Garage, an online marketplace selling specialized equipment commonly used in local government, raised $13.5 million in a Series A funding round led by Infinity Venture. Other investors included Benchstrength, Wayfinder Ventures, and FJ Labs, according to TechCrunch. Being a firefighter since age 15 meant that co-founder Martin Hunt knew the struggles of small communities with tight budgets buying fire equipment. In 2023, he asked a colleague about better options for fighters. “When I couldn’t find anything, it became clear that there was a need for a streamlined, nationwide marketplace for
SRE.ai, an AI-powered automation platform, announced that it raised $7.2 million in a seed round led by Salesforce Ventures and Crane Venture Partners. The company will provide users with natural language AI agents that can perform complex enterprise DevOps workflows, such as continuous integration and testing, according to TechCrunch. “Instead of stitching together different low-code tools for enterprise applications like Salesforce, compared to products built on AWS, GCP, or Azure, teams can now move faster with context-driven, chat-like experiences that work across all of them,” CEO Raj Kadiyala said. How does
Lagos and San Francisco-based Compound AI has launched KidGPT, an AI agent specifically designed for children aged five to thirteen and their parents. The AI agent assists children in studying and learning various topics, including math, English, and even language learning. It gives children questions and additional prompts rather than giving them answers. “I’ll help you think through how to write the essay yourself first. What do you already know about bees? What do you want to include in your essay? Let’s start with a plan,” it says on their website. AI
Black Tech Street (BTS) is bringing transformative AI innovation education to Tulsa’s Historic Greenwood District with the help of microchip maker NVIDIA. The partnership aims to help Tulsa become a national model for tech-driven economic empowerment and community advancement. NVIDIA, the world’s most valuable company, will collaborate with the organization to lead efforts in integrating cutting-edge technologies, according to The Black Wall Street Times. “NVIDIA is powering the AI revolution—likely the most impactful leap in human history,” Tyrance Billingsley II, founder and CEO of Black Tech Street, said. “To have
NBA star Stephen Curry will team up with Google in a long-term strategic partnership, shaping the company’s hardware, features, and AI services. Curry will join the company as a “performance advisor” for Google’s Health, Pixel, and Cloud products. In his role, Curry will actively shape the future of Google Health and Fitbit products and features. Curry becoming Google’s performance advisor Curry will work with Google’s health and AI engineers to alter products, train algorithms, and craft next-generation health experiences. He will also test and provide feedback for Fitbit’s new personal
Join our Patreon for extra-long episodes and ad-free content. Techish is taking a short summer break, but we’ll be back in September! In the meantime, we’ve got a fantastic episode to share from our friends over at the IRL Podcast. You might remember we had IRL host Bridget Todd on Techish recently for our Falling in Love With Your AI episode. So trust us, you’re gonna love this one. ———————————————————— Decoding the Planet: From Whales to Whistleblowers From season eight of the IRL podcast: AI and Us. AI may be able to talk
Right-wing influencer Robby Starbuck has been appointed as an AI bias advisor at Meta to help the company’s chatbot be less “woke.” The announcement came after Meta settled a lawsuit filed by Starbuck, claiming that he was part of the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to MSNBC. “Since engaging on these important issues with Robby, Meta has made tremendous strides to improve the accuracy of Meta AI and mitigate ideological and political bias,” Meta and Starbuck said in a joint statement to Advocate. Who is Robby Starbuck? Starback is a former Hollywood director
Mastercard released a whitepaper highlighting Africa’s readiness, opportunity, and roadmap for responsible artificial intelligence (AI) adoption. Harnessing the transformative power of AI in Africa shares insights into how AI can unlock significant outcomes across the continent’s major industries, including agriculture, healthcare, education, energy, and finance. The whitepaper also details the potential positive impact of AI on digital infrastructure, policy and governance, research and development, local language processing, and investment into Africa. Additionally, it examined how AI can create more jobs, with up to 230 million digital jobs projected by 2030 on
Lava Payments, a fintech startup founded by Mitchell Jones to transform AI-driven transactions, has secured $5.8 million in seed funding. The round was led by Lerer Hippeau and supported by Harlem Capital, Streamlined Ventures, and Westbound. Lava is a digital wallet that lets merchants use usage credits to facilitate transactions, according to TechCrunch. Why Lava Exists Jones launched the startup after leaving his previous Y Combinator-backed fintech startup, Lendtable, where he began experimenting with AI. While building a basic form-filling agent, he continued to experience the same issues. “I was using
Steven Bartlett is using AI to create and host his latest podcast. The Diary of a CEO star has launched “100 CEOs with Steven Bartlett,” an animated documentary-style series hosted by Bartlett’s AI voice clone. The series features high-profile business figures like Richard Branson and Elon Musk. While Bartlett writes the initial scripts, the rest of the production is handled by AI, Business Insider reports. His company, FlightStory Studio, used tech from AI firms Runway, ElevenLabs, and Wondercraft. Creating hosts using AI The “100 CEOs” show doesn’t shy away from the fact
