SiriusXM is shuttering its Stitcher podcasting app and merging podcast delivery into its flagship SiriusXM subscription offerings. As of August 29, “the Stitcher app and web listening experience will be disabled,” the company told users this week. Stitcher offered listeners the choice of free-to-listen ad-supported programs or a la carte show subscriptions. It also had the $4.95 per month ($34.99 per year) Stitcher Premium, providing a wide variety of ad-free podcasts. “Subscribers can listen to podcasts within the SiriusXM app and will see an all-new listening experience later this year,” the company said. Read more

Data management firm Databricks has agreed to purchase generative AI company MosaicML in a deal valued at $1.3 billion. The three-year-old generative AI startup has developed a platform it says makes it “fast, cost-effective, and easy” for companies to train LLMs and deploy tools to use them. MosaicML has privately raised roughly $64 million to date. Its last valuation was $222 million in January, which means it was purchased for a healthy 6x multiple in a move that appears to prime Databricks for what one brokerage calls an “inevitable” IPO. Read more

AI-startup Inflection has unveiled a new foundation LLM (large language model) to power its Pi chatbot. Inflection-1 approximates OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 in terms of size and functionality, which puts it on a par with ChatGPT insofar as model training. Inflection claims its LLM exceeds some benchmarks when tested against that competing system, as well as Meta Platforms’ LLaMA, DeepMind’s Chinchilla and Google’s PaLM-540B. Pi is short for Personal Intelligence, and Inflection compiled its LLM with a goal of creating an emotive AI whose conversation provides a reasonable facsimile of empathy and human-like sensibilities. Read more

Meta Platforms is marketing its Quest catalog with the new monthly VR subscription game service Meta Quest+. For a monthly fee of $7.99 or $59.99 annually, Quest 2 and Quest Pro enthusiasts will gain access to two hand-picked VR titles per month that they can download and play through the life of their subscription. The “browse less and play more” approach aims to provide users an easy point of entry to explore the Meta Quest catalog. Available as of this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the Quest+ pass Monday on Meta’s Instagram channel. Those who sign up through July 31 get their first month for $1. Read more

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is investing $100 million to fund a global AI accelerator, aiming to link its machine learning initiatives with experts, customers and partners worldwide. Twilio, Highspot, Lonely Planet and Ryanair are among the first companies to get onboard with the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center to develop new applications. “Through free workshops, engagements and training, AWS will help customers imagine and scope the use cases that will create the greatest value for their businesses, based on best practices and industry expertise,” the company explains. Read more