• One fallen power line exposed a growing AI data center problem. Here’s how to fix it.• I tried out OpenAI’s new AI keypad — which will be fun for some coders and slightly mystifying to everyone else• Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M• Why Cognition bought Poke: AI personality is becoming a competitive advantage• Anthropic launches Opus 5• As US weighs response to Chinese AI, industry urges against broad open-weight restrictions• Bluesky’s AI assistant Attie expands into an open social research tool• Midjourney acquired the astrology app Co-Star• ‘AI communism’, rogue models, and the why Kimi K3 spooked Wall Street• OpenAI’s new voice mode makes it to the ChatGPT desktop app• How AI guardrails are impeding the work of offensive cybersecurity researchers• AMD takes on Nvidia with its Helios AI rack-scale system• Anthropic updates Claude voice mode with more capable models• AegisAI, founded by former Google security execs, lands $36M to stop AI-driven spear phishing• Runway launches AI model router as generative media gets crowded• 3 Google updates from Galaxy Unpacked 2026• Connect more of your apps to Search• Create, edit and star in videos with two Google Vids updates• Celebrating 25 years of visual search innovation• Expanding Managed Agents in Gemini API: background tasks, remote MCP and more• The latest AI news we announced in June 2026• New York City educators and industry leaders gathered at Google’s offices to shape the future of AI in classrooms.• Unlocking Britain’s next era of productivity: Building a nation of AI trailblazers• Ask an AI expert: What exactly is the full stack?• Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app• New research shows how AMIE, our medical AI, could help manage health conditions.• We’re strengthening our presence in Alabama through new investments and community support.• Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.• The latest AI news we announced in May 2026• 5 ways Google Search can level up your thrift and vintage shopping• Amazon cuts jobs within artificial intelligence team - The Seattle Times• Artificial intelligence will drive an unprecedented natural-gas deficit, this investor warns. Here are the stocks to buy before the crunch. - MarketWatch• The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn’t coming anytime soon - The Guardian• From Silicon Valley to DC, the tech world is suddenly obsessed with one concept in AI: Distillation - CNBC• OpenAI's AI Agent Spent Days Hacking A Company, But It Did Not Notice For A Week: Report - NDTV• Warning shot or publicity stunt - how worried should we be about the OpenAI hack? - BBC• No, OpenAI's models didn't go 'rogue' when they broke into Hugging Face. Here's what really happened. - Live Science• Nvidia, Microsoft and other tech giants back open-source AI models - Reuters• Parents: Teen boy used AI to create sexually explicit images of their daughters - WRAL• Alphabet Just Proved Why It's a Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Once Again - Yahoo Finance• Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House - Politico• Robert Morris University infuses artificial intelligence into MBA curriculum - TribLIVE.com• Addressing Clinician-Educator Hesitancy Toward Artificial Intelligence Through a Peer-Led Instructional Design - Cureus• This week: How defense manufacturers can put artificial intelligence to work - Today's Medical Developments• This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock May Be the Best Company in the World, Says a Wall Street Analyst - The Motley Fool• Launching Health in ChatGPT • Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community• How news organizations are using AI to advance their vital missions• Advancing the next era of national science• Introducing OpenAI Presence• NTT DATA Group cuts incident analysis to 30 minutes with Codex• Introducing the ChatGPT for small business program• OpenAI and Hugging Face partner to address security incident during model evaluation• David Vélez and Robin Vince join the boards of the OpenAI Foundation and OpenAI Group PBC• Safety and alignment in an era of long-horizon models• A scorecard for the AI age• Why teens deserve access to safe AI• How Codex became a collaborator for OpenAI’s creative team• How Cars24 scales conversations and builds faster with OpenAI• The US is advancing AI safety through state and federal action• Here’s how to ask Gemini Live for help with anything you see.• 3 Google updates from Galaxy Unpacked 2026• 13 Google tips for a fun, productive summer off from college• Introducing Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber• 5 ways to build a side hustle with Gemini• How Gemini is speaking the language of Southeast Asia• Here’s how to make study notebooks in the Gemini app.• 3 ways this coffee shop is growing with Gemini• The latest AI news we announced in June 2026• Gemini Spark updates: macOS launch, connected apps and more• Start building with Nano Banana 2 Lite and Gemini Omni Flash• The Gemini app is bringing personalized image creation to more users.• Gemini can now take notes in Google Meet for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.• Here's how Gemini can help you avoid jetlag.• Try these 3 Google AI tools to help find your next job.• Google just redesigned the search box for the first time in 25 years — here’s why it matters more than you think.• Railway secures $100 million to challenge AWS with AI-native cloud infrastructure• Claude Code costs up to $200 a month. Goose does the same thing for free.• Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews• Salesforce rolls out new Slackbot AI agent as it battles Microsoft and Google in workplace AI• Anthropic launches Cowork, a Claude Desktop agent that works in your files — no coding required• Nous Research's NousCoder-14B is an open-source coding model landing right in the Claude Code moment• Best Universities To Study AI in 2026• 10 top women in AI in 2026• Pope Leo XIV Declares AI a Threat to Human Dignity and Workers’ Rights• ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified• AI May Soon Help You Understand What Your Pet Is Trying to Say• Netflix Adds ChatGPT-Powered AI to Stop You From Scrolling Forever• Murder Victim Speaks from the Grave in Courtroom Through AI• China Unveils World’s First AI Hospital: 14 Virtual Doctors Ready to Treat Thousands Daily• Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night• Therapists Too Expensive? Why Thousands of Women Are Spilling Their Deepest Secrets to ChatGPT• AI by Zapier: Add agentic AI steps to your workflows• How Mach 1 uses Zapier MCP to run AI operations across 25 different companies• The 5 best photo editing apps for iPhone and Android (including free options) in 2026• Zapier for enterprise orchestration: Scaling automation on a trusted platform• MuleSoft integrations: Capabilities and limitations• Relay.app is shutting down: How to export your workflows and move to Zapier• I've tried every automation software: here are the 10 best in 2026• Web scraping: A comprehensive guide• Turn off your slop cannon• The 6 best vibe coding tools in 2026• OpenClaw vs. Zapier: What's the difference? [2026]• Agentic AI vs. RPA: Everything you need to know• 16 AI prompt templates for better AI agent outputs• The best CRM software for real estate agents in 2026• Integrately vs. Zapier: Which is best? [2026]
Here’s how to ask Gemini Live for help with anything you see.
Gemini

