ReportWire

Tag: In Brief

  • Voice AI engine and OpenAI partner LiveKit hits $1B valuation | TechCrunch

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    LiveKit, a developer of infrastructure software for real-time AI voice and video applications, has announced the raise of $100 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation.

    The round, which comes 10 months after LiveKit’s previous fundraise, was led by Index Ventures with participation from existing investors, including Altimeter Capital Management, Hanabi Capital, and Redpoint Ventures.

    LiveKit powers OpenAI’s ChatGPT voice mode. The startup’s other customers include xAI, Salesforce, Tesla, as well as 911 emergency service operators and mental health providers.

    The company was founded in 2021 by Russ d’Sa and David Zhao as an open source software project for building apps that can transmit real-time audio and video without interruptions, in an era when the whole world was meeting on Zoom during the pandemic.

    Although LiveKit began as a free developer tool, the business took off after the founders realized big companies wanted a managed cloud version and began providing those services to enterprises amid the voice AI boom.

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    Marina Temkin

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  • AI journalism startup Symbolic.ai signs deal with Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp | TechCrunch

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    Newsrooms have been experimenting with AI for several years now but, for the most part, those efforts have been just that: experiments. A relatively unknown startup, Symbolic.ai, wants to change that, and it just signed a major deal with News Corp, the media conglomerate owned by Rupert Murdoch.

    News Corp, the major assets of which include MarketWatch, the New York Post, and The Wall Street Journal, is set to begin using Symbolic’s AI platform with its financial news hub Dow Jones Newswires.

    Symbolic.ai, which was founded by former eBay CEO Devin Wenig and Ars Technica co-founder Jon Stokes, says its AI platform can “assist in the production of quality journalism and content” and that its tool has even led to “productivity gains of as much as 90% for complex research tasks.” The platform is designed to make editorial workflows more efficient, providing improvements in areas like newsletter creation, audio transcription, fact-checking, “headline optimization,” SEO advice, and others.

    In general, News Corp has shown a willingness to integrate AI into its media operations. In 2024, the company signed a multi-year partnership with OpenAI, wherein it would license its material to the AI company. Last November, the media conglomerate signaled that it was considering branching out, and licensing its material to other AI companies.

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    Lucas Ropek

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  • Nvidia to license AI chip challenger Groq’s tech and hire its CEO | TechCrunch

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    Nvidia has struck a non-exclusive licensing agreement with AI chip competitor Groq. As part of the deal, Nvidia will hire Groq founder Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra, and other employees.

    CNBC reported that Nvidia is acquiring assets from Groq for $20 billion; Nvidia told TechCrunch that this is not an acquisition of the company and did not comment on the scope of the deal. But if CNBC’s numbers are accurate, this purchase is expected to be Nvidia’s largest ever, and with Groq on its side, Nvidia is poised to become even more dominant in chip manufacturing.

    As tech companies compete to grow their AI capabilities, they need computing power, and Nvidia’s GPUs have emerged as the industry standard. But Groq has been working on a different type of chip called an LPU (language processing unit), which it has claimed can run LLMs at 10 times faster and using one-tenth the energy. Groq’s CEO Jonathan Ross is known for this sort of innovation — when he worked for Google, he helped invent the TPU (tensor processing unit), a custom AI accelerator chip.

    In September, Groq raised $750 million at a $6.9 billion valuation. Its growth has been quick and significant — the company said that it powers the AI apps of more than 2 million developers, up from about 356,000 last year.

    Updated, 12/24/25 at 5:40 p.m. ET, with clarification from Nvidia about the nature of the deal.

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    Amanda Silberling

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  • Alphabet to buy Intersect Power to bypass energy grid bottlenecks | TechCrunch

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    Google parent Alphabet has agreed to buy Intersect Power, a data center and clean energy developer, for $4.75 billion in cash, plus the assumption of the company’s debt.

    The acquisition, which was announced Monday, will help Alphabet expand its power-generation capacity alongside new data centers without having to rely on local utilities that are struggling to keep up with the demand of AI companies. Securing access to energy that powers data centers has become a critical part of training AI models.

    Alphabet previously held a minority stake in Intersect Power after Google and TPG Rise Climate led an $800 million strategic funding round in the company last December. That partnership set a target of $20 billion in total investment by 2030.

    The acquisition includes Intersect’s future development projects but excludes its existing operation, which will be bought out by other investors and managed as a separate company.

    Intersect’s new data parks, which are essentially locations next to wind, solar, and battery power, are expected to be operational late next year and fully completed by 2027, Google said when it announced its minority investment.

    The transaction is expected to close in the first half of next year.

    Google will be the primary user. However, Intersect’s campuses are designed as industrial parks that can host other companies’ AI chips alongside Google’s.

    Techcrunch event

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    October 13-15, 2026

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    Marina Temkin

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  • OpenAI learned the hard way that Cameo trademarked the word ‘cameo’ | TechCrunch

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    OpenAI’s social app Sora launched with a controversial feature called Cameo, allowing users to deepfake themselves or others (with permission). The feature had a tenuous rollout — Martin Luther King Jr.’s estate had to get involved, to give you an idea of what went on — but now it faces a new challenge.

    Apparently, Cameo — the app where you buy custom video messages from celebrities — can claim the trademark of the word “cameo.”

    U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee imposed a temporary restraining order that blocks OpenAI from using the word “cameo,” as well as any similar-sounding words or phrases, on Sora.

    The temporary restraining order issued on November 21, 2025 is set to expire on December 22, 2025, at 5:00 p.m. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for December 19, 2025, at 11:00 a.m.

    As of Monday afternoon, the Sora app still uses the “cameo” language, however.

    “We are gratified by the court’s decision, which recognizes the need to protect consumers from the confusion that OpenAI has created by using the Cameo trademark,” Cameo CEO Steven Galanis said in a statement. “While the court’s order is temporary, we hope that OpenAI will agree to stop using our mark permanently to avoid any further harm to the public or Cameo.”

    OpenAI disagrees with the assertion that the company can claim exclusive ownership over the word “cameo,” the company told CNBC.

    Techcrunch event

    San Francisco
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    October 13-15, 2026

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    Amanda Silberling

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  • Chris Sacca’s VC firm is raising a second nuclear fusion fund  | TechCrunch

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    Chris Sacca’s venture firm Lowercarbon Capital is raising a second fund to back nuclear fusion energy hopefuls, the VC said at the SOSV Climate Tech Summit on Thursday, as reported by Bloomberg.  

    The firm has backed leading fusion startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems, as well as others like Pacific Fusion. It raised a $250 million, fusion-geared fund in 2022. Fusion believers, who include a number of well-known climate VCs beyond Sacca (like Vinod Khosla), still hold faith that a breakthrough needed to make it commercially viable is just around the corner. And several advances are showing promise of delivering one.

    In the meantime, building fusion reactors is expensive. Commonwealth raised $863 million earlier this year, after raising a $1.8 billion Series B four years ago. TechCrunch has documented a dozen fusion startups that have raised over $100 million. 

    Sacca didn’t say how big this second fund will be, but a source told Bloomberg that it’s intended to be bigger than the first. 

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    Julie Bort

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  • Nvidia is reportedly investing up to $1B in Poolside  | TechCrunch

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    Nvidia is an existing investor in the AI company and participated in its $500 million Series A round in 2024.

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    Rebecca Szkutak

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  • Rivian makes its second small workforce cut of the year ahead of R2 SUV launch | TechCrunch

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    Rivian is laying off around 150 workers — its second small staff cut in a matter of months — as the company readies itself for the all-important launch of its more-affordable R2 SUV next year.

    The company confirmed to TechCrunch that the new cuts were mostly to its “commercial” team, which deals with sales and service operations, and that affected employees will be eligible for rehire and encouraged to apply for other open positions. The Wall Street Journal first reported the layoffs earlier Thursday.

    The layoffs follow a similar cut of around 1% of its total workforce that TechCrunch first reported in late June. Those cuts targeted Rivian’s manufacturing team.

    Rivian has made repeated workforce adjustments over the last two years. It laid off around 10% of its staff in early 2024 and made another small cut in April 2024. The company started this year with approximately 15,000 employees worldwide.

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    Sean O’Kane

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  • Apple’s Siri upgrade could reportedly be powered by Google Gemini | TechCrunch

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    Apple’s Siri overhaul may include an AI-powered web search tool with technology powered by Google’s Gemini, according to a new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. The iPhone maker, which has been criticized for falling behind in the AI race, delayed its long-awaited Siri update until 2026. In the meantime, the company has been scrambling to determine whether its own AI models alone will work well enough to make its upgraded Siri competitive with the AI answer engines available today from tech companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Google.

    Per Bloomberg, Apple could be turning to Google for a solution to its problems. The report claims that Apple and Google reached a formal agreement this week that will see Apple testing a Google AI model in Siri. If successful, the technology could also be used in other areas of iPhone software, including the Safari browser and Spotlight search, which is available on the Home Screen.

    In previous years, Spotlight seemed to be ramping up to become a rival of sorts to Google, as it allowed iPhone users to bypass web searches to get basic answers about popular topics, like information about actors, musicians, TV shows, and movies, among other things. With AI chatbots, however, consumers can now source quick answers about a wide range of topics beyond those that could be found on Wikipedia.

    The report suggests that the upgraded search experience’s interface will use a combination of text, photos, videos, and local points of interest, as well as an AI-powered summarization feature. It will also be able to tap into users’ personal data and let them navigate their devices via voice.

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    Sarah Perez

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  • Malaysia’s SkyeChip unveils the country’s first edge AI processor | TechCrunch

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    Malaysia has developed its first domestic edge AI processor.

    Malaysian chip design company SkyeChip announced its MARS1000 processor at an industry event on Monday, Bloomberg reported. While an edge processor isn’t as powerful as an advanced Nvidia chip, it still represents a technological milestone for Malaysia, which is looking to play a bigger role in the global AI race.

    Malaysia already has a foothold in the chip manufacturing sector and has recently increased its efforts and investment around AI. The country announced the creation of the Malaysian National AI Office in late 2024, an agency that plans to focus on seven areas, including the acceleration of AI adoption, AI adoption regulatory frameworks, and AI ethics.

    It was rumored in early July that the Trump administration was considering restricting the sale of U.S. AI chips to Malaysia, and Thailand, in an attempt to prevent smuggling of these chips to China.

    While those rumors have yet to come to fruition, Malaysia’s Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry announced that it was going to require trade permits for U.S. AI chips on July 14. This rule means individuals and companies are required to notify the Malaysian government at least 30 days in advance if they plan to export or transship U.S.- made AI chips.

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    Rebecca Szkutak

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  • AI-powered stuffed animals are coming for your kids | TechCrunch

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    Do AI chatbots packaged inside cute-looking plushies offer a viable alternative to screen time for kids?

    That’s how the companies selling these AI-powered kiddie companions are marketing them, but The New York Times’ Amanda Hess has some reservations. She recounts a demonstration in which Grem, one of the offerings from startup Curio, tried to bond with her. (Curio also sells a plushie named Grok, with no apparent connection to the Elon Musk-owned chatbot.)

    Hess writes that this is when she knew “I would not be introducing Grem to my own children.” As she talked to the chatbot, she became convinced it was “less an upgrade to the lifeless teddy bear” and instead “more like a replacement for me.”

    She also argues that while these talking toys might keep kids away from a tablet or TV screen, what they’re really communicating is that “the natural endpoint for [children’s] curiosity lies inside their phones.”

    Hess reports that she did, eventually, let her kids play with Grem — but only after she’d removed and hidden the voice box. They still talked to it and played games with it; then they were ready for some TV.

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    Anthony Ha

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  • Samsung is exploring new wearable form factors such as earrings and necklaces | TechCrunch

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    Samsung released its first fitness-focused smart ring last year, adding to its stable of wearables that’s mostly composed of smartwatches. The company is now looking to bolster its lineup with new wearables in different form factors, like glasses, earrings, and necklaces, CNN reported.

    Won-joon Choi, COO of Samsung’s mobile experience division, told CNN that the company wants to explore form factors that let users communicate and do things without needing their phones.

    “We believe it should be wearable, something that you shouldn’t carry, (that) you don’t need to carry. So it could be something that you wear, glasses, earrings, watches, rings, and sometime (a) necklace,” CNN quoted Choi as saying.

    Earlier this year, Samsung said it was building smart glasses with Google, and in May, the Korea Economic Daily reported that the company was working on an advanced microdisplay for AR glasses.

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    Ivan Mehta

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  • Samsung to launch a triple-folding phone this year | TechCrunch

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    Samsung just yesterday launched its newest slate of foldable smartphones, but that might not be the only foldable phones the company releases this year: The company is reportedly preparing to launch a triple-folding smartphone before the year’s end.

    Samsung’s consumer electronics head TM Roh told The Korea Times that the company aims to release such a device this year.

    “I expect we will be able to launch the tri-fold phone within this year. We are now focusing on perfecting the product and its usability, but we have not decided on its name. As the product nears completion, we are planning to make a final decision soon,” he told the publication.

    Separately, another unnamed executive confirmed to Android Authority that a tri-fold device by Samsung is ready to go into production.

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    Ivan Mehta

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