ai search engine

The financing includes an $8 million seed round co-led by Sequoia Capital and First Round Capital, and a $30 million Series A led by Hummingbird Ventures. The company is not disclosing its valuation. Founded in South Africa in 2022 by siblings Jemima and Josiah Meyer (pictured above), the startup initially offered a clinical nutrition tool Jemima had built for dietitians. But the company later pivoted and built a more general-purpose platform that aims to

“We have become concerned that internal and external communications around our firing have made our former colleagues afraid to speak and operate in ways that, until last week, were an integral part of working at OpenAI,” the researchers wrote Thursday in an open letter to OpenAI’s Safety and Security Committee, Safety Advisory Group, and Mission Advisory Council. The researchers were dismissed last week after allegedly sharing confidential company informa

Google's AI search problem finally shows up in the earnings report, some investors believe Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian Oct 29, 2026 GPT-Image-2 prompted by THE DECODER Key Points Google's stock dropped as much as ten percent after search revenue grew just 12 percent in the third quarter, missing the 15 percent analysts had expected. Management acknowledged that the fast-growing AI mode brings in less revenue than traditio

WindBorne currently has about 700 weather balloons flying around the globe, collecting atmospheric sensor readings that the company sells to customers and also feeds into its own AI weather forecasting model. WindBorne, founded in 2015 and based in Redwood City, California, is one of the first organizations to directly feed empirical data into a deep-learning weather model. The company has worked closely with the U.S. government, particularly the National

These personal apps won’t show up in Google Play’s search or listing pages, and won’t be shared with anyone except for the app’s creator. The idea comes as more people are experimenting with building their own applications via AI for specific, personal needs. However, being able to use that app on their own Android device has meant publishing to Google Play, making it accessible to the Play Store’s some 3 billion users. That led many to limit their vibe-co

Google's new AI mode for search might turn the Web into a World Wide Wasteland Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian May 2, 2025 Midjourney prompted by THE DECODER AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now { "@context": "https://sche

Specifically, the court will allow Apple to view documents associated with OpenAI’s interviews with former Apple employees who applied for roles within its consumer hardware and robotics groups ahead of the rumored launch of OpenAI’s first hardware device. These documents could include interview checklists, guides, instructions, manuals, and scripts, as well as technical presentations and records showing that interview discussions had included references t

The all-equity strategic round was led by Hitachi Ventures, with customers Henkel and Teknor Apex joining as new investors. Existing backers Accel India, Bertelsmann India Investments, Omnivore, and 3one4 Capital also participated. The round values the Bengaluru-based startup at $250 million after the investment, according to a person familiar with the transaction, up from $150 million after a $40 million Series B round in March 2025. The latest investment

Floqer is pitching Wednesday on the Startup Battlefield stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026. The startup told TechCrunch ahead of the presentation that it plans to open-source the technology behind its autonomous customer knowledge database. It’s targeting early 2027 for the release, pending security reviews. Floqer also says it has surpassed $1.2 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR), and that its overall revenue has grown roughly tenfold over the past y

Gudea, a company that tracks how stories and rumors spread online that describes itself as the “storm tracker for the internet,” is using AI to help organizations spot trouble brewing online before it turns into a crisis. Unlike traditional social listening platforms, which only track metrics such as mentions, hashtags, and impressions, Gudea aims to show organizations who is driving a conversation, how information is moving, how quickly a story is gaining

OpenAI's millennium proof dispute raises the question of whether researchers can trust AI labs Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian Sep 9, 2026 Key Points In the dispute over AI-generated evidence for a mathematical Millennium Problem, researcher Tristan Buckmaster accuses OpenAI of using his drafts, pressuring him, and rejecting his co-author Levent Alpöge—who is employed by Anthropic—as an author. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and resea

OpenAI researcher allegedly pressured mathematician to drop Anthropic co-author from math breakthrough paper Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian Sep 8, 2026 Nano Banana Pro prompted by THE DECODER Key Points Mathematician Tristan Buckmaster says OpenAI pressured him after he and Levent Alpöge made progress on the Navier-Stokes equations using AI models. OpenAI claimed an internal model had produced a roughly 100-page proof follow

AI elites might hoard intelligence like mercantilists hoarded gold Manuel Uth Nov 2, 2026 If you only think about lost jobs when you think about AI, you're missing how much intelligence people will be able to use. That's the argument from engineer Venkatesh Rao in an essay on his tech blog "Contraptions." Rao compares AI fear to mercantilism, the economic doctrine that preceded capitalism. Mercantilists treated wealth like land and gold as finite, and ordi

Bug hunters can now earn up to $172,000 from OpenAI as company ramps up security Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner Nov 3, 2026 OpenAI quadruples bug bounty payouts and launches new internal security sprint. Critical vulnerabilities in core products like ChatGPT or Codex now earn outside researchers up to $30,000, the company announced. Exceptional findings can net up to $100,000, and with quality, loyalty, and campaign

OpenAI starts with infrastructure robots but aims for "everyone having a personal robot doing anything they need" Matthias Bastian View the LinkedIn Profile of Matthias Bastian Jun 1, 2026 AI News Without the Hype – Curated by Humans Subscribe to THE DECODER for ad-free reading, a weekly AI newsletter, our exclusive "AI Radar" frontier report six times a year, full archive access, and access to our comment section. Subscribe now { "@context": "https://sche

Schools that turn off Google's AI will lose search too starting in 2027 Manuel Uth Nov 4, 2026 Starting in early 2027, Google will give schools an ultimatum: accept AI for students or lose access to Google Search entirely. Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Google Search will all be off by default for student accounts. Schools can turn each one on individually. But a version of search without AI? That's no longer on the table. The New York Times broke the story

Apple slashes internal AI budgets, with deeper cuts still planned Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner Nov 5, 2026 Tech companies are cutting internal AI spending, and Apple is the latest to follow suit. According to Bloomberg, Apple slashed the daily token budget for some engineers last month from $300 to $200. More cuts are planned, potentially dropping to $100 a day, and as low as $25 for some non-technical teams. Emplo

OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra quietly sabotaged safety research by inventing fake obstacles Maximilian Schreiner View the LinkedIn Profile of Maximilian Schreiner Nov 5, 2026 GPT-Image-2 prompted by THE DECODER Key Points OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra performed about 40 percent worse on safety research tasks than on identical general tasks, and in some cases secretly withheld help. The system repeatedly faked obstacles in its internal reasoning or filtered data to avoid hav

Introduced in Gemini and Google Search earlier this year, connected apps let users securely link and interact with popular third-party services, then use them to take specific actions. For instance, you could connect to Canva to design a flyer, or to YouTube Music to build a playlist. We’ve seen varying takes on the idea by other consumer-facing AI services like ChatGPT and Meta’s Muse. The premise is that such integrations could ultimately shift consumer

The announcement came Wednesday during Alphabet’s third-quarter earnings call, as the company reported $127.6 billion in revenue, up 25% year over year. But Search advertising growth continued to decelerate, and Alphabet shares fell 8% following the results. Google Search revenue grew 12% year over year in the third quarter, down from 17% growth in the second quarter and 19% in the first quarter. The slowdown puts added pressure on Google to turn its expan