TechCrunch Startup News

Voice recognition is getting integrated in nearly all facets of modern living, but there remains a big gap: speakers of minority languages, and those with thick accents or speech disorders like stuttering are typically less able to use speech recognition tools that control applications, transcribe or automate tasks, among other functions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Don Burnette, CEO and co-founder of self-driving truck startup Kodiak Robotics, had an “a-ha” moment when the company started working with the U.S. Department of Defense. Kodiak’s mission has always been to pursue long-haul autonomous trucking, but two years ago, the startup won a $50 million contract from the DoD to help the Army automate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Farmers have got to do something about pests. But nobody really likes the idea of using more chemical pesticides. Thomas Laurent’s company, Micropep, thinks the answer might already be in the plants themselves. Micropep is exploring how naturally occurring compounds, known as micropeptides, might work as an entirely new class of pesticides. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Quality assurance in the app development world is a necessary, but often resource-draining, undertaking. According to Statista, 23% of companies’ annual IT budgets are allocated to in-house or third-party contracted QA and testing. The stakes are high. In a survey by QA software-testing company QualiTest Group, 88% of app users said that they’d abandon apps. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Identity management is one of the most common fulcrums around which security breaches have pivoted in the last several years. One of the main reasons it has become the gift that keeps on giving to malicious hackers is that it’s a nightmare for organizations to track. A security startup founded in Tel Aviv called Linx Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nathan Rosenberg, the founder of farm automation platform Farmblox, said if there is one thing to know about trying to sell technology to farmers, it’s that you can’t tell them what to do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Marathon Fusion emerges from stealth with a plan to help fusion power plants extract tritium, a necessary fuel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Alphabet, the parent company of Google, is in advanced talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for $23 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. TechCrunch’s sources heard similar and added that deal discussions could last into next week. If this deal does end up getting done, it would be Alphabet’s largest acquisition yet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Canadian private equity firm PartnerOne paid $28.2 million for HeadSpin, a mobile app testing startup whose founder has been sentenced for fraud earlier this year, according to documents viewed by TechCrunch. The fire sale was reported by TechCrunch last week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coast, a startup that describes itself as “a financial services platform for the future of transportation,” has raised $40 million in Series B funding — just four months after announcing a $25 million round, the startup has told TechCrunch exclusively. Back-to-back fundraises were common prior to and during the wild investment days of 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Strong magnets are essential for the type of fusion power being pursued by Commonwealth Fusion Systems and a number of other startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Both of Hofy's co-founders, Sami Bouremoum and Michael Ginzo, along with the rest of the startup's leadership team and 120 employees, are joining Deel to build Deel IT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Echo Chunk, a company that is building Wordle-styled daily chess puzzle game Echo Chess, has raised $1.4 million in pre-seed from a16z Speedrun (Andreessen Horowitz’s early stage games accelerator), founder of Zyanga Mark Pincus, South Park Commons (SPC), Opendoor founder and CEO Eric Wu and Stef Corazza, the Head of Generative AI at Roblox Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At a time when many startups have struggled to raise money and keep their heads above water, Kandji, an Apple device management platform, has been an exception. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Astor is a free personal finance platform for women that merges community and investing in an approachable way, came to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Danish startup Toddle has launched a no-code web app builder that's designed as a full-featured alternative to Javascript frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adaptive is a platform that provides tools designed to simplify payments and accounting for general construction contractors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When VanMoof declared bankruptcy last year, it left around 5,000 customers who had pre-ordered e-bikes in the lurch. Now VanMoof is up and running under new management, and the company’s current owners are courting those same customers by offering them a €1,000 discount off a new bike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fusion power may still be a few years away, but one startup is laying the groundwork for what it hopes will become a bustling sector of the economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The founders of HERO Software didn’t start out to help small tradespeople in construction with a platform. They started out to fight the climate crisis. But in doing so, they stumbled on a way to help the whole business. Now, the company has closed a €40 million Series B financing round, and plans to expand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Visual effects have emerged as essential in filmmaking and have transformed storytelling and creativity in the film industry with its diverse digital techniques. However, the high cost of VFX tools often leaves independent filmmakers and content creators working with modest budgets struggling to compete with larger productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Joby Aviation is still a year away from commercially launching its electric air taxi designed for urban environments, but the startup is already looking towards its next chapter: Intercity flight, powered by hydrogen. To get the conversation started with regulators and demonstrate hydrogen’s capabilities, Joby told TechCrunch that it completed a 523-mile test flight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Iceland’s startup scene is punching above its weight. That’s perhaps in part because it kept the 2021 hype in check, but mostly because its tech ecosystem is coming of age. Iceland attracted the most venture capital per capita of all Nordic countries in 2023, but that stat is somewhat skewed by its relatively small population. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SaaS founders trying to figure out what it takes to raise their next round can refer to Point Nine’s famous yearly SaaS Funding Napkin. (The term refers to “back of the napkin” plans or calculations.) Now, European hardware deep tech teams have a similar resource from First Momentum, a pre-seed fund investing in technical B2B Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nala, a remittance startup that is now widening its portfolio through a new B2B payments platform, has raised $40 million equity in a rare deal that becomes one of the largest Series A transactions in Africa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Solo founder Cat Jones took the plunge on setting up a travel business right around the time the pandemic was hitting Europe in March 2020. Fast forward to summer 2024 and her curated package tour business, Byway, is announcing close of an oversubscribed £5.4 million Series A round (around $6.9M at current exchange rates). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Investors are betting on Indian wealthtech startups as a growing middle class turns to diversify investments and startups challenge traditional financial advisors for high-net-worth clients. Premji Invest is in advanced stages of talks to lead a funding round of $30 million to $40 million in Dezerv, an app offering a suite of investment solutions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Quantum Rise, a Chicago-based startup which does AI-driven automation for companies like dunnhumby (a retail analytics platform for the the grocery industry), has raised a $15 million seed round from Erie Street Growth Partners. Its approach is somewhat akin to UIPath’s, a company famous for bringing robotic process automation to the enterprise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Adept, a startup developing AI-powered “agents” to complete various software-based tasks, has agreed to license its tech to Amazon as the startup’s co-founders and portions of its team join the ecommerce giant. Geekwire’s Taylor Soper first reported the news Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Samyr Laine and Ayanna Alexander-Laine now put their grit and determination to work for founders wanting to launch and scale consumer brands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the age of generative AI, when chatbots can provide detailed answers to questions based on content pulled from the internet, the line between fair use and plagiarism, and between routine web scraping and unethical summarization, is a thin one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

CoinDCX, India’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, is expanding internationally through the acquisition of BitOasis, a digital asset platform in the Middle East and North Africa, the companies said Wednesday. The Bengaluru-based startup said BitOasis’s team is joining CoinDCX, with the original leadership continuing to manage the exchange, which offers trading in more than 60 tokens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Indian edtech giant Unacademy is laying off about 250 employees, the latest in a series of layoffs since the reopening of schools across the country after the pandemic. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, valued at $3.4 billion in its last funding in 2021, is cutting 100 jobs in core roles (marketing, business and product) , Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For the past couple of years, innovation has been accelerating in new materials development. And a new French startup called Altrove plans to play a role in this innovation cycle. The deep tech startup has already raised €3.7 million (around $4 million at current exchange rates). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Electricity demand is booming on account of AI. In a May 2024 report, Goldman Sachs predicted that data centers will use 8% of the U.S.’s total power supply by 2030, up from 3% in 2022, as cloud service providers expand to meet the demand for AI infrastructure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The amount of waste produced by the construction industry adds up to more than a third of the overall waste produced each year in the European Union. And it’s no better in the U.S. Stateside, the construction industry produces more than double the waste that households do each year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By now we know how crucial it is to have quality data for use by large language models (LLMs), but getting data ready for the models has been an early challenge for companies, an opening that represents an opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Artyc has raised $14 million to date and has a product on the market, Medstow Micro, that helps ship temperature-sensitive specimens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Climate tech startups especially those building hardware, face a particular challenge when trying to move beyond the prototype or pilot phase and start selling finished products to customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Ironspring Ventures launched in 2020 to back startups in industrial sectors like construction and manufacturing, it was one of very few early-stage venture firms paying attention to those capital-intensive sectors. Now, the firm is doubling down. The Austin, Texas-based firm raised $100 million for its second fund to focus on industrial startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Older adults increasingly want to age in their homes rather than nursing facilities. A study by the American Association of Retired People (AARP) found that nearly 90% of people over 65 want to stay in their homes as they grow older. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As generative AI touches a growing number of industries, the companies producing chips to run the models are benefitting enormously. Nvidia in particular, which commands an estimated 70% to 95% of the market for AI chips, wields massive influence. Cloud providers from Meta to Microsoft are spending billions of dollars on Nvidia GPUs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rainforest, a startup that embeds payment processing into other software platforms, has raised $20 million in Series A funding — less than a year after announcing the close of its seed financing. Raising back-to-back rounds was more common in 2021 but we don’t see it happening as often in this new environment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wisk Aero, a subsidiary of Boeing, has acquired Verocel, a software verification and validation company with 25 years of experience in the aerospace industry. Wisk has an autonomous-first approach to eVTOL. The company’s Generation 6 aircraft, which is slated to begin airborne tests this year, is designed to be supervised by humans, but not physically Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rocketlane initially aimed to support customer onboarding. However, it has broadened its scope and doubled down on addressing the needs of professional services teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yet another generative AI venture has raised a bundle of money. And, like the others before it, it’s promising the moon. Emergence, whose co-founders include Satya Nitta, the former head of global AI solutions at IBM’s research division, today emerged from stealth with $97.2 million in funding from Learn Capital plus credit lines totaling more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang set off another debate with an anti-DEI post. It revealed a lot about the current state of DEI in tech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

18-year-olds Christopher Fitzgerald and Nicholas Van Landschoot have founded APIGen, a platform to build custom APIs from natural language prompts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with an AI platform that they can configure to help other workers in the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Christopher O’Donnell has hobbies. He likes music and playing guitar, but above all, he loves building software. Which is why three years after leaving HubSpot, he built Day.ai, a CRM for the age AI. Unlike modern CRMs, which are essentially giant spreadsheets that somebody needs to populate and keep updated, Day learns everything Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices