HR startup Rippling has grown into a company valued at $13.5 billion with more than 3,200 employees. Despite that size, its founder and CEO Parker Conrad still approves every expense report over $10 and is still the one who does routine HR tasks like running payroll. That’s because doing such tasks means he’s using his
Month: August 2024
This post contains spoilers for the movie “Alien: Romulus” In the long-running Alien movie franchise, the Weyland-Yutani Corporation can’t seem to let go of a terrible idea: It keeps trying to make a profit from the deadly xenomorph. No matter how many times they fail, and how many people die in the process, whenever the
The fintech segment, which saw massive growth during the pandemic and immediately after, has had a fairly rough 2024. But while the rapid pace of funding has slowed, many fintechs are continuing to see growth and expand their teams. In an effort to better understand just how many fintechs might fit into this category, I
While the best startups are doing well, even in this tough venture capital market, others are struggling to raise new funding. If they can’t raise and haven’t become self-sustaining businesses, their best bet is to get acquired, even if it’s for a fraction of their last valuation. The alternative would be to run out of
Most consumer brands have become “completely disassociated” from the manufacturers who actually create their products, says Keychain CEO Oisin Hanrahan. “They don’t own anything except a brand and a set of marketing functions,” Hanrahan said. That’s what Hanrahan is trying to change with Keychain. Brands can use the website to look up different products and
We’re entering the final week of discounted rates for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Save up to $600 on select individual ticket types until August 23. Join a dynamic crowd of over 10,000 attendees, startup founders and VC investors at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. Here are just a few big reasons to attend
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. I’m Anna Heim from TechCrunch’s international team, and I’ll be writing this newsletter moving forward. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week, we’re looking at some companies being created, funded, shut down and
Code reviews — peer reviews of code that help devs improve code quality — are time-consuming. According to one source, 50% of companies spend two to five hours a week on them. Without enough people, code reviews can be overwhelming and take devs away from other important work. Harjot Gill thinks that code reviews can be
Earlier this year, Bridgit Mendler surprised her fans when she announced that she was heading a new space data startup called Northwood Space. With Northwood, the former Disney star and singer is taking aim at an overlooked but critical part of space infrastructure: ground stations. She’s coming to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on October 28-30 in
Tuesday’s Made by Google event cemented Gemini’s place as the Pixel’s default assistant. The company had previously allowed users to opt in to replace Google Assistant with the generative AI platform, and now the newly announced Pixel 9 phones are the first devices to ship that way by default. Google notes that if users are
When Keith Rabois announced he was leaving Founders Fund to return to Khosla Ventures in January, it came as a shock to many in the venture capital ecosystem — and not just because Rabois is a big name in the industry. It was surprising because unlike in many other fields, venture capitalists don’t traditionally move
The Startup Battlefield is one of the highlights of Disrupt, and we can’t wait to see which of the thousands of applicants will be selected to pitch to panels of top-tier VCs at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking place on October 28–30 in San Francisco. It’s always epic, and every contender is on the road to making a
Google’s big hardware event Made by Google is happening today, with the company revealing new Pixel phones, as well as a bigger role for its Gemini AI. Made by Google’s headliner is the Pixel 9 phone. There are now three phones in the main Pixel lineup — the Pixel 9, the Pixel 9 Pro, and
An AI social media vetting startup Ferretly has raised $2.5 million in seed funding and is launching a new platform designed to screen election personnel. Founded in 2019, Ferretly leverages AI to scan social media and publicly available online data to uncover potential risks and behaviors that traditional background checks may overlook. The startup is
Choice is good — especially when it comes to wearables. Human bodies come in all manner of shapes and sizes, and there’s no such thing as one size fits all. Until Tuesday’s Made by Google 2024 event, the Pixel Watch has only been available in one size: 41 mm. Announced Tuesday, the Pixel Watch 3
Journalists, researchers, and politicians are mourning Meta’s shutdown of CrowdTangle, which they used to track the spread of disinformation on Facebook and Instagram. In CrowdTangle’s place, Meta is offering its Content Library – but is limiting usage to people from “qualified academic or nonprofit institutions who are pursuing scientific or public interest research.” Many researchers
What is the right way to build a software business? Many startup advisers say that B2B software should solve one pain point, gain customers, then add features as their company grows. Serial founder Parker Conrad, currently the founder and CEO of Rippling, an HR software startup valued at $13.5 billion in April, thinks that’s the
The new Pixel 9 lineup took centerstage during Tuesday morning’s Made by Google 2024 event. Along with the inclusion of the Pixel 9 Fold Pro, the company added an additional size option. The trio of devices are: the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL. The Pro now sports the same size
The latest generative models make for great demos, but are they really about to change how people make movies and TV? Not in the short term, according to filmmaking and VFX experts — but in the long term, the changes could be literally beyond our imagining. On a panel at SIGGRAPH in Denver, Nikola Todorovic
Software as a service (SaaS) is an ever-evolving industry. We’ll talk to some of the brightest minds and leaders in the industry — executives from early- and late-stage SaaS companies, leaders from the infrastructure companies that power the industry and the venture capitalists who fund them. Explore and enjoy by joining us at the SaaS
Stoke Space is nothing if not ambitious. The five-year-old launch startup has generated a lot of hype due to its bold plans to develop the first fully reusable rocket, with both the booster and second stage vertically returning to Earth. Those plans got a major boost a year ago, when the U.S. Space Force awarded
Pixel Phones dominated Tuesday’s Made by Google 2024 event. In addition to a full refresh for the Pixel 9 line, the company unveiled the successor to its first foldable, the Pixel Fold. Google rejiggered its numbering scheme this time out, jumping to Pixel 9 Pro Fold for what is its second take on the category.
Big day for VR motion peripherals. An hour after Roto VR announced its $799 spinning game chair, Virtuix has finally revealed a September 10 launch date for its Omni One VR treadmill. I say “finally” because this $2,595 (plus shipping) system has been in the works for more than a decade now. In fact, the
India’s top court has put on hold a tribunal ruling that halted Byju’s insolvency proceedings — a win for U.S. creditors that are seeking to recover $1 billion from the once-celebrated edtech startup. The Indian Supreme Court on Wednesday ordered a stay on the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal’s recent approval of a settlement between
EliseAI, a company developing a suite of AI-powered property management tools for landlords, has raised $75 million in a Series D round that values the startup at $1 billion. EliseAI is the brainchild of co-founder and CEO Minna Song, who met the company’s second co-founder, Tony Stoyanov, while the two were undergraduate students at Cambridge.
Most of the new camera features Google has brought to Pixel devices in recent years have involved AI-based post-processing. Made You Look, announced at Tuesday’s Made by Google 2024 event, is different. It reaches back into the history of photography to tap into a perennial favorite: tricking fussy children into smiling. Sure, there are already
After much back and forth earlier this year, Spotify on Wednesday says it’s now received approval from Apple to display pricing information in its iOS app for users in the EU. The company is not opting into Apple’s new business rules under the EU’s Digital Markets Act, but rather is taking advantage of new antitrust
Labeling and annotation platforms might not get the attention flashy new generative AI models do. But they’re essential. The data on which many models train must be labeled, or the models wouldn’t be able to interpret that data during the training process. Annotation is a vast undertaking, requiring thousands to millions of annotations for the
Kristen Faulkner’s astonishing Olympic success of two gold medals stems from lessons learned from her former career as a venture capitalist. Faulkner was an associate investor at Threshold Ventures, and at Bessemer Venture Partners before that, leaving the VC world in 2021 to pursue cycling. She wasn’t initially scheduled to ride in the 158-kilometer (98-mile)
Google’s annual Made by Google hardware event was held earlier Tuesday, and because the company announced so much stuff, a lot got lost in the shuffle. We rounded up some of the more intriguing AI-related announcements that didn’t get a ton of play, like the image-generating Pixel Studio and Pixel Screenshots, which helps save and