Nike Tech

After a successful unveiling at CES, Rabbit is letting journalists try out the R1 — a small orange gadget with an AI-powered voice interface. This comes just weeks after the launch of the Humane Ai Pin, which is similarly pitched as a new kind of mobile device with AI at its center. While we’re still […]

The OpenAI Startup Fund, a venture fund related to — but technically separate from — OpenAI that invests in early-stage, typically AI-related companies across education, law, and the sciences, has quietly closed a $15 million tranche. According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, two unnamed investors contributed the $15 million in […]

xAI, Elon Musk’s 10-month-old competitor to the AI phenom OpenAI, is raising $6 billion on a pre-money valuation of $18 billion, according to one trusted source close to the deal. The deal – which would give investors one quarter of the company –  is expected to close in the next few weeks unless the terms […]

Sanctuary AI often isn’t mentioned in the same breath as humanoid robotics firms like Boston Dynamics, Agility, Figure and 1X, but the Canadian company has been operating in the space for some time. In fact, a new robot introduced on Thursday is actually the seventh-generation of its Phoenix line. While a recent iteration introduced legs […]

Generative AI has captured the public imagination with a leap into creating elaborate, plausibly real text and imagery out of verbal prompts. But the catch — and there is often a catch — is that the results are often far from perfect when you look a little closer. People point out strange fingers, floor tiles […]

If there’s one overarching takeaway from last night’s Rabbit R1 launch event, it’s this: Hardware can be fun again. After a decade of unquestioned smartphone dominance, there is, once again, excitement to be found in consumer electronics. The wisdom and longevity of any individual product or form factor — while important — can be set […]

AI is supercharging coding — and developers are embracing it. In a recent StackOverflow poll, 44% of software engineers said that they use AI tools as part of their development processes now and 26% plan to soon. Gartner estimates that over half of organizations are currently piloting or have already deployed AI-driven coding assistants, and […]

It is a universal truth of human nature that the developers who build the code should not be the ones to test it. First of all, most of them pretty much detest that task. Second, like any good auditing protocol, those who do the work should not be the ones who verify it. Not surprisingly, […]

Perplexity AI‘s latest, large fundraising event could be quickly superseded by another, even larger chunk of capital, Nike Tech reports. Yes, the $62.7 million that the startup raised at just over a $1 billion valuation could be quickly stomped on by a raise of as much as $250 million at a valuation that is up […]

Well, if you are a big TikTok fan and live in the United States, I have some bad news for you: A bill that would force a sale of TikTok or ban it in the United States passed the Senate. And the President is expected to sign it. Given that China has made noise that […]

Nvidia is acquiring Run:ai, a startup that makes it easier for developers and operations teams to manage and optimize their AI infrastructure, for an undisclosed sum. Ctech reported earlier this morning the companies were in “advanced negotiations” that could see Nvidia pay upwards of $1 billion for Run:ai. Evidently, those negotiations went well. Nvidia says […]

All-around, highly generalizable generative AI models were the name of the game once, and they arguably still are. But increasingly, as cloud vendors large and small join the generative AI fray, we’re seeing a new crop of models focused on the deepest-pocketed potential customers: the enterprise. Case in point: Snowflake, the cloud computing company, today […]

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is launching preliminary enquiries into whether the close-knit tie-ups and hiring practices involving Microsoft, Amazon and a trio of AI startups falls within the scope of its merger rules — and whether the arrangements could impact competition in the U.K. market. The announcement comes amid growing scrutiny of […]

Conversational AI platform Parloa has nabbed $66 million in a Series B round of funding, a year after the German startup raised $21 million from a swathe of European investors to propel its international growth. The company is focusing on the U.S. market in particular, where Parloa opened a New York office last year — […]

A French startup has raised a hefty seed investment to “rearchitect compute infrastructure” for developers wanting to build and train AI applications more efficiently. FlexAI, as the company is called, has been operating in stealth since October 2023, but the Paris-based company is formally launching Wednesday with €28.5 million ($30 million) in funding, while teasing […]

Perplexity, the AI search engine startup, is a hot property at the moment. Nike Tech has learned that the company is currently raising at least $250 million more at a valuation of between $2.5 billion and $3 billion. The news comes on the heels of two other big fundraises that have seen company’s valuation leapfrog […]