The U.K. has exited the European Union, but semiconductor development is emerging as one of the areas where it hopes to partner for better economies of scale — and much-needed funding. Today, the government announced that it was joining up with the EU’s “Chips Joint...
These AI agents can adapt to games they haven't played before. Google made them by feeding data on how humans play different video games to a language model like those behind the latest chatbots....
Listen here or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday episode, in which we dig into critical startup news to stay abreast...
AI models that play games go back decades, but they generally specialize in one game and always play to win. Google Deepmind researchers have a different goal with their latest creation: a model that learned to play multiple 3D games like a human, but also...
The cement startup promises to slash carbon emissions in the process, helping the company raise a $6.5 million seed round. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
A new sports tech startup, Volley, aims to revolutionize the way racquet sports players (platform tennis, padel, and pickleball) train with its AI-enabled sports training machine. Unlike traditional tennis ball machines that simply launch balls at varying speeds and heights, Volley’s trainer robot leverages AI...
Employee-focused mental health company Journey is acquiring Felt, a startup formerly known as Mine’d that specializes in matching individuals with therapists using artificial intelligence. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Journey, which offers a mental health employee assistance program used by companies...
The European Parliament voted Wednesday to adopt the AI Act, securing the bloc pole-position in setting rules for a broad sweep of artificial intelligence-powered software — or what regional lawmakers have dubbed “the world’s first comprehensive AI law”. MEPs overwhelmingly backed the provisional agreement reached...
A global network of violent predators is hiding in plain sight, targeting children on major platforms, grooming them, and extorting them to commit horrific acts of abuse....
Hundreds of thousands of tech workers have been laid off since 2022. Some who don’t fit the young coder archetype say being more experienced can feel like a disadvantage....
Simulations are an essential step in physical product engineering. They enable engineers to create prototypes and understand how they might perform in the real world, accounting for factors like aerodynamic drag, air and water flows and pressure and temperature distributions. But today’s engineering simulators tend...
The young automotive company raised $5.4 million and added a Tesla co-founder to its board. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
Teachers’ Venture Growth, the late-stage venture and growth investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, is investing $80 million in Perfios, an Indian fintech that provides real-time credit underwriting solutions to banks and other financial institutions. The new investment values Perfios at a valuation of...
Tesla and General Motors may be struggling with self-driving tech, but the opposite is true in Asia. WIRED tested China's top three autopilot systems to see just how far ahead they are....
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. The company has crafted an interesting distribution strategy for travel eSIM cards and simplified the experience as...
A whiff of anti-AI sentiment got big applause at the SXSW conference in Austin this afternoon. Award-winning writers and directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as “DANIELS,” originally premiered their film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” at SXSW in 2022. The movie later...
This week, Glacier co-founder Rebecca Hu chats with Found about wish-cycling and robots. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
When we examined venture investment amounts in enterprise SaaS startups, we were surprised at the top categories. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
In enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS), usage-based pricing, a pricing model in which customers are charged only when they use a product or service, is gaining ground. According to a report from VC firm OpenView, ~60% of SaaS businesses offer some form of usage-based pricing today. Recently,...
The price of bitcoin has climbed to a new all-time high. But assigning the cryptocurrency a value is anything but trivial....
“We’re fundamentally a software company,” Locus CEO Rick Faulk says with a laugh. We look like a robot company, but we’re actually a software company.” It’s a familiar refrain from companies whose most public-facing products are hardware. That’s certainly the case with Locus, which produces...
In June 2023, the cofounder of “Russia's Google” landed on the EU sanctions list. Now, he's free to build again....
The long-running dearth of IPOs could be coming to a close, partly due to Reddit’s upcoming public debut. Expected to list this month, Reddit saw its valuation soar during the pandemic. Now, the company is fighting to retain as much of its final private-market price...
Deepgram has made a name for itself as one of the go-to startups for voice recognition. Today, the well-funded company announced the launch of Aura, its new real-time text-to-speech API. Aura combines highly realistic voice models with a low-latency API to allow developers to build...
The wings of time are flying fast, and so is the countdown to the biggest savings on passes to TechCrunch Disrupt — taking place October 28–30 in San Francisco. Here’s the thing: You have only four days left to save $1,000 on your pass. How...
A young startup is setting out to help enterprises cut their cloud costs by writing “more efficient” code — and it has secured $6.8 million in fresh funding from notable backers including Alphabet’s GV, Spark Capital, and Lightspeed. Polar Signals, as the company is called,...
Death, as the famous saying goes, is one of the inevitable certainties of life. But that doesn’t make coping with it any easier — not least because while loved ones are grieving, they must also handle a dizzying number of practical tasks, from organizing funerals...
Recalls are costly for — and damaging to — any company, no matter the size or market. For instance, McKinsey estimates that, for businesses manufacturing medical devices, recalls have been as high as $600 million in recent decades. The reputational impact tends to be lasting;...
By using cell-free technology, Tierra is able to cut down protein manufacturing from months to weeks and enable customers to order proteins online. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
DoorDash hopes to reduce verbally abusive and inappropriate interactions between consumers and delivery people with its new AI-powered feature that automatically detects offensive language. Dubbed “SafeChat+,” DoorDash is leveraging AI technology to review in-app conversations and determine if a customer or Dasher is being harassed....