TechCrunch Startup News
3,808 episodes — Page 18 of 77
Amazon hires founders away from AI startup Adept
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
Husband-and-wife former Olympians target $50M for new fund to invest in influencer-led consumer brands
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
News outlets are accusing Perplexity of plagiarism and unethical web scraping
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 acquires BitOasis in international expansion push
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 Unacademy cuts another 250 jobs
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
Altrove uses AI models and lab automation to create new materials
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
As the AI boom gobbles up power, Phaidra is helping companies manage datacenter power more efficiently
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
Sensorita uses digital twins to help waste management companies streamline construction waste
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
Illumex is using GenAI to ease pain of getting good data into LLMs
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
Cold shipping might be the next industry that batteries disrupt
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
Rondo Energy funding shows a new way across the climate startup ‘valley of death’
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
Austin-based Ironspring Ventures raised $100m to invest in industrial revolution
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
Sensi.AI grabs $31M Series B from Insight, Zeev to monitor seniors 24/7
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
Rainforest lands $20M to challenge Stripe with embedded payments for SaaS providers
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
Etched is building an AI chip that only runs one type of model
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
Boeing’s Wisk Aero buys Verocel to boost software safety for self-flying eVTOL
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 snags $24M to bring AI-led experiences for professional services teams
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
Emergence thinks it can crack the AI agent code
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
Silicon Valley leaders are once again declaring ‘DEI’ bad and ‘meritocracy’ good — but they’re wrong
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
How 2 high school teens raised a $500K seed round for their API startup (yes, it’s AI)
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
‘Lawyer-in-the-loop’ startup Wordsmith wants to bring AI paralegals to all employees
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
Ex-HubSpot exec builds an AI-powered CRM that learns for you, with $4M seed led by Sequoia
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
Language learning app Speak nets $20M, doubles valuation
Speak, the AI-powered language learning app, has raised new money from investors at double its previous valuation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Société Générale to sell its freelancer challenger bank Shine to Ageras
Four years after acquiring Shine, a French fintech startup that offers bank accounts to freelancers and very small companies, Société Générale has announced plans to sell Shine to Ageras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Daydream rakes in $50M seed funding to build an AI-powered search engine suited for e-commerce
For retailers, e-commerce is a bit of a puzzle at the moment. Online shopping trends are expected to stay strong this year, so companies can’t afford to curtail their e-commerce budgets, but at the same time, e-commerce is more fragmented than ever before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Seen is a new app for friends to record reactions to TikToks and other content
We all know the feeling when we send a funny TikTok video, anticipating a response from a friend, only to receive a basic laughing emoji or, worse, no reaction at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bitsening raises $25M for its high-resolution radar in autonomous driving
Self-driving vehicles rely on many sensors to detect objects and the world around them. The conventional approach is to work with cameras and lidars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kilimo helps farmers save water and get paid for it
Cheap irrigation has transformed many regions around the world into breadbaskets, but it also means that there can be little left for other uses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
EV startup Fisker files for bankruptcy
Check out TechCrunch.com for more news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Loop Golf looks to take the stress out of booking a tee time
Golf has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the pandemic and the popularity of Netflix’s Full Swing documentary series. More than 531 million rounds of golf were played in the U.S. in 2023 alone, according to the National Golf Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What StepStone’s $3.3B venture secondaries fund tells us about LPs’ current appetite for venture
StepStone raised the largest fund dedicated to investing in venture secondaries ever, the firm announced last week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
GPTZero’s founders, still in their 20s, have a profitable AI detection startup, millions in the bank and a new $10M Series A
GPTZero's growth and financials made it one of the AI startups ruthlessly pursued by VCs. And Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi won the deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Friends & Family Capital, a fund founded by ex-Palantir CFO and son of IVP’s founder, unveils third $118M fund
Small VC firms require deep trust, mutual support, and long-term commitment among the partners —a kinship that, in many ways, resembles a family dynamic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AccountsIQ takes in $65M to boost its bookkeeping tools with AI
AccountsIQ, a Dublin-founded accounting technology company, has raised $65 million to build “the finance function of the future” for mid-sized companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Let there be Light! Danish startup exits stealth with $13M seed funding to bring AI to general ledgers
It’s not the sexiest of subject matters, but someone needs to talk about it: The CFO tech stack — software used by the chief financial officers of the world — is ripe for disruption. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Civic Renewables is rolling up residential solar installers to improve quality and grow the market
With most residential solar panels installed by smaller companies, customer experience can be a mixed bag. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kelvin wants to help save the planet by applying AI to home energy audits
French startup Kelvin, which uses computer vision and machine learning to make it easier to audit homes for energy efficiency, has raised $5.1M. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Raspberry Pi is now a public company as its shares pop after IPO pricing
Who would have thought that Raspberry Pi, the maker of cheap, single-board computers, would become a public company? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anterior grabs $20M from NEA to expedite health insurance approvals with AI
Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Autonomy’s Mike Lynch acquitted after US fraud trial brought by HP
Former Autonomy chief executive Mike Lynch issued a statement Thursday following his acquittal of criminal charges, ending a 13-year legal battle with Hewlett-Packard that became one of Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud cases. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Novel battery manufacturer EnerVenue is raising $515M, per filing
The company is in the process of building a gigawatt-scale factory in Kentucky to produce its nickel-hydrogen batteries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Carta’s valuation to be cut by billions in an upcoming secondary sale
Carta, a once-high-flying Silicon Valley startup that loudly backed away from one of its businesses earlier this year, is working on a secondary sale that would value the company at $2 billion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Eyebot raised $6M for AI-powered kiosks that provide 90-second eye exams without optometrist
"Over half of Americans wear corrective glasses or contact lenses. While there isn’t a shortage of low-cost and luxury frames available online or in stores, consumers can only buy them with a current eyeglass prescription. That means that they first need an eye exam from an optometrist to receive that prescription. But, due to a […] © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Whizz wants to own the delivery e-bike subscription space, starting with NYC
New York City, home to over 60,000 gig delivery workers, has been cracking down on cheap, uncertified e-bikes that have resulted in battery fires across the city. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Insurance provider Understory gets into renewable energy following $15M Series A
After growing 500% year-over-year in the past year, Understory is now launching a product focused on the renewable energy sector. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Eko Health scores $41M to detect heart disease earlier and more accurately
In 1816, French physician René Laennec invented an instrument that allowed doctors to listen to human hearts and lungs. That device — a stethoscope — eventually evolved from a simple wooden tube to a lightweight two-earpiece version most doctors today wear on their necks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
‘Star Wars’ lasers and waterfalls of molten salt: How Xcimer plans to make fusion power happen
The startup has been pursuing a ground-up redesign of a well-understood technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Raspberry Pi partners with Hailo for its AI extension kit
The Raspberry Pi 5, the small-but-mighty computer that has become quite popular with tech hobbyists and industrial companies, is now also an AI computer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Iyris makes fresh produce easier to grow in difficult climates, raises $16M
2023 was the hottest year on record, it doesn’t look like we’re cooling down anytime soon. Rising temperatures have made farming increasingly difficult in areas that were once prime agricultural resources where heat and drought have severely impacted crops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ashby injects recruiting with a dose of AI
Ashby consolidates existing talent acquisition tools and leans heavily on AI to automate the more repetitive steps in the recruitment pipeline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices