Zepto raises $340M at a $5B valuation as India’s quick-commerce market heats up

Indian instant delivery startup Zepto has finalized a $340 million round that values it at $5 billion, up from $3.6 billion in June and $1.4 billion last August, as the startup races to win market share in India’s contested quick-commerce market. General Catalyst and Mars Growth Capital are

Made by Google 2024: A few AI features you might’ve missed

Google’s annual Made by Google hardware event was held earlier Tuesday, and because the company announced so much stuff, a lot got lost in the shuffle. We rounded up some of the more intriguing AI-related announcements that didn’t get a ton of play, like the image-generating Pixel Studi

Gemini Live first look: Better than talking to Siri, but worse than I’d like

Google launched Gemini Live during its Made by Google event Tuesday. The feature allows you to have a semi-natural spoken conversation, not typed out, with an AI chatbot powered by Google’s latest large language model. technewss was there to test it out firsthand. Gemini Live is Google̵

Chinese robotaxi startup WeRide gets approval to carry passengers in California 

Chinese autonomous vehicle company WeRide has received the green light to test its driverless vehicles with passengers in California.  The step comes as WeRide begins the process to go public on the U.S. stock market at a nearly $5 billion valuation. The timing also coincides with reports tha

The first post-quantum cryptography standards are here

It’ll still be a while before quantum computers become powerful enough to do anything useful, but it’s increasingly likely that we will see full-scale, error-corrected quantum computers become operational within the next five to 10 years. That’ll be great for scientists trying to

Pixel Watch 3 adds a life-saving ‘loss of pulse’ detection feature

With the introduction of the Pixel Watch 3 smartwatches, which now come in two sizes, Google is also introducing a new, potentially life-saving feature: loss of pulse detection. At the Made by Google 2024 event Tuesday, the company announced the watch’s added ability to sense this particular

Google's Made You Look uses Pixar characters to trick kids into smiling for the camera

Most of the new camera features Google has brought to Pixel devices in recent years have involved AI-based post-processing. Made You Look, announced at Tuesday’s Made by Google 2024 event, is different. It reaches back into the history of photography to tap into a perennial favorite: tricking

Made by Google 2024: How to watch Google unveil the Pixel 9, a new foldable and more

Google's been on a consumer hardware jag in August. Last week, the company announced the long-awaited new Nest Thermostat, along with Google TV Streamer, which replaces the 11-year-old Chromecast line. And today at Made by Google 2024, the software giant refreshed the Pixel line with a slew of

Pixel phones get an AI-powered weather app

Alongside the launch of new Pixel devices, the Pixel phone lineup is getting its own new weather app, powered by AI. Introduced Tuesday at the Made by Google 2024 event, the tech giant briefly showed off the app, which offers a custom AI weather report created by Gemini Nano — Google’s AI m

Threads may offer its own take on Fleets with a disappearing posts feature

Old tweets from stars, celebrities, politicians and other public figures often come back to haunt them, exposing their embarrassing, unevolved opinions from their youth, offensive comments, abusive messages, errors in judgment, and worse. While users on X (formerly Twitter) only have third-party op

Tesla posts job listing for the 1950s-style diner Elon Musk has proposed building

In line with Elon Musk's increasing rhetoric on X of going back to the good old days, Tesla looks like it's finally getting ready to open its 1950s-style diner.  Tesla is seeking a Tesla Diner Experience Specialist in Los Angeles to work with the charging operations team to ensure “

Google introduces new AI-powered features for photo editing and image generation

At Made by Google 2024 on Tuesday, the company launched its new Pixel 9 series of phones. These devices have a ton of AI-powered features apart from having Gemini as the default assistant. The company is adding features for photo editing, plus new apps for storing and searching through screenshots

Google's Pixel Buds Pro 2 bring Gemini to your ears

The age of the generative AI gadget has been disappointing at best. Devices like Humane's AI Pin and the Rabbit R1 were disappointments at launch, falling victim to their own respective hype cycles. Generative AI has a future on consumer hardware, but you'd be forgiven for believing otherwi

Google Gemini is the Pixel 9's default assistant

Tuesday's Made by Google event cemented Gemini's place as the Pixel's default assistant. The company had previously allowed users to opt in to replace Google Assistant with the generative AI platform, and now the newly announced Pixel 9 phones are the first devices to ship that way by d