Here’s how to ask Gemini Live for help with anything you see.

Have you ever struggled to describe something you’re looking at? Whether it’s a complex manual, a blinking error code, or a unique object, sometimes you just need an exp…

One fallen power line exposed a growing AI data center problem. Here’s how to fix it.
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

One fallen power line exposed a growing AI data center problem. Here’s how to fix it.

A close call in Northern Virginia revealed just how poorly data centers respond to grid disruptions. Here's how to fix the problem.

I tried out OpenAI’s new AI keypad — which will be fun for some coders and slightly mystifying to everyone else
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

I tried out OpenAI’s new AI keypad — which will be fun for some coders and slightly mystifying to everyone else

OpenAI's fancy new AI keypad will be a lot of fun for some, while many others are probably not going to touch it.

Runway launches AI model router as generative media gets crowded
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Runway launches AI model router as generative media gets crowded

The Media Router is a tool that automatically selects the best image, video, or audio generation model for a request based on whether a developer prioritizes quality, speed or cost.

Anthropic launches Opus 5
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Anthropic launches Opus 5

Opus 5 will be both cheaper and less restrictive than Fable, likely making it preferable in most use cases.

A scorecard for the AI age
OpenAI News

A scorecard for the AI age

Sarah Friar, CFO of OpenAI, introduces a practical AI scorecard to measure ROI through useful work, cost per successful task, dependability, and return on compute.

Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night
DailyAI

Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night

Another year, another viral deepfake of Katy Perry at the Met Gala and once again, she wasn’t even there. Photos showing the pop star in a sleek black designer gown circulated widely on social media during Monday night’s event, matching the “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” theme. But the images were AI-generated. Perry quickly clarified she was not at the Met; she was on tour. Perry’s reaction “Couldn’t make it to the MET, I’m on The Lifetimes Tour (see you in Houston tomorrow IRL),” she posted to Instagram alongside the fake images. She added a jab at AI confusion: “P.s. this The post Katy Perry Didn’t Attend the Met Gala, But AI Made Her the Star of the Night appeared first on DailyAI.

Introducing the ChatGPT for small business program
OpenAI News

Introducing the ChatGPT for small business program

OpenAI launches the ChatGPT for Small Businesses program, helping entrepreneurs build AI skills, automate work, and grow with ChatGPT Work.

Try these 3 Google AI tools to help find your next job.
Gemini

Try these 3 Google AI tools to help find your next job.

Use Google AI tools — like Career Dreamer, NotebookLM and Gemini Live — for resumes, cover letters, interview prep and more.

10 top women in AI in 2026
DailyAI

10 top women in AI in 2026

AI is changing our world, but the stories of who build it often get lost in the noise. Behind the headlines and hype, a group of women are solving AI’s fundamental challenges – despite working in an industry persisently impacted by gender inequality. Women make up just 22% of AI professionals worldwide and only 12% of AI researchers. In academic publishing, female researchers account for just 29% of first authors on AI papers, a number that hasn’t increased since the mid-2000s.  This is a story about ten leaders who have influenced AI despite the odds being stacked against them.  Their The post 10 top women in AI in 2026 appeared first on DailyAI.

Netflix Adds ChatGPT-Powered AI to Stop You From Scrolling Forever
DailyAI

Netflix Adds ChatGPT-Powered AI to Stop You From Scrolling Forever

In a bold move to tackle one of streaming’s biggest frustrations, endless scrolling, Netflix just unveiled a major redesign of its TV and mobile apps featuring a ChatGPT-powered AI chatbot and TikTok-style video reels. You’ll soon be able to ask Netflix in plain language what you’re in the mood for “funny and fast-paced” or “dark thrillers with strong female leads” and get instant, tailored recommendations. Netflix is partnering with OpenAI to power this feature, part of a broader overhaul aimed at making content discovery faster, more intuitive, and (finally) less painful. What’s changing Conversational AI Search: Powered by OpenAI, this The post Netflix Adds ChatGPT-Powered AI to Stop You From Scrolling Forever appeared first on DailyAI.

Why teens deserve access to safe AI
OpenAI News

Why teens deserve access to safe AI

Learn how OpenAI is making ChatGPT safer for teens with age-appropriate protections, learning tools, parental controls, and expert partnerships.

Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community
OpenAI News

Building AI infrastructure with the Effingham County community

OpenAI announces Project Camellia in Effingham County, Georgia, with commitments to responsible energy, community investment, jobs, and access to Codex.

Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Prentis, new AI lab co-founded by Reid Hoffman, Mark Pincus in talks to raise $100M

The neolab is betting that automating routine computer tasks will soon outpace coding as AI's biggest use case.

Pope Leo XIV Declares AI a Threat to Human Dignity and Workers’ Rights
DailyAI

Pope Leo XIV Declares AI a Threat to Human Dignity and Workers’ Rights

Pope Leo XIV is taking a bold stance on artificial intelligence, calling it “a challenge to human dignity, justice and labour” in his first major address since being elected leader of the Catholic Church. The new pontiff is placing AI at the center of the Church’s moral agenda, warning that we’re entering a new industrial revolution with the same threats to workers and human rights seen over a century ago. “In our own day… developments in the field of artificial intelligence pose new challenges,” Leo said, addressing the College of Cardinals on Saturday in the New Synod Hall. He echoed The post Pope Leo XIV Declares AI a Threat to Human Dignity and Workers’ Rights appeared first on DailyAI.

Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app
AI

Our latest Google Finance upgrades, including a new app

The new Google Finance is coming out of beta and launching a new Android app.

Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.
AI

Our new community investments in Virginia support local jobs and expand energy affordability.

We’re helping build the state’s next-generation workforce and investing in energy programs.

Google just redesigned the search box for the first time in 25 years — here’s why it matters more than you think.
AI | VentureBeat

Google just redesigned the search box for the first time in 25 years — here’s why it matters more than you think.

For a quarter century, the Google search box has been one of the most recognizable interfaces in computing: a thin white rectangle, a blinking cursor, a few typed words, and a list of blue links. On Tuesday, Google will formally retire that paradigm. At its annual I/O developer conference, Google announced a sweeping redesign of the search box itself — the literal text field where billions of queries begin every day — transforming it from a simple keyword input into a dynamic, AI-driven conversation starter that can accept text, images, PDFs, videos, and even open Chrome tabs as inputs. The company is also merging its AI Overviews and AI Mode features into a single, seamless search flow, eliminating the friction that previously forced users to choose between a traditional results page and an AI-forward experience. Liz Reid, Google's vice president and head of Search, called it "the biggest upgrade to our iconic search box since its debut over 25 years ago" during a press briefing on Monday. The announcement arrived alongside a blizzard of other news — new Gemini models, a personal AI agent called Spark, an intelligent shopping cart, a reimagined developer platform — but the search box redesign may prove to be the most consequential. It is the clearest signal yet that Google views the future of its flagship product not as a place where users type fragmented keywords, but as an interface where they hold open-ended, multimodal conversations with an AI system backed by the entire web. The new search box expands, accepts files, and coaches you on what to ask The changes show a fundamental shift in how Google expects people to interact with the product that generates the vast majority of Alphabet's revenue. The box itself now dynamically expands to accommodate longer, more conversational queries. Where the old interface subtly encouraged brevity — a narrow field suited to two- or three-word keyword strings — the new design invites users to fully articulate complex questions in granular detail. It also now supports multimodal inputs directly. Users can upload images, PDFs, files, and videos, or drag in content from Chrome tabs, right from the main search interface. Previously, some of these capabilities existed in AI Mode, but reaching them required extra steps. Now they sit at the primary entry point. Google is also deploying what it describes as an AI-powered query suggestion system that "goes beyond autocomplete." Rather than simply predicting the next word a user might type based on popular searches, the system helps users formulate complex, nuanced queries — essentially coaching them toward the kind of detailed questions that AI Mode handles best. The new search box is starting to roll out immediately in all countries and languages where AI Mode is available. Google is merging AI overviews and AI mode into one seamless experience Perhaps more significant than the box itself is the architectural change happening behind it. Google is unifying AI Overviews — the AI-generated summary panels that appear atop traditional search results — with AI Mode, the more immersive conversational search experience the company launched at I/O one year ago. Starting Tuesday, this merged experience will be live across mobile and desktop worldwide. A user can type a question, receive an AI Overview alongside traditional results, and then continue directly into a back-and-forth AI Mode conversation to ask follow-up questions — all without navigating to a separate interface. Reid explained the logic during the press briefing: the new AI search box is "an upgrade of our traditional search box, and so the results take you directly to main search rather than AI mode." She noted that while some power users actively sought out AI Mode, "for most users, they don't actually want to have to think about, do they want more of a traditional page or an AI-forward search experience." The goal, she said, was to ensure that "for most users, they don't have to think about where to go, they can just go to the search box they're familiar with, and it feels like they get the best experience afterwards." One billion users and doubling queries reveal how fast search behavior is shifting Google's decision to redesign the foundational interface of its most important product did not happen in a vacuum. The company shared a set of usage statistics during the briefing that reveal just how rapidly user behavior is already changing. AI Mode, which launched in the United States at I/O 2025, has surpassed one billion monthly users in its first year. AI Mode queries have been doubling every quarter since launch. AI Overviews, the lighter-weight AI summaries, now reach more than 2.5 billion monthly users. And overall search query volume hit an all-time high last quarter — a data point the company had previously disclosed on its earnings call. Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, framed these figures as evidence that AI features are additive, not cannibalistic, to search usage. "When people use our AI-powered features in search, they use search more," he said. He added that he loves "how search has become less about individual queries and feels more like an ongoing conversation, giving users deeper insights and connecting you with the vastness of the web." Reid reinforced the point: "It's not just that people are searching more, it's that they're searching differently. They're fully expressing their questions in granular detail, asking those follow-up questions and searching across modalities." Gemini 3.5 Flash gives Google's AI search the speed it needs to work at scale Under the hood, the new search experience runs on Gemini 3.5 Flash, Google's newest AI model, which the company also introduced at I/O. Google upgraded AI Mode's underlying model to 3.5 Flash to deliver what Reid described as "an even more powerful AI search experience." Gemini 3.5 Flash is the workhorse of this year's announcements. Google claims it outperforms its previous frontier model, Gemini 3.1 Pro, on nearly all benchmarks while running four times faster in output tokens per second than comparable frontier models. Pichai described it as being "in a league of its own in the top right quadrant" of the Artificial Analysis index, which plots intelligence against speed — meaning it delivers near-frontier quality at dramatically lower latency. That speed matters enormously for search. A conversational AI search experience that feels sluggish would be dead on arrival for a product that serves billions of queries daily. By coupling the redesigned interface with a model optimized for both quality and throughput, Google is attempting to make AI-powered search feel as instantaneous as the old keyword experience — while being dramatically more capable. Search can now build interactive visuals and custom mini apps on the fly The redesigned search box is also the gateway to a set of new capabilities that push search far beyond text-based answers. Google announced what it calls "generative UI" — the ability for search to dynamically build custom widgets, interactive visualizations, and even mini applications in real time, tailored to a user's specific question. Reid offered a concrete example during the briefing: a user could ask "How do black holes affect space time?" and receive an interactive visual in an AI Overview that brings the concept to life. Follow-up questions would trigger the system to dynamically generate entirely new visuals in real time. This is possible, she explained, because of "a novel real-time code generation system we built in partnership with the Google DeepMind team" that runs on Gemini 3.5 Flash. Generative UI capabilities will roll out to everyone this summer, free of charge. But Google is going further still. For ongoing tasks — planning a wedding, organizing a move, tracking a fitness routine — users will be able to build what the company describes as customizable, stateful experiences within search, powered by its Antigravity development platform. These require no coding expertise. Users simply describe what they want in natural language, and search builds it. Those experiences will be available in coming months, starting with Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in the United States. AI agents that monitor the web around the clock are coming to search results The redesign also opens the door to what Google calls "information agents" — AI agents that users can configure directly within search to monitor the web 24/7 for specific conditions and deliver synthesized updates when those conditions are met. A user could, for example, set up an agent to track market movements in a particular sector with specific parameters. The agent would create a monitoring plan, tap into real-time finance data, and proactively notify the user when conditions are met — complete with links and context for further research. Other use cases include apartment hunting, tracking sneaker drops, or monitoring any topic a user cares about. Information agents will launch first for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers this summer. These agents sit within a much larger strategic pivot that Google articulated throughout the briefing: the company is going all-in on AI systems that don't just answer questions but proactively take actions on users' behalf. Beyond search, Google introduced Gemini Spark, a 24/7 personal AI agent that runs on dedicated virtual machines in Google Cloud. It unveiled the Universal Cart, an intelligent cross-merchant shopping cart. It announced the Agent Payments Protocol for agents to make secure purchases. And it expanded its Antigravity developer platform into a full ecosystem for building autonomous AI agents. Publishers, advertisers, and SEO professionals face a new reality The redesign raises profound questions for the sprawling ecosystem — publishers, advertisers, SEO professionals — that has been built around the old model of keyword search and blue links. If users increasingly express their needs as full, conversational sentences rather than fragmented keywords, the entire discipline of search engine optimization will need to evolve. Keyword-density strategies become less relevant when the AI is parsing natural language intent rather than matching strings. Content that answers deep, nuanced questions in authoritative ways becomes more valuable; content engineered to rank for two-word keyword fragments becomes less so. For publishers, the stakes are existential. AI Overviews already synthesize information from across the web and present it directly in search results, reducing the need for users to click through to source material. The new seamless AI Mode integration deepens that dynamic: users can now get an AI-generated answer and ask multiple follow-up questions without ever leaving the search page. Google has consistently maintained that its AI features drive more traffic to publishers, but the redesign puts that claim under renewed scrutiny as the search results page becomes more self-contained. For advertisers — who fund the vast majority of Google's revenue — the shift from keywords to conversations changes the calculus of ad targeting. Conversational queries contain richer intent signals, which could make ad targeting more precise and valuable. But they also create new ambiguities: when a user is in the middle of a multi-turn conversation with AI Mode, where does an ad naturally fit? Google did not detail changes to its advertising model during the briefing, but the structural shift in the interface will inevitably reshape how ads are surfaced and measured. The search box was always more than a product — it was a habit for billions of people There is a reason Google chose to redesign the search box rather than simply adding new features behind it. The search box is not just a product element at this point; it is a cultural artifact — one of the few pieces of digital infrastructure used by essentially the entire internet-connected world. Changing it sends an unmistakable message about where the company believes computing is headed. For 25 years, the search box trained billions of people to think in keywords — to compress their curiosity into the shortest possible string of words. The new box invites them to do the opposite: to think out loud, to upload what they're looking at, to ask follow-up questions, to let an AI system handle the compression. Pichai tied the company's broader ambitions to a striking statistic: Google's surfaces now process over 3.2 quadrillion tokens per month, up seven-fold from a year ago. The company expects capital expenditures of approximately $180 to $190 billion in 2026 — roughly six times the $31 billion it spent four years ago — largely to support the infrastructure required for this AI transformation. When asked about the future of traditional search, he was direct. "Search is the most used AI product in the world," he said. The blinking cursor in Google's search box still invites you to type. But after 25 years of teaching the world to speak in keywords, Google is now asking it to speak in sentences — and betting roughly $190 billion that it will.

Best Universities To Study AI in 2026
DailyAI

Best Universities To Study AI in 2026

Artificial intelligence has made enormous strides in the past few years – with the introduction of a wide range of AI tools changing the landscape of how we assess data and operate within online spaces forever.  This page ranks the 50 best universities to study AI around the world, based on scope, prestige, and the level of AI-related research each institution has released. Career prospects in AI There is a huge demand for individuals with a high degree of skills in artificial intelligence and machine learning, making AI a potential lucrative career prospect with countless opportunities as AI continues to The post Best Universities To Study AI in 2026 appeared first on DailyAI.

Anthropic updates Claude voice mode with more capable models
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Anthropic updates Claude voice mode with more capable models

Claude's new voice model will let you reschedule your meeting or draft an email.

The best CRM software for real estate agents in 2026
The Zapier Blog

The best CRM software for real estate agents in 2026

A CRM is your prized possession in real estate. You need something to keep things straight when juggling client management, property listings, and the looming threat of being upstaged by that insufferably smug agent from the office across the street. But with countless options on the market, how do you know which software is right for you? ​​I looked into dozens of options, read approximately a million reviews, watched demos narrated by people way too cheerful for 9 a.m., and gathered insights

Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews
AI | VentureBeat

Listen Labs raises $69M after viral billboard hiring stunt to scale AI customer interviews

