In today’s GPT-3 world, it’s not uncommon to hear about new software services that deal with text. Compose.ai is one such company, though it built its own language model to help folks write faster. Its early product work was enough for it to land a $2.1 million seed round led by Craft Ventures, it announced
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When it comes to sustainable livestock production and agriculture, measurement is the first — and sometimes most elusive — step in the process of turning our food system from a carbon emitter into a carbon sink. So DSM, a science-based company that focuses on agriculture and other parts of our food systems, and Blonk, a
“Digital transformation” has been on the mind of many an organization in the last year: the pandemic and the shift it’s brought to how we work are speeding up investments in new apps, infrastructure and work practices to improve productivity regardless of where we sit all day. Now, it looks like we’re on to the
Google is ditching a massively unpopular auction format that underpins an choice screen it offers in the European Union, it said today. Eligible search providers will be able to freely participate. The auction model was Google’s ‘remedy’ of choice — following the 2018 EU $5BN antitrust enforcement against Android — but rivals have always maintained
Last month, Apple announced it would soon add lossless audio streaming and Spatial Audio with support for Dolby Atmos to its Apple Music subscription at no extra charge. That upgrade has now gone live, Apple announced this morning — though many noticed the additions actually rolled out yesterday, following the WWDC keynote. The entire Apple
David Teten Contributor More posts by this contributor How to win consulting, board and deal roles with PE and VC funds 5 innovative fundraising methods for emerging VCs and PEs Hey, founders between gigs: What now? If you exited your last company for airplane money and are now independently wealthy, congratulations! If you want to
Welcome back to the week, and welcome back to The Exchange. Robinhood has yet to file its IPO, so we’re looking at other companies in the meantime. Today it’s Babylon Health, a British healthtech company that is pursuing a U.S. listing via a blank-check company, or SPAC. You have questions. I have questions. We’ll get
During the virtual keynote of WWDC, Apple shared the first details about iOS 14, the next major version of iOS that is going to be released later this year. There are four pillars with this year’s release: staying connected, focusing without distraction, using intelligence and exploring the world. “For many of us, our iPhones have
Apple has introduced a new feature to its camera system that automatically recognizes and transcribes text in your photos, from a phone number on a business card to a whiteboard full of notes. Live Text, as the feature is called, doesn’t need any prompting or special work from the user — just tap the icon
Abby Kearns Contributor Abby Kearns, chief technology officer at Puppet, has more than 20 years of experience scaling growth for numerous Fortune 500 and startup companies. The pandemic forced companies around the world to adjust to a “new normal,” which caused many leaders to pivot their business strategies and adopt new technologies to continue operations.
Briq, which has developed a fintech platform used by the construction industry, has raised $30 million dollars in a Series B funding round led by Tiger Global Management. The financing is among the largest Series B fundraises by a construction software startup, according to the company, and brings Briq’s total raised to $43 million since
Twitter disclosed on Monday that it blocked four accounts in India to comply with a new legal request from the Indian government. The American social network disclosed on Lumen Database, a Harvard University project, that it took action on four accounts — including those of hip-hop artist L-Fresh the Lion and singer and song-writer Jazzy
As remote work became the default for many companies during the pandemic, it’s maybe no surprise that services like Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop, which gives users access to a fully managed Windows 10 desktop experience from virtually anywhere, saw a lot of interest from large enterprises and a new crop of small businesses that suddenly
France’s competition watchdog, L’Autorité de la concurrence, has fined Google up to €220 million (~$268M) in a case related to self-preferencing within the adtech market which the watchdog found constituted an abuse by Google of a dominant position for ad servers for website publishers and mobile apps. L’Autorité began looking into Google’s adtech business following complaints from
Apple is rolling out some updates to iCloud under the name iCloud+. The company is announcing those features at its developer conference. Existing paid iCloud users are going to get those iCloud+ features for the same monthly subscription price. In Safari, Apple is going to launch a new privacy feature called Private Relay. It sounds
Today’s WWDC keynote from Apple covered a huge range of updates. From a new macOS to a refreshed watchOS to a new iOS, better privacy controls, FaceTime updates, and even iCloud+, there was something for everyone in the laundry list of new code. Apple’s keynote was essentially what happens when the big tech companies get
Astra, the space launch startup with plans to go public via a SPAC merger, will acquire electric propulsion maker Apollo Fusion, the company said Monday. Electric propulsion systems are effective at moving spacecraft from lower to higher orbits, even to the moon, Astra Chief Engineer Benjamin Lyon said in a blog post Monday, pointing to
Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines. This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest private market news, talks about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You
Many people in emerging markets depend on informal public transport to move across cities. But while there are ride-hailing and bus-hailing applications in some of these cities, there’s a dire need for journey-planning apps to improve mobility for users and reduce the time they spend commuting. South African startup WhereIsMyTransport is one such company filling
The medical industry is sitting on a huge trove of data, but in many cases it can be a challenge to realize the value of it because that data is unstructured and in disparate places. Today, a startup called Mendel, which has built an AI platform both to ingest and bring order to that body
More signs of the global market righting the ship after a disastrous 2020. New figures from Gartner point to 26% increase in global sales year over year for the first quarter of 2021. The overall increase is an impressive one, though it comes after a couple of years of market slow down, followed by a
Fixing workplace misconduct reporting is a mission that’s snagged London-based Vault Platform backing from Google’s AI focused fund, Gradient Ventures, which is the lead investor in an $8.2 million Series A that’s being announced today. Other investors joining the round are Illuminate Financial, along with existing investors including Kindred Capital and Angular Ventures. Its $4.2M
As more people return to the office over the next few months, companies will have to work harder than ever to make sure the environment is comfortable and inviting. One company that is out to ease the pain of millions of employees leaving the comfy confines of their homes and losing the convenience of conducting
What happens to technology companies with slowing growth and a rising focus on profitability before they reach behemoth scale? How much does the market value hyper-growth? Just because a technology startup has a hot start, that doesn’t mean it will grow quickly forever. Most will wind up somewhere in the middle — or worse. Put
SentinelOne, a late-stage security startup that helps organizations secure their data using AI and machine learning, has filed for an IPO on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). In an S-1 filing on Thursday, the security company revealed that for the three months ending April 30, its revenues increased by 108% year-on-year to $37.4 million
Grupo Bursátil Mexicano (GBM) is a 35-year-old investment platform in the Mexican stock market. In its first three decades of life, GBM was focused on providing investment services to high net worth individuals and local and global institutions. Over the past decade, the Mexico City-based brokerage has ramped up its digital efforts, and, in the
TikTok announced a ban on political advertising all the way back in 2019. So you’d be forgiven for thinking the ugly problem of democracy-denting political disinformation doesn’t apply inside its walled garden of dancing Gen Zers. But you’d be wrong. New research by Mozilla suggests that policy loopholes and lax oversight, especially around influencer marketing,
European Union lawmakers have asked tech giants to continue reporting on efforts to combat the spread of vaccine disinformation on their platforms for a further six months. “The continuation of the monitoring programme is necessary as the vaccination campaigns throughout the EU is proceeding with a steady and increasing pace, and the upcoming months will
Welcome back to This Week in Apps, the weekly TechCrunch series that recaps the latest in mobile OS news, mobile applications and the overall app economy. The app industry continues to grow, with a record 218 billion downloads and $143 billion in global consumer spend in 2020. Consumers last year also spent 3.5 trillion minutes using apps on Android devices
Guest articles are hugely popular with our startup audience — if the topics are right. Prospective authors regularly ask us about which topics Extra Crunch subscribers would like to hear more about. Here are some pointers: How-tos: Generally, early-stage founders want the latest useful information about how to create a company, including fundraising, growth and team-building.