US stiffs WHO hundreds of millions as it officially withdrawals

As of today, the US is no longer a member of the World Health Organization—and it leaves the United Nations health agency with hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid bills, according to reporting by Stat News. A year ago today, the US informed the WHO of its intent to exit, setting the clock for … Read more

Inference startup Inferact lands $150M to commercialize vLLM

The creators of the open-source project vLLM have announced that they transitioned the popular tool into a VC-backed startup, Inferact, raising $150 million in seed funding at an $800 million valuation. The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, confirming TechCrunch’s earlier reporting that vLLM has raised capital from a16z. Inferact’s debut … Read more

Voice AI engine and OpenAI partner LiveKit hits $1B valuation

LiveKit, a developer of infrastructure software for real-time AI voice and video applications, has announced the raise of $100 million in funding at a $1 billion valuation. The round, which comes ten months after LiveKit’s previous fundraise, was led by Index Ventures with participation of existing investors including Altimeter Capital Management, Hanabi Capital and Redpoint … Read more

Vimeo lays off ‘large portion’ of staff after Bending Spoons buyout

Other former employees echo this statement in posts online, with one video engineer saying “almost everyone” at the company was laid off, “including the entire video team.” Another software engineer says he was laid off along with “a gigantic amount of the company.” Earlier this week, Israeli outlet CTech reported that Vimeo is laying off … Read more

Epic and Google have a secret $800 million Unreal Engine and services deal

A judge is questioning whether Epic Games and Google are settling their long-running antitrust fight partly because of a previously unannounced partnership involving the Unreal Engine, Fortnite, and Android. In a hearing in San Francisco today, the court revealed that Epic and Google have struck a new deal that apparently includes “joint product development, joint … Read more