TechCrunch Startup News
3,836 episodes — Page 19 of 77
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
Former teen model co-created app Frich to help Gen Z be more realistic about finances
As a teen model, Katrin Kaurov became financially independent at a young age. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
YoLa Fresh, a GrubMarket for Morocco, digs up $7M to connect farmers with food sellers
YoLa Fresh works with over a thousand retailers across Morocco and records up to $1 million in gross merchandise volume. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OneScreen.ai brings startup ads to billboards and NYC’s subway
When Alex Ewing was a kid growing up in Purcell, Oklahoma, he knew how close he was to home based on which billboards he could see out the car window. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Exactly.ai secures $4M to help artists use AI to scale up their output
Exactly.ai says it uses generative AI to help artists retain legal ownership of their art while being able to reproduce their designs faster and at scale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Tech startup Odyssey goes on journey to help states implement school choice programs
The company's public fund disbursement and e-commerce platform makes accepting school tuition and enabling educational enrichment more accessible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kinnect’s new app aims to help families record and store generational memories
A new startup called Kinnect aims to help people privately save generational memories, traditions, recipes, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ledger starts shipping its high-end hardware crypto wallet
Ledger, a French startup mostly known for its secure crypto hardware wallets, has started shipping new wallets nearly 18 months after announcing the latest Ledger Stax devices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cloover wants to speed solar adoption by helping installers finance new sales
Small operations can lose customers by not offering financing, something the Berlin-based startup wants to change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Doly lets you generate 3D product videos from your iPhone
AniML, the French startup behind a new 3D capture app called Doly, wants to create the PhotoRoom of product videos, sort of. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Indian EV startup Zypp Electric secures ENEOS backing to fund expansion to Southeast Asia
Indian startup Zypp Electric plans to use fresh investment from Japanese oil and energy conglomerate ENEOS to take its EV rental service into Southeast Asia early next year, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Auggie’s new app helps parents find community and shop
A new startup called Auggie is aiming to give parents a single platform where they can shop for products and connect with each other. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bugcrowd, the crowdsourced white-hat hacker platform, acquires Informer to ramp up its security chops
On the heels of raising $102 million earlier this year, Bugcrowd is making good on its promise to use some of that funding to make acquisitions to strengthen its security chops. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Autonomous shipping startup Orca AI tops up with $23M led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures
If you thought autonomous driving was just for cars, think again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Unify helps developers find the best LLM for the job
When developers have a particular job that AI can solve, it’s not typically as simple as just pointing an LLM at the data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hydrolix seeks to make storing log data faster and cheaper
In 2008, Marty Kagan, who’d previously worked at Cisco and Akamai, co-founded Cedexis, a (now-Cisco-owned) firm developing observability tech for content delivery networks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Patronus AI is off to a magical start as LLM governance tool gains traction
These days every company is trying to figure out if their large language models are compliant with whatever rules they deem important, and with legal or regulatory requirements Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rollup wants to be the hardware engineer’s workhorse
Hard tech startups generate a lot of buzz, but there’s a growing cohort of companies building digital tools squarely focused on making hard tech development faster, more efficient, and — well, a whole lot more like software development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Zen Educate raises $37M and acquires Aquinas Education as it tries to address the teacher shortage
Zen Educate, an online marketplace that connects schools with teachers, has raised $37 million in a Series B round of funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
CyberArk snaps up Venafi for $1.54B to ramp up in machine-to-machine security
CyberArk — one of the army of larger security companies founded out of Israel — is acquiring Venafi, a specialist in machine identity, for $1.54 billion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Agora raises $34B Series B to keep building the Carta for real estate
Since he was very young, Bar Mor knew that he would inevitably do something with real estate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Thoma Bravo’s LogRhythm merges with Exabeam in more cybersecurity consolidation
Private equity giant Thoma Bravo has announced that its security information and event management (SIEM) company LogRhythm will be merging with Exabeam, a rival cybersecurity company backed by the likes of Cisco and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Spoor uses AI to save birds from wind turbines
Wind is the largest source of renewable energy in the U.S., according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, but wind farms come with an environmental cost as wind turbines can wreak havoc on bird populations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices