There has been a lot of bad news about social media startups lately. Multiple companies, including Twitter alternative Post News, and IRL have shut down. And ShareChat’s valuation has dropped more than 50% after a recent funding round. But amid the negative headlines, the recent exit of French social network BeReal looks like a bright
Month: June 2024
When Kinnect dropped a new app that’s all about preserving epic family tales and awkward holiday moments for generations to come, I knew I needed to take a closer look at its angel deck. The app is clever and can be thought of as a digital family scrapbook on steroids. This app isn’t just about
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Hold on to your Apple Watches, folks! At WWDC 2024, Apple finally decided to give Siri a brain transplant with something they’re calling “Apple Intelligence” (AI—get
For centuries, people chewed willow tree bark to relieve pain, but scientists at chemical firm Bayer didn’t isolate its active ingredient until the 1800s and eventually patented its modified version as Aspirin. Aspirin is just one example of a medicine derived from natural sources. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that around 40% of
Byju’s is having a hard time raising the full $200 million from its rights issues that its founder had previously claimed was oversubscribed, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. And now, India’s National Company Law Tribunal has restrained the company from proceeding with its second rights issue amid allegations of oppression and mismanagement by
Amazon says that it’ll commit up to $230 million to startups building generative AI-powered applications. The investment, roughly $80 million of which will fund Amazon’s second annual AWS Generative AI Accelerator program, aims to position AWS as an attractive cloud infrastructure choice for startups developing generative AI models to power their products, apps and services.
Among all the young AI startups being ruthlessly pursued by VCs these days, GPTZero has already grown into profitability in its first year and a half of life, generating millions in revenue. Founded by 24-year-old Edward Tian and 26-year-old Alex Cui, who’ve been friends since high school, GPTZero offers a detection tool that helps identify
If there’s one thing holding batteries back, it’s cost. The most widespread type of battery, lithium-ion, still costs around $140 per kilowatt-hour for a pack. While that’s low enough to have triggered quickening adoption of electric vehicles, even the cheapest lithium-ion chemistries are still too expensive to put a big battery in every home to
The financial reporting and auditing process is not often on the list of sexy topics that technology startups want to go after. And yet, when errors are made on financial reports, like the one Lyft had earlier this year, it can have dire consequences for a company. Just ask Lyft. After years of performing reporting
The European economy is on shaky ground, but there is a silver lining for enterprise startups: Those building tools to help businesses run their finances in more steady and predictable ways are seeing a boost. In the latest development, AccountsIQ, a Dublin-founded accounting technology company, has raised €60 million (about $65 million) to build “the
Earlier this year, BASF had to delay the opening of a battery materials plant in Finland when a court agreed with environmental groups that the company didn’t have a good plan to deal with its wastewater. As battery factories spring up around the world, the specter of wastewater threatens to stall their construction. One startup,
The hospitality industry is back, baby. And with it comes a chance for technology startups to not only help hotels streamline their operations, but also focus on how they can improve the guest experience. “The predominant traveler today was born in an age where they are very comfortable with technology,” Harman Singh Narula, Canary Technologies
When Jordan Nathan launched his DTC nontoxic cookware company, Caraway, in 2019, he knew he was not the only founder trying to sell a new brand of pots and pans to millennials scrolling through Instagram. But he found that launching after his peers ended up being a blessing in disguise in all areas but one.
Layoffs are tough. This year alone, we’ve already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies according to layoffs.fyi. Looking for ways to grow your network can be even harder during uncertain times. To help those who’ve been impacted by a layoff within the last year (from any company, region, or industry) and are still looking
Since fintech startup Brex’s inception in 2017, its two co-founders Henrique Dubugras and Pedro Franceschi have run the company as co-CEOs. But starting today, the pair told TechCrunch in an exclusive interview, the San Francisco-based corporate credit card and expense management company is shifting to a more traditional — and what they say should be
For an industry that’s about 20 years old, residential solar is still pretty tumultuous. Some of that can be blamed on shifting regulations, like what happened in California last year where a policy update lengthened the amount of time it took for homeowners to recoup their investments. But other bumps can be attributed to the
YouTube announced this week the rollout of “Thumbnail Test & Compare,” a new tool for creators to see which thumbnail performs the best. The feature first launched to select creators last year but is now widely available. When creators publish a new video (or update an existing video), they can test up to three thumbnails,
It’s not the sexiest of subject matters, but someone needs to talk about it: The CFO tech stack — software used by the chief financial officers of the world — is ripe for disruption. That’s according to Jonathan Sanders, CEO and co-founder of fledgling Danish startup Light, which exits stealth Wednesday with $13 million in
South Korea’s fabless AI chip industry saw a slew of fundraising events over the last couple of years as demand for hardware to power AI applications skyrocketed, and it seems the space is already consolidating. Two of the country’s prominent fabless AI chip startups, Rebellions and Sapeon, have agreed to merge, the companies said on
Gorilla, a Belgian company that serves the energy sector with real-time data and analytics for pricing and forecasting, has raised €23 million ($25 million) in a Series B round led by U.S. venture capital firm Headline. Founded in 2018, Antwerp-based Gorilla works with energy providers across Europe, the U.S. and Australia, including British Gas’ parent
Jordan Meyer and Mathew Dryhurst founded Spawning AI to create tools that help artists exert more control over how their works are used online. Their latest project, called Source.Plus, is intended to curate “non-infringing” media for AI model training. The Source.Plus project’s first initiative is a dataset seeded with nearly 40 million public domain images
Washington, D.C., may be the hub for legislation and regulation that affects startups, but many people in the city don’t know anything about one of the more prominent accelerators fueling the industry: Y Combinator. Speaking at a TechCrunch Strictly VC event on Tuesday evening, YC Head of Public Policy Luther Lowe said the startup incubator
A Finnish startup called Flow Computing is making one of the wildest claims ever heard in silicon engineering: by adding its proprietary companion chip, any CPU can instantly double its performance, increasing to as much as 100x with software tweaks. If it works, it could help the industry keep up with the insatiable compute demand
As Apple prepares to introduce its AI-powered features for the iPhone, another company is taking the opposite approach: Instead of building a phone with more technology, it’s opting for less. Light, the maker of the minimalist phone with an e-paper screen, is announcing its newest model, the Light Phone III. Like its earlier counterpart, the
It’s WWDC 2024 keynote time! Each year Apple kicks off its Worldwide Developers Conference with a few hours of just straight announcements, like the long-awaited Apple Intelligence and a makeover for smart AI assistant, Siri. We expected much of them to revolve around the company’s artificial intelligence ambitions (and here), and Apple didn’t disappoint. We
Traffic is down, newsrooms are undergoing layoffs, and publishers fear that AI technologies will only make matters worse. Entering the fray, news reader startup Particle is teaming up with publishers to seek out a new business model for the AI era, where AI summaries of news don’t have to mean lost revenues. The startup, built
Apple announced at WWDC 2024 that it’s making its Vision Pro headset available in eight new countries: China, Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, Germany and the United Kingdom. Apple will first release the headset in China, Japan and Singapore on June 28, with preorders starting June 13. The Vision Pro will be available in Australia,
When Urvashi Barooah applied to MBA programs in 2015, she focused her applications around her dream of becoming a venture capitalist. She got rejected from every school, and was told she was being unrealistic about her prospects in the venture industry, but she didn’t let that deter her. Now, eight years later, Barooah, 33, is
The folks at Collaborative Fund certainly like a challenge. They don’t specialize in venture capital’s favorite business model, SaaS, preferring instead to invest in sectors like climate, health and food. What’s more, they like companies that focus on consumers, whose fickle attitudes can add another layer of complexity to any business plan. Oh, and they
Apple shared the first details for the upcoming major release of iOS, its operating system specifically designed for the iPhone, at WWDC 2024. As expected, this is a pivotal moment for the mobile platform as iOS 18 is going to focus on artificial intelligence. “I’m excited that we’ll introduce profound new intelligence capabilities that we