Mike Wheatley
Latest from Mike Wheatley
Qualcomm partners with Iridium to enable satellite-based messaging on Android smartphones
Chipmaker Qualcomm Inc. said today it’s partnering with Iridium Communications Inc. to bring satellite-based messaging to high-end Android smartphones, allowing them to communicate without WiFi-based internet connectivity. The companies said the new technology has a number of potential use cases, including enabling SOS services, SMS texts and other low-bandwidth messaging applications. Such services would be ...
Apple brings AI narration to audiobooks
Apple Inc. has made audiobooks narrated by a text-to-speech artificial intelligence algorithm available through Apple Books. The digital narration feature, as it’s called, is designed to make audiobooks more accessible by reducing the complexity and costs of creating them. The current model for audiobook production generally involves authors either narrating their own books, or hiring someone ...
OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT, discusses tender offer that could value it at $29B
OpenAI Inc., the startup behind the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot tool ChatGPT, is the subject of a tender offer from investors that could see its valuation soar to as much as $29 billion. A report from the Wall Street Journal today claims that venture capitalist firms Founders Fund and Thrive Capital are in talks to invest ...
AI startup eYs3D debuts computer vision platform for autonomous robots
Artificial intelligence startup eYs3D Microelectronics Co. is bringing computer vision-based image processing capabilities to all manner of autonomous robotic applications and smart city devices with the launch of its new development platform today. Announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, eYs3D’s computer vision development platform is called XINK, and is both a platform-as-a-service ...
Report: Autonomous driving startup Gatik seeks backing from Microsoft
Microsoft Corp. is said to be planning a $10 million investment in the autonomous driving startup Gatik AI Inc. as part of a financing round that would value the smaller company at more than $700 million, Reuters reported today, citing people familiar with the matter. Gatik, which is already a Microsoft cloud customer, will agree to ...
Elon Musk’s SpaceX seeking to raise $750M from Andreessen Horowitz and other investors
Elon Musk’s spacecraft manufacturer and satellite communications firms SpaceX Corp. is close to completing a massive $750 million round of private funding that would bring its value to $137 billion, according to an exclusive report by CNBC. The news follows a report from Bloomberg last month that SpaceX had allowed insiders to sell their stakes ...
Microsoft’s video game development studio ZeniMax votes to unionize
Software developers at Microsoft Corp.-owned video game studio ZeniMax Studios voted today to create what will become the first-ever union at the company. The vote is being hailed as a milestone moment for both Microsoft and the video games industry. About 300 quality assurance staff at ZeniMax voted to unionize with the Communications Workers of America ...
Tech job layoffs in 2022 rose more than 10 times over 2021
Technology firms have been laying off staff at the fastest rate since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, as companies look to scale back costs amid fears of a global recession in 2023. Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks corporate layoffs and dismissals across dozens of industries, shows that 153,160 tech workers lost their jobs in ...
Data observability startup Chaos Genius raises $3.3M to help companies optimize Snowflake costs
DataOps observability startup Chaos Genius is looking to expand after closing on a $3.3 million seed funding round led by Elevation Capital. Y Combinator also participated in the round, together with angel investors such as former Cloudera Inc. General Manager Charles Zedlewski, Kabam Inc. co-founder Holly Liu and Sumon Sadhu. Chaos Genius, officially known as GoodHealth Technologies ...
Synaptics enables human presence detection in latest Dell and Panasonic mobile PCs
Synaptics Inc. announced today that Dell Technologies Inc. and Panasonic Corp. have launched the world’s first laptops that incorporate its Emza Visual Sense artificial intelligence technology. The technology enables what Synaptics calls “human presence detection” to allow the laptops to detect when the user walks away from the machine and conserve power until they return. ...