Новости за 27.05.2024

Chatbot maker Character.ai has reportedly held exploratory talks with both Meta and Elon Musk’s xAI, discussing potential partnerships. The firm has talked with both companies about working together to pre-train and develop AI models, the Financial Times (FT) reported Friday (May 24). The discussions have centered on research, rather than an acquisition, and no deal […]

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI has raised $6 billion in a Series B funding round, giving it a pre-money valuation of $18 billion. The company will use the new funding to take its first products to market, build advanced infrastructure and accelerate its research and development (R&D), xAI said in a Sunday (May […]

Rows has raised 8 million euros (about $8.7 million) to expand its cloud-based, artificial intelligence (AI)-powered spreadsheet app. “There’s never been a better time to build the future of spreadsheets,” the company said in a Friday (May 24) post on LinkedIn. Rows will use the new funding to continue to accelerate data integrations, enhance its […]

Canadian digital insurance provider Apollo has raised $18.5 million Canadian dollars (about $13.6 million) to launch a wholly owned subsidiary that will allow Canadians to use buy now, pay later (BNPL) for their insurance premiums. The company’s new subsidiary, FinShore, provides a fully embedded BNPL option to more than 100,000 Canadians who are insured with […]

Consumers hate passwords. Fraudsters love them. There might be no better business case for passkeys, which are a biometric, digital alternative to manually selected and stored passwords. Passkeys have also been at the center of recent product introductions from Visa, Mastercard and other payments and financial services companies. The development and usage of passkeys is arguably one of […]

Businesses, particularly global ones, exist and transact across fragmented payment ecosystems. Just ask any organization about their cross-border growth plans and how it’s going from a payments perspective: the absence of standardization and interoperability will become immediately apparent. Against a B2B backdrop of a growing trend toward digitalization and automation in B2B payments, driven by factors […]

After starting the year at a five-year low, France may be in a position to lead venture investment in the EU out of the dark ages. The country has emerged as a rising star in Europe’s active financial technology (FinTech) sector, attracting a surge of venture capital investment that is fueling the growth of startups […]

In 1967, it was the Summer of Love. In 2020, it was the summer of COVID-19. When summer 2024 goes in the books — from an economic perspective anyway — it just might be remembered as the summer of the U.S. consumer. As the banking and payments industry came out of Memorial Day weekend, two […]

Coming into the holiday-shortened trading week, the CE 100 Index lost 2.4%.  All pillars posted declines for the week that ended May 24. Peloton helped bring the “Be Well” pillar down by 4.5%. The stock’s 19.6% loss came as the company announced a private offering of $275 million aggregate principal amount of convertible senior notes due 2029.  The […]

As we approach the middle of the year, here are five of the major ways that the retail landscape has changed in 2024 so far. Amazon Pivots on ‘Just Walk Out’ Last month, news broke that Amazon is pulling back on Just Walk Out technology in its own grocery stores, even as it pushes sales of […]

The smartphone industry is poised for a seismic shift, propelled by advancements in artificial intelligence (AI).  AI is expected to bring many advanced features to smartphones, fundamentally changing how users interact with their devices. And with advanced features comes growth. According to a recent SkyQuest Technology Group report, the mobile AI market is projected to reach $114.36 billion by 2031, […]

At Apple’s upcoming developers conference, artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to be the star of the show. However, Bloomberg News wrote Sunday (May 26), the company has a tough act to follow: selling investors and consumers on the idea that it’s doing exciting things with AI in the wake of big rollouts from Microsoft, Google […]

Tech workers are scrambling to add artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to their resumes. As The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported Sunday (May 26), it’s a shift happening as tech companies are also trying to reposition themselves as AI firms, and trying to get their staff to be more savvy about the technology. “I’ve been leading […]

Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence (AI) startup xAI is hoping to build its own supercomputer. The tech billionaire aims to launch the project — which would run the next iteration of xAI’s chatbot Grok — as early as next year, The Information reported Saturday (May 26), citing an investor presentation. Musk has said in public that xAI will need up […]

Last week, Microsoft debuted a line of artificial intelligence (AI)-ready personal computers. New findings by Morgan Stanley — the subject of a report Sunday (May 26) by Seeking Alpha — argue that the tech giant’s rollout could usher in a new wave of PC sales. “We believe that the commercial PC market will be the […]

In the mind of Google’s AI Overviews, glue is a pizza ingredient. Rocks are edible. And smoking while pregnant is considered healthy. If you’ve spent any time at all on social media in the last few days, you might have seen these wildly inaccurate results that apparently came from Google’s artificial intelligence (AI)-powered search tool go viral. Those […]

What happens when consumers grow too cash-strapped for discount stores? In some cases, the stores go under.  As Bloomberg News reported Sunday (May 26), the economic pressures on lower and middle-income Americans have begun to impact the retailers that cater to them. For example, fashion retailer Rue21, whose customers have an average annual household income of around $50,000, […]

Japan’s SoftBank is reportedly planning to invest nearly $9 billion in artificial intelligence (AI). The tech company’s outlay for investments and commitments has more than doubled to $8.9 billion in the 12 months since its CEO said the company was ready to go on the “counteroffensive,” the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (May 26).  “We will, […]

Dating apps have reportedly begun considering new features as younger women sour on their services. As the Financial Times (FT) reported Sunday (May 26), companies like Bumble and Match are planning to also increase content moderation and introduce other tools to improve women’s experiences, amid a rise in unsolicited material and violent threats. The report said fixing these issues is critical […]