TechCrunch Startup News
3,836 episodes — Page 7 of 77
Terraton wants to be the McDonald’s of biochar, also Hyundai is working with a startup on plant-based leather that smells like the real thing
Terraton sees promise in biochar, but the technology has struggled to scale. The startup thinks a franchise model could be what unlocks biochar's potential. Also, Uncaged Innovations is working with Hyundai to develop alternatives to leather with a fraction of the environmental impact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Robomart unveils new delivery robot to challenge DoorDash, Uber Eats, also
Robomart's RM5 autonomous delivery robot can carry up to 50 pounds and deliver multiple customer orders at once. Also, OpenAI has started hiring in India as it looks to expand its presence in the fast-growing South Asian tech market. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Eyebot gets $20M Series A to boost to expand eye care access and more tech news
Eyebot secured $20M Series A for 90-second prescription kiosk. Also, Pintarnya raised $16.7M to power jobs and financial services in Indonesia. The Indonesian startup, now backed by $16.7M in Series A funding, helps workers find full-time and side gigs while offering financial solutions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FieldAI raises $405M to build universal robot brains and Y Combinator says Apple’s App Store has hindered startup growth
FieldAI builds foundational AI models that help all kinds of robots learn and adapt to new environments using physics. Also, Y Combinator is asking the court to deny Apple’s appeal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As India bans real-money games, Dream Sports, MPL start pulling the plug
Several Indian startups, including Dream Sports, MPL, and Zupee, are shutting down their real-money games after parliament passed a bill banning such games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
YC-backed Oway raises $4M to build a decentralized ‘Uber for freight’
The thousands of trucks zipping along U.S. highways are often only about half full -- something Oway wants to change with its 'ride-share for freight' software. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ecosia has offered to take ‘stewardship’ of Chrome. And it’s not a bad idea.
Berlin-based non-profit search engine Ecosia has asked a U.S. judge to turn Chrome into a foundation it controls, funding billions in climate projects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Group14 lands $463M to make silicon anodes for EVs, also, SRE.ai raises $7.2M for DevOps AI agents
The battery materials startup raised significant Series D funding to expand its manufacturing capability. At the same time, it bought out partner SK's stake in a joint venture. The company helps automate complex enterprise workflows (like continuous integration and testing) — or, in other words, it makes DevOps capabilities more efficient as AI technology takes hold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
New zero-day startup offers $20 million for tools that can hack any smartphone
Prices for hacking tools that allow governments to break into mobile phones keep going up, thanks to efforts by tech firms shoring up their cybersecurity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
FieldAI raises $405M to build universal robot brains, plus Garage raises $13.5M to help firefighters buy equipment
FieldAI builds foundational AI models that help all kinds of robots learn and adapt to new environments using physics. Also, YC backed Garage is a marketplace that sells specialized equipment commonly used in local governments and public safety. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Dex is an AI-powered camera device that helps children learn new languages
A new gadget called Dex allows kids to take pictures of objects and the AI translates the word into different languages. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI crawler Firecrawl raises $14.5M and is still looking to hire agents as employees, also, Databricks CEO says fresh $1B will help him attack a new AI database market
Firecrawl nabbed Shopify’s CEO Tobias Lütke as an investor from a gutsy email after they discovered he was using the product. Also, The round, which pushes Databricks' valuation to $100B, was co-led by Insight Partners and Thrive. CEO Ali Ghodsi says he's found an enormous untapped AI agent market to spend the funds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Eight Sleep raises $100M to expand it AI-powered sleep tech
The sleep tech company raised from HSG, Valor Equity Partners, Founders Fund, Y Combinator and big F1 names like Charles Leclerc and Zak Brown. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Google vet raises $8M for Continua to bring AI agents to group chats
David Petrou, founding member of Google Goggles and Google Glass, wants to enhance group chats with AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Les Amis, the app helping women form friendships, launches in New York ... and more
Les Amis is an app designed to make it easy for women to form friendships and attend local events. Also, why did Paradigm built a spreadsheet with an AI agent in every cell? The company raised a $5 million seed round and is releasing it's AI-powered spreadsheet to the general public. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Hank Green’s Focus Friend app is climbing the App Store charts — and it’s extremely cute
This is the premise of Focus Friend, a productivity app created by Honey B Games and Hank Green, the longtime online creator/entrepreneur/educator/sock salesman. Though the app was soft launched last month, Focus Friend is only now gaining momentum on the App Store charts — likely because Green and his brother, author John Green, are posting about it more — reaching No. 4 among all free apps and No. 2 among productivity apps. Also, another crypto company is headed for the public markets. This time, it’s Gemini Space Station Inc., the New York-based crypto exchange and custodian bank founded by billionaire twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Buzzy AI startup Multiverse creates two of the smallest high-performing models ever ... and more news
It humorously calls this family the Model Zoo because one is like the size of a fly's brain and the other the size of a chicken's. Also, Ultrahuman acquires viO HealthTech to launch enhanced cycle and ovulation tracking. Cycle and Ovulation Pro is available starting Friday as a premium PowerPlug in the Ultrahuman app for $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year for users in the U.S., U.K., EU, Australia, and Canada; and Loveable projects $1B in ARR within next 12 months. Loveable is a vibe coding startup growing phenomenally quickly, according to new sales projections from CEO Anton Osika. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anthropic nabs Humanloop team as competition for enterprise AI talent heats up ... and more
While an Anthropic spokesperson confirmed that the AI firm did not acquire Humanloop or its IP, that’s a moot point in an industry where IP lives in the brain. And what Humanloop’s team is bringing to Anthropic is experience developing the tools that help enterprises run safe, reliable AI at scale. Also, India’s Rapido begins testing food delivery to take on Swiggy, Zomato. Rapido's beta food delivery service has popped up in three key localities in Bengaluru before a broader rollout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cohere hires long-time Meta research head Joelle Pineau as its chief AI officer ... and more
Cohere has hired Joelle Pineau, Meta's former VP of AI research who previously oversaw the tech giant's fundamental AI research (FAIR) lab. In her newly created Chief AI Officer role, Pineau will oversee AI strategy across Cohere's research, product and policy teams. Also, Monarch Tractors won’t be built by Foxconn after Ohio factory sale. The tractors were the only vehicles being built by Foxconn in Ohio after Lordstown Motors, Fisker Inc., and IndiEV went bankrupt. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Uber Freight CEO Lior Ron leaves to join self-driving startup Waabi as COO
Self-driving truck maker Waabi has hired autonomous vehicle industry veteran and Uber Freight CEO, Lior Ron, to step in as chief operating officer, as the startup looks to scale its commercial operations ahead of its planned launch of driverless trucks on public highways later this year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sam Altman, OpenAI will reportedly back a startup that takes on Musk’s Neuralink
Neuralink has been making serious progress. Soon Sam Altman and OpenAI could be backing a challenger. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anduril opens solid rocket motor factory amidst ongoing chemical chokepoint
As more solid rocket motor suppliers are coming online, a supply chain chokepoint looms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
TDK backs Ultraviolette with $21M to take India-made electric motorcycles global
Ultraviolette aims to expand its electric motorcycles to 40 European countries, as well as Latin America and Southeast Asia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Nigerian profitable food delivery Chowdeck lands $9M from Novastar, Y Combinator
Chowdeck, a Lagos-based food delivery startup that has stayed profitable in a notoriously tough and low-margin market, has raised $9 million in Series A funding to launch a quick commerce strategy and expand into more cities in Nigeria and Ghana. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why investors just bet $85M on this Indian company’s generic drug strategy
Truemeds has taken a different route from other Indian online pharmacies — and it has helped the startup double its revenue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI agents aren’t the ‘new Google,’ says Airbnb CEO
"I think we're still kind of feeling out the space," CEO Brian Chesky told investors on the Q2 earnings call. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The high costs and thin margins threatening AI coding startups
Coding assistant startups are highly unprofitable, says a source familiar with Windsurf financials. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI startup OpenArt now creates ‘brain rot’ videos in just one click, also OpenAI priced GPT-5 so low, it may spark a price war
AI-generated “brain rot” videos are popping up all over the internet and getting a lot of attention. Currently gaining traction among younger users, these clips feature wild characters, like a shark wearing sneakers and a ballerina with a cappuccino for a head. One startup driving this trend is OpenArt, founded by two former Google employees in 2022. It touts around 3 million monthly active users. In other news, OpenAI astounded the tech industry for the second time this week by launching its newest flagship model, GPT-5, just days after releasing two new freely available models under an open source license. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman went so far as to call GPT-5 “the best model in the world.” That may be pride or hyperbole, as TechCrunch’s Maxwell Zeff reports that GPT-5 only slightly outperforms other leading AI models from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, and xAI on some key benchmarks, and slightly lags on others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Billing platform Lava raises $5.8M to build digital wallets for the ‘agent-native economy’
Lava is a digital wallet that lets merchants use credits to facilitate transactions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Photo-sharing app Locket is banking on a new celebrity-focused feature to fuel its growth plus Tavily raises $25M to connect AI agents to the web
Celebrity Lockets is a new feature where celebrities can engage with their most loyal followers on their home screens. Also, Tavity, the one-year-old startup raised a Series A led by Insight Partners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
For the first time, OpenAI models are available on AWS and ElevenLabs launched an AI music generator
This is a juicy competitive move for both companies after AWS faced an onslaught of criticism over its progress with AI. In other news, the AI audio-generation unicorn ElevenLabs announced the launch of a new model that allows users to generate music that's cleared for commercial use. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Clay confirms it closed $100M round at $3.1B valuation and Substack rival Ghost connects to the open social web with its latest public release
-The AI sales automation startup raised fresh funds, led by CapitalG, just months after its last round. -While the ActivityPub integration is a main selling point for Ghost 6, this major release includes a number of other changes and new additions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenMind wants to be the Android operating system of humanoid robots
OpenMind is building humanoid robot operating software designed for robots that interact with people and other robots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Germ brings end-to-end encrypted messages to Bluesky
Germ's new app lets users send end-to-end encrypted messages on Bluesky. TechCrunch speaks with the Germ founders to hear why they came up with the idea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jeh Aerospace nets $11M to scale the commercial aircraft supply chain in India
Indian startup Jeh Aerospace has secured $11 million in a new funding round to help ease global supply chain bottlenecks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Anthropic cut off OpenAI’s access to its Claude models, also PlayerZero raised $15M and Figma’s stock soared in its IPO
Anthropic has revoked OpenAI’s access to its Claude family of AI models, according to a report in Wired. Sources told Wired that OpenAI was connecting Claude to internal tools that allowed the company to compare Claude’s performance to its own models in categories like coding, writing, and safety. Also, as Silicon Valley races toward a future where AI agents do most of the software programming, a new problem is created: finding the AI-generated bugs before they are put into production. Even OpenAI is dealing with such issues, a former employee has described; Figma began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday after a long delay. It soared so quickly that trading was halted for a short time due to market volatility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Handwave lends a hand to retailers with its European alternative to Amazon’s palm payments
Latvian startup Handwave aims to compete with Amazon palm payments by offering an independent alternative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Female-founded semiconductor AI startup SixSense raises $8.5M
SixSense offers an AI-powered platform that helps chip makers prevent defects. It landed backing led by Peak XV’s Surge (formerly Sequoia India & SEA). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AIR lands $23M to bring its eVTOLs to the US
Israel-based eVTOL startup AIR has raised $23 million to scale production of both its piloted and uncrewed cargo aircraft, and enter the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How 2 UC Berkeley dropouts raised $28 million for their AI marketing automation startup
A marketing automation startup called Conversation has a founding story that sounds like it could have been an episode of the HBO show “Silicon Valley.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fed up with brands that use corn syrup and skim milk, this mother developed her own ‘clean’ baby formula
Nara Organics is a new organic, whole milk baby formula brand that's free from palm oil, soy, corn syrup, maltodextrin, and GMOs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This founder left Silicon Valley to challenge U.S. defense supremacy from Athens, and investors are paying attention
Delian Alliance Industries recently raised $14 million in funding to continue building its defense products, which include surveillance towers, and concealed sea drones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Index Ventures’ Jahanvi Sardana shares the truth about TAM and what founders should focus on instead
Index Ventures partner Jahanvi Sardana has a reminder for all those founders worried about finding TAM for their product or service: many startups have emerged from markets that, at the time, were essentially nonexistent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
This industrial AI startup is winning over customers by saying it won’t get acquired
In red-hot acquisition market, this CVector founders answer this key question in its first conversation with prospective customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How a Y Combinator food delivery app used TikTok to soar in the App Store ... and Chime backer Lauren Kolodny bets on AI
The internet trend is simple: A friend or family member looks into the camera and tells viewers, in a slightly aggressive tone, that they are about to witness a presentation and that they had better be nice. Also, Acrew Capital's Lauren Kolodny led a $20 million Series A in Alix, a startup that uses AI to automate estate processing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Preston Thorpe is a software engineer at a San Fransisco startup. He’s also serving his eleventh year in prison.
A senior software engineer for Turso, Thorpe is part of an experimental program in the Maine state prison system that allows incarcerated people to work remote jobs from custody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Mission Barns is betting that animal-free pork fat will make artificial meat delicious ... and more
It’s the first such product to reach the market, and it could unlock a host of fattened-up meat alternatives. Also, iRocket is aiming to hit the public markets but the SPAC vehicle has hardly any cash left. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
SoftBank-backed LegalOn lands $50M to streamline legal workflow with AI
LegalOn Technologies, a Tokyo- and San Francisco-headquartered legal tech startup that has built an AI contract review software for legal teams, has raised $50 million in Series E funding led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, along with existing investor World Innovation Lab (WiL), and new investors Mori Hamada & Matsumoto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Nevoya raises $9.3M as its EV truck fleet reaches cost parity with diesel
All-electric truck fleet startup Nevoya has landed a fresh round of capital and plans to expand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Robot guard dogs help Asylon raise a $26M Series B ... plus Eight months in, Swedish unicorn Lovable crosses the $100M ARR milestone
DroneDogs can be sent to places unsafe for humans or real dogs and can do tasks like dangerous chemical detection. In other news, less than a week after becoming Europe’s latest unicorn, Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable has now crossed the $100 million annual recurring revenue mark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices