TechCrunch Startup News
3,807 episodes — Page 15 of 77
Uprise wants to help small businesses make better financial decisions
Small business creation has been on the rise in the U.S. since the pandemic. There are a lot of tech tools designed to help these companies with things like payroll or setting up retirement benefits — but more tools doesn’t mean small businesses know how to use them to make smart decisions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Byju’s founder says his edtech startup, once worth $22B, is now ‘worth zero’
Byju Raveendran, the founder of the embattled edtech group Byju’s, acknowledged on Thursday afternoon that he made mistakes, mistimed the market, and that his startup, once valued at $22 billion, is now effectively worth “zero.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
With $11.9 million in funding, Dottxt tells AI models how to answer
As we’ve reported before, enterprise CIOs are taking generative AI slow. One reason for that is AI doesn’t fit into existing software engineering workflows, because it literally doesn’t speak the same language. For instance, LLMs (aka large language models) require a lot of cajoling to deliver valid JSON. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How Paladin’s drones helped Asheville during Hurricane Helene
When Hurricane Helene hit Asheville, North Carolina in September, the city’s police department reached out to public safety drone startup Paladin for help. The startup’s 30-member team jumped into action working nights and through the weekend to assist Asheville’s police department with locating people and dropping off supply. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ODD taps $27M for diamond chips to clear radioactive debris at Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant
Back in 2011, the world held its breath after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan suffered a failure of its cooling systems, in the wake of the country getting hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Support automation firm Capacity grows with new cash and acquisitions
David Karandish has been busy. Capacity, his support automation company, was planning a $5 million “bridge round” to help the company reach the break-even point. But TVC Capital, Toloka.vc, and the venture’s other backers had something grander in mind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Storio is helping other businesses unlock more value from solar energy
Meet Storio, a French startup that’s focused on providing smart energy storage for commercial and industrial customers. Founded in 2023, the startup raised a €5 million seed round earlier this year (around $5.5 million at current exchange rates) and has signed its first client. Storio believes solar panels have a bright future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Data center tech is exploding but adoption won’t be easy for startups
The data center industry is expanding rapidly to keep up with the flywheel growth of AI. While these data centers are necessary AI infrastructure, they store an AI company’s compute, they are expensive to build, seemingly more so to run, and they are a huge energy suck. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Table Space eyes $2.5B valuation in India IPO
Table Space is targeting a valuation of $2.5 billion or higher for an India IPO planned planned for 2025. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Peanut, a social network for women, adds a pregnancy tracking tool
Peanut, a social networking app for women, is launching a new feature to help users track their pregnancies. The new Peanut Track tool leverages seven years of data from questions asked on the social network and uses AI to anticipate questions that women have during different stages of their pregnancy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This three-person robotics startup is working with designer Yves Béhar to bring humanoids home
It’s hard to know where to focus when speaking to Christoph Kohstall. The contents of his packed Palo Alto garage compete for attention. To his immediate right stands a tower of electrical components, dotted with flashing lights. To his left is a workbench and the tops of machining tools. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
MiLaboratories gets $10M for a platform play to accelerate genomic research
Advances in DNA sequencing and the vast amounts of genomic data being produced by next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology have created a startup opportunity to build software for biologists so they can more easily analyze this big data and take the next leap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
UK neobank Monzo hits $5.9B valuation with secondary market sale
Monzo is now valued at $5.9 billion after the U.K.-based challenger bank announced a secondary market share sale to provide liquidity for its employees. The transaction saw existing investors such as Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund (GIC) and StepStone Group procuring additional shares in the London-based fintech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Streamer Plex rolls out movie and TV show reviews
Following its $40 million fundraise at the beginning of this year, streaming media company Plex announced on Wednesday it’s rolling out a new TV show and movie reviews feature, putting its app in more direct competition with other apps, like Letterboxd and TV Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Health insurtech startup Qantev raises €30 million to outperform LLMs with small AI models
Health and life insurance providers face a rising volume of claims due to chronic disease and aging populations, but their processes lack scalability. AI automation can help, but it takes more tailoring than for other insurance types. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Zap Energy shows off its new fusion power prototype, Century
After keeping Century under wraps for several months, the startup gave TechCrunch a peek under the hood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Alaska Airlines’ venture lab spins out its first startup: Odysee
Odysee CEO Steve Casley sees dollar signs in data. Or more specifically, AI-powered software that can analyze reams of data to help commercial airlines get the most out of its complex flight schedules. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Distributional raises $19M to automate AI model and app testing
Distributional, an AI testing platform founded by Intel’s former GM of AI software, Scott Clark, has closed a $19 million Series A funding round led by Two Sigma Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Revyze, a ‘TikTok for education’ startup, draws on Duolingo to add bite-sized learning too
Middle and high schoolers are both the easiest and most difficult audience. If you’re developing a neat little video game, chances are they’re willing to download it right away. But if, like the team behind Revyze, you’re working on a learning app, good luck pitching them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ollie scoops up health startup to launch a tool that analyzes dog poop
The global pet food market has become fiercely competitive, with an estimated market share of $103.3 billion in 2023 and still growing. This growth has led many companies to target pet owners who are willing to invest in quality food to enhance their pets’ well-being and longevity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SoCreate wants to transform screenwriting software with AI imagery and community sharing tools
Many screenwriters have embraced modern tools over traditional PDFs to craft their film or TV show pilots. SoCreate, the latest entrant in the screenwriting software arena, is challenging established players like Final Draft and Celtx with its fresh approach to storytelling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AirOps is an all-in-one platform for generating and managing AI-based marketing content
To some degree, every business that has a presence on the web is in the content business — whether that’s for informing customers, finding new clients, or for SEO. That means managing the production of those texts and images, updating them, and potentially optimizing them for a search engine to index and rank. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Voyage AI is building RAG tools to make AI hallucinate less
AI tends to make things up. That’s unappealing to just about anyone who uses it on a regular basis, but especially to businesses, for which fallacious results could hurt the bottom line. Half of workers responding to a recent survey from Salesforce say they worry answers from their company’s generative AI-powered systems are inaccurate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spill, the Black-owned Twitter alternative, scores investment from Kerry Washington
As the second anniversary of Spill rolls around, Spill has something else to celebrate: Emmy-winning actress Kerry Washington has made an investment in his app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pallet uses AI to bring logistics into the 21st century
Transportation and warehousing are multi-trillion-dollar industries, but the technologies that power them are often outdated, inefficient and siloed. Pallet, which is announcing an $18 million Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures today, has built an all-in-one transportation and warehouse management system that uses AI to help these businesses streamline their operations Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Numa raises $32M to bring AI and automation to car dealerships
Numa, a startup developing AI-powered automation tech for car dealerships, has raised fresh capital in a Series B round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Eon emerges from stealth with $127M to bring a fresh approach to back up cloud infrastructure
A team of founders who sold their last company to Amazon to build a new business within AWS is setting out to reinvent the tricky business of backing up an organization’s cloud infrastructure. Today, Eon — as their new startup is called — is coming out of stealth with a product, a set of customers, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Beta Technologies unveils first passenger carrying electric aircraft
Beta Technologies unveiled Monday the next electric aircraft in its lineup — a passenger-carrying version of its ALIA vertical takeoff and landing and fixed-wing vehicles. Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles don’t rely on a runway, whereas fixed-wing aircraft do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
.Airship wants to build better sales tools for HVAC contractors
The HVAC industry is going through a transformation. The old guard of tradespeople are on the cusp of retiring while private equity firms are consolidating the industry. Airship is building a software solution for HVAC’s next chapter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Podcasting startup Podeo gets $5.4M to go beyond the Arab world
Podcast listeners crossed half a billion people at the end of last year as listenership maintained steady growth. With countries in the Arab world having some of the most engaged listeners, a podcasting startup out of Dubai is doubling down on the opportunity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
HungryPanda, a food ordering app for the Asian diaspora, picks up $55M
Apps catering to the Chinese and wider Asian diaspora, especially urban consumers focused on food, can be big business. Now, HungryPanda, one of the trailblazing startups in that market is announcing more funding. The food ordering and delivery app, founded in London and aimed squarely at Chinese and other Asian consumers living outside their home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Index Ventures is bulking up its investment team in NYC
While online discourse would make it seem that venture has retreated to the Bay Area, with San Francisco being the most important place to build a startup, Index Ventures is looking to bulk up its New York-based investing team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Indian game streaming startup Loco sells majority stake to Redwood
UAE-based Redwood has acquired a majority stake in the game streaming platform Loco as the Indian firm looks to expand focus to international markets, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed. Redwood, a newly-formed investment firm, has signed a $65 million deal with Loco, an investment that also gives full exit to all existing Loco backers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Prepared, which wants to ‘revolutionize’ emergency 911 calls, raises $27M
A company that claims its tech can “revolutionize” emergency calls has raised $27 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company, Prepared, enables 911 dispatchers to get a caller’s real-time GPS location if their phone supports it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Dinii, a cloud-based restaurant management platform, raises $45M Series B
Japan has always been a strong market for bringing technology into the experience of consuming food, and now one of the startups leading on this idea is attracting investors from across the ocean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
WhatFix raises a whopping $125M for its in-app user guides
Digital transformation — upgrading a company’s legacy apps and processes with new tech — has long been a buzzy and lucrative business. But the pandemic supercharged the market. Covid pandemic lockdowns and the widespread move to work-from-home spurred brands relying on old technology to modernize their organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Radian Aerospace completes ground tests of prototype space plane
Radian Aerospace has moved one step closer to achieving the “holy grail” of spaceflight: a reusable space plane that can take-off from an airfield and land on a runway like a conventional airplane. The startup just announced completion of a series of ground tests in Abu Dhabi earlier this summer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fintech Mesa promises 1% cash back on mortgages, up to 3x on other home needs
Mortgage fintech Mesa has emerged from stealth on Tuesday with $9.2 million in seed capital and a novel idea for homeowners. It’s offering cash back and rewards on all spending done on the home, including the mortgage itself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Torq, which automates cybersecurity workflows, raises $70M in new capital
As the volume of cyberattacks grows, there’s increasing interest from the corporate sector in tech to help automate responses to breaches. Per a 2023 survey from analytics firm Devo, 80% of security leaders expected expanded investments in security automation technology this year; most cited the tech’s potential to support cyber threat mitigation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jump raises $12M to help freelancers get benefits just like employees
Jump offers full-time contracts to freelancers looking for some stability and the benefits involved with a full-time job. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
David Energy is going up against Goliath energy incumbents
James McGinniss has been obsessed with decarbonization and the energy grid since he was a high schooler over a decade ago. Now, his startup David Energy has a lofty goal: getting the energy grid to run entirely on clean energy in the next 10 years. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FTC report on predatory social media data hoarding hints at future regulations
A new FTC report on how social media and streaming sites collect and monetize their hoards of user data doesn’t really feature a lot of surprises for anyone who’s followed the space Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Health insurance startup Alan reaches $4.5B valuation with new $193M funding round
Belfius is leading Alan’s Series F funding round of €173 million (around $193 million at current exchange rates). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tidal Metals sees seawater as the solution to a critical mineral shortage
The startup, previously known as GreenBlu, was working on desalination when it realized there was more value in the minerals that were left behind. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Brightband sees a bright (and open-source) future for AI-powered weather forecasting
With an explosion of weather and climate data that the last generation of tools can’t handle, is AI the future of forecasting? Research certainly suggests so, and a newly funded startup called Brightband is taking a shot at turning machine learning forecast models into both a business and open source standard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Nurture wants to teach kids important life skills through interactive gameplay and entertainment
Parents understand the challenge of keeping young kids engaged in online learning. Nurture is a new app designed for children aged 4 to 7 that features interactive content and games to capture their interest. The company’s mission is to equip children with critical life skills such as socializing, basic financial understanding, mindfulness, fitness, nutrition, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Neuralink’s ‘breakthrough device’ clearance from FDA does not mean they have cured blindness
Neuralink, the Elon Musk-owned brain-computer interface company, has received “breakthrough device” clearance from the FDA. But this does not mean they have developed a cure for blindness, whatever Musk might say. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Quick-commerce startup Flink raises another $150M at a valuation of nearly $1B
Flink, a quick-commerce startup out of Berlin that was an acquisition target of Gorillas, Getir, Amazon, and Gopuff, is spelling out how it plans to go forth on its own. TechCrunch has exclusively learned that the company has raised $150 million, which it will use to double down on business in Germany and the Netherlands Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Greenlite, founded by an ex-Gopuff exec, automates construction permitting
Construction permitting often involves drafting lengthy applications, leading to unpredictable timelines for developers and businesses. There are tens of thousands of jurisdictions — each with their own different forms and application processes for building permits. Ben Allen knows a thing or two about permitting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI coding assistant Supermaven raises cash from OpenAI and Perplexity co-founders
Supermaven, an AI coding assistant, has raised $12 million in a funding round that had participation from OpenAI and Perplexity co-founders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices