Experts from Toyota, Ford and Hyundai will discuss automotive robotics at TC Sessions: Mobility

The events of the past year have only served to accelerate interest in all things robotics and automation. It's a phenomenon we've seen across a broad range of categories, and automotive is certainly no different. Of course, carmakers are no strangers to the world of robotics. Automation ha

Augmented reality NFT platform Anima gets backing from Coinbase

Augmented reality and non-fungible tokens, need I say more? Yes? Oh, well NFTs have certainly had their moment in 2021, but the question of what they do or what can be done with them has certainly been getting voiced more frequently as the speculative gold rush begins to cool off and people start t

Between a rock and a farm raise

Something I think that gets lost in the conversation around robotics is just how many different tasks can — and at some point will — be automated. Here I'm talking specifically about agtech. We've seen a ton of agricultural robotics come across our desk in recent years, and one

Rock-picking robotics startup TerraClear raises $25 million

Rock picking is probably not the first thing you think about when you think agricultural robotics. Understandably so. There are a number of companies out there looking to automate aspects like fruit and vegetable picking, weeding and field tending, but rocks are still a major issue for many farmers

Microsoft Azure launches enterprise support for PyTorch

Microsoft today announced PyTorch Enterprise, a new Azure service that provides developers with additional support when using PyTorch on Azure. It’s basically Microsoft’s commercial support offering for PyTorch. PyTorch is a Python-centric open-source machine learning framework with a f

Microsoft uses GPT-3 to let you code in natural language

Unlike in other years, this year’s Microsoft Build developer conference is not packed with huge surprises — but there’s one announcement that will surely make developers’ ears perk up: The company is now using OpenAI’s massive GPT-3 natural language model in its no-cod

Snap emphasizes commerce in updates to its camera and AR platforms

At Snap’s Partner Summit, the company announced a number of updates to the company’s developer tools and AR-focused Lens Studio, including several focused on bringing shopping deeper into the Snapchat experience. One of the cooler updates involved the company’s computer vision Sca

ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming to step down as CEO by end of 2021

Zhang Yiming, the storied co-founder of ByteDance, is stepping down from his role as the CEO and passing the torch to Liang Rubo, another co-founder of the TikTok parent and one of the world’s most valuable internet juggernauts. In an internal letter to employees, 38-year-old Zhang said he is

Google Maps to add more detailed maps, crowd indicators, better routing and more

Google has announced a series of updates coming to Google Maps as part of the company’s larger goal of delivering more than 100 AI-powered improvements to the platform by year-end. Among the new improvements, detailed during Google I/O’s developer conference this week, are new routing u

Super raises $50M to cover home repairs and maintenance via a subscription model

The real estate sales market has been in an upswing this year, and today a startup that’s addressing one of homeowners’ biggest needs — repair and maintenance services, and specifically the stress of sorting these out when things break down — is announcing some funding on th

Dabbel gets $4.4M to cut CO2 by automating HVAC control for commercial buildings

Düsseldorf-based proptech startup Dabbel is using AI to drive energy efficiency savings in commercial buildings. It’s developed cloud-based self-learning building management software that plugs into the existing building management systems (BMS) — taking over control of heating and coo

Google Cloud launches Vertex AI, a new managed machine learning platform

At Google I/O today Google Cloud announced Vertex AI, a new managed machine learning platform that is meant to make it easier for developers to deploy and maintain their AI models. It’s a bit of an odd announcement at I/O, which tends to focus on mobe and web developers and doesn’t trad

Google Photos update adds new Memories and a Locked Folder, previews Cinematic moments

Google announced a series of upgrades to its Google Photos service, used by more than a billion users, at today’s Google I/O developer event, which was virtually streamed this year due to COVID. The company is rolling out Locked Folders, new types of photo “Memories” for reminisci

Google’s LaMDA makes conversations with AIs more conversational

As far as AI systems have come in their ability to recognize what you’re saying and respond, they’re still very easily confused unless you speak carefully and literally. Google has been working on a new language model called LaMDA that’s much better at following conversations in a