Nigerian fintech Zone raises $8.5M seed to scale its decentralized payment infrastructure
African financial institutions typically scale their solutions using a mix of local and foreign tech. Appzone is one of the standout local fintech software providers for banks and fintechs, providing better pricing and flexibility. For over a decade, the Nigeria-based Appzone has functioned as an…
Apple is reportedly exploring a partnership with Google for Gemini-powered feature on iPhones
Apple is looking to team up with Google for a mega-deal to leverage the Gemini AI model for features on iPhone, Bloomberg reported. This will put Google in a commanding position as the company already has a deal with Apple as the preferred search engine…
Poseidona is removing invasive algae from oceans and turning it into food
Invasive algae is a problem all over the world. Different species of seaweed pose a threat to the oceanic environment by smothering and killing coral, which has an impact on fish and other marine life. Living near the sea in Spain, Sònia Hurtado saw the…
xAI open-sources base model of Grok, but without any training code
Elon Musk’s xAI has open sourced the base code of Grok AI model, but without any training code. The company described it as the 314 billion parameter Mixture-of-Expert model on GitHub. In a blog post, xAI said that the model wasn’t tuned for any particular…
Another autonomous vehicle startup shutters, Zoox expands driverless testing and investor fervor for AI escalates
TechCrunch Mobility is a weekly newsletter dedicated to all things transportation. Sign up here — just click TechCrunch Mobility — to receive the newsletter every weekend in your inbox. Subscribe for free. Welcome back to TechCrunch Mobility — your central hub for news and insights on the…
SpaceX doc leaks, TikTok ban gains steam, and Grok to go open-source
Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter recapping noteworthy happenings in tech over the past few days. This week, TechCrunch viewed leaked documents out of SpaceX showing some questionable practices related to employee stock options. X CEO Elon Musk announced that…
LinkedIn plans to add gaming to its platform
LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned social platform, has made a name for itself primarily as a platform for people looking to network and pick up knowledge for professional purposes, and for recruitment — a business that now has more 1 billion users. Now, to boost the time…
Aaron Levie leads Box into its third era focused on workflow automation and AI
Box began life almost 20 years ago in a dorm room at USC when Aaron Levie conceived of an online file storage and sharing system. A few years later, Levie’s original idea was becoming commoditized, and he switched gears to enterprise content management in the…
AI is keeping GitHub chief legal officer Shelley McKinley busy
GitHub’s chief legal officer, Shelley McKinley, has plenty on her plate, what with legal wrangles around its Copilot pair-progammer, as well as the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act, which was voted through the European Parliament this week as “the world’s first comprehensive AI law.” Three years in…
This Week in AI: Midjourney bets it can beat the copyright police
Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their own….
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