For those who move abroad from China, one thing they miss dearly is the convenience of food delivery apps. Fantuan, a Vancouver-based company, has been working on replicating the experience of Chinese food delivery platforms in the West for the past nine years. Recently, it raised some fresh capital to further advance its goal — bringing authentic Chinese food to people around the world. Fantuan, … [Read more...]
Foretellix raises $85M to build and test scenarios for self-driving systems
On their way to building fully-autonomous vehicles, self-driving car makers are facing a tall task: training their AIs to be able to respond reliably to any and all scenarios that a car, truck or bus might encounter as well as, or hopefully better, than a human would. Today, a startup with a platform to help with that challenge is announcing a sizeable round of funding to take those strategies up … [Read more...]
Used by only a few nerds, Facebook kills PGP-encrypted emails
In 2015, as part of the wave of encrypting all the things on the internet, encouraged by the Edward Snowden revelations, Facebook announced that it would allow users to receive encrypted emails from the company. Even at the time, this was a feature for the paranoid users. By turning on the feature, all emails sent from Facebook — mostly notifications of ‘likes’ and private messages — to the users … [Read more...]
Meta set to discontinue cross-messaging between Instagram and Facebook
Meta has silently updated its support pages to indicate that the company won’t let users on Instagram message their Facebook contacts anymore. The company, as pointed out by 9to5Google, said the feature will shut down mid-December — without specifying a date. The support page indicates that while you won’t be able to start new cross-platform conversations, your existing chats on Instagram will … [Read more...]
Omniful, a supply chain and e-commerce enablement startup, emerges from stealth with $5.85M
Supply chain and e-commerce enablement startup, Omniful, has today emerged from stealth with $5.85 million seed funding led by VentureSouq, with participation from 500 Global, DASH Ventures, Jahez Group, SEEDRA Ventures, Bunat Ventures, Hala Ventures, RZM Investments and several family offices including Al Rasheed, Siraj Holding, Al Bawardi, Al Nafea. The UAE and Kingdom of Saudi Arabia … [Read more...]
Carbon Maps, a carbon accounting startup for the food industry, gets new backers
Carbon Maps is a relatively new entrant in the carbon accounting space as it is less than one year old. But the French company has already secured $7.6 million in funding (€7 million) following the startup’s €3 million seed round extension. I already covered Carbon Maps back in February, so I encourage you to read this previous article to get the full story. But I wanted to share an update as the … [Read more...]
SoftBank Corp takes 51% of Cubic Telecom for $513M to drive into the connected car world
As automakers and technology companies continue to build ever-more sophisticated digital platforms into cars and other vehicles, a startup that’s built a system that makes it easy to connect that hardware to wireless networks around the world has picked up a major round of funding. Cubic Telecom, which provides a software-based networking solution for vehicles (and other devices) to connect to … [Read more...]
Egypt’s Mtor nabs $2.8M pre-seed for its online auto parts marketplace
Egyptian online auto parts marketplace Mtor has raised $2.8 million in pre-seed investment led by MENA-focused venture capital firm Algebra Ventures. Other investors that participated in the round include Dutch Founders Fund (DFF), Aditum Ventures, LoftyInc Capital and other local and global angel investors, the startup said in a statement. Mtor’s founder and CEO, Mohamed Maged, established the … [Read more...]
Fortnite is expanding its horizons with a Lego building game and a Rock Band successor
The first fruit of the partnership between Fornite-maker Epic Games and Lego is due out this week — along with a pair of other games within a game that expand Fortnite’s horizons considerably. The hybrid Lego/Fortnite experience is billed as a “survival crafting LEGO adventure” and will debut this Thursday, December 7. Lego Fortnite, which Epic describes as its own live service game, is designed … [Read more...]
New capital infusion puts Farmless on path to first alternative protein products
Farmless, a Dutch startup working on alternative protein sources via fermentation technology, closed on €4.8 million in seed funding. The new investment also comes seven months after Farmless raised a €1.2 million pre-seed round. The new capital will go toward building a pilot brewery in Amsterdam so that it can develop its first products to replace meat, dairy and eggs. Adnan Oner, founder and … [Read more...]
For $200, George Santos will gossip with you on Cameo
George Santos, Republican ex-congressman, certified grifter and unlikely gay icon, is now on Cameo. Santos’ stint in Congress — checkered with a slew of criminal fraud charges, a House ethics committee probe and allegations of misspending campaign funds on expenses like Botox and OnlyFans subscriptions — ended last week when fellow representatives voted to expel him from the House in a 311-114 … [Read more...]
Cruise faces fines in California for withholding key details in robotaxi accident
Cruise keeps getting kicked while it’s down. The General Motors-owned robotaxi company may face fines and sanctions after failing to disclose details of an October 2 incident — specifically that one of its vehicles dragged a pedestrian 20 feet, according to a ruling from a California agency. The regulatory action comes as Cruise struggles to rebuild public trust and keep operations running after … [Read more...]
Kodiak’s military prototype AV is a Ford F-150 pickup
Kodiak Robotics has unveiled its first autonomous test vehicle for the U.S. Department of Defense, a Ford F-150 pickup truck that the startup has upfitted with its software and sensor stack. The DOD is using the vehicle to test autonomous surveillance and reconnaissance missions in off-road terrain, diverse operational conditions and GPS-challenged environments. Kodiak won the $50 million two-year … [Read more...]
UK age assurance guidance for porn sites gives thumbs up to AI age checks, digital ID wallets and more
The U.K.’s Internet regulator has set out draft guidance for how porn sites will need to meet a newly introduced hard legal requirement to prevent children accessing adult content. So, yep, those years-in-the-making British age checks for porn sites are finally on the way. The watchdog intends this kind of bared flesh to be safety tucked away behind the child-safe age gates it wants to see … [Read more...]
Max Q: A Starlink terminal and a Kuiper terminal walk into a bar
Hello and welcome back to Max Q! In this issue: Why space parachutes are so hard A new lawsuit alleging safety issues at Blue Origin News from Loft Orbital, Relativity Space and more SpaceX is known for its vertical integration, but one component it’s been outsourcing is parachutes — until earlier this month, when the company quietly acquired parachute vendor Pioneer Aerospace after its parent … [Read more...]
‘Animate Anyone’ heralds the approach of full-motion deepfakes
As if still-image deepfakes aren’t bad enough, we may soon have to contend with generated videos of anyone who dares to put a photo of themselves online: with Animate Anyone, bad actors can puppeteer people better than ever. The new generative video technique was developed by researchers at Alibaba Group’s Institute for Intelligent Computing. It’s a big step forward from previous image-to-video … [Read more...]
Mastercard launches Shopping Muse, an AI-powered shopping assistant
Mastercard is launching a new generative AI shopping tool called “Shopping Muse” that is designed to help users get personalized product recommendations. The tool is powered by Dynamic Yield, a personalization company that was acquired by Mastercard in April 2022. Mastercard says the idea behind Shopping Muse is to “revolutionize how customers search for and discover products in a retailer’s … [Read more...]
A Y Combinator-backed startup called Velt wants to make more apps collaborative
Online collaboration has become routine thanks to productivity apps like Google Docs and team design platform Figma, among others, but there are still hosts of internet-connected applications where users cannot interact with colleagues, add notes or otherwise collaborate with one another. That’s something a new startup called Velt wants to fix with the launch of a toolkit that allows any developer … [Read more...]
Atomic Industries closes $17M seed to exascale America’s industrial base
In 2014, investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel infamously posed the distinction between companies that deal in “atoms” versus those that deal in “bits.” In its crudest terms, the former category includes businesses focused on things like hardware and manufacturing; the latter, software and financial services. Just shy of 10 years on, the distinction now strikes as quaint, if not downright … [Read more...]
AI invades ‘word of the year’ lists at Oxford, Cambridge, and Merriam-Webster
Few would disagree that 2023 was, in the world of technology at least, dominated by artificial intelligence. The dictionaries have taken note in their “word of the year” lists, and notably all the AI-related words they highlight are, in fact, existing words that have been appropriated and regurgitated with new meanings. A little on the nose, isn’t it? Cambridge’s word is “hallucinate,” which is of … [Read more...]
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