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ElevenLabs CEO Says the Voice AI Startup Crossed $330 Million ARR Last Year
ElevenLabs reported $330 million in annual recurring revenue, reaching that milestone in just three years after launching its first product in 2023. The company accelerated from $100 million ARR in 20 months to $200 million in 10 months, and hit $330 million in the next five months. Its voice‑agent platform is now deployed by Fortune 500 firms and handles over 50,000 calls monthly, while a Series C round raised $180 million at a $3.3 billion valuation. Recent celebrity voice contracts broaden its content offerings beyond enterprise use.
Deepgram Raises $130M at $1.3B Valuation and Buys a YC AI Startup
Deepgram announced a $130 million Series C funding round, valuing the voice‑AI company at $1.3 billion. The round was led by AVP and included existing backers plus new strategic investors such as Twilio, SAP and Y Combinator. Deepgram, now cash‑flow positive, plans to expand...
Brazil Orders Meta to Suspend Policy Banning Third-Party AI Chatbots From WhatsApp
Brazil’s competition authority (CADE) has ordered Meta to halt its WhatsApp Business API rule that blocks third‑party AI chatbots, launching an antitrust probe into the policy’s exclusivity. The restriction, introduced in October, would have prevented services like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and...
Converge Bio Raises $25M, Backed by Bessemer and Execs From Meta, OpenAI, Wiz
Converge Bio, a Boston‑Tel Aviv AI startup, closed a $25 million Series A led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from TLV Partners, Vintage Investment Partners, and unnamed executives from Meta, OpenAI, and Wiz. The company offers generative‑AI platforms that integrate antibody...
Meta-Backed Hupo Finds Growth After Pivot to AI Sales Coaching From Mental Wellness
Meta‑backed Hupo, originally a mental‑wellness app, has pivoted to AI‑driven sales coaching for banks, insurers and financial services. The startup raised a $10 million Series A led by DST Global, bringing total funding to $15 million. Its platform, trained on real financial products...
Why Amazon Bought Bee, an AI Wearable
Amazon unveiled Bee, an AI‑powered wearable clip‑on pin and bracelet, at CES 2026 following its 2025 acquisition. Bee records conversations, transcribes them, and acts as a personal AI companion that taps into Gmail, Calendar, contacts and Apple Health. The device extends...
Motional Puts AI at Center of Robotaxi Reboot as It Targets 2026 for Driverless Service
Motional, the Hyundai‑Aptiv joint venture, has rebooted its robotaxi program with an AI‑first architecture and aims to launch a fully driverless service in Las Vegas by the end of 2026. After missing earlier milestones, losing Aptiv’s backing and slashing its workforce...
Google Announces a New Protocol to Facilitate Commerce Using AI Agents
Google unveiled the Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP), an open standard that lets AI agents handle end‑to‑end shopping experiences. Developed with retailers such as Shopify, Walmart and Target, UCP streamlines discovery, checkout and post‑purchase support across platforms. The protocol will power...
Indonesia Blocks Grok over Non-Consensual, Sexualized Deepfakes
Indonesian officials said Saturday that they are temporarily blocking access to xAI’s chatbot Grok.
Anthropic Adds Allianz to Growing List of Enterprise Wins
Anthropic announced a partnership with German insurer Allianz to embed its Claude Code AI‑coding tool and custom agents across the company, while adding a transparent logging system for regulatory compliance. The deal, whose financial terms were undisclosed, underscores Anthropic’s focus on...
OpenAI to Acquire the Team Behind Executive Coaching AI Tool Convogo
OpenAI announced an acqui‑hire of Convogo’s three co‑founders, bringing the executive‑coaching AI team into its AI cloud division. The deal does not include Convogo’s intellectual property, and the startup’s product will be shut down. This marks OpenAI’s ninth acquisition in...
Snowflake Announces Its Intent to Buy Observability Platform Observe
Snowflake announced a definitive agreement to acquire observability platform Observe for an estimated $1 billion, marking its largest deal to date. Observe, founded in 2017 and built on Snowflake’s database from the start, has raised nearly $500 million and was valued at...
Elon Musk’s Lawsuit Against OpenAI Will Face a Jury in March
Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI has been cleared for a jury trial in March after a federal judge found evidence that the company’s leaders may have promised to keep its original nonprofit structure. Musk, an early backer who invested roughly...
Why This VC Thinks 2026 Will Be ‘the Year of the Consumer’
Venture partner Vanessa Larco predicts 2026 will be a breakout year for consumer‑tech startups, driven by AI‑powered products that deliver immediate, measurable value to users. She argues that consumer adoption cycles are faster than enterprise, allowing startups to validate product‑market fit...
Former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla’s Startup Triples to $100M Valuation
Spangle, the AI‑e‑commerce platform founded by former Bolt CEO Maju Kuruvilla, closed a $15 million Series A round that lifts its valuation to $100 million. The Seattle‑based startup, now backed by NewRoad Capital and several venture firms, has grown its enterprise roster to...
Ford Has an AI Assistant and New Hands-Free BlueCruise Tech on the Way
Ford announced an AI‑powered digital assistant that will first appear in its revamped smartphone app in early 2026, with native in‑vehicle integration slated for 2027. The assistant runs on Google Cloud using off‑the‑shelf large language models and will have deep...
VC Predicts the Consumer AI Products OpenAI ‘Won’t Want to Kill’
Vanessa Larco, partner at Premise, says 2026 will be the year consumer AI finally takes off, with AI‑driven concierge services reshaping how users browse the web. She warns legacy platforms such as WebMD and TripAdvisor may be folded into larger...
Google Classroom’s New Tool Uses Gemini to Transform Lessons Into Podcast Episodes
Google Classroom now offers a Gemini‑powered tool that automatically converts lesson content into podcast‑style audio episodes. Educators can select grade level, topics, learning objectives, speaker count, and conversational style such as interviews or roundtables. The feature rolls out to Google...
Caterpillar Taps Nvidia to Bring AI to Its Construction Equipment
Caterpillar is piloting an AI assistive system called “Cat AI” on its Cat 306 CR Mini Excavator, built on Nvidia’s Jetson Thor platform and showcased at CES. The system answers operator queries, offers safety tips, and schedules services while streaming roughly 2,000 data messages...
Intel Spinout Articul8 Raises More than Half of $70M Round at $500M Valuation
Articul8, an Intel spin‑out, has secured more than half of its planned $70 million Series B at a $500 million pre‑money valuation, marking a five‑fold increase from its $100 million Series A. The company now reports over $90 million in total contract value from 29 enterprise...
Meta’s Manus News Is Getting Different Receptions in Washington and Beijing
Meta agreed to acquire AI assistant platform Manus for $2 billion, sparking a regulatory tug‑of‑war that is more pronounced in Beijing than Washington. U.S. officials have signaled acceptance despite earlier concerns about Benchmark’s prior investment, while Chinese regulators are probing whether...
California Lawmaker Proposes a Four-Year Ban on AI Chatbots in Kids’ Toys
Senator Steve Padilla introduced SB 867, a bill that would impose a four‑year ban on the sale and manufacture of AI‑chatbot toys for anyone under 18. The legislation seeks to give regulators time to develop safety guidelines after a series of...
Commonwealth Fusion Systems Installs Reactor Magnet, Lands Deal with Nvidia
Commonwealth Fusion Systems installed the first of 18 20‑tesla, 24‑ton magnets in its Sparc fusion reactor, marking a critical hardware milestone. The D‑shaped magnets will form a toroidal field capable of confining plasma hotter than 100 million °C. CFS announced a partnership...
AMD Unveils New AI PC Processors for General Use and Gaming at CES
AMD unveiled its Ryzen AI 400 Series at CES 2026, featuring 12 CPU cores, 24 threads and AI‑accelerated performance that is 1.3× faster at multitasking and 1.7× faster for content creation versus rivals. The launch also introduced the gaming‑focused Ryzen 7 9850X3D and an...
Nvidia Launches Powerful New Rubin Chip Architecture
At CES 2026, Nvidia unveiled its Vera Rubin architecture, the latest generation of AI hardware succeeding Blackwell. The six‑chip system combines a new GPU, Vera CPU, enhanced Bluefield storage and NVLink interconnect, delivering up to 3.5× faster training and fivefold...
Nvidia Launches Alpamayo, Open AI Models that Allow Autonomous Vehicles to ‘Think Like a Human’
Nvidia unveiled Alpamayo at CES 2026, an open‑source AI family for autonomous vehicles featuring Alpamayo 1, a 10‑billion‑parameter vision‑language‑action model that reasons through complex driving scenarios. The suite includes the Cosmos generative world‑model for synthetic data, a 1,700‑hour real‑world driving dataset, and...
CES 2026: Follow Live as NVIDIA, Lego, AMD, Amazon, and More Make Their Big Reveals
At CES 2026, major players unveiled a wave of AI‑driven consumer products, from Google’s Gemini‑powered TV features to Amazon’s art‑styled Ember TVs and revamped Fire TV interface. Health tech also took center stage with Withings’ Body Scan 2 smart scale that...
Google Previews New Gemini Features for TV at CES 2026
Google unveiled new Gemini AI capabilities for Google TV at CES 2026, initially rolling out on select TCL models before expanding to other devices. The features let users converse with their TV to discover content, receive plot recaps, and receive...
Subtle Releases Ear Buds with Its Noise Cancelation Models
Voice AI startup Subtle unveiled $199 wireless earbuds that combine noise‑cancellation with real‑time transcription and AI chat capabilities. The devices ship with a year‑long iOS and Mac app subscription, allowing users to dictate in any application without touching a keyboard....
India Orders Musk’s X to Fix Grok over ‘Obscene’ AI Content
India's IT ministry has ordered Elon Musk's platform X to implement immediate technical and procedural changes to its AI chatbot Grok after users and lawmakers flagged the generation of obscene content, including AI‑altered images of women. The directive mandates a...
European Banks Plan to Cut 200,000 Jobs as AI Takes Hold
European banks could eliminate more than 200,000 jobs by 2030 as AI reshapes operations, representing roughly 10% of staff across 35 major institutions. The cuts will focus on back‑office, risk management and compliance functions, where algorithms promise up to 30%...
‘College Dropout’ Has Become the Most Coveted Startup Founder Credential
The tech press notes a resurgence of the college‑dropout narrative among startup founders, especially at Y Combinator Demo Days, even as academic research shows most unicorns are built by degree‑holders. The AI boom intensifies the perception that time‑to‑market is critical, prompting...
VCs Predict Enterprises Will Spend More on AI in 2026 — Through Fewer Vendors
Enterprise AI budgets are set to rise in 2026, but the growth will be concentrated on a limited set of vendors. Venture capitalists surveyed by TechCrunch expect firms to trim experimental spend, consolidating contracts around tools that demonstrate clear ROI....
Meta Just Bought Manus, an AI Startup Everyone Has Been Talking About
Meta Platforms announced a $2 billion acquisition of Singapore‑based AI startup Manus, a company that quickly amassed millions of users and $100 million in annual recurring revenue after a viral demo. Manus, valued at $500 million in a recent $75 million funding round, offers...
Plaud Note Pro Is an Excellent AI-Powered Recorder that I Carry Everywhere
Plaud Note Pro is a credit‑card‑sized AI recorder that slips into a wallet and mounts magnetically to phones. It records offline on 64 GB of internal storage, offering up to 30 hours of continuous capture and 60 days of standby on a single...
Waymo Is Testing Gemini as an In-Car AI Assistant in Its Robotaxis
Waymo is piloting Google’s Gemini chatbot as an in‑car AI assistant for its robotaxis, revealed through a 1,200‑line system prompt. The assistant is designed to answer rider queries, manage cabin functions such as climate, lighting and music, and personalize greetings...
Marissa Mayer’s New Startup Dazzle Raises $8M Led by Forerunner’s Kirsten Green
Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has launched Dazzle, an AI personal‑assistant startup, after shuttering her photo‑sharing venture Sunshine. Dazzle secured an $8 million seed round at a $35 million valuation, led by Forerunner Ventures partner Kirsten Green, with participation from Kleiner Perkins and...
Lemon Slice Nabs $10.5M From YC and Matrix to Build Out Its Digital Avatar Tech
Lemon Slice announced a $10.5 million seed round backed by Y Combinator, Matrix Partners, and notable tech leaders to accelerate its Lemon Slice‑2 model. The 20‑billion‑parameter diffusion model adds a real‑time video layer to AI avatars, streaming 20 fps on a single GPU...
