TechCrunch Startup News
3,808 episodes — Page 21 of 77
World Fund closes first €300M ClimateTech fund, seeking to follow-on and backing hardware
World Fund closes first €300M ClimateTech fund, seeking to follow-on and backing hardware Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
US cyber investors pledge spyware is off limits — with a catch
Biden administration announced that six new countries had joined an international coalition to fight the proliferation of commercial spyware, sold by companies such as NSO Group or Intellexa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Budgeting app Copilot is booming now that Mint is dead, leading to $6M Series A
The company reached profitability in 2023, however, more customers began asking for web and Android capabilities so they could share Copilot with family and friends. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Silence is an early stage climate tech VC fund with $35 million; Greenly lands $52M to help smaller companies track CO2 emissions
Silence wants to shake things up when it comes to climate tech investment; The carbon accounting startup targets SMBs to help them assess the carbon footprint of their operations and products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pocket FM bags $103M in funding as it eyes global expansion
India-based audio platform Pocket FM has secured $103 million in Series D funding led by Lightspeed Ventures with participation from Stepstone Group. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
PocketHealth eases doctor-patient communications with easy image exchange
Have you ever needed a copy of your medical imaging to take to your doctor or another healthcare provider and received the images on a CD? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Telegram raises $330 million fresh capital through bond sales
Telegram founder and CEO Pavel Durov said on his channel today that the company secured $330 million in investment through bond sales last week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Poseidona is removing invasive algae from oceans and turning it into food
Poseidona is a Barcelona-based developer of sustainable food technology. It takes invasive seaweed and algal side-streams to make proteins. In this case, it's a soy protein alternative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Apple acquires AI startup specializing in overlooking manufacturing components
Apple has added another AI startup to its acquisition list with Canada-based DarwinAI, which specializes in vision-based tech to observe components during manufacturing to improve efficiency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
ShopMy lands $18.5M to help influencers earn more money from promoting products
ShopMy, a marketing platform for content creators to connect with brands and monetize their content, announced today that it raised $18.5 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Aethero wants to become the space industry’s Intel or Nvidia
Satellite sensors collect an incredible amount of raw data, but on-orbit compute limitations mean that operators have little way to process this data in space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
WarpStream is building a cheaper, cloud-native data streaming service
When the open source streaming service Apache Kafka was created in 2011 at LinkedIn, it was a different world. Most companies were still on prem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AliExpress is first online marketplace to face DSA investigation by EU
The European Union has opened its third formal investigation of a very large platform under the Digital Services Act (DSA), with China’s AliExpress earning itself the dubious honor of being the first online marketplace to face formal probe by the Commission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Luminary Cloud’s simulator taps GPUs to help speed up product design
Simulations are an essential step in physical product engineering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kolet makes travel eSIM cards easier to navigate
Kolet is a new French startup created by four experienced co-founders in the French tech ecosystem that wants to make it easier to stay connected when you travel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Pint-size pickup startup Telo Trucks finds unexpected niche in fleet customers
The young automotive company raised $5.4 million and added a Tesla co-founder to its board. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Generative AI video startup Tavus raises $18M to bring face and voice cloning to any app
Tavus, a four-year-old generative AI startup that helps companies create digital “replicas” of individuals for automated personalized video campaigns, has confirmed a fresh $18 million in funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Backed by Leonardo DiCaprio, YC alum SolarMente wants to help democratize solar power in Spain
Barcelona-based cleantech startup SolarMente recently added Leonardo DiCaprio to its cap table, hence becoming the actor's and activist's first investment in the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Profitable car rental service Turo is still ready for an IPO, but its growth cratered in 2023
Turo, the venture-backed, peer-to-peer car rental service reported its fourth-quarter and full-year financial performance this week in an updated IPO filing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI fraud detection software maker Inscribe.ai lays off 40% of staff
Yet another AI-powered fraud detection software provider is laying off staff. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Baron values Swiggy at $12.16B, above prior private market valuation
Baron Capital, an investor in Indian food delivery startup Swiggy, has increased the value of its stake in the Indian firm, implying a valuation of $12.16 billion Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Lensrentals acquires BorrowLenses
Lensrentals, a titan in the online rental service for photo, video, audio and lighting equipment, has announced its acquisition of BorrowLenses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Babylon Micro-Farms is bringing vertical farming to K-12 classes
In an e-mail exchange, Babylon Micro-Farms CEO Alexander Oleson tells me “we’ll have these in every school and apartment one day.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Satellite servicing tech startup, led by former head of Ukraine’s space agency, lands $4M
Kurs Orbital, a startup founded by Ukrainian space industry veterans, has closed a new tranche of funding to accelerate the commercialization of its satellite servicing technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
New geospatial data startup streamlines satellite imagery visualization
