Naval Ravikant’s Airchat is a social app built around talk, not text

Airchat is a new social media app that encourages users to “just talk.” A previous version of Airchat was released last year, but the team — led by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder product exec Brian Norgard — rebuilt the app and relaunched it on iOS and Android yesterday. Currently invite-only, Airchat is […]

Vana plans to let users rent out their Reddit data to train AI

In the generative AI boom, data is the new oil. So why shouldn’t you be able to sell your own? From big tech firms to startups, AI makers are licensing e-books, images, videos, audio and more from data brokers, all in the pursuit of training up more capable (and more legally defensible) AI-powered products. Shutterstock […]

Windfall Bio is seeing strong demand for its methane-eating microbe startup

When Josh Silverman started shopping around the idea for his methane-eating microbe startup, Windfall Bio, eight years ago, the market just wasn’t ready. Nobody cared about methane, he said. Companies were instead focused on lowering their carbon emissions. But a few years later, the market is starting to come around. Menlo Park–based Windfall Bio raised […]

Google goes all in on generative AI at Google Cloud Next

This week in Las Vegas, 30,000 folks came together to hear the latest and greatest from Google Cloud. What they heard was all generative AI, all the time. Google Cloud is first and foremost a cloud infrastructure and platform vendor. If you didn’t know that, you might have missed it in the onslaught of AI […]

Government spyware is another reason to use an ad blocker

Ad blockers might seem like an unlikely defense in the fight against spyware, but new reporting casts fresh light on how spyware makers are weaponizing online ads to allow governments to conduct surveillance. Spyware makers are reportedly capable of locating and stealthily infecting specific targets with spyware using banner ads. One of the startups that […]

API startup Noname Security nears $500M deal to sell itself to Akamai

Noname Security, a cybersecurity startup that protects APIs, is in advanced talks with Akamai Technologies to sell itself for $500 million, according to a person familiar with the deal. Noname was co-founded in 2020 by Oz Galan and Shay Levi and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, but has Israeli roots. The startup raised $220 […]

Tesla drops FSD price to $99 per month in US

Tesla has slashed the price of its Full Self-Driving (FSD) software subscription to $99 per month, down from $199 per month, as the electric vehicle maker aims to boost adoption of its advanced driver assistance system ahead of first-quarter earnings. The price cut comes a couple of weeks after Tesla launched a free one-month trial […]

Startups Weekly: So are we all working from home now?

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. In the corporate tug-of-war over remote work, CEOs like Andy Jassy and Elon Musk are the old-school gym teachers insisting everyone get back on the field, […]

Spotify is developing tools that would let users remix songs, screenshots show

Spotify is working on mixing tools that would allow users to remix songs on the streaming service, according to screenshots captured by tech veteran and app researcher Chris Messina. While music aficionados use software like Adobe Audition or Ableton Live to create mixes of their favorite songs, the new capabilities would allow people to do […]

Meta is testing an AI-powered search bar in Instagram

Meta is pushing ahead with its efforts to make its generative AI-powered products available to more users. Apart from testing Meta AI chatbot with users in countries like India on WhatsApp, the company is also experimenting with putting Meta AI in the Instagram search bar for both chat with AI and content discovery. The search […]