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Ossia’s wireless power tech, Cota, has been kicking for a long time now. In fact, we wrote about the thing nearly a decade ago. Certainly the promises attached to the technology are intriguing: over-the-air power at a distance, without a line of sight. So, where does one sign up?

Today at CES, the Pacific Northwestern firm announced a step toward bringing it to more users. It’s taking the form of the Universal Base, a white labeled product that receives power from a nearby Cota Home node. The technology can be built into a new product or added to an existing one.

“Cota is unique in that it automatically sends wireless power over the air safely and reliably, even with people in the room or on the move,” says Ossia CEO Doug Stovall. “Ossia works with companies to license the Cota technology and complete rapid integrations, like this one, which helps expedite time to market. The Cota Universal Base is a springboard for organizations that wish to cut the cord on plug-in charging pads and surfaces and move to Real Wireless Power.”

The first commercially available product to utilize the set up will be the universal charging base for the ARCHOS Cota Wireless Power Security Camera. The home security camera can be used untethered, receiving power from the Home node, rather than relying on just battery power. As far as applications go, security cameras make sense. They’re always on and can be a bit tough to wire. Otherwise you have to change the thiing.

Per the company,

It comes with a Cota transmitter that plugs into a wall outlet and continuously charges up to five cameras within a 30-foot range of the Ossia transmitter. Homeowners can monitor power levels and camera footage from a mobile app. This is a seamless user experience that requires no management. An event captured on the security camera can trigger the camera app with nothing extra to download.

Pre-orders for the Cota Universal Base will open early this year. It will start shipping closer to the end of the year.

Ossia is taking its wireless power tech to consumers with a new charging base by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

There isn’t much hope that 2023’s fundraising environment will be better for startups than last year’s. It seems likely that it will get worse before it gets better — even at the earliest stages, which have largely been insulated thus far.

But for burgeoning companies capable of building business models that reflect current conditions and rely less on venture capital to grow, the frosty environment could wind up being a good thing down the line.

While some sectors need to raise a lot of capital to build a viable business, like space and defense or manufacturing, most don’t — but that didn’t stop companies from collecting oodles of dollars during the past few record-breaking years. But it’s better to just raise the smallest amount you need, which many startups are now discovering.

“I can’t tell you how many companies I’ve spoken to that are in a tough environment because they painted themselves into a corner because of their fundraising history and valuation,” Rachel ten Brink, a general partner at pre-seed-focused Red Bike Capital, told TechCrunch. “They started in 2017 and raised at 100x revenue. It’s a SaaS company; what are they doing from here?”

But now that funding isn’t as easy to come by, early-stage founders may have the opportunity to avoid some of those pitfalls.

Frosty fundraising environment may change early startups’ DNA for the better by Rebecca Szkutak originally published on TechCrunch

At CES, Amazon today announced that a number of new devices from four manufactureres will soon join its Sidewalk network. Sidewalk, Amazon’s long-range, low-bandwidth IoT mesh network that is powered by sharing a small portion of a user’s bandwidth from devices like the company’s Echo speakers and Ring cameras, currently supports the Tile tracker, Amazon’s own Ring cameras and sensors, as well as Level smart locks and CareBand’s senior-care systems. Now, you can add sensors from Browan and New Cosmos, Meshify and Deviceroy’s Aria to this list, though only the Deviceroy system, which will connect solar inverters to the internet, is currently available, with the rest launching later this year.

For the most part, these four new partners are not exactly household names. Amazon’s Tanuj Mohan, the company’s GM and CTO for Sidewalk, however, told me that a number of new partners will launch over the course of this year. More importantly, he also said that Amazon plans to open up the Sidewalk network to developers in the first half of this year. This, he noted, will enable virtually anyone who wants to get started with building IoT products to order a reference kit from Amazon’s partners and get going in days, all without having to worry about connectivity.

“Anybody who has an idea should be able to go to an AWS website, find a hardware kit from Silicon Labs, TI or from somebody, order the kit and be able to get this kit flowing data via AWS into an application,” he explained. “They can start writing literally as soon as the kit is in their hands. So that is what we expect [when we] open for developers. My vision is that with some of these kits and devices, they could actually try building something real out of it and maybe even in low numbers for proof of concepts to prove their business case in a timespan that was never before possible.”

As Mohan noted, one of the major challenges for the Sidewalk team is to get people to change the way they think about IoT connectivity. “The market doesn’t fully appreciate why sidewalk is different,” he said when I asked him what his team’s hardest challenge is. “They have heard that, oh, Matter solves everything, or ZigBee solves everything, or we have had this forever. But not really. You haven’t had a network that’s just there and a device that ships to your house that you power on and it’s on. Yes, maybe a cell phone with a SIM card does that. But nothing else.”

Some manufacturers may have gotten started with ZigBee or WiFi to add smarts to everyday devices like a faucet, he noted, but then learned that people didn’t have a ZigBee hub or just wouldn’t configure it. “It was an investment that wasn’t worthwhile,” he said. “If you look at the percentages of some of these smart things that smartness was forced on, a very low percentage of them got ever got connected.”

Ideally, that’s not a problem with Sidewalk and while Matter is trying to solve some of these problems, Mohan argued that Sidewalk may actually help Matter to grow because it can provide the initial networking capabilities for the Matter network to allow for setting up new devices.

Amazon Sidewalk adds new partners, plans to open to developers soon by Frederic Lardinois originally published on TechCrunch

I first met with the team at Labrador Systems in a hotel suite several CESes ago. What immediately stood out about the firm is its focus on the long-standing promise of eldercare robotics. Various systems have existed in Japan for decades now, aimed at that nation’s aging population. But for the most part, it’s a category that’s been lacking here in the States – especially in terms of actually bringing products to market.

Toward the end of last year, the California-based startup announced that it was beginning to deliver its first systems to clients in the U.S. It also announced new backing from the Alexa Fund. Included in that news, was the promise of compatibility with Amazon’s voice assistant. While it’s certainly true that voice computing doesn’t make sense for every scenario, it really does here.

Labrador is showing off the feature at CES this week. The demo utilizes an Echo Show 10. The smart screen is mounted on top of the robot – serving as a tablet similar to the kind found on teleconferencing systems. The Echo’s built-in swivel means it can turn to face to the user. To, for example, get a beverage, you would say, “Alexa, ask Lab 1 to get me a drink.” It’s all still an early proof on concept, but Labrador plans to start piloting the set up with its customer base soon.

“The proof-of-concept demo with the Echo Show 10 is a preview of what we will be testing in our next rounds of pilots with care providers,” says CEO Mike Dooley. “Capabilities like this can make a dramatic difference in the quality of people’s lives and their ability to live independently while staying connected with others, and we’re grateful to Amazon’s team for their support on this project.”

The set up makes sense for Laborador. It’s a relatively inexpensive way to add functionality to its systems using off-the-shelf consumer hardware. For Amazon, it aligns nicely with the company’s consumer robotics play, which puts Alexa at the heart of its various consumer robotics offerings, from Astro to (potentially) Roomba.

Labrador taps the Echo Show to expand functionality for its eldercare robot by Brian Heater originally published on TechCrunch

Amazon’s conversational voice assistant, Alexa, has made its way into many electric vehicles in recent years. Now, along with ordering Alexa to ‘play Despacito’ or ‘call Mom,’ EV drivers in the U.S. with Alexa-enabled cars will be able to ask Alexa to find the nearest public charging spot.

Charging network EVgo will be the first to partner with Amazon to offer this service later in 2023. Aside from a list of available public charging stations, Alexa will help drivers in the U.S. navigate to their chosen station and initiate charging. Drivers can even pay through a linked account simply by saying, “Alexa, pay for my charge,” according to Amazon, which announced the integration at CES 2023 in Las Vegas on Thursday.

“The EV charging experience is a lot more fragmented than for gas customers, who can pretty much stop at any location,” said Anes Hodžić, vice president at Amazon’s Smart Vehicles group, in a statement. Hodžić noted that EV drivers often fumble through different apps and maps to find an available charger, taking into account factors like real-time availability, distance, remaining battery, charging speed, plug type and payment options.

Alexa’s EV charging service connects drivers with Alexa-enabled vehicles and automotive accessories like Echo Auto to over 150,000 public stations in the U.S. powered by EVgo and other operators. When a driver asks Alexa to find a station, they’ll receive a list of nearby locations with availability by plug type, as well as the time and distance to arrival. Once the driver chooses a location, Alexa can provide navigational instructions.

“At EVgo, we’re committed to making EV driving infrastructure convenient, reliable, and affordable for all types of drivers,” said Cathy Zoi, EVgo’s CEO. “Mass adoption of EVs is underway, and this collaboration between EVgo and Amazon will make charging seamless for even more EV drivers.”

At present, EVgo has more than 850 fast charging stations across the country, but it’s building out more. In June, EVgo partnered with General Motors to build more than 3,250 fast chargers in the U.S. by 2025.

Alexa, find me an EV charging station by Rebecca Bellan originally published on TechCrunch

In 2019, Ring launched the Peephole Cam, a camera that fits over existing door peepholes to record goings on outdoors, in apartment building hallways and so on. Priced at $199, the Peephole Cam failed to catch on, leading Ring to discontinue it in 2021.

But now, Ring’s giving it another go — the Peephole Cam made a return this morning at CES 2023. While the same model, it now starts at $129 and ships with software that brings its capabilities in line with the rest of Ring’s product portfolio.

“After removing the Peephole Cam from our inventory, we heard from a number of customers who still were interested in this device and wanted to secure their front door with a Ring Doorbell but were not able to install one of Ring’s existing doorbells,” Ring CTO Josh Roth told TechCrunch in an email interview. “We are pleased to be able to offer the Ring Peephole Cam at a lower price than before to better serve our customers.”

The Peephole Cam — which Ring insists can be installed without permanent modifications to a door — offers motion detection, a doorbell button, 1080p video, two-way talk, real-time streaming video and Privacy Zones (areas users can designate to black out from their camera’s field of view). Exclusive to the Peephole Cam is an adjustable impact sensor to detect when a door is being “physically interacted with”; when the Peephole Cam senses vibrations, it’ll alert that someone’s knocking on the door and begin recording.

Predictably, the Peephole Cam works with Alexa, letting owners send announcements or sound effects to Alexa-enabled devices when a knock, motion or doorbell ring is detected. A Peephole Cam-detected knock or motion can also be set to trigger smart home routines, for example switching on connected lights and closing motorized window blinds.

When asked about the Peephole Cam’s privacy features, Roth noted that the doorbell has built-in cover slides to prevent a passerby from looking through the peephole and a toggle for audio recording. But that probably won’t allay the fears of consumer advocates who’ve argued that the company’s devices are a security threat. As TechCrunch previously reported, Ring has a history of sharing footage with the government without users’ permission, workingclosely with police departments around the U.S. and being generally reluctant to disclose its connections with law enforcement.

Ring brings back the Peephole Cam, now starting at $129 by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Riding the generative AI wave, Picsart, the developer behind various photo and video editing apps for the web and mobile devices, is introducing a new iOS app that transforms photos and drawings into digital art. Called SketchAI, the app lets users sketch a picture or upload an existing image and apply different artistic styles to it.

SketchAI is easy enough to use. It features several pre-selected styles that can applied to creations, including ink drawing, pencil sketch, and the artist-inspired “Da Vinci” and “Van Gogh.” In addition to sketching or uploading a photo, users can add a prompt describing an image (e.g. “Boat at night pointing by Aivazovsky”) to enhance the generated results.

SketchAI offers five free creations. Unlocking unlimited generations requires a subscription ranging from $5.99 per week to $17.99 per month or $69.99 per year.

“We’re planning a lot in the way of making the user experience, processing and image quality better, and adding more prompts and artistic styles,” Picsart VP of product Lusine Harutyunyan told TechCrunch in an email interview. “We’re also thinking about adding features for the user to enhance and play with their results, as Picsart is known for its powerful and fun editing tools. Along with building on our main platform, we’re excited to offer more unique entry points for creative technologies like this.”

SketchAI joins Picsart’s roster of generative AI tools including AI Avatar, which makes custom AI-generated profile pics from selfies, and arrives as art-generating AI apps attract controversy both from users and the artistic community. Lensa’s recently-launched, viral avatar creator came under scrutiny for its biases toward the sexualized depiction of women. Meanwhile, on the art portal ArtStation, which earlier this year began allowing AI art for the first time, members widely protesting by placing “No AI Art” images in their portfolios — asserting that AI-generated art threatened the artistic integrity of the platform.

Harutyunyan didn’t deny that generative AI systems have their issues, even admitting that the system driving SketchAI — an open source model called Stable Diffusion — could reproduce biases in the artwork it creates. But he argued that SketchAI and generative AI as a whole will evolve and improve over time as more people use the tech and additional models become available.

“These are very early days for generative AI as a whole and this technology will continue to evolve quickly and we will continue to adhere to industry standards and best practices as it does. Our goal is to empower creators and we support artists everywhere,” Harutyunyan said.

Stable Diffusion, which is trained on images from around the web, including from art communities, has spread like wildfire in recent months. Lensa and DeviantArt use it to generate images, as does game developer Latitude and countless others. Most of the use cases are harmless enough. But some groups have wielded Stable Diffusion to create objectionable content like depictions of violence and pornographic, nonconsensual celebrity deepfakes.

Stability AI was even the subject of a recent critical letter from U.S. House Representative Anna G. Eshoo (D-CA) to the National Security Advisor (NSA) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in which she urged the NSA and OSTP to address the release of “unsafe AI models” that “do not moderate content made on their platforms.”

Harutyunyan says that Picsart fine-tuned and optimized Stable Diffusion for “quality, original image strength” in SketchAI and put filters in place to prevent some “unsafe” art from being generated. Picsart hasn’t, however, established a way for artists who don’t wish SketchAI users to create art in their distinctive styles to “opt out.” In recent months, artists like Hollie Mengert and Greg Rutkowski — whose names have become some of the most commonly used prompts in Stable Diffusion-powered apps — havedecried what they see as poor AI imitations that are nevertheless tied to their work.

Stability AI, the startup largely funding the development of Stable Diffusion, recently bowed to pressure, signaling that it would allow artists to opt out of the data set used to train the next-generation Stable Diffusion model. Harutyunyan says that Picsart will consider adopting the model for SketchAI once it’s released.

“The baseline model we’re using is trained on data, not specific material and not reproducing a specific artist’s work,” Harutyunyan said.

A word of warning to those who’d share their SketchAI creations publicly, though: Picsart says that it can’t guarantee users will be able to claim copyright over them. That’s because the copyright status of AI-generated artwork is somewhat in flux at the present. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently moved to revoke copyright protection for an AI-generated comic, saying that copyrightable works require human authorship. And a class action lawsuit working its way through the U.S. court system alleges that generative AI violates intellectual property laws by regurgitating portions of the copyrighted data used to develop it.

The copyright issue has spooked platforms like Kickstarter and Getty Images, both of which in recent months have banned — either partially or fully — AI-generated art and tools to create it out of fear of the legal ramifications.

“As between Picsart and the user, the user owns the rights in the content,” Harutyunyan said. “However, users should be aware of the inherent limitations that come along with generative AI.”

Picsart’s AI-powered SketchAI app turns images and outlines into digital art by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Immunefi’s Crypto Losses 2022 report found over $3.9 billion was “lost” last year. While that might seem like a whopping amount of capital to lose track of, it’s down 51.2% compared to 2021, when over $8 billion was stolen, the report found.

Crypto losses are defined as a combination of hacks and alleged fraud incidents, Adrian Hetman, tech lead of the triaging team at Immunefi, previously told TechCrunch. In 2022, the majority of losses, or $3.77 billion, were from hacks across 134 specific incidents. About $175 million was lost to fraud across 34 incidents in the same time frame.

Both decentralized finance (DeFi) and centralized finance (CeFi) experienced major catastrophic events, including the implosion of the Terra/LUNA ecosystem and the downfall of centralized crypto exchange FTX. But overall, DeFi was the main target for (successful) exploits at over 80%, Immunefi stated.

DeFi losses increased 56.2% from over $2 billion across 107 incidents in 2021 to $3.18 billion across 155 incidents in 2022. CeFi losses, meantime, fell 87.3% from $6 billion across nine incidents in 2021 to $768.8 million across 13 incidents in 2022.

The two most targeted blockchains last year were BNB Chain — crypto exchange Binance’s blockchain ecosystem — and the layer-1 blockchain Ethereum, with 65 and 49 incidents, respectively. Together, BNB Chain and Ethereum represented over half of the blockchain attacks at 63.3%. Trailing behind the two was Solana, with 12 incidents, or 6.7% of total attacks in 2022.

Looking back, every quarter had a handful of multimillion-dollar losses, some bigger than others. While each quarter had its losses, the fourth quarter saw the most, with $1.62 billion in total losses across 55 incidents, accounting for almost half of the total losses in the year.

But five major exploits, Ronin Network’s $625 million, Wormhole’s $326 million, Nomad’s $190 million, BNB Chain’s $570 million and FTX’s $650 million, accounted for about 60% of all losses in 2022.

Roughly 5%, or $204 million, of total losses were recovered in 2022.

Looking forward to 2023, it’s expected that crypto “losses” will be in the billions again as more players enter the space and capital continues to pour in. Fixing this long term will be a product of enhanced security measures, something not all projects, blockchains, protocols and other digital asset entities have prioritized.

There are also bug bounty and security services platforms that aim to protect web3 businesses and their users — but until these are implemented across the industry as a standard, more will fall to these hacks and fraudulent activities.