These days we have a ton of geospatial data coming off the increasing numbers of satellites circling in our atmosphere, but it takes some serious processing power and engineering prowess to turn that data into something useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Harness Wealth wants to bring sophisticated tax planning to the masses
Harness Wealth, which started in 2018 primarily offering financial advice to startup founders and employees, has expanded into the tax advisory space and raised a $17 million extension to its Series A round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
LLMs are poised to make lumbering business intelligence tools easier and faster to use
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Backed by $10M Series A, TravelJoy is riding the post-COVID demand for expert travel planning
A travel-focused startup that the COVID pandemic could have killed has instead thrived. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI chip startup Groq forms new business unit, acquires Definitive Intelligence
Groq, a startup developing chips to run GenAI models faster than conventional hardware, has an eye toward the enterprise — and public sector. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
MyHeritage launches OldNews.com, a website with access to millions of historical newspaper pages
MyHeritage announced today that it’s launching OldNews.com, a new website that offers access to thousands of historical newspapers, mainly from the 1800s and 1900s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Syrenna’s WaterDrone is the ocean-monitoring ‘underwater weather station’ of the future
As crucial as the ocean is to countless industries, we lack the kind of systematic knowledge of it that we have of the surface. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rec emerges from stealth to modernize Parks & Rec management and booking
Park and recreation organizations help communities thrive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenCTI maker Filigran raises $16 million for its cybersecurity threat management suite
Paris-based cybersecurity startup Filigran is capitalizing on the success of OpenCTI to build a suite of open-source threat management products. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Inspired Capital secures $330M fund to take venture capital ‘back to the studs’
As part of the new fund, Inspired Capital wrote a manifesto that highlights how the venture capital firm thinks, what it believes in and what it is looking for. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Black Tech Nation Ventures’ diversity thesis undeterred by growing DEI backlash
Black Tech Nation Ventures launched in 2021 to address the funding gap for Black founders amid a wave of venture diversity initiatives after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Microsoft made a $16 million investment in Mistral AI
The latest Tech News from TechCrunch Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Writer’s latest models can generate text from images including charts and graphs
As generative AI continues to dominate the headlines, it’s hard sometimes to find actual working business use cases among the hype. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Glean wants to beat ChatGPT at its own game — in the enterprise
GenAI has its issues. But if there’s one thing it excels at, it’s surfacing answers from vast pools of data. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Shadowfax speeds ahead with $100M funding as instant delivery boom fuels growth
Shadowfax, one of the largest logistics service providers to hyper-local and on-demand delivery businesses in India, has raised $100 million in a new funding round as it clocks an yearly growth of over 35%. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Consolidation continues in micromobility as Cooltra snaps up Cityscoot
Paris’ commercial court has accepted Cooltra’s offer to acquire Cityscoot. These two companies provide shared electric mopeds that you can unlock and ride to go from one place to another. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Uber to explore travel ticketing with India’s open commerce network
Uber has signed a memorandum of understanding with an Indian government-backed firm that aims to make mobility and commerce more accessible across the South Asian nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Antler’s founder on its vertical AI bet in Southeast Asia
A growing roster of vertical AI startups is emerging in Southeast Asia to serve sectors ranging from seafood to finance. Singapore-based venture capital firm Antler recently made a bet on 37 of them, investing $5.1 million in total for pre-seed deals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Locker organizes your shopping links into virtual wish lists and collages
After years of copying and pasting shopping links into spreadsheets and taking screenshots of products to share with her friends and family, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Singapore-based fintech Xalts acquires digital trade platform Contour Network
In a role reversal, Xalts, a Singapore fintech startup founded 18 months ago, has acquired Contour Network, a digital trade platform set up by eight major banks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Planity raises $48 million because even hair salons need their own SaaS product
If you’ve ever traveled in rural areas in France, you may have realized a French peculiarity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sproxxy is making it easier to measure conference spending ROI
Whenever you go to a conference, whether as a sales and marketing exercise, or an executive is speaking, there is a cost associated with that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
1Password expands its endpoint security offerings with Kolide acquisition
1Password, the AgileBits-owned password management software developer, today announced that it has acquired Kolide, an endpoint security platform, for an undisclosed amount. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Miruku grabs more capital as its plant-based dairy tech reaches proof of concept
The company made advancements in its proprietary dairy seed system to leverage interactions between recombinant dairy casein and native plant proteins, with or without improved fatty acid profiles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Dutch startup Monumental is using robots to lay bricks
Few categories are as ripe for automation-fueled disruption as construction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anthropic takes steps to prevent election misinformation
Ahead of the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Anthropic, the well-funded AI startup, is testing a technology to detect when users of its GenAI chatbot ask about political topics and redirect those users to “authoritative” sources of voting information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices