TechCrunch Startup News
3,873 episodes — Page 20 of 78
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
Embedded accounting startup Layer secures $2.3M toward goal of replacing Quickbooks
So did investors laugh them out of the room when they explained how they wanted to replace Quickbooks? Kind of. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meet PayHOA, a profitable and once-bootstrapped SaaS startup that just landed a $27.5M Series A
PayHOA, a previously bootstrapped Kentucky-based startup that offers software for self-managed homeowner associations is an example of how real-world problems can translate into opportunity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Orange Charger thinks a $750 outlet will solve EV charging for apartment dwellers
Charging has long been the Achilles’ heel of electric vehicles. One startup thinks it has a better way for apartment dwelling EV drivers to charge overnight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Aplazo is using buy-now-pay-later as a stepping stone to financial ubiquity in Mexico
Four-year-old Mexican BNPL startup Aplazo facilitates fractionated payments to offline and online merchants even when the buyer doesn't have a credit card. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sona, a frontline workforce management platform, raises $27.5M with eyes on US expansion
Sona, a workforce management platform for frontline employees, has raised $27.5 million in a Series A round of funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Retell AI lets companies build ‘voice agents’ to answer phone calls
Call centers are embracing automation. There’s debate as to whether that’s a good thing, but it’s happening — and quite possibly accelerating. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bluesky now lets you personalize its main Discover feed using new controls
The social network has announced an updated version of its app that lets you offer feedback about its algorithmic feed so you can better customize it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Blackboard founder transforms Zoom add-on designed for teachers into business tool
When Class founder Michael Chasen was in college, he and a buddy came up with the idea for Blackboard, an online classroom organizational tool. His original company was acquired for $1.64 billion in 2011. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Triomics raises $15M Series A to automate cancer clinical trials matching
For cancer patients, medicines administered in clinical trials can help save or extend lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Lucid Bots secures $9M for drones to clean more than your windows
Cleaning the outside of buildings is a dirty job, and it’s also dangerous Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Checkfirst raises $1.5M pre-seed to apply AI to remote inspections and audits
We’ve all seen them. The inspector with a clipboard, walking around a building, ticking off the last time the fire extinguishers were checked, or if all the lights are working. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Meati Foods bites into another $100M amid growth to 7,000 retail locations
Meati Foods is adding 2,000 retail locations within Kroger’s family of stores by April. Three products will be available, including the Classic cutlet as well as Classic and Carne Asada steaks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
After a $20M Series A funding, Germany’s Insempra plans eco-friendly lipid production
Insempra plans to turn oil yeast in lipids on an industrial scale using yeast fermentation factories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices