Fundings and Exits

Bluesky is continuing to blow up. The Twitter-like service and alternative to Elon Musk’s X, has now surpassed 16 million users after seeing rapid growth in the days following the U.S. presidential election. While many are leaving X over the service’s increasing right-wing leanings and Musk’s campaigning for Trump, others are unhappy with other changes
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Soaring private vehicle ownership and declining use of public and non-motorized transport have created mounting traffic congestion in India, the world’s most populous country, which also struggles with relatively narrower roads and inadequate parking facilities in cities. New Delhi recognizes these challenges and has been exploring new ways to address them quickly. Indian Prime Minister
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Prelude is a relatively new French startup that focuses on SMS verification; it’s announcing new funding from Singular and Seedcamp on Wednesday. The two founders met when they were working for Zenly, a popular location-sharing app with tens of millions of users that was acquired by Snap (and later shut down). While you might not
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Anysphere, the company behind AI-powered code editor Cursor, has acquired AI coding assistant Supermaven for an undisclosed sum. Anysphere CEO Michael Truell announced the deal in a post on Cursor’s blog. Supermaven, he said, will enable Anysphere to launch a new version of its Tab AI model that’s “fast, context-aware, and highly intelligent,” especially at sequences
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It was 2020, and Nicolas Orban, Stéphane Derosiaux and Stéphane Maarek were beyond frustrated with Apache Kafka. The tool for handling real-time data streams simply couldn’t keep up with the trio’s engineering needs — particularly during the pandemic, when companies were rushing to embrace cloud services. “Many companies were finding it difficult to scale their
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Tozero, a Munich-based startup that recovers valuable raw materials from recycled lithium-ion batteries, is gearing up to scale. The startup just closed an oversubscribed €11 million seed round (around $11.7M) to step up production by building its first industrial deployment (A.K.A first-of-a-kind or FOAK) plant. Currently, Tozero’s pilot plant processes nine tonnes of lithium-ion battery
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What’s the secret to startup success? Not the trends that so many Silicon Valley founders subscribe to, Andreessen Horowitz general partner VC Martin Casado said to a standing-room-only crowd at TechCrunch Disrupt last week.  Before joining the storied VC firm, Casado founded two other companies, including Nicira, a networking infrastructure company he sold to VMware
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After a career as an incident investigator with risk management firms like Kroll and FTI Consulting, Aaron Narva (pictured above) was working with a big international bank client at compliance software maker Exiger. He was responsible for monitoring that client’s legal compliance after it had made headlines a decade earlier for a money-laundering scandal. “While
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When Skydio, a young maker of drones in San Mateo, California, sent a customer proposal in 2023 to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, its chief of staff, Mike Gennaro, forwarded the email to VC Ben Horowitz. “Which deployment are you looking to do?” Horowitz wrote back. “Whatever you want, Ben,” Gennaro replied, according to
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This year, TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 showcased the incredible talent and groundbreaking ideas of our 2024 Startup Battlefield 200 cohort. Out of thousands of applications, we selected 200 of the most promising startups, each bringing unique innovations to their respective industries. The competition culminated in an electrifying event where these startups had the opportunity to pitch
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Pinstripe aims to reimagine the secondhand market by offering sellers the opportunity to have both a digital storefront and a physical retail presence. Launched in June, the platform offers an alternative approach compared with other marketplaces like Archive, Depop, Facebook Marketplace, and Poshmark. With Pinstripe, sellers take their clothes to local consignment stores, vintage shops,
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For this week’s episode of Found we’re taking you backstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Becca Szkutak had the chance to talk with Dan Lorenc, the CEO and co-founder of cybersecurity startup Chainguard, following their conversation onstage with prominent investors, The Chainsmokers. The pair discuss how the EDM duo’s venture fund MANTIS went from being viewed skeptically by
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At TechCrunch Disrupt, our team sits front and center, furiously typing away at our laptops to publish real-time news from impressive speakers like NFL quarterback-turned-founder Colin Kaepernick, Perplexity AI founder Aravind Srinivas, and Ashton Kutcher. We are a well-oiled machine. Some writers have been covering Disrupt since the old days, before Meta was Meta and
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CareYaya, a platform that matches people who need caregivers with healthcare students, is working to disrupt the caregiving industry. The startup, which exhibited as part of the Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt, is looking to enhance affordable in-home support, while also helping students prepare for their future healthcare careers. The startup was founded in 2022
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