With global content consumption rising and demand for non-English content surpassing that for English movies and shows, IMAX is leveraging AI to scale localization on its original content. The entertainment and media industry grew 5% to $2.8 trillion in 2023, according to a report by PwC. The industry is expected to continue its expansion, though
Month: November 2024
When ServiceTitan dropped its S-1 notice of an impending public offering on November 18, many VCs likely rejoiced. A successful IPO by the company, which builds operating software for trade businesses, could be what the quiet IPO market needs to start shaking loose. But the timing of ServiceTitan’s IPO may not be entirely based on
Volkswagen bet big on European-made batteries a few years ago with two massive investments in Northvolt, the Swedish manufacturer. Now the automaker’s €1.4 billion stake is worth less than half that, according to Reuters. The write-downs occurred throughout the current fiscal year as the situation at Northvolt deteriorated. It’s unclear what Volkswagen’s current stake is
Want to keep up with what everyone’s talking about on alternative social media sites like Bluesky and Mastodon, but don’t have time to constantly scroll through their respective apps? A newly launched link aggregation service called Sill may be able to help. The service is similar to the older startup Nuzzel, which was ultimately acquired
Back in 2016, Hammad Syed and Mahmoud Felfel, an ex-WhatsApp engineer, thought it’d be neat to build a text-to-speech Chrome extension for Medium articles. The extension, which could read any Medium story aloud, was featured on Product Hunt. A year later, it spawned an entire business. “We saw a bigger opportunity in helping individuals and
After the European Union opened a competition investigation into Corning earlier this month, citing concerns over alleged exclusive dealing, the Gorilla Glass maker has offered a raft of changes to its contract clauses aimed at settling the probe. The U.S. company is a supplier to major electronics brands including Apple’s iPhone, and the changes could
Brightcove, a cloud platform that helps businesses manage and monetize video content, is being taken private by Italian technology company Bending Spoons in an all-cash deal valued at $233 million. The transaction prices Brightcove at $4.45 per share, translating to a 90% premium on its 60-day average. Founded out of Boston in 2004, Brightcove develops
Entrepreneur Marc Lore has already sold two companies for billions of dollars, collectively. Now he plans to take his food delivery and take-out business Wonder public in a couple of years at an ambitious $40 billion valuation. We talked with Lore in person in New York recently about Wonder and its ultimate aim of making
It’s not exactly a secret that Apple has explored the possibility of building a television. Before his death in 2011, co-founder Steve Jobs famously told biographer Walter Isaacson that he’d “finally cracked it,” but no full-fledged Apple TV (as opposed to the Apple TV set-top box) has emerged in the years since. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman
Midway through 2024, Mike Packer, a partner at fintech-focused QED Investors, predicted we’d already hit the bottom for funding to Latin American fintech startups, and that a bounce back was coming. While momentum hasn’t been a straight shot up and to the right ever since, it’s looking like he was right. The volume of venture
Tesla and Rivian may have resolved a lawsuit in which Tesla accused Rivian of poaching employees and stealing trade secrets. Bloomberg reports that Tesla told a California judge that the companies have reached a “conditional” settlement, and that it expects to seek dismissal of the lawsuit by December 24. Tesla filed the suit, which was
It may be hard to remember, but George Clooney and Brad Pitt co-starred in a movie, “Wolfs,” that Apple released just two months ago. On Friday, the film’s writer and director Jon Watts said Friday that a sequel is no longer happening; in a follow-up interview with Deadline, he explained that he “no longer trusted
Anthropic has raised an additional $4 billion from Amazon, and has agreed to train its flagship generative AI models primarily on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing division. The OpenAI rival also said it’s working with Annapurna Labs, AWS’ chipmaking division, to develop future generations of Trainium accelerators, AWS’ custom-built chips for training AI
The European Union looks to have clinched political agreement on the team of 26 commissioners who will be implementing President Ursula von der Leyen’s policy plan for the next five years. A final vote is still pending next week, but on Thursday, Politico’s Brussels Playbook newsletter reported a deal in the European Parliament on the
The AI race is taking a detour as developers consider a new path to super-intelligent systems: test-time compute. Not sure what that means? Don’t worry, the Equity pod team breaks it down. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey and Margaux MacColl dig into the week’s tech and startup news, including what
Despite all the talk of doom and gloom about the economy, entrepreneurship is actually on the rise in the U.S.: In 2024, an average of 430,000 new business applications were submitted every month, marking a 50% rise from 2019. But the number of accountants these new businesses will need to maintain their books, file taxes,
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. If you’d like to receive this newsletter in your inbox every Friday, sign up here! The week before Thanksgiving is typically busy with announcements of all sorts, but this week has been particularly interesting. Money was flowing to big problems, like defense, cybersecurity, and
The Silicon Valley dream is to build a tech startup that is such a unique idea it alters the commercial universe and turns its founders into billionaires. Participating in the Valley’s most famed startup factory, Y Combinator, is often part of that dream. Airbnb, Coinbase, and Stripe all got started there. Yet, a deep dive
Daricus Releford always wanted to be a founder. In high school, he ran a hot dog station and in college launched a chocolate-covered strawberry business, making millions in sales before moving to Silicon Valley to pursue his dreams in tech. Entrepreneurship simply runs in his family, he told TechCrunch. “My grandfather was one of the
Streaming service and media software maker Plex on Friday introduced a redesign of its software that puts more emphasis on discovery, easily accessing your watchlist and other personalization features — including those for home media enthusiasts who still use the app to organize their media libraries. Over the years, the company has tried to balance
Beleaguered Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt announced on Thursday that it was filing for bankruptcy in the U.S., striking a blow to Europe’s ambitions for homegrown lithium-ion batteries. The company reportedly chose Chapter 11 in an effort to right its finances. In the wake of the filing, co-founder and CEO Peter Carlsson resigned, though he’ll remain on
The European Commission (EC) has quietly closed a longstanding antitrust investigation into Apple over rules it enforces against third-party e-book and audiobook app developers. The EC opened the probe back in 2020 after receiving complaints over how Apple forced competing e-book and audiobook app developers to use Apple’s own in-app payment system, while also preventing
AI may be the hottest thing since sliced bread. But that doesn’t mean it’s getting easier to develop and run. According to a recent Boston Consulting Group poll, 74% of organizations are struggling to derive value from their AI investments. William Falcon, the creator of PyTorch Lightning, a popular open source AI framework, says that
Ten years after pitching onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt in London, fintech N26 has reported its first ever quarterly (pretax) profit. The challenger bank with millions of customers across Europe generated a net operating income of €2.8 million during the third quarter of 2024 (or $2.9 million at current exchange rates). This is an important milestone
It’s a truism in the climate tech world that hardware is paramount. After all, you can’t curb carbon pollution without fixing cement, steel, hydrogen, and more. But as with anything today, hardware is just part of the equation. “In almost every case, hardware is going to be developed with software in mind,” Vaughn Blake, partner
Beleaguered Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt announced today that it was filing for bankruptcy in the U.S., striking a blow to Europe’s ambitions for homegrown lithium-ion batteries. The company reportedly chose Chapter 11 in an effort to right its finances. Northvolt, which had soared for years on the back of strong fundraising and a string of
Zepto has secured $350 million in new funding, its third round of financing in six months, as the Indian quick-commerce startup strengthens its position against its competitors ahead of a planned IPO next year. Indian family offices, wealthy individuals, and asset manager Motilal Oswal invested in the round, which maintains Zepto’s $5 billion valuation. Motilal
Nuclear startup Kairos Power received approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to start construction on two test reactors in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The permit marks a significant milestone for Kairos, which in October inked a deal with Google to provide 500 megawatts of electricity for its data centers. The fluoride-salt cooled, high-temperature reactors are
Crusoe Energy, a startup building data centers reportedly to be leased Oracle, Microsoft, and OpenAI, is in the process of raising $818 million, according to an SEC filing. The filing indicates that Crusoe has secured $686 million of the $818 million total that it hopes to raise. Seventy investors have contributed to the tranche so
Teleo describes itself as a construction robotics startup, but its mission is bigger than automating heavy equipment like excavators and tractors. Today, Teleo’s retrofitted machinery allows its customers to operate their existing fleets semi-autonomously. In the future, the startup sees the data it collects as a key enabler for the robotics industry to reach its
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