Deon Nicholas is the CEO and co-founder of Forethought, the AI company whose mission is to transform customer experiences with human-centered AI. Forethought has raised over $100 million in venture capital, including from NEA, which led Forethought’s $9.52 million Series A. Hear from NEA’s Vanessa Larco on what convinced the firm to invest in Forethought,
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Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast, where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. Today Natasha and Alex were on the mics, kicking back and riffing through the biggest technology stories of the week. Our dear Mary Ann was off this week, but will be back in short order. What did we
Vibrant Planet — which is creating an “operating system for forest restoration” — comes as a pleasant surprise, and not one I expected. Climate tech, while relatively new, has settled into two camps: hardware and software. And while Vibrant Planet is definitely a software play — from its cloud focus to its per-seat licenses, it’s
Last year we covered how “&Open” (yes, “ampersand open,” pronounced “And Open”) had raised a raised $7.2 million seed to make it easier for brands to send gifts to customers to boost loyalty and engagement. According to one study customers who feel emotionally connected to a brand after receiving gifts have a 306% higher lifetime
As Google works on reconfiguring its adtech stack to move away from cookie-based ad targeting to something else that’s not yet fixed but which it claims will be better for individual web users’ privacy — and after Apple’s move last year to lock down third party tracking of app users on iOS, also on a
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman joins Emily Chang for more on Apple’s plans to release a much-anticipated Tap-to-Pay feature on the iPhone later this year, giving merchants an alternative to Block’s Square technology.
Brex’s announcement last week that it would stop serving small-to-medium-sized businesses shocked — and upset — many in its suddenness and delivery. The fintech decacorn, which started its life as a provider of cards to startups and SMBs, began notifying customers last week that they would be cut off from Brex’s services as of August
For nearly all fintech startups, lending has long been the end game. A notice from India’s central bank this week has thrown a wrench into the ecosystem, scrutinizing just who all can lend. The Reserve Bank of India has informed dozens of fintech startups that it is barring the practice of loading non-bank prepaid payment
For those of us who’ve been a little bit wobbly on the mental health front over the past couple of years, there are a bunch of options starting to crop up. The on-demand chat-based therapy options are one, and at-home ketamine-assisted treatments are another. We’ve seen Mindbloom and Fieldtrip Health taking pole position, and recently,
Evinced is on a mission to make as many web properties accessible as possible, and to do that means getting that work done as early as possible — which means integrating with the development process from the beginning. The company is continuing this “shift left” mentality with $38 million in new funding that it plans
Einride, the Swedish startup that wants to electrify the autonomous freight industry, will begin operating its purpose-built, self-driving pods on public roads in the U.S. this year as part of an existing partnership with General Electric Appliances (GEA). Einride’s pods are built without a front cabin for a human safety operator, which the company says
As companies grow they expose more of themselves online and become harder to defend in terms of cybersecurity. One report estimates that 30%-40% of a company’s IT infrastructure isn’t even known about by the security team. So startups have appeared with an ‘offensive’ profile in order to similate cyber attacks. One such is Amsterdam-based Hadrian,
As part of a broader update to its Chrome web browser, Google announced today a handful new features coming to the latest build of Chrome on iOS. Among the key additions, the Chrome app is gaining access to Google’s Enhanced Safe Browsing feature which proactively warns you about dangerous web pages. Other updates include user
Ro, a healthcare unicorn that last raised $150 million just months ago at a $7 billion valuation, has cut 18% of its staff to “manage expenses, increase the efficiency of our organization and better map our resources to our current strategy,” leadership wrote in an e-mail obtained by TechCrunch and confirmed by multiple sources. “Due
Any given year, the real unsung highlight of re:Mars are the dozen or so startups and researchers who show off their wares on the show floor. There are always a couple of cool projects that have somehow managed to escape our radar, thus far. Los Angeles-based Airrow jumped out with a clever product offering. The
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Hey, folks! Me again. As I’m sure it had you on the edge of your seat, I’m pleased to report that the team wasn’t completely dissatisfied with my inaugural work (it’s here
We have quite a unique pitch deck on our hands today. A few years ago, AR car hardware company WayRay raised $80 million at a half-a-billion valuation in a Series C round led by Porsche, and I’m super excited to show off their pitch deck today! Yes, it’s a little bit older than some of the
For Allison Wolff, the 2018 wildfire season in California marked a turning point. During that record-breaking year, she started asking a lot of questions. “We were in the middle of the 2018 wildfire season, with the Carr Fire, and what I thought at the time was the worst season ever,” Wolff said. “I started asking
Europe has no shortage of buy now, pay later startups and a quick search is revealing. Berlin-based fintech startup Mondu has taken in €39.9 million to expand its B2B BNPL solution. Madrid’s RITMO scored over €184 million. Tranch in the U.K. is launching BNPL to a B2B market with €4 million. Berlin-based Billie raised about
Mobile well-being apps topped 1.2 billion downloads last year, while leading meditation app Calm alone pulled in $118.2 million in revenue, data from Sensor Tower indicates. That may leave some to believe the digital well-being market is essentially solved, but a new startup, Lumi Interactive, believes the opposite is true. The Melbourne-based, women-led company has
Cynthia Price Contributor Cynthia Price is the SVP of marketing at Litmus. Her team grows and supports the Litmus and email community through content marketing, demand generation and events. She has been in the email marketing industry for over 10 years and was previously VP of Marketing at Emma, an email service provider. Early 2020
Video streaming company Netflix said it has laid off 300 people — which represents 3% of its workforce — because of slowing growth and economic downturn. This is the firm’s second layoff spree in two months, after it let go of 150 staffers in May. In April, it also laid off a bunch of staffers
Universities turn to robots to address labor shortages and explore new businesses Rebecca Bellan 7 hours The relatively controlled environments of university campuses have long served as ideal testing grounds for autonomous technology, and they’re proving particularly effective for sidewalk delivery robots. In the latest move to introduce autonomous delivery to college campuses, early last
The space industry is evolving, as are the tools it uses; Epsilon3 is a startup trying to make launches, satellite design, rocket manufacturing, and other complex processes easier and more collaborative. The company has found its tools have uses beyond space, and growing traction across the board has led to a $15 million in new
When it comes to moving the transportation sector over to EVs, commercial fleets are probably some of the lowest hanging fruit. More often than not, they have consistent routes, reserved off-hour parking, and cost a lot less to drive and maintain. But for many commercial operators, EVs are still a wildcard. Gagan Dhillon and Andrew
Another strike against use of Google Analytics in Europe: The Italian data protection authority has found a local web publisher’s use of the popular analytics tool to be non-compliant with EU data protection rules owing to user data being transferred to the U.S. — a country that lacks an equivalent legal framework to protect the
The axe has fallen for e-cigarette maker Juul. The FDA ordered the company to stop selling and distributing its ubiquitous vaping devices in the U.S. Thursday, a dramatic end for a company that dominated the e-cigarette market and was valued at $38 billion at the top of its game. Juul will no longer be able
Instagram is experimenting with another new feature that would allow usersto post disappearing content. The feature, called Notes, allows users to post quick notes, like announcements, to their “Close Friends” circle or to followers who also follow them. Unlike Twitter’s new Notes feature, which allows writers to post long-form content, Instagram’s version is more like sticky
Uber said on Thursday it has never explored exiting India, a key overseas market for several tech giants, dismissing a claim that it has had held discussions to sell the local unit. Bloomberg reported earlier in the day that the San Francisco-headquartered firm had explored selling the India business, but “suspended discussions after tech startup
A decade ago, SumUp was one of the army of fintechs that made names for themselves with dongles that turned basic smartphones into card payment terminals. Today, the London-based company has expanded into a wider range of business services that are used by some 4 million small and medium businesses in 35 markets, and as