Frederic Lardinois, Author at TechCrunch

Google is changing how Chrome detects and warns you about unsafe sites

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 16:01:37 +0000

Google announced a major change to its Safe Browsing feature in Chrome today that will make the service work in real time by checking against a server-side list — all without sharing your browsing habits with Google. Previously, Chrome downloaded a list of known sites that harbor malware, unwanted software and phishing scams once or […]

IO River lets you mix and match CDNs without the hassle

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 16:00:07 +0000

Content delivery networks (CDN) have changed. They used to be platforms for efficiently delivering static files — and little else. These days, however, virtually every CDN service is adding edge compute services, security tools and more on top of their core delivery networks. As a result, it’s become more challenging for users to switch between […]

Deepgram’s Aura gives AI agents a voice

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 12 Mar 2024 15:00:57 +0000

Deepgram has made a name for itself as one of the go-to startups for voice recognition. Today, the well-funded company announced the launch of Aura, its new real-time text-to-speech API. Aura combines highly realistic voice models with a low-latency API to allow developers to build real-time, conversational AI agents. Backed by large language models (LLMs), […]

Brevian is a no-code enterprise platform for building AI agents

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 07 Mar 2024 17:30:43 +0000

Sunnyvale-based Brevian wants to make it easier for business users to build custom AI agents. Currently, the company is focused on support teams and security analysts — areas where both the use cases and training sets are well defined — but plans to expand to other areas over time. Brevian is coming out of stealth […]

Numbers Station lets business users chat with their data

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 17:30:31 +0000

Numbers Station, a startup that is using large language models (LLMs) to power its data analytics platform, is launching its first cloud-based product today: the aptly named Numbers Station Cloud, which is now in early access. With this service, virtually any user in an enterprise can analyze their internal data using Numbers Station’s chat interface. […]

Ubicloud wants to build an open source alternative to AWS

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 14:00:58 +0000

Using the large cloud computing providers is convenient, but not exactly cheap. Ubicloud, a new startup founded by the team behind Citus Data, which Microsoft acquired in 2019, wants to change the dynamics by offering a layer of core cloud computing services on top of affordable bare-metal servers from providers like Hetzner, OVH Cloud, Leaseweb […]

Cycode acquires Bearer to accelerate its move into AI-enhanced security remediation

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 13:00:05 +0000

Cycode is a well-funded startup that offers an end-to-end application security posture management platform — that is, a tool that continuously scans code (and the libraries it relies on) for potential security vulnerabilities throughout the software development life cycle and then helps remediate those issues. Today, the company announced that it has acquired Bearer, a […]

Microsoft’s Windows 11 Copilot gets smarter with new plugins and skills

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 18:00:46 +0000

You may not have a Copilot key on your PC’s keyboard yet, but if you’re a Windows 11 user, you’ll soon be able to use Copilot for a lot more everyday tasks on your desktop. Starting today, Microsoft is adding skills that will allow Copilot to change more Windows 11 settings for you and plugins […]

Google brings Stack Overflow’s knowledge base to Gemini for Google Cloud

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 29 Feb 2024 14:00:06 +0000

Developer Q&A site Stack Overflow is launching a new program today that will give AI companies access to its knowledge base through a new API, aptly named OverflowAPI. The launch partner for this is Google, which will use Stack Overflow’s data to enrich Gemini for Google Cloud and provide validated Stack Overflow answers in the […]

GitHub’s Copilot Enterprise is now generally available at $39 a month

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 27 Feb 2024 16:00:57 +0000

GitHub today announced the general availability of Copilot Enterprise, the $39/month version of its code completion tool and developer-centric chatbot for large businesses. Copilot Enterprise includes all of the features of the existing Business plan, including IP indemnity, but extends this with a number of crucial features for larger teams. The highlight here is the […]

Chrome gets a built-in AI writing tool powered by Gemini

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 22 Feb 2024 17:00:15 +0000

Google Chrome is getting a new AI writing generator today. At its core, this Gemini-powered tool is essentially the existing “Help me write” feature from Gmail, but extended to the entire web and powered by one of Google’s latest Gemini AI models. The company first announced this new tool in January and it remains in […]

NodeShift wants to challenge the hyperscalers with its decentralized cloud

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 18:10:37 +0000

When the large cloud providers have excess compute capacity, they tend to discount it through programs like AWS’s and Azure’s spot instances. Any time a server idles, it isn’t making the company money, after all. NodeShift aims to take this concept and expand it well beyond the big clouds — and with stronger guarantees — […]

Microservices orchestration platform Orkes raises $20M Series A

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 15:00:14 +0000

Back in 2016, Netflix open sourced Conductor, its microservices orchestration platform, but last December, it announced that it would discontinue maintaining it. Thankfully, for the many companies that rely on it, the creators of Conductor had previously left the company to launch Orkes, a startup that provides an enterprise-grade microservices platform based on the open […]

Google launches two new open LLMs

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 21 Feb 2024 13:00:55 +0000

Barely a week after launching the latest iteration of its Gemini models, Google today announced the launch of Gemma, a new family of lightweight open-weight models. Starting with Gemma 2B and Gemma 7B, these new models were “inspired by Gemini” and are available for commercial and research usage. Google did not provide us with a […]

Knock takes the pain out of building notification workflows

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 17:30:12 +0000

Notifications may seem like a solved problem. You’re probably getting more than you want already, after all. The two founders of Knock, Sam Seely and Chris Bell, argue that while a lot of companies have solved the “last-mile delivery problem,” there is more work to be done. While products like Twilio and SendGrid may offer […]

Google makes more Gemini models available to developers

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 15:00:33 +0000

Google is expanding the range of Gemini large language models it is making available to developers on its Vertex AI platform today. Gemini 1.0 Pro (which was still known as Gemini Pro 1.0 only a week ago — because Google is very good at branding) is now generally available after being in public preview for […]

Kong’s new open source AI Gateway makes building multi-LLM apps easier

Frederic Lardinois — Thu, 15 Feb 2024 14:00:22 +0000

API company Kong is launching its open source AI Gateway, an extension of its existing API gateway that allows developers and operations teams to integrate their applications with one or more large language models (LLMs) and access them through a single API. On top of this, Kong is launching several AI-specific features prompt engineering, credential […]

KTrust launches an automated red team for Kubernetes security

Frederic Lardinois — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 11:00:54 +0000

KTrust, a Tel Aviv–based security startup, is taking a different approach to Kubernetes security from many of its competitors in the space. Instead of only scanning Kubernetes clusters and their configurations for known vulnerabilities, KTrust is taking a more proactive approach. It deploys an automated system that tries to hack into the system. This allows […]

Akamai extends its edge-computing platform as it looks to challenge AWS, Azure and GCP

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 21:01:03 +0000

Akamai today announced the launch of its Gecko “Generalized Edge Compute” platform. This new initiative will increase the company’s cloud-computing network with an additional 10 regions worldwide in the first quarter of this year and then another 75 throughout the rest of the year. Ever since it acquired Linode in 2022, Akamai has made it […]

Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo

Frederic Lardinois — Tue, 13 Feb 2024 20:23:35 +0000

After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product strategy, TechCrunch has learned. Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and its Online Footprint Scrubber. Mozilla will also shut down Hubs, […]