Month: August 2024

Anysphere, a two-year-old startup that’s developed an AI-powered coding assistant called Cursor, has raised over $60 million in a Series A financing at a $400 million post-money valuation, two sources familiar with the deal told TechCrunch.  The round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive Capital. Patrick Collison, co-founder and CEO of Stripe, also participated
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Meta and Universal Music Group (UMG) announced on Monday the expansion of their multi-year music licensing agreement, which enables users to share songs from UMG’s music library across Meta’s platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Horizon, Threads and WhatsApp) without violating copyright.  What’s most notable about the new agreement is that it states that the two companies are
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Heavy equipment manufacturer CNH Industrial has a long history of mergers and acquisitions, at times supervising legendary brands like Ferrari. But five years ago, as agtech was booming, the global giant was struggling to tap into the startup scene.  The conglomerate turned to one of its longest-tenured executives, a swashbuckling Italian businessman named Michele Lombardi.
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The valuation of Oyo, once India’s second-most valuable startup at $10 billion, has dipped to $2.4 billion in a new funding round. The Gurugram-headquartered startup has raised $173.5 million in a Series G funding round. InCred Wealth, Patient Capital and J&A Partners invested in the new round. TechCrunch reported in May that Oyo was seeking
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Susan Wojcicki, a longtime Googler who spent nearly a decade as the CEO of YouTube, passed away Friday after a two-year battle with non-small cell lung cancer. Wojcicki, who was 56, famously rented the garage of her Menlo Park home to Larry Page and Sergey Brin as they were starting Google. She then became one
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India is the second-largest wearable market after China. At times, it has also been the largest smartwatch market. However, in Q2, wearable shipments in the country declined 10% year-on-year to 29.5 million units. The first half of the year, meanwhile, fell 4.7% to 55.1 million units, analyst firm IDC reported this week. Market analysts believe
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Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week we are looking at AI founders who are playing musical chairs, a massive defense tech investment, and more issues at Techstars. Let’s get into it. Most
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In 1996, two companies, Patersons HR and Payroll Solutions, formed a venture called CloudPay to provide payroll and payments services to enterprise clients. CloudPay grew quietly over the next several decades, adding workflow automation features to maintain pace with upstart rivals. It’s still growing, CFO Andy Thomson assures TechCrunch. Thomson claims that CloudPay is handling
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AI companies are gobbling up investor money and securing sky-high valuations early in their life cycle. This dynamic has many calling the AI industry a bubble. Nick Frosst, a co-founder of Cohere, which builds custom AI models for enterprise customers, recently said on TechCrunch’s Found podcast that he doesn’t think the AI industry is in
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Slag is the molten runoff created while producing steel in a traditional blast furnace. The material has been prized as greener cement alternative for creating concrete, the Earth’s most abundant human-made material. The runoff is facing supply chain issues, however, as the steel industry looks to greener methods of production. Increasingly, steel producers in the
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