Paul Sawers, Author at TechCrunch

With Functional Source License, Sentry wants to grant developers freedom ‘without harmful free-riding’

Paul Sawers — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 18:43:04 +0000

Yet another software license is vying for the attentions of SaaS companies seeking to align themselves with the open source realm, without compromising their commercial endeavors. Sentry, an app performance monitoring (APM) company that helps companies such as Disney, Microsoft and Cisco track and resolve laggy or buggy applications, has transitioned its core product to […]

Open source Notion alternative AppFlowy gets big-name backers and lands on the cloud

Paul Sawers — Mon, 20 Nov 2023 10:17:37 +0000

A new startup is targeting the lucrative workplace productivity space with an open source approach to project and knowledge management — and it has received backing from a who’s who of investors from across the technology spectrum. AppFlowy, as the company is called, has raised $6.4 million in funding from a slew of renowned founders, […]

Strava launches Flyover, an aerial 3D video recap of all your GPS activities

Paul Sawers — Wed, 15 Nov 2023 14:00:35 +0000

Strava is introducing a new feature called Flyover, which allows users to replay their activities via a 3D video map. Flyover is powered by Fatmap, a 3D mapping platform that Strava acquired earlier this year. The feature is available to premium Strava subscribers only, and is accessible by clicking on an individual GPS-powered activity, then […]

EU business crowdfunding is now bound by bloc-wide regulations

Paul Sawers — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 10:50:32 +0000

All business crowdfunding platforms wishing to operate within the European Union (EU) must now comply with a new EU-wide regulatory framework that brings a uniform set of rules to the bloc. Crowdfunding platforms that had previously been greenlighted to operate had until today to receive authorization under the new rules. Prior to these updated regulations, […]

GitHub teases Copilot enterprise plan that lets companies customize for their codebase

Paul Sawers — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 17:10:04 +0000

GitHub today announced plans for an enterprise subscription tier that will allow companies to fine-tune its Copilot pair-programmer based on their internal codebase. The news constituted part of a number of notable tidbits the Microsoft-owned company revealed at its annual GitHub Universe developer conference today, including a new partner program as well as providing a […]

Google-led App Defense Alliance joins Linux Foundation, with Meta and Microsoft joining too

Paul Sawers — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 14:04:13 +0000

The App Defense Alliance (ADA), an initiative set up by Google back in 2019 to combat malicious Android apps infiltrating the Play app store, has joined the Joint Development Foundation (JDF), a Linux Foundation project focused on helping organizations working on technical specifications, standards and related efforts. The App Defense Alliance had, in fact, already […]

Meta taps Hugging Face for startup accelerator to spur adoption of open source AI models

Paul Sawers — Wed, 08 Nov 2023 12:02:47 +0000

Facebook parent Meta is teaming up with Hugging Face and European cloud infrastructure company Scaleway to launch a new AI-focused startup program at the Station F startup megacampus in Paris. The underlying goal of the program is to promote a more “open and collaborative” approach to AI development across the French technology world. The timing […]

Decentralized communication protocol Matrix shifts to less-permissive AGPL open source license

Paul Sawers — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 16:21:06 +0000

Element, the company and core developer behind the decentralized communication protocol known as Matrix, has announced a notable license change that will make the open source project just that little bit less appealing for companies looking to build on top of it. The London-based company revealed that the core Matrix server, Synapse, its alternative server […]

Daytona wants to be an enterprise-grade GitHub Codespaces

Paul Sawers — Mon, 06 Nov 2023 10:00:27 +0000

A new company is setting out to “fill the enterprise void” left by GitHub Codespaces,” with a platform that enables companies to bring all their development environment endeavors in-house. Cloud-based coding is all the rage, a trend that has accelerated in recent years with the introduction of browser-based integrated developer environments (IDE) such as GitHub […]

Meta and Amazon settle UK antitrust probes over use of third-party data to benefit marketplaces

Paul Sawers — Fri, 03 Nov 2023 13:46:38 +0000

The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) today announced that it has accepted proposals from Facebook’s parent Meta and Amazon to limit how they use data gathered from their respective marketplaces to benefit their own products and bottom lines. The CMA has been probing both companies as part of separate investigations, though the cases bore […]

Charm offensive: Google’s Gradient backs this startup to bring more pizzazz to the command line

Paul Sawers — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 11:00:40 +0000

A young startup is setting out to transform the command line interface (CLI) into something a little more fitting for the modern age — something a little more glamorous. Charm is a four-year-old company founded by former Apple, Last.fm, and TweetDeck engineer Toby Padilla, alongside Christian Rocha, who formerly served as head of voice at […]

New Facebook Stories API helps creators share directly from third-party desktop or web apps

Paul Sawers — Thu, 02 Nov 2023 10:21:49 +0000

Meta is introducing a new API that makes it easier to create and share a Facebook Story directly from a third-party desktop or web app. The social networking ad titan first introduced Stories to the main Facebook app in 2017, emulating a feature it had added to Instagram the previous year as well as to […]

Meta’s Yann LeCun joins 70 others in calling for more openness in AI development

Paul Sawers — Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:56:30 +0000

On the same day the U.K. gathered some of the world’s corporate and political leaders into the same room at Bletchley Park for the AI Safety Summit, more than 70 signatories put their name to a letter calling for a more open approach to AI development. “We are at a critical juncture in AI governance,” […]

President Biden issues executive order to set standards for AI safety and security

Paul Sawers — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 13:39:30 +0000

U.S. President Joe Biden has issued an executive order (EO) that seeks to establish “new standards” for AI safety and security, including requirements for companies developing foundation AI models to notify the federal government and share results of all safety tests before they’re deployed to the public. The fast-moving generative AI movement, driven by the […]

AWS announces ‘sovereign cloud’ to support data residency in Europe

Paul Sawers — Wed, 25 Oct 2023 11:45:46 +0000

Amazon is joining the list of Big Tech companies to introduce a dedicated independent cloud for Europe, with news that it’s working on the “AWS European Sovereign Cloud” for governments and highly regulated industries across Europe. AWS’s cloud rival Google partnered with Deutsche Telekom’s IT services and consulting subsidiary T-Systems more than two years ago to […]

From zero to Employment Hero

Paul Sawers — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 22:59:47 +0000

In a startup world where down rounds prevail and much beyond low-million Series A raises are practically (but not totally) unheard of, those rare megabuck funding rounds stand out just that little bit more today than they did even a year ago. With that in mind, Employment Hero, an Australia-based recruitment, HR and payroll platform, today […]

ChatGPT officially gets web search as DALL-E 3 integration arrives in beta

Paul Sawers — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 10:32:40 +0000

OpenAI has formally launched its internet-browsing feature to ChatGPT, some three weeks after re-introducing the feature in beta after several months in hiatus. ChatGPT, the generative AI chatbot that has taken the world by storm these past 12 months, has historically been limited to data up to September, 2021 — rendering it useless as a […]

London’s not calling for Par Equity, as VC firm targets £100M at UK startups in the north

Paul Sawers — Sun, 15 Oct 2023 23:00:08 +0000

Any conversation centered on the U.K. tech scene often has a strong center of gravity around the south of the country — to many, “the U.K.” and “London” may as well be the same thing. A recent House of Commons Committee report on venture capital allocation pointed to “uneven levels of VC investment” across the […]

Why Microsoft had to relinquish Activision’s cloud-gaming rights outside Europe

Paul Sawers — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 13:15:51 +0000

Microsoft has finally done it — nearly two years after the Xbox-maker first revealed plans to acquire gaming giant Activision Blizzard in a mammoth $68.7 billion deal, it has managed to secure U.K. regulatory clearance, meaning that Activision will now be a fully fledged subsidiary. But the antitrust clearance comes with one notable caveat. For […]

It’s official: Microsoft closes $68.7B Activision Blizzard acquisition as UK approves restructured deal

Paul Sawers — Fri, 13 Oct 2023 06:13:19 +0000

After a prolonged antitrust tussle, Microsoft’s near-two-year attempt to buy gaming giant Activision is finally happening, after the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) accepted a restructured proposal that addresses the CMA’s concerns about Microsoft dominating the cloud gaming market. The crux of Microsoft’s concession to get the deal over the line lies squarely in […]