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 show, focused on startup and venture capital news that matters. Today we have a grip of startup stories, and...
Every enterprise software company out there is working to bring more workflow automation and AI to the platform. ServiceNow has been on this journey for some time now, and given the kind of data it collects via interactions on its platform, it’s building more refined...
In a never-ending saga between Google and France’s competition authority over copyright protections for news snippets, the Autorité de la Concurrence announced a €250 million fine against the tech giant Wednesday (around $270 million at today’s exchange rate). According to the competition watchdog, Google disregarded...
When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced GPTs, custom chatbots powered by OpenAI’s generative AI models, onstage at the company’s first-ever developer conference in November, he described them as a way to “accomplish all sorts of tasks” — from programming to learning about esoteric scientific subjects...
Join us for an unforgettable opportunity at TechCrunch Early Stage in Boston on April 25! We’re on the lookout for enthusiastic volunteers to be part of this exciting event. If you’ve ever wondered what goes into the making of tech gatherings, now’s your chance to...
Globally, healthcare IT systems are groaning under the weight of legacy platforms. Thankfully, there’s a new wave of startups entering the arena: UK startup Anima is a “care enablement” platform that operates almost like a combination of Slack, Salesforce and Figma, but for healthcare clinics...
The new firm follows the startup studio model, hoping to tap into a likely wave of climate-related investments. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
You won’t have to search very hard or go very far to engage in compelling conversations next month at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024. One of the most popular attractions at Early Stage are roundtables. These expert-led, small-group conversations focus on a specific topic designed to...
Well before President Joe Biden signed the CHIPS and Science Act into law back in August 2022, Intel has been a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to increase domestic chip manufacturing. This morning, the White House announced an agreement with the Department of Commerce that would...
India-based audio platform Pocket FM has secured $103 million in Series D funding led by Lightspeed Ventures with participation from Stepstone Group. The company, which counts Tencent and Times Internet as backers, aims to expand into Europe and Latin America after looking at positive results...
They met by chance, got hooked on an idea, and wrote the “Transformers” paper—the most consequential tech breakthrough in recent history....
India’s Ultrahuman is prepping for a growth tear. Today it’s announcing the close of $35 million in Series B* funding, a mix of equity ($25M) and debt. The smart ring startup is a less familiar name than category veteran — and market leader — Oura....
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? Many radiologists still use this ancient format to transfer patients’ imaging files. A startup called PocketHealth has built an medical...
Anonymous, candid reviews made Glassdoor a powerful place to research potential employers. A policy shift requiring users to privately verify their real names is raising privacy concerns....
Rather than grimly assembling data about cancer deaths to predict outcomes in treatment, the founders of Cure51 had another idea. They decided to turn the model around 180 degrees. Instead, the company assembles data about long term survivors of cancer, thus hoping to crack the...
Toucan is leveraging blockchain to reinvent the carbon credit market. But thorny questions abound....
The race is on to create climate-friendly air-con technology....
The shift to electric vehicles is exciting, but it will leave us with thousands of tonnes of spent batteries....
From water-testing polluted rivers to measuring radiation levels, ordinary people are taking environmental research into their own hands....
Cowboy is better known for its sleek electric bikes that you can see in many major cities across Europe. And if you look at the persons riding those Cowboy bikes, most of the time, you’ll see a young adult heading to an office with a...
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — often referred to as “strong AI,” “full AI,” “human-level AI” or “general intelligent action” — represents a significant future leap in the field of artificial intelligence. Unlike narrow AI, which is tailored for specific tasks (such as detecting product flaws,...
Link-in-bio startup Linktree introduced new features today including a featured layout to highlight links better, the ability to fetch the latest posts from Instagram and support for a more prominent profile picture. The company said that the new featured layout is great for highlighting certain...
A research paper quietly released by Apple describes an AI model called MM1 that can answer questions and analyze images. It's the biggest sign yet that Apple is developing generative AI capabilities....
While the technology world breathlessly awaits Reddit's public debut, another company you might never have heard of is about to go public: Astera Labs. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
Nvidia benefits tremendously if it can persuade companies to think of data centers and AI tools in a different way. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only....
In June 2023, Inflection announced it had raised $1.3 billion to build what it called “more personal AI.” The lead investor was Microsoft. Today, less than a year later, Microsoft announced that it was essentially eating Inflection alive (though I think they phrased it differently)....
Backpack’s founders, who are building a crypto exchange and wallet, have experienced strong growth since launching in 2022. But the road wasn’t easy. FTX co-led Backpack’s $20 million strategic investment round in September 2022. Less than two months later, in November, 2022, FTX collapsed. “We...
The Open Source Robotics Foundation (OSRF) this week announced the launch of the similarly named Open Source Robotics Alliance (OSRA). The new initiative is designed to maintain development for and maintenance of open source robotics projects, with a particular focus on the OSRF’s own robot...
Los Angeles-based Gitai said Tuesday that its autonomous robotic arm has nailed a tech demonstration outside the International Space Station. Gitai CEO Sho Nakanose told TechCrunch in an interview last year that the company aims to reduce in-space labor costs by 100 times, in the...
Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan, co-founders of high-profile AI startup Inflection AI, and several of their colleagues as the Satya Nadella-led cloud giant continues its aggressive push to attract top talent. Suleyman — also a co-founder of DeepMind, which Google bought in...