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Google’s Talking Tours brings an AI tourist guide to your phone

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Google's Talking Tours brings an AI tourist guide to your phone

Google has become one of the biggest names in the AI-based development ​​space on its own merits. The company is a pioneer in implementing artificial intelligence in mobile devices, offering advanced features and new possibilities. However, it has also implemented AI in its software products and services via Gemini models. Google’s new AI-powered virtual tourist guide is proof of that.

Since Google offers many products and services, you may not know them all. The Arts & Culture app is not as mainstream as Google Maps or Gmail, but it has a solid user base. As its name suggests, the app is a hub for multiple fun features and options related to art. For example, you can take virtual tours of cultural places (or “landmarks”) powered by Google Maps Street View.

Google develops an “AI tour guide” that offers commentary on what’s around you

Now, Google is integrating “Talking Tours” as a new AI-powered feature to the Arts & Culture app. Talking Tours harnesses the power of generative AI to give you audible commentary on artwork, locations, and other things of artistic value during virtual tours. The feature supports hotspots in up to 55 locations around the world.

That said, the feature isn’t limited to just Google’s predefined tours. Talking Tours can also generate commentary on what’s around you. To do this, the app will give you the option to take a 360-degree panorama that allows the AI to analyze the scene. Then, the “virtual tourist guide” will offer you helpful feedback on what’s in the scene.

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Works on Google’s Arts & Culture landmarks

Talking Tours isn’t compatible with just any location, though. You have to be in one of the 55 hotspots supported by virtual tours. However, it’s impressive that your phone can do the job without a tourist guide in one of those areas thanks to AI. According to Techradar, the feature still needs some polishing. But this is expected given that this is only the initial version.

Talking Tours is available as an experimental feature in the Arts & Culture app for both Android and iOS. You can also try it out on the web version of the service.

Google Arts & Culture AI tours

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Amazon reportedly bumped back its AI-powered Alexa to next year

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Amazon reportedly bumped back its AI-powered Alexa to next year

If you’re wondering what happened to Amazon’s new and improved version of its Alexa voice assistant, you’re not alone. reports that the new Alexa is still stuck in its developmental phase and Amazon has cut off access to its beta phase including its new “Let’s Chat” phase. As a result, a planned late 2024 launch has been pushed back to next year.

The problem seems to be with its large language models (LLMs). The new Alexa is designed to from users but it’s also more likely to fail doing some of the most basic things the old version could do quite easily like create a timer or operate smart lights, according to a follow up report from .

Amazon originally planned to unveil its new version of Alexa AI in October but now the timeline has been extended into next year. (As you might have noticed, October has come and gone.) The original timeline planned to premiere the next evolutionary step in Alexa’s advancement on October 17 but Amazon decided to pivot and used the date to show off its new line of Kindle ereaders. Then in August, news surfaced that the new Alexa would be powered by and come with a monthly subscription fee.

As ChatGPT began to rise in popularity in the summer of 2023, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wanted to see if Alexa could compete if it had an AI upgrade. Jassy reportedly started peppering Alexa with sports questions “like an ESPN reporter at a playoff press conference” and its answers were “nowhere near perfect.” It even made up a recent game score for Jassy.

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Despite this, Alexa passed the good enough stage and Jassy and his fellow executives felt their engineers could build a beta version by the early part of 2024. Unfortunately, Amazon wasn’t able to meet its deadline.

Even with the new deadline, the new Alexa still has a long way to go to fix its problems. Some employees told Bloomberg that the problem outside of Alexa’s innerworkings is with Amazon’s overstuffed management and a lack of “a compelling vision for an AI-powered Alexa.” .

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AI Investment Accelerates: Global Deal Counts Reach 2-Year High

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AI Investment Accelerates: Global Deal Counts Reach 2-Year High

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Global AI deal volumes reached 1,245 during Q3 2024, a level not seen since Q1 2022 reflecting how confident and resilient investors are about investing in AI.

With a 24% year-over-year growth, global AI deals far outpaced the -10 % quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) declines across the broader investment market. CB Insights notes in its State of AI Q3’24 Report that despite broader venture trends slowing down, investor resilience and confidence in AI remain strong.

CB Insights says that “while AI deals in Q3’24 included massive $1B+ rounds to defense tech provider Anduril and AI lab Safe Superintelligence, global AI funding actually dropped by 29% QoQ.” The 77% decline in funding from $1B+ AI rounds QoQ contributed to the 29% QoQ decline.

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The average AI deal size increased 28% this year, climbing from $18.4M in 2023 to $23.5M. Deal size gains this year are attributable to five $1B+ rounds this year, including xAI’s $6B Series B at a $24B valuation, Anthropic’s $2.8B Series D at an $18.4B valuation, Anduril’s $1.5B Series F at a $14B valuation, G42’s $1.5B investment from Microsoft and CoreWeave’s $1.1B Series C at a $19B valuation. CB Insights notes that these deals alone aren’t responsible for increasing the average entirely on their own, mentioning that the median AI deal size is up 9% in 2024 so far.

U.S.-based AI startups attracted $11.4B in investment across 566 deals in Q3, 2024 accounting for over two-thirds of global AI funding and 45% of global AI deals. European AI startups attracted $2.8B from 279 deals, and Asian AI startups received $2.1B from 316 deals.

AI deal volumes reach 1,245 in Q3 2024, marking the highest level since Q1 2022 amid resilient investor interest. Source: CB Insights, State of AI Q3 2024 Report.

Generative AI and industry-specific AI lead investments

The anticipated productivity gains and potential cost reductions that generative AI and industry-specific AI are delivering are core to investors’ confidence and driving more AI deals.  

Enterprises have already learned how to prioritize gen AI and broader AI investments that deliver measurable value at scale. That’s one of the primary factors continuing to fuel more venture investments over other opportunities. Gartner’s 2024 Generative AI Planning Survey reflects how impatient senior management is for results, correlating back to CB Insight’s findings.

One of the key findings from the Gartner Survey is that senior executives are expecting—and driving—gen AI projects to boost productivity by 22.6%, outpacing revenue growth at 15.8% and cost savings at 15.2%. While cost efficiency and revenue gains matter, Gartner predicts the most immediate and substantial impact will be on driving greater operational efficiency. Gartner predicts that enterprises that prioritize gen AI integration will see significant increases in both workflow optimization and financial performance.

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Projected impact of generative AI on productivity, revenue, and cost savings over the next 12–18 months. Source: Gartner Generative AI 2024 Planning Survey

CB Insights provides a comprehensive analysis of the deals completed in Q3, reflecting the growing dominance of gen AI and industry-specific AI investments. The following deals support this finding:

Gen AI investments in Q3:

  • Safe Superintelligence raised a massive $1 billion Series A round, indicating continued strong interest in large language models (LLM) and general-purpose AI systems.
  • Baichuan AI, a Chinese generative AI company, secured $688 million in Series A funding.
  • Moonshot AI, another gen AI startup, raised $300 million in a Series B round.
  • Codeium, a code generation AI company, became a unicorn with a $150 million Series C round.

Industry-specific AI investments in Q3:

  • Anduril, an AI-powered defense technology company, raised $1.5 billion in a Series F round, highlighting interest in AI for national security applications.
  • ArsenalBio secured $325 million for AI in biotechnology and drug discovery.
  • Helsing raised $488 million for AI applications in defense and security.
  • Altana AI received $200 million for AI in supply chain management and logistics.
  • Flo Health raised $200 million for AI-powered women’s health applications.

New AI unicorns more than doubled in Q3

Gen AI continues to be one of the primary catalysts driving the formation and growth of unicorns (private companies reaching $1B+ valuations). CB Insights found that the number of unicorns more than doubled QoQ, reaching 13 in the latest quarter. That’s 54% of the broader venture total for Q3 2024.

More than half of the AI unicorns launched last quarter are gen AI startups. They’re targeting a broad spectrum of areas, including AI for 3D environments (World Labs), code generation (Codeium), and legal workflow automation (Harvey). Among new GenAI unicorns in Q3’24, Safe Superintelligence, co-founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever received the most sizable valuation. The AI lab was valued at $5B after raising a $1B Series A round in September 2024.

In Q3 2024, AI unicorns account for 54% of all new unicorn births, with 13 out of 24 new billion-dollar companies emerging in the AI sector. Source: CB Insights, State of AI: Q3’24

Gen AI’s enterprise challenges are just beginning

The potential of gen AI and industry-specific AI to improve productivity, help drive new revenue streams and reduce costs keeps investors resilient and focused on results.

From the many organizations getting additional late-stage funding to startups and new unicorns, the challenge will be gaining adoption at scale and solidly enough to sustain recurring revenue while reducing costs.

With CIOs and CISOs looking to reduce the tool and app sprawl they already have, the most successful startups will have to find new ways to embed and integrate gen AI into existing apps and workflows. That’s going to be challenging, as every enterprise has its data management challenges, siloed legacy systems, and the need to update its data accuracy, quality and security strategies.

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Startups and unicorns that can take on all these challenges and improve their customers’ operations at the data level first are most likely to deliver the results investors expect.


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When to sell your company? Look for these signals

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US Dollar Bill Paper Airplanes with Dotted Chalk Path Creative Idea on Blue Background

Part of the mythology of Silicon Valley is the committed founder driving the company to a blockbuster IPO. In reality, startups are 16 times more likely to get acquired.

It’s not an outcome that’s frequently discussed, either. 

“It’s one of these things that a lot of people don’t really talk about. In Silicon Valley, we always talk about IPOs,” said Naveen Rao, VP of AI at Databricks and two-time founder, onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Thursday.

That silence can make the arduous process even more challenging for founders. “I’m so glad that this is being talked about as a topic on a panel, as a real path and a real outcome for founders, rather than the hallowed, inside secrets of investment bankers who strike a deal,” said Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, head of data clean rooms at Snowflake and a two-time founder.

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“Acquisitions statistically are more likely than IPOs — arguably more successful in many scenarios than IPOs — and certainly something that founders have to kind of mentally and physically prepare for. It’s an endurance journey,” she said.

Rao and Sivaramakrishnan each built and sold two companies: Rao sold Nervana to Intel for $408 million in 2016 and MosaicML to Databricks for $1.3 billion in 2023. Sivaramakrishnan sold Drawbridge to LinkedIn for around $300 million in 2019 and Samooha to Snowflake for $183 million.

Both founders said they didn’t start their companies with the intention of selling them, but when the right deal with the right company came along, it made sense.

“I personally believe that you should build a company and try to make that into a real entity,” Rao said. “If something comes along the way, great. If you try to set yourself up to sell the company, it’ll always be bent that way, like you’re always for sale. And I think the outcome will never be as good.”

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“You hear all these stories about ‘good companies are bought, not sold’ and ‘you should just keep going and have infinite perseverance,’” Dharmesh Thakker, general partner at Battery Ventures, told the audience.

“The reality is, most investors have a few hits that make 100x and they pay the fund. The rest of it, whether you make a 1x or a 0.5x or a 2x, it kind of doesn’t really matter. What we try to do is say, ‘Okay, if things aren’t going to be a 50 or 100x, let’s find them a good home early in the cycle,” he added. “It’s much easier to sell a company when you raise $10 million or $20 million and can still make a win-win situation for the founders and investors and get it done. It’s difficult when you have to raise hundreds of millions and then find out that things aren’t working.”

To determine when it’s time to soldier on and when it’s time to sell, Thakker analyzes the company using a three-point framework. 

First, he analyses the product: Is it something customers love and are using? If a company is struggling to gain traction in the market, it might warrant a pivot, or it might be worth cashing out.

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Second, he looks at the company’s sales and sales cycle. If the product isn’t moving or if it’s challenging for the sales team to complete deals, that might be a red flag.

Third, Thakker takes a look at the balance sheet. If money and runway is running short, that’s a pretty obvious signal that it might be time to look for a suitor.

“I’ve been fortunate to be an investor in MongoDB and Cloudera, Databricks, Confluent, Gong many others, where every time we had an acquisition offer, we looked at the framework and said, Are these three things true?” If the answer was yes, the Battery team encouraged the startup to remain independent. 

On occasion, the founders needed a moment to “refresh” and “revitalize,” he added. “In almost all cases, the eventual outcome was a lot better than selling the company.”

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But that’s not always the case. If two of the three items in Thakker’s framework aren’t positive, it’s worth reconsidering. Maybe customers bought the product but aren’t using it. Or maybe it’s a good fit but it’s not selling well. In both cases, the company can keep trying, but it’ll burn a lot of cash in the process. “In those cases, you should be much more open-minded, and the sooner you do it, the better off you are,” Thakker said.

When the time comes to sell, Thakker encourages founders to negotiate a deal that’s equitable not just for founders and investors, but their employees as well. “Let’s do right by employees,” he said. “Often, a big component of the acquisition is a retention package for all the employees. And inevitably, if you do that right, many of those employees come back, start a company, and you fund them the second and the third time. And the second and the third time, there are much better outcomes.”

