Tuesday, July 23, 2024

Welcome to TechCrunch PM! Today we bring you lots of stories from various parts of the tech world: autonomous vehicles, Meta's big new "open" AI model, robots, and new app features. Let's dig in!

TechCrunch Top 3

Image Credits: Waymo

🚘 If you're going to San Francisco: Be sure to check out Waymo's robotaxi built by Chinese electric automaker Zeekr. Waymo is testing the new vehicles on the public roads, and they aren't fully autonomous just yet. Read more

🌐 Meta's big "open" AI model: Meta said it is releasing Llama 3.1 405B, a model containing 405 billion parameters. Parameters roughly correspond to a model's problem-solving skills, and models with more parameters generally perform better than those with fewer parameters. To be fair, at 405 billion parameters, Llama 3.1 405B isn't the absolute largest open source model out there, but it's the biggest in recent years. Read more

😆 What do you meme? The Kamala Harris edition: From coconut trees to Brat, there's a lot to take in about the memes going around about Vice President Kamala Harris. In the short term, these memes are performing well. But some political meme experts worry that if the campaign leans in too hard, the memes won't be funny anymore. Read more

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Afternoon must-reads

Image Credits: Bryce Durbin/TechCrunch

🏦 Founders are not pleased: Digital banking startup Mercury is no longer serving customers in certain countries, including Ukraine, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. Read more

🚗 Say goodbye: GM self-driving car subsidiary Cruise is scrapping plans to build the Origin and will instead use the next-generation Chevrolet Bolt in its operations. Read more

🤖 Robot riot: Vayu Robotics sees potential in getting rid of LiDAR to make delivery robotics cheaper and more scalable. Read more

🔥 New tools: Adobe's new Firefly tools for Photoshop and Illustrator let creative workers describe what they want with brief prompts and receive AI-generated textures or images that could otherwise take hours to create. Read more

🎉 Just an intimate gathering: Event startup Posh is focusing on live events of up to a few hundred people where you might know a friend, a friend of a friend, and a person you met at some party. Read more

📈 SPAC alert: Cyabra plans to merge with special purpose acquisition company Trailblazer Merger Corporation I and list on the NASDA. The Tel Aviv-based startup helps public and private organizations detect and fight mis- and disinformation campaigns and counts Warner Media and Elon Musk among its clients. Read more

⚙️ Humanoids are hot: Robotics startup Mytra is jumping into this highly competitive space in a bid to rethink warehouse automation. Read more

🛒 Supermarket savings: Flashfood, an app that provides people access to discounted food close to its best-by date, added independently owned grocery stores to the app, enabling a larger number of shoppers to buy budget-friendly groceries. Read more

Money, money, money

Image Credits: mathisworks / Getty Images

⚖️ Harvey raises $100M: If you didn't think legal tech was hot, you do now. Harvey, a startup building what it describes as an AI-powered "copilot" for lawyers, has raised $100 million in a Series C round led by GV, Google's corporate venture arm. Read more

📋 QA Wolf secures $36M: There's no shortage of solutions to automate quality assurance testing, but QA Wolf manages to stick out for a couple distinct reasons. Read more

✅ Fan-task-ic: Noded AI, a new startup, wants to make all your work tools available from where you take notes in an automated fashion, eliminating the need to task switch. Read more

🧑‍🌾 A way of life: Farmblox created a solar-powered connected monitor where information is translated back to an AI-powered automation platform that farmers can check from anywhere. Read more

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Around the web

🏠 Buyer beware: Rana Robillard, chief people officer at software startup Tekion, said cybercriminals stole $400,000 from her while she was in the process of buying a home. CNBC has more

🎤 Arrested: Kakao's billionaire founder Kim Beom-Su was arrested for alleged stock rigging in a K-pop deal, Forbes reports. Read more