Coding assistant Cursor raises $100M, reaches $2.5B valuation

The AI coding assistant Cursor has secured $100 million in Series B funding, reaching a post-money valuation of $2.6 billion. According to Marina Temkin of TechCrunch, the funding round was led by returning investor Thrive Capital, with Andreessen Horowitz also participating. The investment comes just four months after Cursor’s $60 million Series A round. The … Read more

Google expands NotebookLM with interactive AI features and enterprise version

Google has announced significant updates to its AI-powered note-taking application NotebookLM, including a new interactive feature for its Audio Overviews function and an enterprise-focused version called NotebookLM Plus. The application, which has gained popularity for its ability to generate podcast-like conversations between AI hosts based on source materials, now allows users to directly interact with … Read more

Tests show strong performance of Google’s Gemini 2.0 Flash model

Independent developer Simon Willison has conducted extensive testing of Google’s newly announced Gemini 2.0 Flash model, documenting the results on his blog. The tests reveal significant capabilities in multimodal processing, spatial reasoning, and code execution. The model demonstrated exceptional accuracy in analyzing complex images, as shown in a detailed assessment of a crowded pelican photograph … Read more

Google launches Gemini 2.0 AI model with expanded capabilities and agent features

Google has announced Gemini 2.0, its latest artificial intelligence model that introduces significant advances in multimodal capabilities and autonomous agent features. The experimental version, Gemini 2.0 Flash, is being released first to developers and trusted testers through Google’s AI platforms. According to Google, the new model can generate text, images, and multilingual audio while operating … Read more

Microsoft launches AI tool Copilot Vision

Microsoft has introduced Copilot Vision, a new AI tool that can analyze and respond to questions about web content in Microsoft Edge browser. As reported by Kyle Wiggers for TechCrunch, the feature is currently available in limited preview in the United States through Copilot Labs, requiring a $20 monthly Copilot Pro subscription. The tool can … Read more

Alibaba releases new AI reasoning model to compete with OpenAI o1

Alibaba has released Qwen with Questions (QwQ), a new artificial intelligence reasoning model designed to compete with OpenAI’s o1 system. The model features 32 billion parameters and can process contexts of up to 32,000 tokens. According to Alibaba’s testing, QwQ outperforms OpenAI’s o1-preview on mathematical and scientific reasoning benchmarks AIME and MATH. The company states … Read more

New AI system OpenScholar helps scientists process research papers

OpenScholar, a new open-source AI system developed by the Allen Institute for AI and the University of Washington, is transforming how researchers analyze scientific literature. As reported by Michael Nuñez for VentureBeat, the system processes over 45 million open-access academic papers to provide citation-backed answers to complex research questions. The AI combines advanced retrieval systems … Read more

Brave Search introduces AI chat feature for follow-up questions

Brave Search has launched a new AI-powered chat feature that enables users to ask follow-up questions after their initial search query. As reported by Aisha Malik, the feature builds upon the company’s existing “Answer with AI” summaries by adding an interactive chat bar below search results. Users can now explore topics more deeply without starting … Read more

Chinese AI company DeepSeek launches new reasoning model to compete with OpenAI

DeepSeek, a Chinese AI research company backed by hedge fund High-Flyer Capital Management, has released DeepSeek-R1-Lite-Preview, a new AI model designed to rival OpenAI’s o1. The model specializes in reasoning capabilities, allowing it to spend extended time considering questions before providing answers. According to DeepSeek, their model performs comparably to OpenAI’s o1 on established AI … Read more

Google Gemini introduces user memory feature

Google has launched a new memory feature for its Gemini chatbot that allows the AI to retain information about users’ preferences and characteristics across conversations. According to tech journalist Kyle Wiggers, the feature is currently available only to Google One AI Premium subscribers paying $20 monthly and works exclusively in English on the web client. … Read more