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Agatha All Along rushed its journey down the ‘Witches’ Road’

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Agatha All Along rushed its journey down the ‘Witches’ Road’

When Agatha All Along was first announced back in 2021 as a music-heavy follow-up to WandaVision, it was hard to imagine how showrunner Jac Schaeffer could recreate the magic that made the original such an inspired piece of storytelling. WandaVision’s shows-within-a-show premise and clever use of practical effects, along with being one of the first Disney Plus series, helped to set it apart from previous Marvel projects. But Schaeffer also used WandaVision to weave beats from the franchise’s tentpole films into a cohesive narrative that helped bring the entire MCU into its multiversal era.

From its very first episode, Agatha All Along went to great lengths to show us that, even with WandaVision’s lead killed off in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, there was still plenty of — and perhaps too much — meat for Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness to chew on. The show’s two-part finale stuck the landing by living up to its title in more ways than one. Though the MCU’s interconnectedness has felt increasingly wobbly post-WandaVision, Agatha All Along ended in a way that feels poised to put (at least some of) the franchise back on track. And with another follow-up series already in development, it seems like Marvel has figured out that these specific stories are the ones it has the best shot of knocking out of the park.

This piece contains spoilers about Agatha All Along’s finale.

Image: Disney Plus / Marvel

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WandaVision briefly touched on covens in a flashback to the 17th century when Agatha killed her mother Evanora (Kate Forbes) and their group of sister witches. But Agatha All Along digs deeper, introducing characters like Agatha’s ex-lover Rio Vidal (Aubrey Plaza) and a mysterious teen who’s unable to share his name (Joe Locke). Because Agatha herself was already framed as a unique threat to magic users, it was difficult to suss out what kinds of dangers were lying in wait for the coven as she and the teen recruited fortune teller Lilia Calderu (Patti LuPone), potions master Jennifer Kale (Sasheer Zamata), protection witch Alice Wu-Gulliver (Ali Ahn), and ordinary Jersey woman Sharon Davis (Debra Jo Rupp) to their ranks. 

But Agatha All Along established a very clear focus for all of its players. The “Witches’ Road” — a realm entered by covens singing “The Ballad of the Witches’ Road” — and its ability to grant wishes to those who passed its trials gave the witches a reason to work together. And similar to how Agatha All Along’s send-up of Mare of Easttown was a callback to WandaVision’s sitcom spoofs, the Witches’ Road felt like the show’s biggest way of emphasizing the power of practical effects.

The Road, with all of its hand-painted leaves and trees that transformed the set into an otherworldly forest, hammered home how Agatha All Along’s creative team was smartly using its lean budget to create magic that felt more real than its predecessor’s. And the Road’s horror movie-inspired trials to test witches’ skills gave the show a narrative structure that was similar to but distinct enough from WandaVision’s to make it seem like Agatha All Along truly was the second chapter in a trilogy of stories rather than just a spinoff.

Image: Disney Plus / Marvel

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As tends to be the case with genre TV shows with big casts, Agatha All Along occasionally struggled to keep all of its plates spinning at the same speed as Agatha’s. Each witch got a chance to shine when facing a different trial, but some of their backstories — especially Jennifer’s and Alice’s — felt rushed and went largely unexplored. Some of the trials themselves were a bit shaggy. (At one point, the witches brew a poison antidote by dumping a bunch of ingredients into a sink.) As unwieldy as Agatha All Along sometimes was, though, it was also willing to kill characters off with a finality that helped it become sharper as the season progressed.

There was still some question as to what Agatha All Along’s big bad might end up being by the season’s midway point, when Sharon and Alice had already bitten the dust. But all of the show’s puzzle pieces began fitting together in episodes five and six as the teen was revealed to be Billy Maximoff / William Kaplan, one of the Scarlet Witch’s sons, who had possessed the body of a dead person.

One of the more impressive things about WandaVision was the way it managed to rework some of Marvel’s most convoluted Scarlet Witch and Vision comics arcs into a story that was concise and compelling enough to keep people who weren’t readers of the comics consistently engaged. Much of Billy’s comics lore — he and his brother wind up having their souls reabsorbed by the demon Mephisto before being reincarnated as strangers — is even wilder than his spiritual mother’s. But Agatha All Along made quick work of incorporating many of those beats with a story reminiscent of WandaVision’s “We Interrupt This Program,” which cleverly stepped outside of the series’ sitcom conceit.

Unlike Alice’s and Sharon’s arcs, it was clear early on that Agatha All Along was teasing something important with Lilia’s many moments of confusion stemming from her power to see the future. What was far less obvious, however, was that the show was using her to set the stage for a time-jumping episode that would provide key context for some of the show’s most satisfying twists: Rio was actually the personification of death in disguise.

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Image: Disney Plus / Marvel

Of all the Marvel characters who might pop up in a Disney Plus show, it was genuinely surprising to see Death given how, in the comics, she’s a cosmic entity most often associated with Thanos (and occasionally Spider-Man’s clone). But Death’s arrival also brought a fascinating gravity to everything happening to the coven. It added some context to the show’s rising body count and a new layer of intrigue to Agatha and Rio’s romantic past — another beat that could have benefitted from more fleshing out. Death gave Jennifer, Billy, and Agatha a clearly defined foe to rally against as they neared the Road’s end. And while the witches’ final battle against Death wasn’t all that much to write home about, it brought Agatha All Along’s own story and its deeper connections to WandaVision into much clearer focus.

Agatha All Along’s final two episodes establish how, right up until Agatha and Billy’s coven sang the ballad together and created a doorway, the Witches’ Road never truly existed. It was just a myth that began in Agatha’s early days of being a witch and a new mother to her son. Spreading the idea of the Road’s existence gave Agatha an easy way to lure witches into the woods under the pretense of opening a portal, only for her to steal their magic. That was her plan all along with the present-day coven, and she probably would have gotten away with it, too. But in the show’s final episode, Agatha returns as a ghost to tell Billy that things worked out very differently in this instance because of his desire for the Witches’ Road to be real.

That plot point and Agatha’s insistence on remaining with Billy as a spectral mentor crystalized the degree to which Agatha All Along really was continuing WandaVision’s story — pushing forward its characters and also what a Marvel show can do.

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Huawei quietly adds 61.44TB SSD option to its flagship storage solution — and now quotes 2:1 compressed capacities as it eyes LTO Tape market as well

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Huawei quietly adds 61.44TB SSD option to its flagship storage solution — and now quotes 2:1 compressed capacities as it eyes LTO Tape market as well

At its recent Huawei Connect event, the Chinese tech giant unveiled one of the highest-capacity storage solutions on the planet.

The OceanStor Pacific 9928 features 36 high-density 61.44TB NVMe SSDs per 2U chassis, each just 9.5mm thick, delivering up to 2.21PB of raw capacity.

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TCL’s The Frame alternative is 33% off today at Best Buy

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TCL's The Frame alternative is 33% off today at Best Buy
TCL NXTFrame A3000W Pro.
TCL

It’s not enough for a TV to just be able to turn on and display whatever movie, show, or video game you’re diving into that day. Cutting-edge sets are all about 4K and 8K resolution, advanced picture processing, and smart TV capabilities. Fortunately, most manufacturers are at the ready when it comes to state-of-the-art features, and one brand we’re always prepared to stand behind is TCL.

We’ve reviewed several TCL TVs over the last couple of years, so we can say, without a doubt, that these are some of the best LED-LCDs and QLEDs on the market. Most TCL TVs are relatively affordable, too, which is why we’d like to shine a light on this fantastic offer: Right now, when you order the TCL 55-inch NXTFRAME 4K QLED at Best Buy or Amazon, you’ll save $500. At full price, this model sells for $1,500.

Why you should buy the TCL NXTFRAME 4K QLED

The TCL NXTFRAME is designed to showcase professional art prints and personal media. Even its surface-level cosmetics give the impression that you’re looking at a matte canvas! Once connected to Wi-Fi, the NXTFRAME gives you access to TCL’s Art Library and AI art features. You’ll even be able to choose your own matte background, and the TV comes with a Flush Wall Mount for getting as snug to the wall as possible (as you would a painting or photograph).

The NXTFRAME is far more than an art showcase, though. With its 4K screen and 120Hz refresh rate (up to 144Hz with compatible gaming hardware), this TCL QLED delivers bright and colorful picture. On top of class-leading HDR support and numerous gaming optimizations (including ALLM and AMD FreeSync Premium), the TCL NXTFRAME runs Google TV OS for all things smart TV, including apps like Netflix and Disney+.

It’s hard to say how long this discount is going to stick around, but our experience with Best Buy deals and Amazon deals is they tend to vanish quickly. That being said, now might be the best time to save $500 on the TCL 55-inch NXTFRAME 4K QLED. You may also want to check out some of the other great TCL TV deals we’ve been finding.

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