Microsoft 365 gets a host of new AI-powered features

During an AI-focused press event today, Microsoft unveiled Microsoft 365 Copilot, its latest push to embed its suite of productivity and enterprise apps with AI. Currently in testing with select (around 20) commercial customers, Copilot combines the power of AI models including OpenAI’s recen

Cast AI raises $20M to help companies reduce cloud spend

Cloud costs remain a top concern for organizations. According to a recent Anodot survey, 50% of businesses are struggling to control them, in part because they lack visibility into their cloud usage. Unsurprisingly, reducing those costs has become a top priority. A report from Wanclouds finds that

Warp brings an AI bot to its terminal

Warp, a fast-growing startup that is working on building a better terminal, today announced that it has added a new chat feature (unsurprisingly based on ChatGPT) that will help its users with using the command line and troubleshooting errors. We’ve obviously seen a flood of ChatGPT-enabled s

Wingspan raises $14M for its all-in-one payroll platform for contractors

In the wake of the pandemic, more and more companies are relying on independent contractors to sustain and grow their businesses — and more people are turning to freelancing. According to a Fiverr poll, 45% of businesses are using more freelancers than before the pandemic. And Fiverr rival Up

Zed raises $10M for a code editor built for collaboration

Code editors are complex and demanding pieces of software, but from a business standpoint, they’re notoriously difficult to monetize. At the same time, they haven’t kept pace with recent trends like work-from-home collaboration. At least, that’s how Nathan Sobo sees it. “Cod

T-Mobile to acquire Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile in $1.35 billion deal

T-Mobile is acquiring Mint Mobile, the budget-friendly wireless provider partially owned by Ryan Reynolds, in a deal valued at up to $1.35 billion, the company announced on Wednesday. The move indicates that T-Mobile is looking to boost its prepaid offerings. In a blog post, T-Mobile said it reache

Grafana acquires Pyroscope and merges it with its Phlare continuous profiling database

Open source observability platform Grafana Labs today announced that it has acquired Pyroscope, the company behind the eponymous open source continuous profiling platform. Founded in 2020, the Y Combinator-backed Pyroscope raised a seed round in 2021 and counts the likes of Sensor Tower, Confluent,

Samsung commits $230B for five new chip plants in South Korea

Samsung Electronics said today that it plans to invest approximately $230 billion (300 trillion won) to build five new memory and foundry fabs in South Korea — a big move in line with the government’s ambitious aim to set up a mega semiconductor hub in Yongin, on the outskirts of Seoul.

GitHub releases blueprint for budding open source program offices

GitHub has published its own internal guides and tools on how to go about setting up an open source program office (OSPO). The new GitHub-OSPO repository on GitHub (where else?) is aimed at businesses in the first year of setting up their inaugural OSPO, and includes everything from policies coveri

OpenAI releases GPT-4, a multimodal AI that it claims is state-of-the-art

OpenAI has released a powerful new image- and text-understanding AI model, GPT-4, that the company calls “the latest milestone in its effort in scaling up deep learning.” GPT-4 is available today to OpenAI’s paying users via ChatGPT Plus (with a usage cap), and developers can sign

Cvent to go private again in $4.6B Blackstone deal

Meetings and events management software provider Cvent is to be taken private yet again, as part of a $4.6 billion transaction involving two of the biggest players in the private equity sphere. Today’s announcement continues a recent trend that has seen myriad companies retreating from the pu

Kakao to close Tapas Entertainment Korean office next month as part of a restructuring

Kakao Entertainment, owned by South Korean tech giant Kakao, will shut down the Korean branch of Tapas Entertainment, the U.S.-headquartered storytelling platform, next month.  Kakao Entertainment told technewss that it plans to close the Korean office as part of a restructuring effort to zero in

Google Cloud gives developers access to its foundation models

Google Cloud today announced a slew of new AI-powered features for its productivity tools, but the company also today launched a set of new APIs and tools for developers that are just as interesting — if not more so. In addition to making its large language models available to developers thro

Meet the team developing an open source ChatGPT alternative

At the risk of stating the obvious, AI-powered chatbots are hot right now. The tools, which can write essays, emails and more given a few text-based instructions, have captured the attention of tech hobbyists and enterprises alike. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, arguably the progenitor, has an estimated m