TechCrunch Startup News

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

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

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

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

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, 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

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

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

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

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

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, 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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, 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quantum computing remains something of a holy grail in the world of technology: it promises a huge leap in computing power, but only if someone can figure out how to square away the fault rates that prevent any scaling of the tech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kodiak Robotics has officially handed off two autonomous trucks to customer Atlas Energy Solutions, marking the startup’s first commercial launch. Atlas, a provider of proppant (i.e., sand) and oilfield logistics, received its first Kodiak-equipped trucks in December and began driverless operations in an off-road environment in West Texas’s remote Permian Basin shortly after. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you’ve been following the AI industry, Mistral should be a familiar name by now. The French AI startup with a $6 billion valuation is arguably the biggest AI company working on foundation models in Europe. Alan, on the other hand, isn’t as well known. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many nonprofits are stuck with outdated, expensive, and limited tech that hinders their ability to fund their mission or cause. While most consider adopting tech to be a priority, they’re faced with a number of blockers, including siloed data and issues with integration. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Growing up with an OB-GYN father, Rachel Blank assumed that most women received excellent gynecological care. She regularly witnessed her dad’s patients thanking him for delivering their child when they would bump into him around town. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The $1 billion acquisition of rent-to-own startup Divvy Homes, which was announced Wednesday, is expected to leave some shareholders without a payout, according to sources familiar with the deal. The terms — and Divvy’s journey from buzzy startup to acquisition target — reflects the rollercoaster ride the proptech industry has endured over the past decade. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Stockholm startup Neko Health has made a big bet on consumers wanting to learn about their state of health and how to prevent things going wrong. Now, investors are making a big bet on Neko. The startup has raised a fresh $260 million in funding, a Series B that values Neko at $1.8 billion post-money Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When George Avetisov was the founder and CEO of cybersecurity startup HYPR, he spent a lot of time in the trenches with the company’s sales team. He quickly realized that regardless of how good his sales team was, they were consistently pulling in other departments to answer customer questions or fill out technical questionnaires. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

London startup Vertice has made a name for itself over the years in the very crowded world of expense management with a focus on applying AI to optimize a single area where businesses, collectively, are currently sinking hundreds of billions of dollars in IT budgets that are exceeding $5 trillion annually. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A U.S. federal safety regulator has “upgraded” its investigation into Ford’s hands-free advanced driver assistance system known as BlueCruise — a required step before a recall can be issued. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of Defects Investigation launched a probe into Ford BlueCruise last April after the agency confirmed the system was active. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An arena. A hype tunnel, the kind through which NBA players typically streak. A competitor dressed in a jersey patterned with a six-pack abs. In a new piece, the New York Times takes readers to an event that organizers call the Microsoft Excel World Championship, a 40-minute, Las Vegas-based competition featuring 12 contestants; Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says that the company plans to release a “two-way” voice mode for its chatbot, Claude, as well as a memory feature that lets Claude remember more about users and past conversations; IMDb founder steps down as CEO after 35 years Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The process of getting screened for cervical cancer is quite intimidating. It’s the once-a-year, sometimes life-changing treatment that involves the bright lights of a doctor’s office and an uncomfortable insertion that always seems to last too long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban is ready to fund a TikTok alternative built on Bluesky’s AT Protocol, he shared in a TikTok video posted on Wednesday. In anticipation of the coming U.S. TikTok ban, which will go through on Sunday unless paused by the Supreme Court, users have been fleeing to other video platforms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices