TechCrunch AI

At Ai4, three of the world's most respected AI experts—Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, and Andrew Ng—debated regulation, open-source access, and how America can compete as China advances in Asia.

The AI chip boom just produced its biggest Wall Street moment yet. SK Hynix, a South Korean memory chip giant, said Friday it has raised $26.5 billion in its US market debut, the largest-ever US debut by a non-American company, topping Alibaba’s $25 billion IPO in 2014. Now SK Hynix and Samsung are being asked to build US factories.

AI drug discovery startup Converge Bio has raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from TLV Partners, Saras Capital, Vintage Investment Partners, and executives from Meta, OpenAI, and Wiz. The company uses generative AI trained on molecular data to accelerate drug development for pharma and biotech firms.

Two former Harvard students are launching smart glasses with an always-on microphone that records and transcribes conversations, displaying real-time info. Priced at $249, the Halo X glasses raise privacy concerns due to no indicator light. The startup has raised $1M.

Cloudflare published research alleging that AI startup Perplexity is ignoring robots.txt blocks and using deceptive methods to scrape content. Perplexity denies the claims.

American streets are incredibly dangerous for pedestrians. A San Carlos, California-based startup called Obvio thinks it can change that by installing cameras at stop signs — a solution the founders also say won’t create a panopticon. The company has raised a $22M Series A led by Bain Capital Ventures to expand beyond its first five cities in Maryland.