# Meta AI Data, Google Enterprise Tools, and Tech Investment Trends

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-04-23

## Transcript

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Google Maps is about to get a big dose of AI.
I'm Imran Shaikh and your Thursday Daily Crunch featuring three big tech headlines and a little bit of startup business news starts right now.
Meta's found a new source of training data for its AI models, its own employees.
Yeah, that's right.
The company plans to use data culled from the mouse movements and keystrokes of its own staff in its pursuit to build more capable and efficient AI.
The story, which was first reported by Reuters, shows the lengths to which tech companies are going to find new sources of training data, the lifeblood of AI models that helps the programs learn how to more effectively carry out tasks and respond to user queries.
When reached for comment by TechCrunch, a meta spokesperson provided the following statement.
If we're building agents to help people complete everyday tasks using computers, our models need real examples of how people actually use them.
Things like mouse movements, clicking buttons, and navigating drop-down menus.
To help, we're launching an internal tool that will capture these kinds of inputs on certain applications to help us train our models.
There are safeguards in place to protect sensitive content.
and the data is not used for any other purpose.
This trend reveals a troublesome privacy dimension of the AI industry.
Last week, it was reported that old startups are being scavenged for their corporate communications, like Slack archives and Jira tickets, and converted into AI training data.
Today, Amazon Music said that it's partnering with live event listing platform Bands in Town to bring concert listings to its music streaming service.
Through a Bands in Town for Artists integration, users will be able to find live shows on the artists' profile pages on Amazon Music.
They can also click on the Buy Ticket buttons to purchase tickets on Bands in Town.
Artists will need to link their Amazon Music profile for the first time on Bands in Town for event sync to begin.
Also, Amazon Music will automatically list events from venues, festivals and promoters using Bands in Town Pro on its platform.
The feature is rolling out now and will be fully available on Amazon Music this spring on both iOS and Android apps, the company notes.
Bands in Town said that it has more than 700,000 artists on the platform, along with over 65,000 venues and festivals using its Bands in Town Pro marketing and promotion product.
It added that more than 100 million users are registered on the platform, but didn't specify the number of active users.
Now, previously, Bands in Town had partnered with Amazon Music all the way back in 2023 to let artists sell merch on the music streaming platform.
Amazon Music is relatively late to the concert discovery party because, of course, Spotify has been working on it for years, and Apple Music teamed up with Ticketmaster and Bands in Town to power its live events feature in March.
Last year, SoundCloud also worked with Ticketmaster to let artists list their live events.
Good old Google has unveiled new generative AI features for its mapping and geospatial apps that are designed with enterprise users in mind.
You see the new features announced at Cloud Next in Las Vegas this week.
Add generative AI capabilities to Google's mapping platform, giving it enhanced visual and data analytics powers.
One of the new features called Maps Imagery Grounding, very creative naming Google, used generative AI to create realistic scenes in Google Street View to visualize how a particular project, be it a movie set or a planned construction site, might look.
Users merely type a prompt into Gemini Enterprise Agent's platform, which then conjures the scene inside Street View as long as the proper settings have been enabled within Google Maps imagery.
The company is also expanding the ways in which users can analyze data from satellite imagery in Google Earth.
A new feature called Aerial and Satellite Insights allows users to analyze imagery that is stored in Google Cloud's BigQuery, the company's cloud-based data warehouse and analytics platform.
Now, Google's claiming that this feature shrinks weeks of work into just minutes of labor.
Finally, the company's also launching two new Earth AI imagery models, AI systems designed to assist with geospatial analysis.
Google says that the models have been trained to identify specific objects in imagery, like bridges, roads, and power lines.
Previously, companies had to build and train their own AI systems to do this, a process Google says could take months.
The new models mean businesses no longer need to spend months training and building AI from scratch when developing their own products.
These AI updates unlock entirely new possibilities for businesses, data analysts, and urban planners, the company said in its release.
Now over to producer Dennis with the latest in startup business news all in about one minute.
Emron, thank you.
And investors are aggressively courting AI researchers to build startups that can make AI more reliable and efficient.
NeoCognition, described as a research lab developing self-learning AI agents, has just emerged from stealth with $40 million in seed funding.
NeoCognition currently has about 15 employees, the majority of whom hold PhDs.
and a new company built by a team of former Pinterest designers and engineers is rethinking what an email can be from the ground up.
Extra, the first product from the consumer technology company Build Forever, ditches subject lines, folders, and tags in favor of an inbox organized around your life, bringing everything important into a single, actionable overview within its Today tab.
This tab updates in real time with the most current and critical information extracted from the mountains of emails in your inbox.
The idea, like many in the consumer space, emerged from a personal problem the founder wanted to solve.
His inbox was a mess, and that'll do it for me.
Imran, back to you.
And folks, that's your Daily Crunch.
Today's stories were reported by Ivan Mehta, Lukas Ropek and more awesome TechCrunch journalists.
We'll see you here tomorrow.
Same Tech Time, same Crunch Channel.
And until then, remember, you can find us at TechCrunch.com.
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