AI

Orum, which aims to speed up the amount of time it takes to transfer money between banks, announced today it has raised $56 million in a Series B round of funding. Accel and Canapi Ventures co-led the round, which also included participation from existing backers Bain Capital Ventures, Inspired Cap

After raising tens of millions from investors and executing a pretty substantial pivot earlier this year, augmented reality startup Ubiquity6 and its team have been acquired by gaming chat app giant Discord. The ambitious AR startup had raised $37.5 million from a series of top investors including

Drink making probably isn't at the top of your list of jobs most likely to be fully automated. The past year-and-a-half have, however, brought into stark relief how large a role robotics could play in the food service industry. I've said it time and again on these pages, but the appeal is c

The U.K. is gaining in popularity as a great place to start a tech firm. The country is quickly catching up to China on the tech investment front, with VC investments reaching a record of $15 billion in 2020, according to TechNation. A global health crisis notwithstanding, London remained a favorit

Research papers come out far too frequently for anyone to read them all. That's especially true in the field of machine learning, which now affects (and produces papers in) practically every industry and company. This column aims to collect some of the more interesting recent discoveries and pa

As an increasing number of startups sell investors on mobile apps that help consumers prioritize well-being and mindfulness, other startups are looking for a more immersive take that allows users to fully disconnect from the world around them. Tripp has been building immersive relaxation exercises

The other week at TC Sessions: Mobility, I spoke to a trio of executives at top automotive companies about why they're all so bullish about robotics. There are the obvious implications, of course. Automakers have long employed robotics for manufacturing – they were really ahead of the curve o

Following this morning's announcement that Hyundai has closed its acquisition of Boston Dynamics, another automotive company has posted some robotics news. The Toyota Research Institute announcement is decidedly less earthshaking than that big deal — if anything, it's more of a progre

I spoke to Refraction AI co-founder/CTO Matthew Johnson-Roberson on the occasion of the Michigan startup's $4.2 million seed raise. This week we posted a Q&A where he answers a wider range of topics about the delivery robotics company, and this bit jumped out at me: It still boggles my mind

If you walk down the street shouting out the names of every object you see — garbage truck! bicyclist! sycamore tree! — most people would not conclude you are smart. But if you go through an obstacle course, and you show them how to navigate a series of challenges to get to the end unsc

Vianai Systems, an AI startup founded by Vishal Sikka, former chief executive of Indian IT services giant Infosys, said on Wednesday it has raised $140 million in a round led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2. The two-year-old startup said a number of industry luminaries also participated in the new round,

Facebook today introduced a new set of tools aimed at helping Facebook Group administrators get a better handle on their online communities and, potentially, help keep conversations from going off the rails. Among the more interesting new tools is a machine-learning-powered feature that alerts admi

Sunlight is a great source of energy, but it rarely gets hot enough to fry an egg, let alone melt steel. Heliogen aims to change that with its high-tech concentrated solar technique, and has raised more than a hundred million dollars to test its 1,000-degree solar furnace at a few participating min

Refraction AI calls itself the Goldilocks of robotic delivery. The Ann Arbor-based company, which recently raised a $4.2 million seed round and expanded operations to Austin, was founded by two University of Michigan professors who think delivery via full-size autonomous vehicles (AV) is not nearly