Maria Deutscher
Latest from Maria Deutscher
Ragie launches with $5.5M in funding to ease RAG application development
Ragie Corp., a new startup that helps developers build retrieval-augmented generation applications, launched today with $5.5 million in seed funding. Craft Ventures, Saga VC, Chapter One and Valor provided the capital. Retrieval-augmented generation, or RAG, is a machine learning technique that makes it easier for large language models to learn new information. In the past, ...
Waymo to start testing fully autonomous vehicles on San Francisco freeways
Waymo LLC will start testing its autonomous vehicles on San Francisco freeways later this week without a human driver aboard. The move, which TechCrunch reported today, marks the latest milestone in the Alphabet Inc. unit’s efforts to build a large-scale autonomous ride-hailing service. Waymo started carrying out similar freeway tests in Phoenix earlier this year. ...
UK antitrust watchdog launches inquiry into Synopsys’ $35B Ansys acquisition
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, is looking into Synopsys Inc.’s proposed acquisition of Ansys Inc. for $35 billion. The antitrust regulator announced its inquiry today. To determine whether Ansys’ sale may hurt market competition in the U.K., the CMA has asked interested parties to submit feedback about the deal. Such requests for ...
Cisco could reportedly let go 4,000+ workers in new round of job cuts
Cisco Systems Inc. is gearing up for a new round of layoffs that could hit more than 4,000 workers, Reuters reported today. The report comes six months after the networking giant let go a similar number of employees in a restructuring initiative. The initiative cost Cisco about $800 million, mostly in the form of severance costs ...
Intel postpones key chip event amid cost-cutting effort
Intel Corp. has postponed a product event where executives usually introduce new chips on account of a cost-cutting initiative it launched earlier this month. The company announced the decision late Thursday. The two-day Intel Innovation conference was originally set to kick off on Sept. 24 in San Jose, California. The company has pushed back the ...
Microsoft uncovers Iranian cyber activities designed to influence US elections
Microsoft Corp. researchers have uncovered several Iranian cyber operations designed to influence the U.S. elections. The company detailed its findings in a report published today. The research was carried out by its MTAC, or Microsoft Threat Analysis Center, unit. MTAC focuses on tracking online influence operations run by state-backed actors. The cyber campaigns detailed in ...
Hugging Face acquires XetHub to enhance its AI storage infrastructure
Hugging Face Inc. has acquired XetHub, a startup that helps developers manage the files they create as part of artificial intelligence projects. The companies disclosed the deal today. Hugging Face describes the acquisition as its largest to date, which suggests a price tag higher than the $10 million it spent to buy Argilla Inc. in ...
Defense technology startup Anduril valued at $14B following $1.5B investment
Defense technology startup Anduril Industries Inc. today announced that it has raised $1.5 billion in funding to upgrade its manufacturing infrastructure. The investment was co-led by Founders Fund and Sands Capital. Fidelity Investments, Baillie Gifford and a number of other institutional investors chipped in as well. Anduril is now worth $14 billion, up from $8.5 ...
UK antitrust regulator launches probe into Amazon’s Anthropic partnership
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator has launched a probe into Amazon.com Inc.’s partnership with large language model developer Anthropic PBC. The Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, disclosed the move today. The development is not entirely unexpected. In April, the CMA asked interested parties to submit feedback about the potential competitive impact of Anthropic’s work with ...
Serverless database startup Neon nabs $25M in fresh funding
Neon Inc., a startup with a serverless distribution of the open-source Postgres database, today announced that it has raised $25 million in funding. Microsoft Corp.’s M12 venture capital arm led the investment. It was joined by existing Neon investors Abstract Ventures, General Catalyst, Menlo Ventures and Notable Capital. The capital infusion brings the company’s total ...