OpenAI Says AI Browsers May Always Be Vulnerable to Prompt Injection Attacks
OpenAI admits that prompt‑injection attacks on its Atlas AI browser are unlikely to be fully eliminated and has rolled out a hardening update that flags suspicious instructions. The firm introduced a reinforcement‑learning‑trained automated attacker to probe the system for hidden...
Waymo Suspends Service in San Francisco as Robotaxis Stall During Blackout
Waymo temporarily suspended its robotaxi service in San Francisco after a massive citywide blackout left many autonomous vehicles stalled on streets. The outage, triggered by a fire at a PG&E substation, knocked out power for roughly 120,000 customers and disabled traffic...
OpenAI Allows Users to Directly Adjust ChatGPT’s Enthusiasm Level
OpenAI has added a new Personalization menu that lets ChatGPT users directly adjust the model's enthusiasm, warmth, and emoji usage. The settings can be set to More, Less, or Default, complementing existing tone presets such as Professional, Candid, and Quirky....
New York Governor Kathy Hochul Signs RAISE Act to Regulate AI Safety
Governor Kathy Hochul signed the RAISE Act, making New York the second U.S. state to adopt comprehensive AI safety legislation after California. The law obliges large AI developers to publish safety protocols and report incidents to the state within 72 hours, with...
Ex-Splunk Execs’ Startup Resolve AI Hits $1 Billion Valuation with Series A
Resolve AI, founded by former Splunk executives Spiros Xanthos and Mayank Agarwal, announced a Series A round that carries a $1 billion headline valuation, though a multi‑tranche structure means the blended valuation is lower. The startup, less than two years old, reports...
Yann LeCun Confirms His New ‘World Model’ Startup, Reportedly Seeks $5B+ Valuation
Yann LeCun announced the launch of Advanced Machine Intelligence (AMI) Labs, appointing Alex LeBrun as CEO. The startup aims to develop world‑model AI and is seeking €500 million at a €3 billion valuation. LeCun will serve as executive chairman, while his former...
Pickle Robot Adds Tesla Veteran as First CFO
Pickle Robot, a Massachusetts‑based maker of autonomous unloading robots, appointed Jeff Evanson as its first chief financial officer. Evanson, a former Tesla vice president of global investor relations, had been consulting for Pickle since September and now joins full‑time. The...
Peripheral Labs Taps Into Self-Driving Car Sensors to Bring Sports Fans Right Into the Game
Peripheral Labs is adapting self‑driving car sensor technology to create affordable volumetric video for sports, reducing camera arrays from over 100 to as few as 32. The AI‑powered platform captures 3D reconstructions, offering fans multi‑angle views and coaches biomechanical data....
Luma Releases a New AI Model that Lets Users Generate a Video From a Start and End Frame
Luma AI unveiled Ray3 Modify, a generative video model that lets users edit existing footage while preserving the original actor’s performance. Creators can supply character reference images and define start and end frames to generate smooth transitions and transform scenes....
Adobe Hit with Proposed Class-Action, Accused of Misusing Authors’ Work in AI Training
Adobe faces a proposed class‑action lawsuit alleging it used pirated books to train its SlimLM language model. The suit, filed by author Elizabeth Lyon, claims the model’s training data derives from the SlimPajama‑627B dataset, which copies the RedPajama and Books3...
Amazon Appoints Longtime AWS Exec Peter DeSantis to Lead New AI Org
Amazon announced that longtime AWS executive Peter DeSantis will head a new AI-focused organization. The unit will oversee Amazon’s AI models such as Nova, custom silicon development, and quantum computing initiatives. DeSantis brings 27 years at Amazon, including eight as...
Google Launches Gemini 3 Flash, Makes It the Default Model in the Gemini App
Google unveiled Gemini 3 Flash, a faster and cheaper AI model that now serves as the default engine in the Gemini app and AI‑enhanced search. The model hits 33.7% on the Humanity’s Last Exam benchmark and 81.2% on the MMMU‑Pro multimodal reasoning...