Justin Maier, the Mormon-raised, Boise, Idaho-based founder of open-source AI platform Civitai, has had a wild year — and a rough few months.
His company was founded a year ago to support a community discovering, creating and sharing models and image-generated content based on the popular text-to-image generator Stable Diffusion. Since then, it has exploded from a four-person startup and less…
ChatGPT rival Pi launches on Android
December 9, 2023
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Inflection AI, the Palo Alto-based startup founded by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid…
US Senator Calls for Light Crypto Regulation That Doesn't Kill Innovation and Drive Companies Offshore
December 9, 2023
A U.S. senator says Congress needs to regulate the crypto industry “with a light touch that doesn’t kill innovation in the U.S.” Noting that crypto “has the potential to disrupt much of the traditional banking model,” he stressed that crypto regulation needs to be…
Farzam Ehsani, the founder and CEO of the South African crypto exchange Valr, has stated that institutional traders account for the bulk of the African continent’s crypto trading volumes. To support this point, Ehsani referred to Valr’s largest volumes which he said “are executed via our API by institutional traders deploying a host of programmatic trading strategies.”
African Regulators…
Japan Mulls Exempting Companies From Paying Taxes on Unrealized Cryptocurrency Gains
December 9, 2023
Japan is considering exempting corporations from paying unrealized gains income taxes related to cryptocurrency holdings. The measure, proposed as part of a reform in Japan’s tax code, would allow companies to avoid paying taxes for cryptocurrencies even if their market…
ChatGPT rival Pi launches on Android
December 9, 2023
Inflection AI, the Palo Alto-based startup founded by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, just announced that its AI chatbot ‘Pi’ is now available as a dedicated app on Android.
The move, which is expected to give billions of users…
In the equivalent of a mic drop, open source model startup Mistral AI released a new LLM today with nothing but a torrent link.
It immediately created community buzz for the stark contrast with Google’s Gemini release this week, or what OpenAI’s Andrej Karpathy called in an X-post “an over-rehearsed professional release video talking about a revolution in AI.”
One of Google’s demo…
Google’s Gemini AI launch marred by questions over capabilities
December 9, 2023
Google unveiled its much-anticipated artificial intelligence system Gemini on Wednesday, touting benchmarks suggesting it could compete with OpenAI’s industry-leading GPT-4 model in reasoning abilities. But the launch has quickly been overshadowed by accusations that the…
El Salvador has unveiled a new citizenship investment program, the “Freedom Visa,” open to a limited number of applicants. By investing $1 million in bitcoin or tether, participants can secure Salvadoran citizenship.
El Salvador’s Bold Bid: Citizenship for Crypto…
Venezuelan Attorney General Alleges Exxonmobil Financed Opposition to Essequibo's Ballot With Cryptocurrency
December 9, 2023
Tarek William Saab, the Venezuelan attorney general, stated that Exxonmobil, a U.S.-based oil and gas company, used intermediaries and cryptocurrency to finance actions against the ballot where Venezuelans were consulted about their position on the ongoing Essequibo claim. Fourteen arrest warrants were issued for individuals who allegedly conspired against the country.
Exxonmobil Used…
