What’s the common thread between Tesla, building startups, General Motors venture capital and Lyft? Jon McNeill, co-founder and partner of DVx Ventures, joins TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec on Equity to discuss how Elon Musk’s pay package has influenced founders, when it makes sense to go light on cash and heavy on equity, and his firm’s
Month: July 2024
Planning to attend TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 with your team? Maximize your team-building time and your company’s impact across the entire conference when you bring your team. Groups of 4 to 9 save 15% on passes, and if you have a group of 10 or more, you can save 30%. Here’s a sneak peek at some
The venture fundraising trend in 2024 is fairly clear by now: Large, established VC firms are continuing to attract capital from limited partners, while smaller, newer funds are finding it more difficult to raise. But Industry Ventures’ latest fundraise should offer a dash of good news for emerging managers. On Tuesday, the 24-year-old firm announced
For the past couple of years, innovation has been accelerating in new materials development. And a new French startup called Altrove plans to play a role in this innovation cycle. The deep tech startup has already raised €3.7 million (around $4 million at current exchange rates). If you’re interesting in new materials development, you may
The Indian social media platform Koo, which positioned itself as a competitor to Elon Musk’s X, is ceasing operations after its last-resort acquisition talks with Dailyhunt collapsed. Despite securing over $60 million in funding from prominent investors including Tiger Global and Accel, Koo faced significant challenges in expanding its user base and generating revenue over
Electricity demand is booming on account of AI. In a May 2024 report, Goldman Sachs predicted that data centers will use 8% of the U.S.’s total power supply by 2030, up from 3% in 2022, as cloud service providers expand to meet the demand for AI infrastructure. Assuming the current trend holds, U.S. utilities will need to
Sophisticated spacecraft often run on shockingly outdated computing systems: consider that the Perseverance rover runs on a PowerPC 750, the processor famous for running on iMacs in the late 1990s. San Francisco-based Aethero is aiming to bring more powerful computing systems to orbit, and their first payload launches this month on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 rideshare mission.
Google has issued its 2024 Environmental Report, a more than 80-page document describing all of the massive company’s efforts to apply tech to environmental issues and to mitigate its own contributions. But it totally dodges the question of how much energy is AI using — perhaps because the answer is “way more than we’d care
In the age of generative AI, when chatbots can provide detailed answers to questions based on content pulled from the internet, the line between fair use and plagiarism, and between routine web scraping and unethical summarization, is a thin one. Perplexity AI is a startup that combines a search engine with a large language model
Raising a Series A round in today’s competitive market can be a daunting task. To equip seed-stage founders with the insights and strategies needed for success, TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 will host a crucial session on the Builders Stage titled “What You Need to Raise a Series A Today.” This session will bring together some of
The amount of waste produced by the construction industry adds up to more than a third of the overall waste produced each year in the European Union. And it’s no better in the U.S. Stateside, the construction industry produces more than double the waste that households do each year. Sensorita wants to help the construction
Meta plans to bring more generative AI tech into games, specifically VR, AR and mixed reality games, as the company looks to reinvigorate its flagging metaverse strategy. According to a job listing, Meta is seeking to research and prototype “new consumer experiences” with new types of gameplay driven by generative AI, like games that “change
Meta is not the only company grappling with the rise in AI-generated content and how it affects its platform. YouTube also quietly rolled out a policy change in June that will allow people to request the takedown of AI-generated or other synthetic content that simulates their face or voice. The change allows people to request
SmartHR, a cloud-based human resources and labor management software startup, said on Monday that it has raised $140 million in a funding round led by KKR and Teachers’ Ventures Growth, an investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, with participation from existing investors. The Series E round, which comes three years after the company raised
A group of senators has banded together to urge Synapse’s owners and bank and fintech partners to “immediately restore customers’ access to their money.” As part of their demands, the senators implicated both the partners and investors of the company as being responsible for missing customer funds. In a letter shared publicly on Monday, U.S.
Music, podcasts, audiobooks…emergency alerts? Spotify’s latest test has the streaming app venturing into new territory with a test of an emergency alerts system in its home market of Sweden. According to code references found within the Spotify app, the company is considering a system that would help distribute public announcements related to things like “accidents,
Exciting news for tech enthusiasts and innovators! TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 is just around the corner, and we have an incredible opportunity for you to elevate your brand’s visibility. How? By hosting your own Side Event at the most anticipated tech gathering of the year! Why host a Side Event? Imagine being at the helm of
Afloat, a gift delivery app that lets you shop from local stores and have gifts delivered to a loved one on the same day, is now available across the U.S. The startup announced on Monday that it is rolling out its service nationwide after previously only being available in select cities, including Atlanta, Dallas, Charleston, Fort
When Til Klein and Jochen Beutgen came across Gaingels, the U.S.-based syndicate of angel investors backing LGBTQ+ founders, they wondered why there wasn’t a firm looking to do the same for the European LGBTQ+ startup community. Five years later, when a firm like that still didn’t exist, Klein and Beutgen decided they should try to
Apple’s AI plans go beyond the previously announced Apple Intelligence launches on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company is also working to bring these features to its Vision Pro headsets. It’s not the most surprising move — if Apple Intelligence (a whole suite of features including an improved Siri,