Ex-Twitter engineers are developing Particle, an AI-driven news reader
A team led by former Twitter engineers is reimagining how AI can assist individuals in processing news and information. Particle.news, which recently entered private beta, is a novel startup offering a personalized, “multi-perspective” news reading experience. It not only utilizes AI to summarize news but also aims to do so in a manner that fairly compensates authors and publishers — or so it claims.
Although Particle has not yet disclosed its business model, its emergence coincides with growing concerns about the impact of AI on an increasingly shrinking news ecosystem. AI-summarized news could potentially reduce traffic to publishers’ websites, thereby diminishing their ability to monetize through advertising.
The startup was established last year by Sara Beykpour, former Senior Director of Product Management at Twitter. During her tenure at Twitter from 2015 to 2021, Beykpour played pivotal roles in developing products such as Twitter Blue, Twitter Video, and conversations. She also led the development of the experimental app, twttr. Beykpour’s co-founder, Marcel Molina, is a former senior engineer at both Twitter and Tesla.
Particle’s premise, as outlined by Beykpour last month, is to streamline the process of staying informed with the help of AI.
“Sometimes it feels like headlines are all we have time for. We also want to understand more, but faster,” she wrote in an introduction to the startup on Threads. “We’re in the early stages of using AI to transform the way we interact with news.”
Through Particle, news consumers receive a quick, bulleted summary of the story, incorporating information from diverse sources. However, in announcing the private beta, Beykpour emphasized that readers have the option to either utilize the summary to catch up quickly or delve deeper to “learn about how a story has unfolded over time.”
This venture-backed startup has secured funding from Kindred Ventures and Adverb Ventures, as well as various angel investors, including Twitter and Medium co-founder Ev Williams, and Behance founder Scott Belsky.
