Almost one decade after its $1 billion acquisition of Cruise, automaker General Motors has decided to give up on the self-driving startup. GM will now use Cruise tech to improve its own advanced driver assistance system with the ultimate goal of offering personal autonomous vehicles. Today, on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha,
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The road from scientist to founder is well trodden, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Those pitfalls are why, over the last decade, several programs have sprung up to help smooth the path for technical founders. Now, two prominent programs, Activate and The Engine Accelerator, have decided they can give founders an even bigger advantage
In October, Google started piloting a version of NotebookLM, its viral AI note-taking and research app, aimed at businesses. Now, the company’s bringing NotebookLM to the enterprise, complete with work-focused security and privacy features. NotebookLM for enterprises — which Google’s dubbing NotebookLM Plus — delivers the same experience as the consumer version, but with added
Tom Gardiner and Harry Marshall founded Trevor.io in 2016 as a no-code business intelligence platform to help non-data people run analysis on their internal data. That business was solid, but customers increasingly started asking the company for access to the same tools for their customer-facing data. Gardiner told TechCrunch that the company initially resisted the
It’s becoming increasingly costly to develop and run AI. OpenAI’s AI operations costs could reach $7 billion this year, while Anthropic’s CEO recently suggested that models costing over $10 billion could arrive soon. So the hunt is on for ways to make AI cheaper. Some researchers are focusing on techniques to optimize existing model architectures — i.e.
AI models that understand videos as well as text can unlock powerful new applications. At least, that’s what Jae Lee, the co-founder of Twelve Labs, believes. Granted, Lee’s a little biased. Twelve Labs trains video-analyzing models for a range of use cases. But there may just be something to his assertion. Using Twelve Labs’ models,
ServiceTitan, which offers financial and customer management software for the trades, went public in a big way on Thursday, much to the delight of retail investors. The stock quickly popped from its opening IPO sales price of $71 million to $105 a share in modest trading volume. It is currently maintaining an above-$100 price. ServiceTitan’s
Running a startup can be expensive, requiring a multitude of different subscriptions. Cap table management software, which helps founders organize their funding, can cost thousands of dollars a year. San Francisco-based Carta is the market leader in this industry. But some startup founders say Carta is making it too hard to cancel their subscriptions. The
Arriving in time for holiday travel and potentially lost luggage, a new feature that allows Apple AirTag owners to share the location of a lost item is now integrated with the customer service systems of two major airlines. United and Air Canada are the first launch partners for Apple’s “Find My Share Item Location” feature,
Throw a stone and you’ll likely hit a deepfake. The commoditization of generative AI has led to an absolute explosion of fake content online: According to ID verification platform Sumsub, there’s been a 4x increase in deepfakes worldwide from 2023 to 2024. In 2024, deepfakes accounted for 7% of all fraud, per Sumsub, ranging from
When SlideShare, the presentation-sharing service acquired by Scribd, launched in 2006, generative AI technology was significantly less advanced than it is today, and social networking platforms were just beginning to take off. Recognizing the evolution of AI and the increasing desire for innovative ways to share documents, the founders of SlideShare—Amit Ranjan (COO), Jonathan Boutelle
Making sure your software is accessible is fast becoming a must rather than a nice-to-have, and Evinced is one of a wave of startups helping make that happen. The company is about to expand to Europe, where new accessibility regulations are about to take effect, and has raised $55 million to fuel the expansion. Evinced
Big tech companies spent several months this year touting their investments in nuclear power. Now, the tide is turning to renewables. Google announced on Tuesday that it was funding $20 billion worth of renewable power projects across the U.S. On Wednesday, it was Microsoft’s turn, helping to launch the Climate and Communities Investment Coalition with
Google said that it is launching a new Android-based XR platform on Thursday to accommodate AI features. The company said the platform, called Android XR, will support app development on different devices, including headsets and glasses. The company is releasing Android XR’s first developer preview on Thursday, which already supports existing tools, including ARCore, Android
People don’t sing as much as they used to, and Mike Wilson wants to change that. The former Devolver exec has of late been exploring how games can help with wellness, and his latest attempt is a VR app that you can, no joke, sing out loud with when you’re home alone. It’s not quite
Demand for South Asian fashion is growing globally as more South Asians are migrating and settling in new markets, then buying ethnic wear for occasions like local festivals and weddings. However, not many online platforms today sell an extensive catalog of apparel and footwear from local South Indian sellers to global markets. Those that do
Upvest might not be a familiar name if you don’t pay close attention to the fintech industry, but chances are you’ve already interacted with the company’s products. Founded by Martin Kassing (pictured above), the Berlin-based startup builds a white-label investment platform that is used by some of the biggest fintech companies in Europe. Upvest clients
SolarSquare has raised $40 million in what is the largest venture round in India’s solar sector. The Mumbai-based startup bootstrapped and was profitable selling to corporate customers for five years before switching to residential solar in 2021. Now it has scaled to powering over 20,000 homes and 200 housing societies across India, and is India’s
Alongside the release of a host of new AI features, Apple is also updating the Voice Memos app in iOS 18.2. On Wednesday, the iPhone maker announced that iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max users will be able to layer a vocal track on top of an existing instrumental recording in the Voice Memos app,
Lumen Orbit, a startup looking to build data centers in space, was able to close its recent seed round in mere days amid intense investor interest. The Redmond, Washington-based company closed on a $11 million seed round at a $40 million valuation, confirming prior TechCrunch reporting that the company had raised a competitive double-digit round
Late last year, Gou Rao and Vinod Jayaraman founded NeuBird to automate IT site reliability operations tasks with generative AI. Having sold their previous cloud-native storage startup, Portworx, to PureStorage for $370 million, the pair was well-versed in the IT challenges faced by today’s enterprises. “It’s very hard to find good site reliability engineers. There’s
Green ammonia startup Amogy has raised $11.2 million of a targeted $90 million round, an SEC filing reveals. The new round’s target is significantly smaller than its last round — a $139 million Series B-1 that was announced in March 2023 — highlighting the challenges that middle-stage climate startups face today when trying to attract
OpenAI has never revealed exactly which data it used to train Sora, its video-generating AI. But from the looks of it, at least some of the data might’ve come from Twitch streams and walkthroughs of games. Sora launched on Monday, and I’ve been playing around with it for a bit (to the extent the capacity
Cybercrime became easier in 2024 with the rise of info-stealer malware, or software that collects login credentials. Instead of breaking into target networks using vulnerabilities, hackers can just log in with those stolen credentials. They don’t even have to steal them themselves, but can buy them on the dark web. IBM’s 2024 X-Force Intelligence report
Back in February, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian teamed up with Brent Montgomery (“Pawn Stars” producer) and Evan Parker (former general manager at The Athletic) to launch Mantel, a social network allowing collectors to share their latest finds, such as sports cards, TCGs (trading card games), comic books, coins, stamps, sneakers, watches, and more. Initially available
Getting rid of fossil fuels is relatively simple for some things. Housing? Replace furnaces with heat pumps. Cars and light trucks? Ditch internal combustion for batteries and electric motors. Yet for many industries like cement, steelmaking, and more, it’s hard to replace the heating power of fossil fuels. But Dan Stack thinks bricks have a
Apple released new Apple Intelligence features, including image playground, Genmoji, writing tool enhancements, and ChatGPT integration with iOS 18.2, iPadOS 18.2, and macOS Sequoia 15.2. The company also expanded language support for Apple Intelligence to localized English in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the U.K. Previously, the company supported only U.S. English
French unicorn Mirakl is announcing its third acquisition in three years with the acquisition of Adspert, a German adtech startup focused on e-commerce advertising. Mirakl isn’t disclosing the terms of the acquisition, but the entire Adspert team of 30 employees will join Mirakl. As a reminder, Mirakl originally started as a software solution to add
Tiger Global famously fueled the pandemic-era venture capital boom, investing heavily in a wide range of startups, setting up bidding wars for even the most unproven startup that led to sky-high valuations. In 2021 alone, the hedge fund backed 315 startups, according to PitchBook data. And much of the VC industry was not happy about
As data center power demand surges, tech companies are looking for ways to trim electricity use wherever they can. Cooling is an obvious place to start, since it can account for around 40% of a data center’s energy consumption, according to McKinsey. Most data centers are cooled by blowing chilled air through their servers. The
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