Maria Deutscher
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OpenAI reportedly leads $60M round for webcam startup Opal
OpenAI is expected to lead a $60 million funding round for Opal Camera Inc., a consumer electronics startup that develops high-end webcams. The Information reported the ChatGPT developer’s investment plans today. OpenAI is expected to be joined by several of Opal’s existing backers in the new round, which is described as a Series B raise. ...
EQT to acquire majority stake in cybersecurity firm Acronis at $3.5B+ valuation
Swedish investment firm EQT is acquiring a majority stake in Acronis International GmbH, a major provider of cybersecurity and backup software. The companies announced the deal today. They didn’t disclose the size of the investment, but detailed that it values Acronis at more than the $3.5 billion the software maker was worth following a 2022 ...
OpenAI co-founder John Schulman joins rival LLM developer Anthropic
John Schulman, a member of OpenAI’s founding team who played a key role in its product development efforts, is leaving for rival Anthropic PBC. Schulman announced his resignation today in a post on X. His departure reduces the number of OpenAI co-founders still at the company to three: Chief Executive Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman ...
Fortinet acquires Next DLP to extend its data security capabilities
Fortinet Inc. has acquired Next DLP Inc., a startup that helps enterprises ensure their workers interact with internal data in a secure manner. The companies announced the deal today without disclosing the financial terms. According to PitchBook, Next DLP raised more than $10 million in funding prior to the acquisition. Sunnyvale, California-based Fortinet provides firewalls ...
Quantum error correction startup Riverlane closes $75M investment
Riverlane Ltd., a U.K. startup working to make quantum computers more reliable, today disclosed that it has closed a $75 million Series C funding round. Growth equity firm Planet First Partners led the investment. It was joined by a half-dozen other institutional backers, including Altair Engineering Inc., a publicly traded provider of simulation software. TechCrunch ...
Federal court rules against Google in landmark search monopoly case
A federal court today ruled that Google LLC has illegally maintained a monopoly in the search and search text advertising markets. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued the decision in connection with an antitrust lawsuit brought against the company by the Justice Department. A bipartisan group of state attorneys general participated ...
Elon Musk files new lawsuit against OpenAI over for-profit shift
Elon Musk has sued OpenAI for allegedly misleading him about the goals of its artificial intelligence development efforts. The lawsuit was filed today with the District Court for the Northern District of California. Musk’s attorneys name not only OpenAI but also Sam Altman and Greg Brockman, the AI developer’s chief executive and president, respectively, as ...
AWS details internal Mithra threat intelligence system
Amazon Web Service Inc. today detailed Mithra, an internal system it uses to detect malicious website domains. The cloud giant says that Mithra spots an average of 182,000 malicious domains per day. AWS uses the system to protect customers from malicious web traffic. In some cases, Mithra also helps the Amazon.com Inc. unit detect cyberattacks ...
Google rehires founders of consumer chatbot startup Character.AI
Character.AI Inc., a well-funded startup with a chatbot service for consumers, today announced that its founders will join Google LLC. Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas are returning to the search giant about two years after leaving their engineering roles to launch Character.AI. The chatbot maker, in turn, will continue operating under new leadership. In ...
Justice Department reportedly investigating Nvidia’s Run:ai acquisition
The U.S. Justice Department is reportedly scrutinizing Nvidia Corp.’s acquisition of startup Run:ai, which develops software for managing graphics card clusters. Politico reported the probe on Thursday afternoon, citing people familiar with the matter. The development comes two months after sources told the New York Times that the Justice Department is investigating Nvidia’s leading position ...