Ingrid Lunden, Author at TechCrunch

Black Friday online buying hits a record $9.8B in the US, $70.9B globally

Ingrid Lunden — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 16:36:50 +0000

A rush of deep discounts and the growth of flexible payment options were the drivers behind $9.8 billion in online sales in the U.S. on Black Friday — a record figure for the day. According to Adobe Analytics, sales were up by 7.5% on last year’s numbers (you can see those here). Sales easily surpassed […]

Adobe: Thanksgiving US online sales nudge up to $5.6B; Salesforce: $31.7B spent globally

Ingrid Lunden — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 15:43:51 +0000

Thanksgiving Thursday, when stores in the U.S. are closed and many are spending time off work, has become the de facto start of the holiday shopping season both for those looking to bargains online, and for online retailers to kick off holiday sales deals to meet that demand. But if there is a message from […]

Emmett Shear, the ex-Twitch CEO tasked with stabilizing OpenAI, has some spicy social history

Ingrid Lunden — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 17:45:21 +0000

Emmett Shear, the interim CEO of OpenAI, may be out of a job by the end of the hour, day or week given how fast and unexpectedly things are moving at the world’s hottest hot mess artificial intelligence company. But for now, he is the person at the helm after a dramatic three days in […]

DeepMind and YouTube release Lyria, a gen-AI model for music, and Dream Track to build AI tunes

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 12:47:06 +0000

Back in January, Google made some waves — soundwaves, that is — when it quietly released some research on AI-based music creation software that built tunes based on word prompts. Today, its sister business Google DeepMind went several steps further — it has announced a new music generation model called Lyria that will work in […]

X says 325K posts and 375K accounts ‘actioned’ over Israel-Hamas war violations

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 14 Nov 2023 14:18:19 +0000

X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, has been facing waves of criticism over how it has, under owner Elon Musk, grappled with issues of trust and safety, and specifically how well it handled content moderation and taking down malicious or harmful posts and accounts. Today, the company, which said it now has over […]

More consolidation in grocery delivery: Getir acquires FreshDirect to beef up in the US

Ingrid Lunden — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 07:50:24 +0000

Getir, the Turkish instant grocery delivery startup, has made an acquisition to expand its presence in the U.S. and to further its strategy as a consolidator in its category. The company has scooped up FreshDirect, an online grocery delivery service based in New York. Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but for some […]

Volante raises $66M for payments tech for banks and other legacy financial businesses

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 07 Nov 2023 13:36:22 +0000

“Digital transformation” among enterprises hasn’t happened with quite the gusto that people predicted it would a few years ago. But today, a startup building fintech technology — for businesses to modernize legacy financial services like payments — is announcing a decent round of funding, a sign of how change is coming, even if slowly. Volante […]

Confirmed: Palo Alto has acquired Talon Cyber Security, sources say for $625M

Ingrid Lunden — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 14:06:37 +0000

Palo Alto Networks has just confirmed one more major piece of security startup M&A out of Israel: It has acquired Talon Cyber Security, a specialist in building enterprise browsers for securing distributed workforces sources. Source say the deal is valued at $625 million. This is PA’s second Israeli security acquisition within a week: Last Tuesday, […]

At Bletchley, Rishi Sunak confirms AI Safety Institute but delays regulations for another day

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 17:58:44 +0000

A Frontier AI taskforce established by the U.K. back in June to prepare for the AI Safety Summit held this week is on course to be a permanent fixture, as the U.K. bids to take a leadership role on AI policy in the future. The U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak today formally announced the launch […]

LinkedIn, now at 1B users, turns on OpenAI-powered reading and writing tools

Ingrid Lunden — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:58:45 +0000

It was only a couple of weeks ago that LinkedIn was having a moment as a social platform, with business types gravitating to it as a stable and safer alternative to the unpredictability of the newly named “X.” But don’t get too comfortable if actual human content is what you are expecting there. Today the […]

Politicians commit to collaborate to tackle AI safety, US launches safety institute

Ingrid Lunden — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 12:00:41 +0000

The world is locked in a race, and competition, over dominance in AI, but today, a few of them appeared to come together to say that they would prefer to collaborate when it comes to mitigating risk. Speaking at the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park in England, the U.K. minister of technology, Michelle Donelan, […]

Who’s going (and who’s not) to the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park?

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 23:56:38 +0000

Ahead of the AI Safety Summit starting tomorrow morning taking place outside of London in Bletchley Park, today, the U.K. government has confirmed more details about who is actually going to be attending the event. The list’s publication comes after weeks of speculation and criticism that the event’s line up — both in terms of […]

Wirepas nabs $22M to expand IoT business based on distributed, mesh technology

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 12:52:37 +0000

Wirepas, a startup out of Finland that is building out an Internet of Things business based on a novel approach — using mesh networking, rather than cellular or Wi-Fi to connect thousands of objects — has raised some funding to give its efforts some oxygen. The company has picked up $22 million, at a valuation […]

Confirmed: Palo Alto Networks buys Dig Security, sources say for $400M

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 12:31:17 +0000

We reported in September that Palo Alto was getting ready to make yet more security acquisitions out of Israel, specifically of Dig Security and Talon. Today, some confirmation of one of those has arrived: The U.S. security giant said it would be acquiring Dig. The company is not disclosing the financial terms but our sources say […]

SkyCell raises $57M at a $600M valuation to build smart containers for pharmaceutical transport

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 31 Oct 2023 09:14:27 +0000

The COVID-19 pandemic put a spotlight on how critical the development and distribution medicine can really be. Vaccines for the coronavirus typically needed to be kept at very specific temperature controls to remain active, so getting them to where they needed to be in temperature-safe condition became nearly as important as making them at all. […]

Existential risk? Regulatory capture? AI for one and all? A look at what’s going on with AI in the UK

Ingrid Lunden — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 23:20:26 +0000

The promise and pitfall of artificial intelligence is a hot topic these days. Some say AI will save us: It’s already on the case to fix pernicious health problems, patch up digital divides in education, and do other good works. Others fret about the threats it poses in warfare, security, misinformation and more. It has […]

OpenAI, Google and a ‘digital anthropologist’: the UN forms a high-level board to explore AI governance

Ingrid Lunden — Fri, 27 Oct 2023 14:02:58 +0000

The halls of power are waking up to the potentials and pitfalls of artificial intelligence. The big question will be how much of an impact they will have on the march of progress if (and when) there are missteps. Yesterday, the United Nations announced a new AI advisory board — 39 people from across government, […]

Web Summit confirms Lisbon and Qatar events still on, ex-CEO Paddy Cosgrave has 80% ownership of business

Ingrid Lunden — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 13:15:05 +0000

Over the weekend, Paddy Cosgrave and Web Summit made the bombshell announcement that Cosgrave would step down from his post as CEO of the technology conference business — a move made to try to close the book on a sea of controversy and high-profile conference cancellations that had been pouring on him and his technology […]

Amazon Pharmacy launches its first drone deliveries

Ingrid Lunden — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 12:38:47 +0000

Amazon’s Prime Air drone service has been slow to take off for the company, with limited operations in just two locales a whole decade after Amazon first started development of the program. Now, Prime Air is getting a small injection of activity, quite literally: Today, Amazon announced the launch of drone deliveries of medicines purchased […]

Prove Identity nabs $40M at a $1B+ valuation to expand in mobile-based authentication tech

Ingrid Lunden — Tue, 17 Oct 2023 13:14:34 +0000

Prove Identity, the smartphone-based identity verification startup that originally made its name years ago as Payfone before rebranding in 2020, has raised $40 million. According to sources close to the company, the funding is coming in at a ten-figure valuation, which would pip it past the $1 billion mark (it’s not disclosing an exact figure). […]