Alfred Wahlforss was running out of options. His startup, Listen Labs, needed to hire over 100 engineers, but competing against Mark Zuckerberg's $100 million offers seemed impossible. So he spent $5,000 — a fifth of his marketing budget — on a billboard in San Francisco displaying what looked like gibberish: five strings of random numbers. The numbers were actually AI tokens. Decoded, they led to a coding challenge: build an algorithm to act as a digital bouncer at Berghain, the Berlin nightclub famous for rejecting nearly everyone at the door. Within days, thousands attempted the puzzle. 430 cracked it. Some got hired. The winner flew to Berlin, all expenses paid. That unconventional approach has now attracted $69 million in Series B funding, led by Ribbit Capital with participation from Evantic and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Conviction, and Pear VC. The round values Listen Labs at $500 million and brings its total capital to $100 million. In nine months since launch, the company has grown annualized revenue by 15x to eight figures and conducted over one million AI-powered interviews. "When you obsess over customers, everything else follows," Wahlforss said in an interview with VentureBeat. "Teams that use Listen bring the customer into every decision, from marketing to product, and when the customer is delighted, everyone is." Why traditional market research is broken, and what Listen Labs is building to fix it Listen's AI researcher finds participants, conducts in-depth interviews, and delivers actionable insights in hours, not weeks. The platform replaces the traditional choice between quantitative surveys — which provide statistical precision but miss nuance—and qualitative interviews, which deliver depth but cannot scale. Wahlforss explained the limitation of existing approaches: "Essentially surveys give you false precision because people end up answering the same question... You can't get the outliers. People are actually not honest on surveys." The alternative, one-on-one human interviews, "gives you a lot of depth. You can ask follow up questions. You can kind of double check if they actually know what they're talking about. And the problem is you can't scale that." The platform works in four steps: users create a study with AI assistance, Listen recruits participants from its global network of 30 million people, an AI moderator conducts in-depth interviews with follow-up questions, and results are packaged into executive-ready reports including key themes, highlight reels, and slide decks. What distinguishes Listen's approach is its use of open-ended video conversations rather than multiple-choice forms. "In a survey, you can kind of guess what you should answer, and you have four options," Wahlforss said. "Oh, they probably want me to buy high income. Let me click on that button versus an open ended response. It just generates much more honesty." The dirty secret of the $140 billion market research industry: rampant fraud Listen finds and qualifies the right participants in its global network of 30 million people. But building that panel required confronting what Wahlforss called "one of the most shocking things that we've learned when we entered this industry"—rampant fraud. "Essentially, there's a financial transaction involved, which means there will be bad players," he explained. "We actually had some of the largest companies, some of them have billions in revenue, send us people who claim to be kind of enterprise buyers to our platform and our system immediately detected, like, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud, fraud." The company built what it calls a "quality guard" that cross-references LinkedIn profiles with video responses to verify identity, checks consistency across how participants answer questions, and flags suspicious patterns. The result, according to Wahlforss: "People talk three times more. They're much more honest when they talk about sensitive topics like politics and mental health." Emeritus, an online education company that uses Listen, reported that approximately 20% of survey responses previously fell into the fraudulent or low-quality category. With Listen, they reduced this to almost zero. "We did not have to replace any responses because of fraud or gibberish information," said Gabrielli Tiburi, Assistant Manager of Customer Insights at Emeritus. How Microsoft, Sweetgreen, and Chubbies are using AI interviews to build better products The speed advantage has proven central to Listen's pitch. Traditional customer research at Microsoft could take four to six weeks to generate insights. "By the time we get to them, either the decision has been made or we lose out on the opportunity to actually influence it," said Romani Patel, Senior Research Manager at Microsoft. With Listen, Microsoft can now get insights in days, and in many cases, within hours. The platform has already powered several high-profile initiatives. Microsoft used Listen Labs to collect global customer stories for its 50th anniversary celebration. "We wanted users to share how Copilot is empowering them to bring their best self forward," Patel said, "and we were able to collect those user video stories within a day." Traditionally, that kind of work would have taken six to eight weeks. Simple Modern, an Oklahoma-based drinkware company, used Listen to test a new product concept. The process took about an hour to write questions, an hour to launch the study, and 2.5 hours to receive feedback from 120 people across the country. "We went from 'Should we even have this product?' to 'How should we launch it?'" said Chris Hoyle, the company's Chief Marketing Officer. Chubbies, the shorts brand, achieved a 24x increase in youth research participation—growing from 5 to 120 participants — by using Listen to overcome the scheduling challenges of traditional focus groups with children. "There's school, sports, dinner, and homework," explained Lauren Neville, Director of Insights and Innovation. "I had to find a way to hear from them that fit into their schedules." The company also discovered product issues through AI interviews that might have gone undetected otherwise. Wahlforss described how the AI "through conversations, realized there were like issues with the the kids short line, and decided to, like, interview hundreds of kids. And I understand that there were issues in the liner of the shorts and that they were, like, scratchy, quote, unquote, according to the people interviewed." The redesigned product became "a blockbuster hit." The Jevons paradox explains why cheaper research creates more demand, not less Listen Labs is entering a massive but fragmented market. Wahlforss cited research from Andreessen Horowitz estimating the market research industry at roughly $140 billion annually, populated by legacy players — some with more than a billion dollars in revenue — that he believes are vulnerable to disruption. "There are very much existing budget lines that we are replacing," Wahlforss said. "Why we're replacing them is that one, they're super costly. Two, they're kind of stuck in this old paradigm of choosing between a survey or interview, and they also take months to work with." But the more intriguing dynamic may be that AI-powered research doesn't just replace existing spending — it creates new demand. Wahlforss invoked the Jevons paradox, an economic principle that occurs when technological advancements make a resource more efficient to use, but increased efficiency leads to increased overall consumption rather than decreased consumption. "What I've noticed is that as something gets cheaper, you don't need less of it. You want more of it," Wahlforss explained. "There's infinite demand for customer understanding. So the researchers on the team can do an order of magnitude more research, and also other people who weren't researchers before can now do that as part of their job." Inside the elite engineering team that built Listen Labs before they had a working toilet Listen Labs traces its origins to a consumer app that Wahlforss and his co-founder built after meeting at Harvard. "We built this consumer app that got 20,000 downloads in one day," Wahlforss recalled. "We had all these users, and we were thinking like, okay, what can we do to get to know them better? And we built this prototype of what Listen is today." The founding team brings an unusual pedigree. Wahlforss's co-founder "was the national champion in competitive programming in Germany, and he worked at Tesla Autopilot." The company claims that 30% of its engineering team are medalists from the International Olympiad in Informatics — the same competition that produced the founders of Cognition, the AI coding startup. The Berghain billboard stunt generated approximately 5 million views across social media, according to Wahlforss. It reflected the intensity of the talent war in the Bay Area. "We had to do these things because some of our, like early employees, joined the company before we had a working toilet," he said. "But now we fixed that situation." The company grew from 5 to 40 employees in 2024 and plans to reach 150 this year. It hires engineers for non-engineering roles across marketing, growth, and operations — a bet that in the AI era, technical fluency matters everywhere. Synthetic customers and automated decisions: what Listen Labs is building next Wahlforss outlined an ambitious product roadmap that pushes into more speculative territory. The company is building "the ability to simulate your customers, so you can take all of those interviews we've done, and then extrapolate based on that and create synthetic users or simulated user voices." Beyond simulation, Listen aims to enable automated action based on research findings. "Can you not just make recommendations, but also create spawn agents to either change things in code or some customer churns? Can you give them a discount and try to bring them back?" Wahlforss acknowledged the ethical implications. "Obviously, as you said, there's kind of ethical concerns there. Of like, automated decision making overall can be bad, but we will have considerable guardrails to make sure that the companies are always in the loop." The company already handles sensitive data with care. "We don't train on any of the data," Wahlforss said. "We will also scrub any sensitive PII automatically so the model can detect that. And there are times when, for example, you work with investors, where if you accidentally mention something that could be material, non public information, the AI can actually detect that and remove any information like that." How AI could reshape the future of product development Perhaps the most provocative implication of Listen's model is how it could reshape product development itself. Wahlforss described a customer — an Australian startup — that has adopted what amounts to a continuous feedback loop. "They're based in Australia, so they're coding during the day, and then in their night, they're releasing a Listen study with an American audience. Listen validates whatever they built during the day, and they get feedback on that. They can then plug that feedback directly into coding tools like Claude Code and iterate." The vision extends Y Combinator's famous dictum — "write code, talk to users" — into an automated cycle. "Write code is now getting automated. And I think like talk to users will be as well, and you'll have this kind of infinite loop where you can start to ship this truly amazing product, almost kind of autonomously." Whether that vision materializes depends on factors beyond Listen's control — the continued improvement of AI models, enterprise willingness to trust automated research, and whether speed truly correlates with better products. A 2024 MIT study found that 95% of AI pilots fail to move into production, a statistic Wahlforss cited as the reason he emphasizes quality over demos. "I'm constantly have to emphasize like, let's make sure the quality is there and the details are right," he said. But the company's growth suggests appetite for the experiment. Microsoft's Patel said Listen has "removed the drudgery of research and brought the fun and joy back into my work." Chubbies is now pushing its founder to give everyone in the company a login. Sling Money, a stablecoin payments startup, can create a survey in ten minutes and receive results the same day. "It's a total game changer," said Ali Romero, Sling Money's marketing manager. Wahlforss has a different phrase for what he's building. When asked about the tension between speed and rigor — the long-held belief that moving fast means cutting corners — he cited Nat Friedman, the former GitHub CEO and Listen investor, who keeps a list of one-liners on his website. One of them: "Slow is fake." It's an aggressive claim for an industry built on methodological caution. But Listen Labs is betting that in the AI era, the companies that listen fastest will be the ones that win. The only question is whether customers will talk back.

Robert Morris University infuses artificial intelligence into MBA curriculum - TribLIVE.com
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Robert Morris University infuses artificial intelligence into MBA curriculum - TribLIVE.com

Robert Morris University infuses artificial intelligence into MBA curriculum  TribLIVE.com

Introducing Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber
Gemini

Introducing Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber

We’re introducing new Gemini models, including Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite and 3.5 Flash Cyber.

How Codex became a collaborator for OpenAI’s creative team
OpenAI News

How Codex became a collaborator for OpenAI’s creative team

How OpenAI’s creative team uses Codex to build custom creative tools, accelerate ideation, and prototype faster with context-aware AI.

3 Google updates from Galaxy Unpacked 2026
AI

3 Google updates from Galaxy Unpacked 2026

We shared how Samsung users can boost productivity and get time back on new foldables, watches, and glasses coming soon.

AI by Zapier: Add agentic AI steps to your workflows
The Zapier Blog

AI by Zapier: Add agentic AI steps to your workflows

Guilty of tokenmaxxing? I get it. Now that AI is ubiquitous in all of our work, it's easy to let an agent harness take the reins for every workflow. But tossing your important tasks into the agent void and letting it run amok in your wallet isn't always the cheapest—or smartest—way to go. Some work requires determinism, which means the same input produces the same output every time. Conventional automation handles that more reliably than AI. And it's also less expensive. There's no reason to pay

The 5 best photo editing apps for iPhone and Android (including free options) in 2026
The Zapier Blog

The 5 best photo editing apps for iPhone and Android (including free options) in 2026

"The best camera is the one you have with you" is an old adage in photography, and there's a lot of truth to it. Even as someone who has at least five cameras at home, I capture more photos with my smartphone than I do anything else. Smartphone cameras have been so good for so long now that it really doesn't feel like a tradeoff. My DSLR definitely doesn't have a wide-angle and an 8x telephoto lens built in. But capturing photos is just the first half of creating a good image. To really make gre

Alphabet Just Proved Why It's a Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Once Again - Yahoo Finance
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Alphabet Just Proved Why It's a Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Once Again - Yahoo Finance

Alphabet Just Proved Why It's a Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Once Again  Yahoo Finance

Relay.app is shutting down: How to export your workflows and move to Zapier
The Zapier Blog

Relay.app is shutting down: How to export your workflows and move to Zapier

Relay is shutting down on August 15, 2026, for free users, and on September 14 for paid plans. Either way, if you built workflows, agents, or tables in Relay, the end is near. The good news is that Relay has made it as easy as possible to transition your workflows to a new tool. Here's how to export your Relay.app data and rebuild those workflows in Zapier, plus what to expect from Zapier as a former Relay user. We'll also cover why Zapier is your best option compared to other Relay alternatives

How AI guardrails are impeding the work of offensive cybersecurity researchers
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

How AI guardrails are impeding the work of offensive cybersecurity researchers

We spoke with several cybersecurity researchers, who look for unknown vulnerabilities and develop tools to exploit them, about how OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s guardrails affect their work.

ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified
DailyAI

ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified

ChatGPT, the popular AI chatbot from OpenAI, is unintentionally leading users into full-blown spiritual delusions, and families are sounding the alarm. On Reddit’s r/ChatGPT forum, a chilling thread titled “ChatGPT induced psychosis” is gaining traction. Users are reporting a disturbing pattern: their loved ones are convinced that ChatGPT is a divine being, a spiritual guru, or even a portal to God. Rolling Stone journalist Miles Klee spoke directly with affected individuals. One woman shared how her partner became obsessed after ChatGPT gave him cosmic nicknames like “spiral starchild” and claimed he was on a divine mission. He ultimately told her The post ChatGPT Is Making People Think They’re Gods and Their Families Are Terrified appeared first on DailyAI.

5 ways to build a side hustle with Gemini
Gemini

5 ways to build a side hustle with Gemini

Launching a side business? Use Gemini to design your side hustle, conduct market research and automate logistics.

This week: How defense manufacturers can put artificial intelligence to work - Today's Medical Developments
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

This week: How defense manufacturers can put artificial intelligence to work - Today's Medical Developments

This week: How defense manufacturers can put artificial intelligence to work  Today's Medical Developments

AMD takes on Nvidia with its Helios AI rack-scale system
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

AMD takes on Nvidia with its Helios AI rack-scale system

AMD is challenging its chipmaker rival with a new rack-scale system that will start shipping to customers later this year.

Celebrating 25 years of visual search innovation
AI

Celebrating 25 years of visual search innovation

Google Images is turning 25. Here’s a look back at some major milestones — and new ways to explore and create visual content.

OpenAI’s new voice mode makes it to the ChatGPT desktop app
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

OpenAI’s new voice mode makes it to the ChatGPT desktop app

ChatGPT Voice on desktop can work with both ChatGPT Work and Codex to complete tasks and control agents.

Connect more of your apps to Search
AI

Connect more of your apps to Search

You’ll be able to securely link and interact with your go-to services directly in AI Mode.

Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House - Politico
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House - Politico

Obernolte-Trahan artificial intelligence bill introduced in House  Politico

Why Cognition bought Poke: AI personality is becoming a competitive advantage
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

Why Cognition bought Poke: AI personality is becoming a competitive advantage

The acquisition brings Poke’s conversational style and interaction model to Cognition’s coding agent Devin, reflecting a growing belief that how AI assistants interact with users is as important as the models powering them.

The latest AI news we announced in May 2026
AI

The latest AI news we announced in May 2026

Here are Google’s latest AI updates from May 2026

Gemini can now take notes in Google Meet for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.
Gemini

Gemini can now take notes in Google Meet for Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Google Meet's "Take notes for me" feature is available to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers in select languages.

As US weighs response to Chinese AI, industry urges against broad open-weight restrictions
AI News & Artificial Intelligence | TechCrunch

As US weighs response to Chinese AI, industry urges against broad open-weight restrictions

AI companies, including Nvidia and Mistral, urge policymakers to avoid broad restrictions on open-weight AI models as Washington debates responses to Chinese AI and alleged model distillation.

How Mach 1 uses Zapier MCP to run AI operations across 25 different companies
The Zapier Blog

How Mach 1 uses Zapier MCP to run AI operations across 25 different companies

Most AI agents can complete a task inside a single tool. Running them reliably across an entire business is a different problem. Chris Olson is co-founder and CEO of Mach 1, an AI operations platform that helps mid-market companies deploy agents across go-to-market, customer success, sales, support, and finance operations. He developed the approach after applying AI-driven operations at a sports technology company, helping move the business from a $9 million annual cash burn to $5 million in fre

Turn off your slop cannon
The Zapier Blog

Turn off your slop cannon

Good writing is a gift to everyone around you. Clear, concise communication means your readers spend less time decoding your words and more time acting on them. Here's how to write in a way that respects your reader's time and keeps us all from drowning in walls of text. Why this matters AI slop is real, and we can do better. The internet is full of bloated, padded writing generated (or at least inspired) by AI that optimizes for length over clarity. Don't add to it. When you write vague or word

The latest AI news we announced in June 2026
AI

The latest AI news we announced in June 2026

Here are Google’s latest AI updates from June 2026.

No, OpenAI's models didn't go 'rogue' when they broke into Hugging Face. Here's what really happened. - Live Science
"artificial intelligence" - Google News

No, OpenAI's models didn't go 'rogue' when they broke into Hugging Face. Here's what really happened. - Live Science

No, OpenAI's models didn't go 'rogue' when they broke into Hugging Face. Here's what really happened.  Live Science

NTT DATA Group cuts incident analysis to 30 minutes with Codex
OpenAI News

NTT DATA Group cuts incident analysis to 30 minutes with Codex

NTT DATA Group uses ChatGPT Enterprise and Codex to help 9,000 employees automate work, cut incident analysis to 30 minutes, and scale secure AI adoption.

Introducing OpenAI Presence
OpenAI News

Introducing OpenAI Presence

Introducing OpenAI Presence, a proven enterprise AI agent platform that helps organizations deploy trusted voice and chat agents for customer and internal workflows.

Expanding Managed Agents in Gemini API:  background tasks, remote MCP and more
AI

Expanding Managed Agents in Gemini API: background tasks, remote MCP and more

We’re announcing new capabilities in Managed Agents in Gemini API so developers can build reliable, production-ready agents.