Thursday, May 15, 2025

Startups Weekly: A brighter outlook, but don’t get carried away

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. Startup news this week was fairly routine — in a good way: Aside from a minor kerfuffle between Y Combinator and Google, there was no headline-grabbing drama. […]

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TikTok rolls out a new meditation feature to help you get off the app and sleep

TikTok is launching in-app guided meditation exercises, the social network announced on Thursday. The company began testing the meditation exercises with select teens earlier this year and is now making the feature available to all users on its app. The idea behind the feature is to help users improve their sleep quality and encourage them […]

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Google rolls out new AI and accessibility features to Android and Chrome

Google announced on Thursday that it’s rolling out new AI and accessibility features to Android and Chrome. Most notably, TalkBack, Android’s screen reader, now lets you ask Gemini about what’s in images and what’s on your screen. Last year, Google brought Gemini’s capabilities to TalkBack to give people who are blind or have low vision […]

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Wednesday, May 14, 2025

Billionaire founder of Luminar replaced as CEO following ethics inquiry

Austin Russell, who became a billionaire after his lidar startup Luminar went public, appears to be out as CEO, according to the company’s board. Luminar’s board announced Wednesday — the same day of its first-quarter earnings report — it had replaced Russell and appointed Paul Ricci to the role. Ricci is the former chairman and […]

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SoundCloud backtracks on AI-related terms of use updates

SoundCloud says it’s revising its terms after widespread backlash over a clause related to AI model training. Earlier this year, SoundCloud quietly updated its usage policies, adding wording that many users interpreted as legal cover to allow the company to train AI on audio uploaded to its platform. SoundCloud was quick to assert that it wasn’t […]

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OpenAI pledges to publish AI safety test results more often

OpenAI is moving to publish the results of its internal AI model safety evaluations more regularly in what the outfit is pitching as an effort to increase transparency. On Wednesday, OpenAI launched the Safety evaluations hub, a web page showing how the company’s models score on various tests for harmful content generation, jailbreaks, and hallucinations. […]

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Stability AI releases an audio-generating model that can run on smartphones

AI startup Stability AI has released Stable Audio Open Small, a “stereo” audio-generating AI model that the company claims is the fastest on the market — and efficient enough to run on smartphones. Stable Audio Open Small is the fruit of a collaboration between Stability AI and Arm, the chipmaker that produces many of the […]

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Pinterest finally admits mass bans were a mistake caused by an ‘internal error’

Pinterest has now publicly apologized for the wave of moderation issues that have swept across the social network over the past few weeks, leading to account bans and Pin removals that users said were unwarranted. In posts published to social media Tuesday, the company took responsibility for the issue, saying that an “internal error” led […]

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DeepMind claims its newest AI tool is a whiz at math and science problems

Google’s AI R&D lab DeepMind says it has developed a new AI system to tackle problems with “machine-gradable” solutions. In experiments, the system, called AlphaEvolve, could help optimize some of the infrastructure Google uses to train its AI models, DeepMind said. The company says it’s building a user interface for interacting with AlphaEvolve, and plans […]

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Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Attend TechCrunch Sessions: AI with this new, limited-time discount

We’re excited to announce a big surprise for the AI community — TechCrunch Sessions: AI is getting a limited-time discount to broaden the number of people who can attend and learn from some of the brightest minds in the industry. For just $292, you can get a general admission ticket — plus a 50% discount […]

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$25B-valued Chime files for an IPO, reveals $33M deal with Dallas Mavericks

At long last, digital consumer bank Chime has moved forward with its IPO by filing its S-1 paperwork Tuesday. Chime had reportedly filed confidential S-1 paperwork back in December. S-1 filings typically reveal all kinds of information, covering financial, legal, and other risk factors. But Chime’s S-1 documents still have a lot of blank spaces. […]

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Google tests replacing ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ with ‘AI Mode’

Google is testing a redesign of its Search homepage in which “AI Mode,” the experimental AI-powered search feature the company rolled out earlier in May, replaces its longstanding “I’m Feeling Lucky” button under the Search bar. A company spokesperson confirmed to The Verge, which was the first to report the change, that the feature began […]

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xAI’s promised safety report is MIA

Elon Musk’s AI company, xAI, has missed a self-imposed deadline to publish a finalized AI safety framework, as noted by watchdog group The Midas Project. xAI isn’t exactly known for its strong commitments to AI safety as it’s commonly understood. A recent report found that the company’s AI chatbot, Grok, would undress photos of women when […]

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Google is bringing Gemini to Wear OS smartwatches and Google TV

During the Android Show on Tuesday, leading up to Google I/O, Google announced that it’s bringing Gemini to Wear OS smartwatches and Google TV. The announcement is part of Google’s plans to replace Google Assistant with Gemini across all of its devices and platforms. Tuesday’s announcement doesn’t come as a surprise, as users have been […]

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