn’t used for training consumer models. Now, Anthropic aims to leverage real-world interaction to improve Claude’s accuracy, reasoning, and safety systems, as…

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…