Apps

Google Maps adds agentic features, including food ordering and hotel bookings

Google announced on Thursday that Google Maps’ “Ask Maps” feature is gaining a slew of new agentic capabilities, including the ability to order food, book hotels, and find event tickets. The tech giant is also bringing Personal Intelligence to Ask Maps, allowing the AI tool to personalize its responses by drawing on information from a […]

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Disney+ looks to TikTok creators to bring fan content to its short-form video feed

Disney is partnering with TikTok to bring Disney-focused fan content directly into the Disney+ app. The companies are starting with a pilot program in the U.S. in the coming months, and plan to expand to additional markets later on. As part of the agreement, fan-made videos on TikTok about Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars will

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MacPaw taps Liquid AI to offer on-device inference to devs building for its app store

Ukraine-based app developer MacPaw has partnered up with Liquid AI to power its products with locally hosted AI models, and eventually make the tech stack available to developers. The company is also preparing its SetApp app store for AI apps with credit-based plans for users. MacPaw is currently working on its AI assistant Eney, which

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Saudi Aramco backs India’s Mitti Labs to make Asia’s rice farming more water-resilient

As rising temperatures and shifting rainfall patterns put Asia’s water-intensive rice farming under pressure, Mitti Labs, a New York- and Bengaluru-headquartered climate-tech startup, has raised $9.5 million in an investment led by Aramco Ventures, Saudi Aramco’s venture arm, to expand across Asia with a platform that combines satellite imagery, AI, and field operations to help

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Wispr Flow is preparing to launch a meeting notetaker, updated terms suggest

Dictation app Wispr Flow is preparing to launch a meeting notetaker, according to the tool’s updated Terms of Service. The company also sent an email to its customers about the change in both its terms and its privacy policy to accommodate related features. Upon investigation, the refreshed terms have added sections about the use of

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Base Power raises another $1B to save the grid using backyard batteries

Where most energy storage companies look for big tracts of land near large connections to the grid, Base Power is betting that it can beat them all by putting batteries in people’s backyards instead. It appears to be paying off, with Base Power installing more than 500 megawatt-hours of storage over the past few years.

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Sequoia’s Shaun Maguire leads $1B round for nuclear startup Valar Atomics

Valar Atomics confirmed the whisperings that it was raising a giant round led by Sequoia on Monday. The startup’s founder and CEO Isaiah Taylor announced that the company has raised $1 billion in equity, with Sequoia partner Shaun Maguire joining its board, and that it also secured a $200 million line of credit from Erebor

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