AI & Robotics

Airbnb is evolving in two directions: On the ground, it wants to compete with hotels by providing myriad services; online, it is using AI and people in its Airbnb network to aid travel discovery. As part of its fall product update, the company is adding services to the app it had launched last year, such as meal delivery, laundry, baby-gear rental, ski and boat rental in limited locations, and…

Anthropic devoted nearly a third of its hotly anticipated IPO prospectus to risk factors, according to the Financial Times, which says it has reviewed the filing in recent days. The filing details specific, worrisome behaviors that Anthropic says its models have already shown or could show, including attempts to “resist shutdown,” to “conceal or manipulate information,” and…

It’s only been a month since AI assistant startup Instinct announced a fundraise that valued it at $2.5 billion, and now the company has already raised another $1 billion from investors, including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Coatue, valuing the company at $10 billion. The news of the company’s fundraising efforts was reported earlier this month by The Information. In a…

When Alexandru Voica, head of corporate affairs at the video-generation startup Synthesia, sent me a link this summer to the newest addition to their PR team, I was surprised. It was an interactive virtual avatar of him, trained to answer common press questions about Synthesia, like what it does and how it works. The day before, I was on a panel where PR people asked me if I minded pitches that…