Maria Deutscher
Latest from Maria Deutscher
Reid Hoffman-backed AI drug discovery startup Manas AI launches with $24.6M
Manas AI Inc., a startup using artificial intelligence to discover new medicines, launched today with $24.6 million in initial funding. The investment was led by General Catalyst and Manas AI co-founder Reid Hoffman. Greylock Partners, where Hoffman was a general partner until 2023, participated as well. The billionaire LinkedIn co-founder launched Manas AI with Siddhartha ...
Meta upgrades its AI chatbot with more personalization features
Meta Platforms Inc. is rolling out a new version of its Meta AI chatbot that can customize its responses based on information provided by the user. The company announced the update in a blog post published this morning. Meta AI is an artificial intelligence assistant that rolled out for Facebook, Messenger and Instagram in 2023. ...
Applied Labs raises $4.2M for its AI-powered business automation platform
Artificial intelligence startup Applied Labs Inc. today announced that it has closed a $4.2 million seed round to support its growth efforts. Early-stage venture fund Abstract led the investment with participation from Point72 Ventures, Outlander and Tetra. Several angel investors participated as well. Applied Labs’ total outside funding now stands at $5.2 million. New York-based ...
Sam Altman reportedly backs $1B round for AI healthcare startup Retro Biosciences
Retro Biosciences Inc., a startup using artificial intelligence to discover new drugs, is reportedly raising $1 billion in funding to support its research. The Financial Times today cited sources as saying that OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman is participating in the investment. He previously provided the initial $180 million funding round that helped launch Retro. ...
New details emerge about Project Stargate as Meta discloses $60B+ AI investment
New details have emerged about Project Stargate, the $500 billion initiative through which OpenAI hopes to build a cluster of artificial intelligence data centers. The Financial Times reported on Thursday that the project currently lacks a fully developed plan. The initiative’s funding has not been finalized either, sources told the publication. OpenAI, SoftBank Group Corp. ...
OpenAI releases Operator agent as rivals enhance their AI services
OpenAI today introduced Operator, an artificial intelligence agent that can automatically perform tasks on users’ behalf. Two of the company’s highest-profile rivals announced their own product updates in conjunction. Perplexity AI Inc., a startup with a popular AI search engine, introduced an agent similar to Operator for its Android app. Anthropic PBC, which already offers ...
CMA opens investigations into Apple and Google over mobile practices
The U.K.’s antitrust regulator today opened investigations into Apple Inc. and Google LLC over their business practices in the mobile market. The Competition and Markets Authority, or CMA, is picking up where it left off last August. That month, the regulator closed a pair of probes into Apple and Google it had launched in 2021 ...
Hugging Face open-sources world’s smallest vision language model
Hugging Face Inc. today open-sourced SmolVLM-256M, a new vision language model with the lowest parameter count in its category. The algorithm’s small footprint allows it to run on devices such as consumer laptops that have relatively limited processing power. According to Hugging Face, it could potentially run in browsers as well. The latter feature is ...
Samsung debuts new Galaxy S25 smartphone series with Google’s Gemini AI assistant
Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. today debuted the Galaxy S25 smartphone series, its new flagship line of Android handsets. The product family comprises three devices: the top-end S25 Ultra, the mid-range S25 Plus and the entry-level S25. All three use Google LLC’s Gemini as the default artificial intelligence assistant, replacing Samsung’s internally developed Bixby chatbot. The ...
Google reportedly invests $1B+ in OpenAI rival Anthropic
Google LLC is investing more than $1 billion in Anthropic PBC, the Financial Times reported today. The cash infusion comes on top of the $2 billion that Google has already provided to the artificial intelligence developer. Separately, Anthropic is said to be raising $2 billion from a group of institutional investors led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. ...