artificial intelligence
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Here are the 59 startups that demoed at Y Combinator Winter ’16 Demo Day 2
“Food, housing, healthcare, transportation. Life essentials made better and more affordable.” These are the types of startups that partner Paul Buchheit said were demoing today at Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 Demo Day 2. Yesterday, we covered the first 60 startups from the batch, and picked our 7 favorites. Plus, check out our picks for the top 8 startups from these 59.… Read More
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The top 7 startups from Y Combinator Winter ’16 Demo Day 1
We asked investors what their favorite startups were from the 60 that launched at Y Combinator’s Winter 2016 Demo Day 1. After huddling with our writers and adding our input, here are TechCrunch’s picks for the 7 most promising companies from the batch, plus an honorable mention. Additional reporting by Greg Kumparak and Megan Rose Dickey. Read More
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Why Quartz’s news app is so much bigger than news
Have you tried the Quartz News app, yet? Please do. Imagine a text conversation with a bot that sends you a news topic. You’re then presented with two choices: Either tap a string of relevant (and surprisingly entertaining) emojis, which is like pressing “learn more,” or tap an “anything else?” button to have another topic served. Read More
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Check out the new AI-powered TechCrunch news bot on Telegram messenger
We’re excited to announce the launch of our first artificial intelligence-powered news bot on the encrypted messaging platform Telegram. We teamed up with Chatfuel to build the bot, and after a month of development we’re thrilled to show it off to the world. If you are already on Telegram, you can check out the bot by following this link (or search for “techcrunchbot”… Read More
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Zuckerberg Education Ventures backs learning assistant camera app Volley
“This is so fast it feels like cheating” students tell Volley. The education startup’s app lets students point their phone’s camera at a textbook page or piece of homework, and instantly see resources about key facts and tricky parts, prerequisites, and links to snippets of online classes or study guides that could help. But rather than manually cobble this info… Read More
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Mapillary raises $8M to take on Google’s Street View with crowdsourced photos
A startup out of Sweden called Mapillary is using crowdsourced photos to create an open and more intelligent version of Google’s Street View, and today it announced a Series A round of funding from an impressive list of backers to help make that ambition a reality. The $8 million from Atomico, Sequoia, LDV Capital, and PlayFair will be used to expand operations outside of its home… Read More
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Mozilla tests the waters for Firefox OS IoT apps, including a Samantha-style virtual assistant
Back in December, Mozilla called it a day with its failed Firefox OS for mobile business, and said it would pivot the technology into a new Internet of Things strategy. Amid a good dose of skepticism that a platform (and organization) that failed in one area can succeed in another that is arguably even more complex, Mozilla has laid out the first projects in its IoT shortlist. Get ready for… Read More
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IBM and SoftBank Launch First Japanese Language APIs for Watson
A year ago, SoftBank teamed up with IBM to bring its supercomputer Watson to Japan. Now Watson has learned enough Japanese for developers to take advantage of its new skills. Microsoft’s New App “Fetch!” Tells You What Kind Of Dog You Are (And It Can ID Your Dog, Too)
Even Microsoft’s new image recognition app has no idea what kind of dog I have. Oh well! If you don’t own a mixed-breed mutt saved from the kill shelter, however, you might have fun with the company’s latest Microsoft Garage project: Fetch!, a new iPhone app that looks at photos of dogs to identify its breed. Or, in the case when it can’t make an exact match, the app… Read More
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Microsoft Confirms SwiftKey Acquisition (For $250M In Cash)
Microsoft today confirmed that it has acquired SwiftKey — a startup based out of London that makes keyboard apps for Android and iOS devices and is already installed and used on some 300 million devices. The terms of the deal are not being disclosed but sources close to the deal tell us it’s $250 million in cash after Microsoft beat out other interested buyers, which we’ve… Read More
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