Crypto losses in 2022 dropped 51% year on year to $4B by Jacquelyn Melinek originally published on TechCrunch

Not everyone believes that the metaverse — social, VR-centric worlds — has staying power. But MeetKai is among the steadfast optimists. Founded in 2018, the startup initially focused on conversational AI, aiming to build cutting-edge, top-of-the-line voice recognition and speech synthesis tech. It soon broadened its focus, introducing products to help developers build components of metaverse worlds, including “intelligent” NPCs and (less excitingly) ads.

This year at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show, MeetKai is launching several new platforms geared toward metaverse creators and users, including a way to digitize 3D spaces and buildings using any internet-connected device with a camera.

The 3D-digitizing service, called MeetKai Reality, can bring various objects and spaces from the real world into the metaverse, says MeetKai. After tapping a camera-equipped device to record a few seconds of video, users upload the footage to MeetKai Reality, which renders the captured space in VR.

While not novel — platforms like Coohom, Matterport and even Zillow could already render spaces from photos — MeetKai CEO and co-founder James Kaplan asserts that MeetKai Reality is the first photo-to-rendering solution tailored for metaverse use cases. “We want to unlock the same cost and time savings for everyone else looking to build in the metaverse,” he said in a statement, noting the potential applications in real estate, interior design, architecture, engineering and retail.

MeetKai’s second new product, MeetKai Metaverse Editor, is a bit more differentiating. It allows users without coding experience to build structures and spaces in the metaverse, optionally collaborating with others in real time as they do so. Metaverse-building tools exist, to be sure — startups like Tripolygon provide them. But not all are no-code and some remain vaporware, Kaplan currently points out.

“MeetKai’s metaverse tools can be used a la carte … We want to unlock the same cost and time savings for everyone else looking to build in the metaverse,” Kaplan said.

To round out the new product suite, MeetKai is launching MeetKai Cloud AI, which allows developers to plug a cloud-driven voice assistant into an existing virtual environment. Kaplan claims these assistants — which take the form of avatars that can converse on any number of predefined topics — have “real time reasoning capabilities” (although the jury’s out on that) and can “leverage any form of multimedia to instantly interact with end users.”

In the future, MeetKai plans to develop its own AI language system along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which it expects will vastly improve the quality of conversations with its avatars.

“I’m very happy to see our company deliver the world’s leading metaverse and AI technology products, which set a new mark and raise the technology bar in a very competitive industry,” MeetKai co-founder and executive chairwoman Weili Dai said in a press release. “Our vision and mission for MeetKai is to deploy these capabilities to the masses by offering groundbreaking and affordable solutions, accessible from web browsers and any device — like phones, tablets, computers, large screens, not just VR — available anywhere in the world for greater impact and better lives for all.”

MeetKai is competing with hundreds of companies for dominance in the metaverse space, but it appears to be holding its own, claiming that over 50 million people actively use its tech. Recently, the startup announced a deal with the Los Angeles Chargers to develop new in-stadium and at-home experiences, including an “AI-based” locker room tour.

To date, MeetKai has raised over $20 million in venture capital (per VentureBeat) and has roughly 40 employees.

MeetKai launches new room-scanning tech and metaverse builder by Kyle Wiggers originally published on TechCrunch

Data science has long been the domain of hardcore data professionals who understand the complex frameworks and languages involved, but those professionals are in notoriously short supply.

Fortunately, the landscape of tools and frameworks is constantly evolving, and in 2023 I predict new developments that will alleviate challenges for data teams and businesses alike.

On the one hand, the long-heralded citizen data scientists will finally play a greater role in analytics thanks to sheer necessity and a simplification of the tools and platforms involved. On the other hand, data professionals will start to benefit from some of these simpler tools to accelerate their work and a push for greater standardization will help the industry as a whole.

Here are four predictions for data science in the new year and how businesses can take advantage of them.

Python use will expand beyond data professionals to citizen developers

Business people can’t afford to wait for data scientists to provide the analytics they need, so they’re taking matters into their own hands. Python has become more approachable for non-professionals with the availability of preconfigured cloud runtimes and accessible tools like NumPy for numerical data, Prophet for forecasting and H3 for geospatial data. As a result, in 2023, Python use will expand beyond data professionals and into the hands of business analysts and other less technical users.

Novice Python users should not attempt to build their own runtime environments but should opt for any of the modern cloud platforms that provide built-in security and governance. Anaconda offers a popular Python distribution that helps ensure updates and dependencies are managed properly, and Snowflake installs these packages in our cloud-based Python runtime.

There are numerous online resources for non-professionals to get started with Python, including this comprehensive beginner’s guide from RealPython.

4 data science predictions for 2023 by Annie Saunders originally published on TechCrunch