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Nurture aims to teach children important life skills through interactive gameplay and entertainment.

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Parents understand how difficult it’s to keep their children engaged in online learning. Education is a brand new app designed for youths aged 4 to 7 that gives interactive content and games that can keep them engaged. The company’s mission is to equip kids with key life skills comparable to socialization, basic financial literacy, mindfulness, fitness, nutrition and more through story-driven adventures that children can actively take part in.

Nurture announced its $2.8 million pre-seed round on Wednesday, led by Golden Gate Ventures. The funding will go toward hiring preschool content creators to help create content for the platform.

The flagship title that Nurture first launched is known as “Doki’s Delivery” and focuses on helping children learn social-emotional skills. The series follows a gaggle of characters who’re on a mission to deliver an egg via spaceship.

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Image sources: Education

The app also has a dual-screen component that requires parents to download the Nurture TV app on Fire TV or Google TV so kids can interact between each screens. In the case of “Doki’s Delivery,” kids can use their phone or tablet as a game controller while playing on the TV screen. They can tilt their mobile device from side to side to help the characters avoid obstacles.

Other interactions include responding to the protagonist’s calls, designing a spaceship, and hatching a mysterious egg that players can then take care of – similar to Tamagotchi, the favored children’s toy.

“I didn’t want it to be passive, mindless screen time. I want it to be an active, interactive learning process,” co-founder and CEO Roger Egan told TechCrunch. “(Once kids) understand the concepts, we use games and interactive materials to practice the skills and apply them.”

The company plans to release latest original content focused on “growth mindset and financial thinking,” Egan explained. Additionally, Nurture is in talks with about 20 popular third-party creators to expand its content library. Nurture’s creator platform lets creators host content on their very own digital “islands,” which users can access with a swipe of the app’s menu.

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Image sources: Education

In addition to engaging educational content, parents will have the opportunity to track their children’s gaming performance.

“We have these moments called reflection moments where we ask questions and the child can answer them…With that answer, we can synthesize that information and understand how well they understand a concept, and then feed that into the product and let the parents know how the child is learning and how they’re progressing,” Egan said.

Offline classes may even be available to help parents learn the way to consolidate the knowledge they’ve acquired through the app, and to encourage children to apply their knowledge in on a regular basis situations.

Nurture was founded in 2022, just a few years after Egan’s children began distant learning throughout the pandemic. With a front-row seat to his children’s education, he felt that traditional education wasn’t adequately preparing children for a rapidly changing world, especially one dominated by artificial intelligence. He also believes that children should learn things like adaptability, critical pondering, digital literacy, mindfulness, and empathy to achieve success in the long run. But he struggled to find suitable alternatives to complement his children’s education.

Egan previously founded online food market RedMart, which was acquired by Alibaba. He was joined by co-founders Danny Limanseta (chief product officer), who served as product design manager at Redmart; Sally Doherty (chief human resources officer), who previously worked at Microsoft; and Scott and Julie Stewart (creative directors), a husband-and-wife team specializing in animated children’s content comparable to “Lego Friends: The Next Chapter.”

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In addition to being an investor, Priebe can be a game design advisor at Nurture. Priebe was chargeable for creating Club Penguin, the wildly popular online multiplayer game.

“The next generation of kids are learning games faster than they are learning shows,” Priebe told us. “I really like the idea that you’re not just going to sit and watch linear TV anymore… It’s really innovative how the (Nurture) characters stop and pull the kid into the adventure and ask, ‘What would you do?’ or ‘How would you like us to do this?’”

Nurture is currently in an invite-only beta for users within the U.S., U.K., and Canada. It plans to expand to other markets in 2025. The company may even launch a paid subscription once the app is publicly available.

Other participants within the round included Reach Capital and Seedcamp, with participation from Club Penguin co-founder Lance Priebe. Other notable advisors included Manual Bronstein, Roblox’s chief product officer; Scott Kraft, former head author and executive producer of “Paw Patrol”; and Joey Mazzarino, a puppeteer on “Sesame Street” known for his roles as Murray Monster, Stinky the Stinkweed and other Muppets.

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This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

Technology

Anysphere, which makes the cursor supposedly collect USD 900 million with a valuation of USD 9 billion

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AI robot face and programming code on a black background.

Anysphere, producer of coding cursor with AI drive, attracted $ 900 million in the recent financing round by Thrive Capital, Financial Times He informed, citing anonymous sources familiar with the contract.

The report said that Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z) and ACCEL also participate in the round, which values ​​about $ 9 billion.

The cursor collected $ 105 million from Thrive, and A16Z with a valuation of $ 2.5 billion, as TechCrunch said in December. Capital Thrive also led this round and in addition participated in A16Z. According to Crunchbase data, the startup has collected over $ 173 million thus far.

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It is alleged that investors, including index ventures and a reference point, attempt to support the company, but plainly existing investors don’t want to miss the opportunity to support it.

Other coding start-ups powered by artificial intelligence also attract the interest of investors. Techcrunch announced in February that Windsurf, a rival for Aklesphere, talked about collecting funds at a valuation of $ 3 billion. Openai, an investor in Anysphere, was supposedly I’m attempting to get windsurf for about the same value.

(Tagstransate) A16Z

(*9*)This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com

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This is the shipping of products from China to the USA

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Shein and Temu icons are seen displayed on a phone screen in this illustration photo

The Chinese retailer has modified the strategy in the face of American tariffs.

Thanks to the executive ordinance, President Donald Trump ended the so -called de minimis principle, which allowed goods value 800 USD or less entering the country without tariffs. It also increases tariffs to Chinese goods by over 100%, forcing each Chinese firms and Shein, in addition to American giants, similar to Amazon to adapt plans and price increases.

CNBC reports that this was also affected, and American buyers see “import fees” from 130% to 150% added to their accounts. Now, nevertheless, the company is not sending the goods directly from China to the United States. Instead, it only displays the offers of products available in American warehouses, while goods sent from China are listed as outside the warehouse.

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“He actively recruits American sellers to join the platform,” said the spokesman ago. “The transfer is to help local sellers reach more customers and develop their companies.”

(tagstotransate) tariffs

This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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One of the last AI Google models is worse in terms of safety

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The Google Gemini generative AI logo on a smartphone.

The recently released Google AI model is worse in some security tests than its predecessor, in line with the company’s internal comparative test.

IN Technical report Google, published this week, reveals that his Flash Gemini 2.5 model is more likely that he generates a text that violates its security guidelines than Gemini 2.0 Flash. In two indicators “text security for text” and “image security to the text”, Flash Gemini 2.5 will withdraw 4.1% and 9.6% respectively.

Text safety for the text measures how often the model violates Google guidelines, making an allowance for the prompt, while image security to the text assesses how close the model adheres to those boundaries after displaying the monitors using the image. Both tests are automated, not supervised by man.

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In an e-mail, Google spokesman confirmed that Gemini 2.5 Flash “performs worse in terms of text safety for text and image.”

These surprising comparative results appear when AI is passing in order that their models are more acceptable – in other words, less often refuse to answer controversial or sensitive. In the case of the latest Llam Meta models, he said that he fought models in order to not support “some views on others” and answers to more “debated” political hints. Opeli said at the starting of this yr that he would improve future models, in order to not adopt an editorial attitude and offers many prospects on controversial topics.

Sometimes these efforts were refundable. TechCrunch announced on Monday that the default CHATGPT OPENAI power supply model allowed juvenile to generate erotic conversations. Opeli blamed his behavior for a “mistake”.

According to Google Technical Report, Gemini 2.5 Flash, which is still in view, follows instructions more faithfully than Gemini 2.0 Flash, including instructions exceeding problematic lines. The company claims that regression might be partially attributed to false positives, but in addition admits that Gemini 2.5 Flash sometimes generates “content of violation” when it is clearly asked.

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“Of course, there is a tension between (after instructions) on sensitive topics and violations of security policy, which is reflected in our assessment,” we read in the report.

The results from Meepmap, reference, which can examine how models react to sensitive and controversial hints, also suggest that Flash Gemini 2.5 is much less willing to refuse to reply controversial questions than Flash Gemini 2.0. Testing the TechCrunch model through the AI ​​OpenRoutter platform has shown that he unsuccessfully writes essays to support human artificial intelligence judges, weakening the protection of due protection in the US and the implementation of universal government supervisory programs.

Thomas Woodside, co -founder of the Secure AI Project, said that the limited details given by Google in their technical report show the need for greater transparency in testing models.

“There is a compromise between the instruction support and the observation of politics, because some users may ask for content that would violate the rules,” said Woodside Techcrunch. “In this case, the latest Flash model Google warns the instructions more, while breaking more. Google does not present many details about specific cases in which the rules have been violated, although they claim that they are not serious. Not knowing more, independent analysts are difficult to know if there is a problem.”

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Google was already under fire for his models of security reporting practices.

The company took weeks to publish a technical report for the most talented model, Gemini 2.5 Pro. When the report was finally published, it initially omitted the key details of the security tests.

On Monday, Google published a more detailed report with additional security information.

(Tagstotransate) Gemini

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This article was originally published on : techcrunch.com
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