Amazon defends RTO
Quick Hits
Age gauge: Instagram AI spots minors.
AI oasis: Saudis unveil $100B fund.
Apple appeal: Co. woos Indonesia.
Bot support: Xbox gets chatbot.
Continental boost: $250M for African tech.
Crypto lift: Election spikes Bitcoin.
Drone zone: AMZ delivers Phoenix.
Electric evolution: Mining goes EV.
Game fame: Steam unleashes recording.
Glass act: Apple eyes smart specs.
Higher value: Perplexity hits $9B.
Joining forces: Lyft eyes robotaxis.
Military mindset: Meta enables AI for defense.
Movie magic: Disney leans into AI/AR.
New domains: OpenAI buys chat.com.
No spoilers: AI generates Prime recaps.
Price hike: Claude gets more expensive.
‘Relentless onslaught’: Mozilla cuts 30%.
Space stick: Japan launches wooden satellite.
Amazon defends RTO
Amazon's CEO defended the company's return-to-office mandate amid employee dissatisfaction and concerns about job security.
AI optimizes flying
Alaska-based Odysee uses predictive AI to optimize flight schedules for Alaska Airlines. “It’s just much better than a human being can do on their own,” an exec says.
Perplexity offers bots to NYT
Perplexity's CEO offered to supplement New York Times coverage with AI bots during a labor strike.
Cheap spills: Robotic arm costs $120
UC Berkeley and a German university collaborated to build a $120 robot arm that uses generative AI to clean up spills.
OpenAI builds a robot
San Francisco’s Physical Intelligence raised $400M from Jeff Bezos, OpenAI, and others to bring general-purpose AI into the physical world for companies like DeepMind and X.
Teaching robots LLM
MIT introduced a new LLM training approach for robots.
Weekly Pulse
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Recently funded companies
Asia
India-based Edtech Innovartan Learning Solutions Raises $600k
Australia's Earthodic Raises $6M for Bio-Packaging
India's Hala Mobility Raises $6.1M for EV-as-a-Service
India's CynLr Raises $10M for Manufacturing Automation
Europe
UK's Radical Forge Secures $3.2M for Game Development
London’s Research Grid Raises $6.5M to Automate Clinical Trials
London's Miros Raises $6.5M for Visual Search
Germany's Dash0 Secures $9.5M for Data Observability
U.S.
Las Vegas-based MagicDoor Raises $2M for Property Management
San Francisco-based Advex Secures $3.5M for AI Vision in Manufacturing
Los Angeles-based Troveo Secures $4.5M for AI Monetization
San Francisco’s Endeavor Secures $7M for AI Manufacturing Solutions
What we're reading
Knowledge workers are leaning on generative AI as their workloads mount (VentureBeat)
How ChatGPT search paves the way for AI agents (MIT)
Profit Dollars per GPU Dollar (Tomasz Tunguz)
This Is a Glimpse of the Future of AI Robots (Wired)
Chart: See Which Generative AI Models 50 Companies Are Buying (The Information)
Post of the week
Podcasts of the Week
Rebecca Carr: Navigating Challenges in Modern Hiring (The POZCAST: Decoding Success with Adam Posner)
Transforming HR into a Strategic Powerhouse with Andrew Bartlow (HR Superstars)
How to Grow from Idea to IPO with Eliot Horowitz of MongoDB & Viam (For Starters with Alexa von Tobel)
✓ Startups hiring now
Veo: Next generation of mobility | 22 open roles
Genius Sports: Innovative sports data technology | 67 open roles
Calm: Making the world happier and healthier through the superpower of Calm | 7 open roles
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