TechCrunch Startup News
3,836 episodes — Page 12 of 77
Flora is building an AI-powered ‘infinite canvas’ for creative professionals
With just a few words, AI models can be prompted to create a story, an image, or even a short film. But according to Weber Wong, these models are all “made by non-creatives for other non-creatives to feel creative.” In other words, they’re not built for actual creative professionals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cloudsmith raises $23M to improve software supply chain security
The software supply chain is notoriously porous: a reported 81% of codebases contain high- or critical-risk open source vulnerabilities. A single vulnerability can have a far-reaching impact on the wider software supply chain, as evidenced by the likes of the Log4Shell exploit that saw millions of applications exposed to potential remote code execution hacks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Just Move In raises $8M Series A for its home setup service
Fintech has fragmented into increasingly specialized, cucumber-sliced micro-services, ranging from embedded buy-now-pay-later loans to specialized neo banks to yet more payment processing systems. What opportunities remain for innovators in such a fragmented landscape? One U.K. startup, Just Move In, zoomed out and realised that the home had been overlooked by everyone in the industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Workhelix taps years of research to help enterprises figure out where to apply AI
AI has the power to transform how people work, but getting tangible value out of AI isn’t as easy as throwing any AI application at any workflow. It can be hard for enterprises to figure out which AI applications help their business and which are just hype. Workhelix wants to solve that problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Inception emerges from stealth with a new type of AI model
Inception, a new Palo Alto-based company started by Stanford computer science professor Stefano Ermon, claims to have developed a novel AI model based on “diffusion” technology. Inception calls it a diffusion-based large language model, or a “DLM” for short. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Europe’s Relay pulls in $35M Series A after applying Asia’s model to delivery
Being somewhat later than Europe in adopting the idea of parcel delivery, much of Asia built its delivery infrastructure around e-commerce, effectively ‘Uberising’ how deliveries worked down to the last mile. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bridgetown Research raises $19M to speed up due diligence with AI
Birdgetown Research has raised $19 million in a round co-led by Accel and Lightspeed to deploy AI agents for business decisions and M&A deals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anagram takes a gamified approach to employee cybersecurity training
Despite employers requiring their employees to complete yearly cybersecurity training courses, human-driven cybersecurity breaches still happen. The problem could even get substantially worse as generative AI increases the scale and personalization of social engineering campaigns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Redalpine, Founders Fund back Magdrive’s electric thruster business
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Perfect taps $23M to fix the flaws in recruitment with AI
“Agentic AI” is the concept of the moment. Developers big and small are rushing to build apps to leapfrog the heavy lifting needed to employ generative AI in specific contexts… and investors are rushing to fund the most interesting of these. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Patlytics raises $14M for its patent analytics platform
For decades, patents have been a bone of contention in the technology world, seen by some as a way to protect intellectual property, but by critics as a blunt weapon against innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI-coding startup Codeium in talks to raise at an almost $3B valuation, sources say
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Arize AI hopes it has first-mover advantage in AI observability
The AI observability platform has raised $70 million in Series C funding. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Solar crushed 2024, but emissions were up as industry used more natural gas
Solar and wind together now represent nearly a quarter of electricity demand and nearly 10% of all energy consumption in the U.S. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spore.Bio raises $23M to apply machine learning to microbiology testing
Recalls in the food and beverage industry due to contamination incidents can have catastrophic effects. Not only do companies have to pay fines and damages, but the impacts on the brand’s reputation can be long-lasting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
IVF insurance startup Future Family promises a baby or your money back
For decades, couples going through in vitro fertilization have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the procedures with no guarantee of success. It’s not only an emotionally draining process, but a financially exhausting one as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hyperlume wants to make chip-to-chip communication faster and more efficient
Data centers consumed 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023 and are estimated to use up to 12% by 2028. The majority of the energy data centers suck up is used to help transfer data from chip to chip. A company called Hyperlume is looking to make that process more energy-efficient while also speeding it up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Augury raises $73M on a $1B+ valuation for AI to detect malfunctions in factory machines
As companies like Nvidia and SoftBank make industrial robotics into a key focus for future R&D, a startup has raised funding today for another facet of how AI is being used on the factory room floor. Augury, which develops AI-based hardware that measures vibrations, sound, temperature and other factors to understand how machines are working Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Level Zero Health banks $6.9M to prove wearable medtech can take the strain out of hormone testing
Level Zero Health, a female-founded medical device startup that’s aiming to break new ground by developing a device for continuous hormone monitoring, has closed an oversubscribed $6.9 million pre-seed funding round despite being only a little over a year old. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Legal tech startup Luminance, backed by the late Mike Lynch, raises $75M
Generative AI is getting better at interpreting dense texts, and this progress has proven to be a boon for startups attacking one of the most complex sets of texts there is: the law. It makes sense then that we’ve been seeing a new burst of activity in the legal tech space Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Germany’s Helsing doubles down on drones for Ukraine, scales up manufacturing
Helsing, the German defense tech startup backed by Spotify’s Daniel Ek and others, is producing 6,000 HX-2 strike drones in addition to the 4,000 HF-1 strike drones financed by Germany that are currently being delivered to Ukraine. “We are scaling up production of HX-2 in response to additional orders from Ukraine.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mistral releases regional model focused on Arabic language and culture
The next frontier for large language models (LLMs), one of the key technologies underpinning the boom in generative AI tools, might be geographical. On Monday, Paris-based AI startup Mistral — which is vying to rival the likes of U.S.-based Anthropic and OpenAI — is releasing a model that’s a bit different from its usual LLM. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tofu is building an omni-channel marketing platform for enterprises
When EJ Cho started his first company in 2018, he was exposed to what it takes to market a product. He was surprised to find a market filled with different single-use tools. “It was a very frustrating experience,” Cho told TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Phase raises $13M to speed up the UX design process with its no-code platform
UX and UI designers work closely with engineers throughout product development to build and implement design concepts and wireframes for functional user interfaces. Regular communication, feedback and testing are required for the collaboration to work smoothly and deliver a user experience that aligns with the intended design goals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apptronik, which makes humanoid robots, raises $350M as category heats up
Apptronik, a University of Texas spin-out that was quietly building humanoid robots before it became quite so fashionable, on Thursday announced a $350 million Series A round of financing. B Capital and Capital Factory co-led the round, which also featured participation from Googl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Avride launches sidewalk delivery bots on Uber Eats in Jersey City
Uber Eats customers in Jersey City can now have their orders delivered by one of Avride’s autonomous sidewalk delivery robots. The launch, which kicked off this week in New Jersey, is Uber’s latest foray into autonomous vehicles and represents an expanding relationship with Avride. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
No-code app builder Softr expands beyond Airtable databases
If you’re working for a small company and want to build a client portal or an internal tool, it can be difficult to find the budget and resources to allocate a developer to that small project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SpotDraft taps AI to help streamline contract management
More and more legal professionals are embracing AI, surveys show. Per a recent poll from legaltech company Clio, 79% of firms used some form of AI for casework last year, up from just 19% in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chestnut Carbon gets $160M to turn old farms into forests
The company buys marginal and degraded farmland, plants them with native trees, and harvests the resulting carbon credits. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Voyantis aims to help companies figure out their customers’ worth
How much is a customer worth to a company? That’s the eternal question. To arrive at an answer, customer and sales teams are often forced to use spreadsheets and other manual data analysis methods. The problem is, these methods tend to be slow and error-prone, leading to gaps in reporting processes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Archer Aviation doubles down on defense aircraft with fresh $300M
Escalating geopolitical tensions and a new administration with a hawkish defense agenda has led many startups to embrace dual-use strategies to secure revenue through military applications. And it’s a trend that is already heating up in aerospace. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
3D mood board and marketplace Mattoboard picks up $2M to launch AI visual search
Mattoboard, the makers of web-based software designed to simplify the creative process for interior designers and architects, is getting into AI. On Tuesday, the startup announced its $2 million seed funding round, which will support the launch of a new feature called Design Stream, an AI-driven visual search and discovery tool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admits that AI’s benefits may not be widely distributed
In a new essay on his personal blog, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is open to a “compute budget,” among other “strange-sounding” ideas, to “enable everyone on Earth to use a lot of AI” and ensure the benefits of the technology are widely distributed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
PromptLayer is building tools to put non-techies in the driver’s seat of AI app development
The GenAI boom of the last few years has unleashed a wave of startups promising to support the process of prompt engineering — i.e., coming up with instructions to precisely steer an AI chatbot to serve useful output. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hiveclass, a platform for virtual PE classes for kids, raises $1.5M
When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020 and schools transitioned to online learning, both Joe Titus and Paul Suhr were concerned about how to maintain their children’s activity levels in the absence of mandatory physical education classes and sports. The two friends’ solution was Hiveclass, a New York-based edtech platform that hosts online courses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fizz brings on TikTok alum to help build out its marketplace and recommendation engine
Fizz, the college social app, is looking for ways to enhance and expand its platform, and a recent new hire is poised to help drive these ambitions. The company has brought on David Vasquez, who previously served as TikTok’s head of creator monetization and a product lead for TikTok Shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pendulum’s AI-driven platform helps enterprises better predict supply and demand
Supply chains have had a tumultuous few years, beginning in 2020, when COVID-19 upended legacy global supply chains. More recently, the “TikTok-ification” of retail has companies like Shein and Temu creating new products constantly as consumer demands change at the same rapid pace. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
European AI startups have raised $8 billion in 2024
In just a few days, France will host the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, with heads of state flocking to Paris to meet global tech leaders. They’ll most likely announce some big investments and diplomatic agreements focused on safety or the environmental impact of artificial intelligence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Neuralk-AI is developing AI models specifically designed for structured data
Tabular data is a broad term that encompasses structured data that generally fits into a specific row and column. It can be a SQL database, a spreadsheet, a .CSV file, etc. While there has been tremendous progress on artificial intelligence applied to unstructured and sequential data, these large language models are fuzzy by design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Archive raises $30M to solve fashion’s pollution problem and Sotira landed $2M to help brands offload and monetize their surplus inventory
The fashion industry has concerned Emily Gittins since adolescence. The sector is, after all, one of the most polluting in the world. According to some sources, it is responsible for nearly 10% of the earth’s CO2 emissions and more than 20% of all water waste. Yet people still want more, fast.; Also, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Waabi and Volvo team up to build self-driving trucks at scale
Self-driving truck startup Waabi is partnering with Volvo Autonomous Solutions to jointly develop and deploy autonomous trucks, an important milestone as it gets closer to a commercial launch. The tie up also marks Volvo’s second partnership to co-develop self-driving big rigs with a startup partner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI agents could birth the first one-person unicorn — but at what societal cost?
Thanks to the advent of cloud computing and distributed digital infrastructure, the one-person micro-enterprise is far from a novel concept. Cheap on-demand compute, remote collaboration, payment processing APIs, social media, and e-commerce marketplaces have all made it easier to “go it alone” as an entrepreneur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Riot raises $30 million for its cybersecurity product suite focused on employees
French startup Riot has raised a $30 million Series B round after reaching $10 million in annual revenue in 2024. Originally focused on educating employees about cybersecurity risks, the company now wants to go one step further and nudge employees so that they minimize their attack surface. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Custom feed builder Graze is building a business on Bluesky, and investors are paying attention
A startup called Graze, which lets you build your own feeds for the Bluesky social network, has caught investors’ attention. In addition to offering tools to easily build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds, Graze will soon allow feed creators to monetize their efforts with advertising, sponsored posts, and subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Backed by Mayo Clinic, Nutrix’s hardware monitors worker stress
Stress isn’t just bad for you — it’s also bad for your employer. Factoring in absenteeism, diminished productivity, turnover, medical costs, and accidents, the non-profit American Institute of Stress estimates that workplace stress costs U.S. businesses over $300 billion annually. One way to measure stress is by monitoring cortisol levels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
European embedded banking startup Swan adds another $44 million to its Series B
French startup Swan has raised another €42 million (around $44 million at current exchange rates). The company considers this round as the second part of the Series B round that was originally announced in September 2024. Swan helps other companies offer financial products at scale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Data analytics startup Athenic AI wants to be an enterprise’s central nervous system
Jared Zhao originally got interested in data analytics during his time at UC Berkeley because he was drawn to how it could turn raw data into a story. Zhao founded his first data analytics startup Polyture in 2021 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Naboo secures $21M for its concierge-style corporate event booking platform
If you’ve ever tried to book a venue for a company event, you’ll know how onerous a task it can be. You have to contact multiple vendors, wait for quotes, evaluate them, see if you can get a good deal, and then get all that approved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This Bay Area startup is using AI to help families navigate long-term care planning
Lily Vittayaruksku was studying aerospace engineering when her aunt was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Her aunt had lived under the same roof as Vittayaruksku while she was growing up and helped raise her. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
TravelPerk raises $200M as valuation nearly doubles to $2.7B
Barcelona-based business travel management platform TravelPerk has raised $200 million at a hefty $2.7 billion valuation — almost double the $1.4 billion valuation at its previous fundraise last year. Alongside the raise, TravelPerk also announced it has acquired Swiss startup Yokoy to bring native expenses management into the fray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices