Mercedes-Benz received a permit from California regulators to sell or lease vehicles with a conditional automated driving system for hands-free driving on certain highways. Mercedes-Benz received a deployment permit for its Drive Pilot system from the California DMV on Thursday. The hands-off, eyes-off system can be used on certain California …

Adobe announced today that enterprise customers can customize its Firefly generative image generator with their own branded assets. In addition, enterprise users will be able to access Firefly from Adobe Express, formerly Adobe Spark. “Enterprise leaders expect content demands to increase by five-fold over the next two years, making it …

Lens Protocol, a web3 product that creates a decentralized social networking ecosystem, raised $15 million, its team told TechCrunch exclusively. Aave, a web3 technology company, is building a protocol that lets users lend and borrow crypto tokens. (Aave raised $49 million.) Aave CEO Stani Kulechov said the protocol aims to …

“Colombia’s largest coffee producer” Green Coffee Company raised $25 million in Series C equity funding. Coffee is worth $493 billion worldwide. Smaller coffee companies have emerged alongside legacy brands. I recently reported on Chamberlain Coffee raising venture capital, joining Fellow, Blank Street, and many celebrity coffee brands. Compound Foods and …

LinkedIn launched its own ad suggestion tool weeks after Meta launched a suite of generative AI-based tools to help advertisers create different campaigns. The company suggests ad introductory text based on a marketer’s LinkedIn page and Campaign Manager settings like objective, targeting criteria, and audience. Microsoft-owned LinkedIn uses OpenAI models …

Meta is testing a broadcast-based messaging feature called Channels on WhatsApp, similar to a recent Instagram update, to give its 2 billion users more conversational options. The company also hopes to make money from this feature. WhatsApp will add an Updates tab for Channels messages. On Instagram, Meta announces channels …

On Tuesday, Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com and the main contributor to open-source WordPress, launched an AI assistant for the popular content management system. The assistant integrates seamlessly with WordPress.com and Jetpack-powered sites, according to the company. Add an “AI Assistant” block to your post or page. After typing a …

Instabase, a startup that develops apps to understand and analyze “unstructured” data, raised $45 million in a Series C round led by Tribe Capital and including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), New Enterprise Associates, and Spark Capital. Instabase’s valuation doubled to $2 billion as it invested more in generative AI. “At Instabase, …

Never met. Never spoke. The Vision Pro isn’t for you, I’m sure. It’s a gamble. It’s not for most people, like you. The headset costs $3,500. Most people know a product’s price, so it’s probably too expensive. Vision Pro is The media, including us, reported it. Apple sells consumer goods. …

On Wednesday, Byju’s unveiled three transformer models to improve service quality and streamline student learning and personalization as the edtech giant bets big on AI to transform its business. Badri, a predictive AI model, predicts when students may struggle with certain concepts. This model proactively suggests ways to fill knowledge …