Omnivore, a reading app startup, has been acquired by ElevenLabs, an AI audio technology company, to help develop their new ElevenReader app. According to a note from Omnivore’s founders Jackson and Hongbo, the acquisition will enable them to create more accessible reading and listening experiences on a larger platform. Omnivore users are invited to create …
Moondream, a startup backed by Felicis Ventures, Microsoft’s M12 GitHub Fund, and Ascend, has emerged from stealth with $4.5 million in pre-seed funding. According to VentureBeat’s Michael Nuñez, the company has developed an open-source vision-language model that boasts 1.6 billion parameters but matches the performance of models four times its size. The model, which can …
Read AI, an AI-powered meeting assistant startup, has raised $50 million in a Series B funding round led by Smash Capital, just six months after a $21 million Series A. According to co-founder David Shim, the company has seen strong growth, with over 100,000 new accounts created since the Series A. Read AI plans to …
Nooks, an AI sales platform founded by three Stanford roommates, has raised $43 million in a Series B round led by Kleiner Perkins, bringing its total funding to $70 million at a $285 million valuation. According to CEO Daniel Lee, Nooks uses AI to automate tedious sales tasks like finding contacts, leaving voicemails, writing emails …
Humane, a San Francisco-based startup co-founded by former Apple engineers Bethany Bongiorno and Imran Chaudhri, is now focusing on licensing its AI operating system CosmOS after the release of its AI Pin wearable device received significant criticism. As reported by Om Malik, the AI Pin faced issues such as poor battery life, heating problems, and …
Startup CrewAI is launching “CrewAI Enterprise,” a new platform that allows companies to create and deploy teams of AI agents. As founder João Moura told VentureBeat, the system greatly simplifies the creation and deployment of multi-agent systems. The platform is based on CrewAI’s popular open source framework and allows users to develop AI agents with …
SynthBee has raised $20 million in funding to develop a new kind of “computing intelligence”, Dean Takahashi reports for VentureBeat. The round was led by Crosspoint Capital Partners. SynthBee plans to use the money to expand its team and proprietary computing intelligence platform. SynthBee’s founder, Rony Abovitz, is known for previous successful startups including Mako …
Strella, a startup using AI for market research, has raised $4 million in seed funding, reports VentureBeat. The company, founded by Lydia Hylton and Priya Krishnan, employs artificial intelligence to automate and accelerate customer interviews. According to the founders, the platform can deliver insights up to ten times faster and at half the cost of …
Gladia, an AI-powered transcription and audio intelligence provider, has secured $16 million in funding. The Paris-based company plans to develop a new real-time transcription and analytics engine with this investment. CEO Jean-Louis Quéguiner told VentureBeat he founded the company out of frustration with existing services’ poor accent recognition. Gladia’s new engine can transcribe over 100 …
Chinese AI start-ups are targeting the US market to boost revenue growth, inspired by TikTok’s international success amid a challenging domestic landscape. Companies like MiniMax, ByteDance, and 01.ai are launching AI products overseas, particularly focusing on the lucrative US user base, reports the Financial Times. MiniMax, backed by major investors, projects $70 million in sales …