TechCrunch Startup News

Chatbots and other kinds of AI agents — and the companies that build them — may feel like a dime a dozen these days. But the truth is that, for both businesses and consumers, some may be infinitely more useful (and perhaps less dystopian) than others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A startup called Superpower is publicly launching what it calls the world’s first super-app that is designed to help people better understand and take care of their health. For $499, the startup offers biannual lab testing that analyzes over 100 blood biomarkers across 21 categories Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Every now and then, a Silicon Valley startup launches with such an “absurdly” described mission that it’s difficult to discern if the startup is for real or just satire. Such is the case with Mechanize, a startup whose founder – and the non-profit AI research organization he founded called Epoch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI’s recently launched o3 and o4-mini AI models are state-of-the-art in many respects. However, the new models still hallucinate, or make things up — in fact, they hallucinate more than several of OpenAI’s older models. Hallucinations have proven to be one of the biggest and most difficult problems to solve in AI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Deck, a startup that claims to be building “the Plaid for the rest of the internet,” has raised $12 million in a Series A funding round — about nine months after closing its seed financing, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. The new raise, led by Infinity Ventures, brings Montreal-based Deck’s total raised Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Capsule is upgrading its AI-powered video editing assistant for marketing, sales, and media teams following the close of a $12 million round of Series A funding, the company announced on Wednesday. The upgraded editor will include new features like AI suggestions and support for real-time collaboration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tesla famously struggled to scale up production of the Model 3 sedan in 2018 — so much so that CEO Elon Musk said his company was weeks away from collapsing. That near-death experience helped spawn a whole new company called Atomic that’s built around using AI to streamline supply chains. Co-founded by former Tesla employees Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In an update to its Preparedness Framework, the internal framework OpenAI uses to decide whether AI models are safe and what safeguards, if any, are needed during development and release, OpenAI said that it may “adjust” its requirements if a rival AI lab releases a “high-risk” system without comparable safeguards. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

U.K. startup Marshmallow has blown up over the years by using innovations in data science to build car insurance policies for immigrants and other consumers who have been overlooked or priced out of traditional insurance. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hexium has emerged from stealth with $8 million in seed funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thirteen years ago, Forerunner Ventures began helping to usher in a new era of consumer startups, including Warby Parker, Bonobos, and Glossier. None has gone through a traditional IPO process. Warby Parker was taken public through a special purpose acquisition vehicle. Bonobos was acquired by Walmart. Glossier is still privately held. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A handful of engineers who worked at Lucid Motors and on Apple’s electric car project have launched a new startup that puts a fresh spin on electric hub motors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Matt Rogers says Quilt is picking up where his old startup, Nest, left off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The business of moving goods in the United States is dominated by trucks, which handles about two-thirds of the 20.2 billion tons of freight that’s transported annually. Parallel Systems founder and CEO Matt Soule wants to change that by putting a modern autonomous and electric twist on the centuries-old railroad system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the job market continues to get more competitive, it’s taking months for new grads to land employment, with many settling for roles that don’t align with their goals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After months of hearty marketing efforts and large-scale technology demos across the U.S., Nuro has secured $106 million in fresh funding to help scale its autonomous driving technology and advance commercial partnerships. The Series E round brings Nuro’s total funding raised to $2.2 billion and its valuation to $6 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tessell, a startup developing a multi-cloud database-as-a-service, has raised $60 million in a new funding round led by WestBridge Capital ahead of its plans to expand its market presence and launch an AI-powered conversational database management service. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Legal tech has come a long way, but the bulk of an intellectual property or patent lawyer’s work today is still done with spreadsheets, word processors and PDFs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dark kitchens– also referred to as ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, or virtual kitchens– often receive criticism for their food quality. Sizl, a cook-to-order delivery service based in Chicago, seeks to change this perception by delivering meals made with fresh ingredients in around 30 minutes flat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The startup has commissioned a demonstration unit of its organic flow battery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie wants to bring his city back to its glory days. And he’s convinced tech leaders — who often pitch utopian ideals of their own — can help him deliver. “I’m a mayor that is picking up the phone and calling CEOs,” said Lurie during TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event on Thursday night. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thirteen years ago, when Chris Farmer founded early-stage venture firm SignalFire with data analysis at the core of its investment strategy, many were skeptical about the approach — conventional wisdom dictated that nascent companies didn’t have enough data to make investment algorithms effective. “This was a very radical idea, and everyone thought I was crazy.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenAI just co-led a $43 million Series A into deepfake defense startup Adaptive Security. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thatch, a startup that aims to transform the health insurance experience for employers and employees alike, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Aetherflux, the space solar startup founded by billionaire co-founder of Robinhood Baiju Bhatt, has raised a $50 million in a Series A round as it works to launch its first low Earth orbit demonstration in 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cloud infrastructure is dominated by several large industry players: AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud. While to some it may look like AI is headed in a similar direction, the founders of Parasail think AI infrastructure will look very different — and are betting their company’s fate on it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rippling released the affidavit of the its employee who admitted he was spying for Deel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While working on their MBAs at Harvard Business School, Colombian immigrants Stephanie Murra and Lorenza Vélez noticed that most of the workers in the cafeteria were Hispanic. In conversations with them, a common theme kept coming up: how difficult it was for people who legally moved to the U.S. from Spanish-speaking countries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Skylight, a startup taking on TikTok with a more open alternative, is launching its mobile app to the public on Tuesday after just ten weeks of active development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI startup Runway on Monday released what it claims is one of the highest-fidelity AI-powered video generators yet. Called Gen-4, the model is rolling out to the company’s individual and enterprise customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite Google’s intentions for its default image viewing and editing app for Android, the Photos app has, over the years, become one of the most popular photo backup services around. In fact, it was one of the most attractive offerings for years until it stopped offering unlimited storage in 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Charlie Javice, the founder of student loan application startup Frank that was purchased by JP Morgan for $175 million, was found guilty on Friday of defrauding the bank by greatly inflating the customer count. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Seattle-based Temporal has made its name over the last several years in the world of microservices — specifically providing a platform to orchestrate the messy business of building and operating integrations and updates across disparate services and apps in the cloud. But the AI boom has come at the company fast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

HoneyBook, a startup last valued in late 2021 at $2.4 billion, told TechCrunch that it hit $140 million annualized recurring revenue (ARR). This makes HoneyBook one of the few startups with peak-VC-era valuations to report their financials after the market cooled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Twin came out of stealth in January 2024, AI agents were more of a theoretical concept than a reality. Today, the Paris-based is releasing an automation agent in partnership with Qonto, the fintech startup that offers business bank accounts to more than 500,000 customers across Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The proliferation of scarily realistic deepfakes is one of the more pernicious byproducts of the rise of AI, and falling victim to scams based on these deepfakes is already costing companies millions of dollars — not to mention the implications these could have on national security. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s only been a day since ChatGPT’s new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Medina's new startup, called Paid, helps agentic startups profitably charge for their bots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Sam Weaver was vice president of product management at Unqork, he realized that the company needed a better way to manage its sprawling network of Kubernetes clusters — which are groups of computing nodes. When Unqork couldn’t find anything off the shelf, it assembled a 15-person team to build a Kubernetes management product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pruna AI, a European startup that has been working on compression algorithms for AI models, is making its optimization framework open source on Thursday. Pruna AI has been creating a framework that applies several efficiency methods, such as caching, pruning, quantization and distillation, to a given AI model. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Arcade, a generative AI marketplace for designing jewelry, is expanding its offerings to include home goods, starting with rugs. The company on Monday also introduced a new feature called “Match My Room,” which allows users to upload a photo of their room so that their design complements the existing colors and style Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After hitting record lows at the start of the pandemic, mortgage rates began to climb in 2022 and haven’t come down significantly since. With 30-year mortgage rates hovering at over 6.5% today (they were as low as 2.49% in 2020!), buying a home is simply not that attainable for many people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Aletiq has raised a €6 million funding round led by Point Nine a few months ago (around $6.5 million at current exchange rates). The French startup is announcing the founding round today. Aletiq has been developing product lifecycle management (PLM) software for manufacturing industrial companies working in aerospace, automotive, electronics, luxury and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Norwegian robotics startup 1X plans to start early tests of its humanoid robot, Neo Gamma, in “a few hundred to a few thousand” homes by the end of 2025, according to the company’s CEO, Bernt Børnich. “Neo Gamma is going into homes this year.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wayve co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall sees promise in bringing his autonomous vehicle startup’s tech to market. That is, if Wayve sticks to its strategy of ensuring its automated driving software is cheap to run, hardware agnostic, and can be applied to advanced driver assistance systems, robotaxis, and even robotics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Debt collection in emerging markets often feels outdated, and can be costly — damaging borrower trust. As consumer lending surges and regulators push for fairer practices, legacy collection outfits are struggling to maintain pace. ClearGrid aims to help modernize debt collection — and recovery — with AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A Swedish startup aiming to build a hyperscale cloud company in Europe has raised €50.6 million ($55 million) in Series A funding. Evroc, as it’s called, says it’s laying the foundations for a “secure, sovereign and sustainable hyperscale cloud to reimagine the digital future of Europe.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While Rippling and Deel duke it out in the field and in the courtroom alleging illegal sales and marketing tactics, here’s another way to boost business growth: pick up a massive sum of cash to expand your operations in those areas. Factorial, the Barcelona-based “unicorn” startup that provides an all-in-one HR platform. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by former Okta exec Alex Salazar and former Redis engineer Sam Partee, has raised $12 million from Laude Ventures. Laude is the new fund launched in 2024 by Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski, the UC Berkeley computer scientist who also co-founded Databricks. This isn’t the only check Laude has cut. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s gloves off in one of the more tense rivalries in the world of startups. HR company Rippling Monday morning announced a lawsuit against Deel, another big player in the same space. The dramatic 50-page complaint alleges racketeering, misappropriation of trade secrets, tortious interference, unfair competition, and aiding & abetting breach of fiduciary duty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices