The serious, long-term negative impact of the bankruptcy of banking-as-a-service (BaaS) fintech Synapse will be significant “on all of fintech, especially consumer-facing services,” one observer has said. In the wake of that company’s collapse, other startups in the space are working hard to prove that not all BaaS are created equal. As partners to fintechs,
Month: July 2024
Startups are attracting serious funding to provide fun, alcohol-free drink options at the bar and in other social contexts. Earlier this year, canned water company Liquid Death announced that it has raised $67 million in new funding at a $1.4 billion valuation. And Athletic Brewing Company, which describes itself as America’s largest non-alcoholic brewery, said
Farms produce a lot of data. From machines to irrigation systems, farms generate a lot of information that could be helpful to both them and the companies that serve them. Traditionally this data has been siloed across different formats making it hard to read and build off of. Leaf is trying to change that. New
Apple is finally releasing some of the Apple Intelligence features it announced at its Worldwide Developer Conference in June. However, the rollout is currently restricted to developer beta versions of iOS 18.1. So if you don’t want to deal with early-stage buggy software, you might want to wait for the Apple Intelligence feature release of
Maximize your brand exposure at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, one of the tech industry’s most anticipated events! From October 26 to November 1, you can host a Side Event, offering a prime opportunity to connect with top tech innovators and showcase your brand to a wide audience. Don’t miss out — applications close in September! What
Google had good news and bad news last week. The good news was that the cloud division — including Google Workplace software as a service and Google Cloud infrastructure services — generated $10 billion for the quarter for the first time. That had to take the sting out of losing out on its second potential
The founder of once-hyped crypto startup BitClout is facing trouble. On Tuesday, the SEC charged BitClout founder Nader Al-Naji with fraud and unregistered offering of securities, claiming he used a pseudonymous identity to avoid regulatory scrutiny while he raised over $257 million in cryptocurrency. BitClout, a decentralized social media platform, raised from a who’s-who of
The software supply chain faces threats from all sides. A 2024 report by the Ponemon Institute found that over half of organizations have experienced a software supply chain attack, with 54% having experienced one within the past year. Supply chain attacks typically target services from third-party vendors or open source software that make up a
Users will be able to get the first taste of Apple Intelligence as Apple has started to make some of the features of its AI suite available with the iOS 18.1 developer beta released Monday. The company launched Apple Intelligence at its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in June. However, the first set of developer beta
Intelmatix, a deep tech B2B startup that’s targeting businesses in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region wanting help to tap into the power of AI for decision-making, has closed a $20 million Series A funding round — one of the largest such rounds for a regional company of this type. The startup, which
Airtable today announced that it has acquired Dopt, a startup focused on helping other startups build product onboarding experiences for new users. Earlier this year, Dopt introduced a number of features that helped users add AI-based assistance tools to their respective services — those are the main reason Airtable is now acquiring the company. The
Ever since a government experiment proved in 2022 that fusion isn’t as far fetched as it once seemed, physicists, engineers, and investors have been growing increasingly bullish on the technology’s ability to deliver on its long held — if frequently delayed — promise of providing nearly limitless amounts of emission-free power. The latest exhibit of
AI hardware is all the rage in startup land — though receptions have thus far been mixed. Two notable examples, Rabbit and Humane, released devices to disappointing results. a16z-backed Limitless and Exor-backed Bee AI, meanwhile, are working on their own screenless AI wearables. Avi Schiffmann, a Harvard dropout who built a Webby Award-winning website that
Perplexity AI will soon start sharing advertising revenue with news publishers when its chatbot surfaces their content in response to a user query, a move that appears designed to assuage critics that have accused the startup of plagiarism and unethical web scraping. Dmitry Shevelenko, Perplexity’s head of business, told TechCrunch that the company was actually
Canva has acquired Leonardo.ai, a generative AI content and research startup, as the company looks to deepen its investments in its AI tech stack. The financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but Canva co-founder and chief product officer Cameron Adams said it’s a mix of cash and stock. All of Leonardo.ai’s 120 employees will
Zoe, a nutrition company based in London, is expanding its presence in the United States after raising $15 million in a Series B extension. Here’s how it works: Zoe sends customers at-home testing materials to collect blood or feces to test blood fat, blood sugar, and gut microbiome health. Following those results, the company scores
Qualcomm Tuesday announced the Snapdragon 4s Gen 2. The entry-level chip aims to make 5G accessible to 2.8 billion smartphone users in price-sensitive markets, including India and Latin America. Manufacturers lately have struggled to attract feature phone buyers in India, the world’s second-biggest smartphone market, primarily due to a lack of 5G models in the
The promise of AI and large language models (LLMs) is the ability to understand increasingly wider amounts of context and make sense of that information easily, so it makes sense that we’re seeing a bunch of companies trying to make wearable hardware so that people can use AI in their day-to-day lives. The latest entrant
A fireside chat on Monday between Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the SIGGRAPH 2024 conference in Colorado took a few unexpected turns. It started innocently enough, with Huang waxing positive about the capabilities of Nvidia GPUs and Zuckerberg speaking about his vision of an AI chatbot future. But by the
Government websites aren’t known for cutting-edge tech. GovWell co-founder and CTO Ben Cohen discovered this while trying to help his dad, a contractor, apply for building permits. Cohen worked as a full stack engineer at Uber during the day and faxed documents for building permits at night. The difference in tech was stark. Years later,
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. Today’s episode is packed with M&A talk, how one YouTuber succeeded at the creator economy, why Twitch is still losing money and an autonomous vehicle company that is making a comeback. First up, senior reporter Rebecca Bellan took a look
The first time I saw Google’s latest commercial, I wondered, “Is it just me, or is this kind of bad?” By the fourth or fifth time I saw it, I’d stopped wondering. It starts innocuously enough, with a father talking about how much his daughter loves Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (she “might even be the world’s number
Samsung’s original Galaxy Flip was the phone that taught me to love foldables. Prior to the launch of the clamshell, devices were big and bulky like the Galaxy Fold. Rather than embracing portability, the goal was jamming as much screen real estate as possible into a pocketable design. The result, in the case of the
The California Department of Motor Vehicles this week granted Nuro approval to test its third-generation R3 autonomous delivery vehicle in four Bay Area cities, giving the AV startup a positive boost after facing some setbacks and financial struggles. The approval gives Nuro the ability to test its driverless delivery vehicle in Mountain View, Palo Alto,
Working and even living in space has shifted from far-off fantasy to seemingly inevitable reality, but the question remains: what exactly will the next generation of space habitation look like? For Max Space, the answer is clear, and has been for decades — centuries, even. A new generation of expandable habitats could offer both safety
Clutch, a marketplace for digital marketing services, has been acquired by the online social network Plaiced, Clutch’s co-founder, Madison Long, told TechCrunch. The deal closed earlier this week for undisclosed terms. “The creator economy is growing rapidly, we knew to remain competitive and really be able to take over market share, an acquisition would be
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. To get Startups Weekly in your inbox every Friday, sign up here. This week we are talking about Wiz’s bold decision, VC’s public feud, legal tech’s new capital and a16z’s close call. Let’s go! Most interesting startup stories
Payments giant Stripe has acquired a four-year-old competitor, Lemon Squeezy, the latter company announced Friday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. As a merchant of record, Lemon Squeezy calculates and pays global sales tax for digital products, handling legal processing and fees in every country. It primarily serves SaaS and software businesses. In a
Apple has reduced prices of its iPhone models in India by 3-4% following a cut in import duties in the South Asian market. The price cuts range from 3000 rupees ($36) for models like the iPhone 13, 14 and 15, and to up to 6,000 rupees ($72) for the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max
Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with some significant fundraises, a potentially massive acquisition falling apart and looking at what happens when a fintech company suddenly stops serving certain customers. To kick things off, Mary Ann Azevedo walked everyone through Clio’s huge
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