Sesame, the startup behind the viral virtual assistant Maya, releases its base AI model

AI company Sesame has released the base model that powers Maya, the impressively realistic voice assistant. The model, which is 1 billion parameters in size (“parameters” referring to individual components of the model), is under an Apache 2.0 license, meaning it can be used commercially with few restrictions. Called CSM-1B, the model generates “RVQ audio codes” from text […]
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Rad Power Bikes already has a new CEO

Rad Power Bikes has named a new CEO, just a few days after its previous leader stepped down. The e-bike company has tapped Kathi Lentzsch, who has spent the last few decades helping turn around underperforming companies in both the consumer and B2B spaces. The change comes as Rad Power continues to shift away from […]
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Y Combinator’s police surveillance darling Flock Safety raises $275M at $7.5B valuation

Flock Safety and one of its long-time VCs, Bedrock Capital, announced Thursday that the startup raised a fresh $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation. Flock makes computer vision-enabled video surveillance technology used by law enforcement as well as businesses, property management companies, and so on. It’s best known for its automatic license plate recognition […]
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Toast, Shift4 lead drop in fintechs as investors exit stocks tied to consumer spending

Fintech stocks are under pressure as investors worry about companies heavily reliant on consumer spending.

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Y Combinator urges the White House to support Europe’s Digital Markets Act

Y Combinator, one of the world’s most prolific startup accelerators, sent a letter on Wednesday urging the Trump Administration to openly support Europe’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), a wide-ranging piece of legislation that aims to crack open Big Tech’s market power. The DMA designates six tech companies as “gatekeepers” to the internet — Alphabet, Amazon, […]
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Oracle is reportedly a top choice for helping run TikTok

TikTok has until April to finalize a sale to a U.S.-based buyer, yet uncertainties about the future of the short-form video app remain. However, a new report has emerged, suggesting that Oracle is the leading candidate to serve as the cloud technology partner for managing TikTok in the U.S., according to The Information.  Sources including […]
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Bluesky quickly sold out of the T-shirt its CEO wore to troll Mark Zuckerberg

When Bluesky CEO Jay Graber took the SXSW stage this week, she managed to make fun of Mark Zuckerberg without mentioning Meta at all. Her black T-shirt was emblazoned with black text stretching across the chest and sleeves, similar to the style of a T-shirt that the billionaire founder wore at an event last year. […]
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What’s Lost When the Human Drivers Are Gone?

This week on Uncanny Valley, we look ahead into a future where driverless cars are mainstream.

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UK Watchdog Slams Apple & Google for Stifling Mobile Browser Innovation

If Apple and Google don’t make it easier for users to discover third-party browsers, the companies will not have as much of a competitive need to improve Safari and Chrome.

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Ex-Twitter AI ethics lead Rumman Chowdhury is worried about Musk’s impact on the federal government

Rumman Chowdhury, a data scientist, nonprofit founder, and former director of Twitter’s machine ethics team, had strong words for Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) during an SXSW panel on Thursday. “When your funding is frozen and you don’t know if you’re gonna be fired, and there’s this, like, absolutely unhinged person […]
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