Maria Deutscher
Latest from Maria Deutscher
Sam Altman reportedly backs $1B round for AI healthcare startup Retro Biosciences
Retro Biosciences Inc., a startup using artificial intelligence to discover new drugs, is reportedly raising $1 billion in funding to support its research. The Financial Times today cited sources as saying that OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman is participating in the investment. He previously provided the initial $180 million funding round that helped launch Retro. ...
New details emerge about Project Stargate as Meta discloses $60B+ AI investment
New details have emerged about Project Stargate, the $500 billion initiative through which OpenAI hopes to build a cluster of artificial intelligence data centers. The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the project currently lacks a fully developed plan. The initiative’s funding has not been finalized either, sources told the publication. OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. ...
OpenAI releases Operator agent as rivals enhance their AI services
OpenAI today introduced Operator, an artificial intelligence agent that can automatically perform tasks on users’ behalf. Two of the company’s highest-profile rivals announced their own product updates in conjunction. Perplexity AI Inc., a startup with a popular AI search engine, introduced an agent similar to Operator for its Android app. Anthropic PBC, which already offers ...
CMA opens investigations into Apple and Google over mobile practices
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator today opened investigations into Apple Inc. and Google LLC over their business practices in the mobile market. The Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, is picking up where it left off last August. That month, the regulator closed a pair of probes into Apple and Google it had launched in 2021 ...
Hugging Face open-sources world’s smallest vision language model
Hugging Face Inc. today open-sourced SmolVLM-256M, a new vision language model with the lowest parameter count in its category. The algorithm’s small footprint allows it to run on devices such as consumer laptops that have relatively limited processing power. According to Hugging Face, it could potentially run in browsers as well. The latter feature is ...
Samsung debuts new Galaxy S25 smartphone series with Google’s Gemini AI assistant
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. today debuted the Galaxy S25 smartphone series, its new flagship line of Android handsets. The product family comprises three devices: the top-end S25 Ultra, the mid-range S25 Plus and the entry-level S25. All three use Google LLC’s Gemini as the default artificial intelligence assistant, replacing Samsung’s internally developed Bixby chatbot. The ...
Google reportedly invests $1B+ in OpenAI rival Anthropic
Google LLC is investing more than $1 billion in Anthropic PBC, the Financial Times reported today. The cash infusion comes on top of the $2 billion that Google has already provided to the artificial intelligence developer. Separately, Anthropic is said to be raising $2 billion from a group of institutional investors led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. ...
Databricks completes $10B funding round, raises $5.25B in debt
Databricks Inc. has closed the mammoth $10 billion funding round it announced last month. The company disclosed the milestone today alongside the completion of a new $5.25 billion debt raise. JPMorgan Chase led the latter deal with participation from Barclays, Citi and other financial institutions. Reports of Databricks’ funding round first emerged in November. At ...
Perplexity launches Sonar API for building applications with search capabilities
Perplexity AI Inc. today introduced an application programming interface that will enable developers to embed search features into their applications. The API is available in two editions: Sonar and Sonar Pro. Both use the company’s Sonar series of large language models to process search queries. The API’s release comes two months after Perplexity reportedly raised ...
HPE investigating potential breach after hacker claims to steal data
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. is investigating a potential breach of its network after a hacker offered to sell data purportedly stolen from the company. TechCrunch reported the cyberattack today, citing a post on a cybercrime forum dated Jan. 16. In the post, a hacker with the username “IntelBroker” is offering to sell data stolen from ...