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  • Geek Ventures, a fund that specializes in backing immigrant founders, is raising a second fund

    Geek Ventures is raising a Fund II, according to a recent SEC filing.  The firm, founded in 2021 by Ihar Mahaniok, focuses on investing in early-stage immigrant founders. Mahaniok immigrated to the U.S. from Belarus and spoke to TechCrunch a few years ago about how hard the venture ecosystem can be for immigrants.  “Talent is […]

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  • Ambi Robotics built a clever solution to automate pallet packing

    UC Berkeley spinout Ambi Robotics announced Tuesday the arrival of AmbiStack, a novel system that automates pallet packing. The system features an industrial robotic arm mounted above a conveyer belt that moves along the X and Y axes and lifts boxes up via suction cups mounted to a gripper. Once lifted from the conveyer belt, […]

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  • Waymo is reportedly building a charity ‘tipping’ feature into its robotaxi app

    Alphabet-owned autonomous vehicle company Waymo might be planning to test a feature that will allow robotaxi riders to add a “tip” that will go to the charity of their choice after a ride. Jane Manchun Wong, a security researcher who recently hacked the display dome on top of a Waymo vehicle, found the new tip […]

    © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.

  • Who is Liang Wenfeng? DeepSeek founder comes from AI investing

    DeepSeek, a Chinese AI lab, has Silicon Valley reeling with its R1 reasoning model, which it claims uses far less computing power than those of American AI leaders — and, it’s open source. The DeepSeek app has shot to the top of the App Store charts this week, dethroning ChatGPT. But who is Liang Wenfeng, […]

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  • Eric Schmidt says DeepSeek marks a ‘turning point’ for the global AI race

    Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt called for the United States to ramp up open source AI efforts to address the rise of DeepSeek in a Washington Post op-ed published Tuesday. Just last year, Schmidt said America was two or three years ahead of China. But DeepSeek’s rise marks “a turning point” for the global AI […]

    © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.