Startups

Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, and Rebecca Bellan got back on the mic for the latest episode of Equity to discuss several weird things and at least one cool thing. First, the crew talked about the least weird thing of the week: how nice it is that Cohere co-founder Nick Frosst has a band that people

Keep the energy of TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 alive and leverage your brand by hosting an after-hours Side Event.  Act fast — today is your last chance to apply! Showcase your brand to 10,000 Disrupt attendees and the vibrant Bay Area tech scene during “Disrupt Week” — taking place from October 26 to November 1. From

When Elon Musk published Tesla’s first “master plan” in 2006, it seemed a bit far-fetched that batteries would end up changing the automotive industry, much less global power production and consumption. Today, as electric vehicles continue to gain market share and massive batteries displace smoke-spewing power plants from the electrical grid, that notion seems less

Startup Battlefield 200 is a major highlight at every Disrupt, and we’re thrilled to find out which of the thousands of startup applicants will get the chance to pitch to top-tier VCs at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Join us at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28–30 to witness the epic showdown where every contender

UPchieve, the free, 24/7 online tutoring and college counseling app for low-income students, announced Thursday it’s giving teachers in Title 1 middle schools and high schools a new tool to ensure their students get the academic support they need. The new offering, called “UPchieve for Teachers,” allows teachers to offer 1:1 support to their students.

Extend the buzz of TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 beyond the main event by hosting an exclusive Side Event. Expose your brand to 10,000 Disrupt attendees and the surrounding Bay Area tech community during “Disrupt Week” — October 26 through November 1. Whether it’s a cocktail party, happy hour, meetup, workshop, silent disco, or comedy show, create

Fal.ai, a dev-focused platform for AI-generated audio, video, and images, today revealed that it’s raised $23 million in funding from investors including Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Black Forest Labs co-founder Robin Rombach, and Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas. It’s a two-round deal. $14 million of Fal’s total came from a Series A tranche led by Kindred Ventures.

Edera, a startup looking to simplify and improve how Kubernetes containers and AI workloads are secured by offering a new hypervisor, today announced that it has raised a $5 million seed funding round led by 645 Ventures and Eniac Ventures. Kubernetes is now 10 years old, but Edera founders Ariadne Conill (distinguished engineer), Emily Long

Workday announced on Tuesday that it’s acquiring Evisort, an AI-powered contract management platform, for an undisclosed amount. In a statement, Terrance Wampler, group general manager at Workday, said that Evisort’s tech will enable Workday to add a range of AI-powered document processing tools to its existing finance and HR software. “Evisort will help us deliver

Do you remember what life was like before the cloud? Before this AI revolution? Prukalpa Sankar, the co-founder and CEO of Atlan sat down with the team at Found to chat about the evolution of data management.  She knows firsthand how things have changed. She and her co-founder launched SocialCops, where they did much work building

Are we at peak social media yet? It’s an interesting question to ponder after the launch of an iOS app offering a social media experience just for one. At a glance, SocialAI — which is billed as a pure “AI Social Network” — looks like Twitter but there’s one very big twist on traditionally microblogging:

Jacob Jackson was all-in on AI early in his career. Jackson co-founded Tabnine, the AI coding assistant that went on to raise close to $60 million in venture backing, while still a computer science student at the University of Waterloo. After selling Tabnine to Codata in 2019 (during his final exams), Jackson joined OpenAI as

Gogoro, the Taiwanese electric scooter manufacturer and battery swapping giant, said its CEO and chairman Horace Luke has stepped down amid subsidy fraud allegations, according to a regulatory filing. Gogoro allegedly used Chinese parts for e-scooters to reduce manufacturing costs, despite reporting that it used locally made parts to qualify for government subsidies. In a

Earlier this year, former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick launched his AI startup, Lumi. Kaepernick has had thousands of stories written about him, and he knows a thing or two about losing control of his narrative. Now with Lumi, he’s trying to help creators take control of their own narratives, offering AI

Bolt says it has settled its long-standing lawsuit with its investor Activant Capital. One-click payments startup Bolt is settling the suit by buying out the investor’s stake “after which Activant will no longer hold any interest in Bolt,” the company said in a statement. Activant’s suit accused founder and then CEO Ryan Breslow of adding

Martin Casado, a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, will tackle one of the most pressing issues facing today’s tech world — AI regulation — only at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking place at Moscone West in San Francisco on October 28-30. Casado is a pioneering figure in software-defined networking and is a key player in the

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week once again proved that the startup world isn’t homogeneous when it comes to risk-taking. Let’s have a look. Most interesting startup stories from the week

Indian logistics firm Delhivery has publicly contested the accuracy of metrics presented by competitor Ecom Express in its draft initial public offering prospectus, a rare confrontation in the lead-up to the latter’s market debut.  Delhivery, which is backed by SoftBank and already publicly listed, claims that Ecom Express has inaccurately represented Delhivery’s business metrics when

Online sports apparel retailer Fanatics has agreed to settle and drop a lawsuit that it filed against troubled one-click payments provider Bolt in March, according to court documents obtained by TechCrunch.  The settlement occurred as Bolt was in the thick of a new gambit to raise a large round of financing, including a “cramdown” threat

Cohost, a would-be X rival launched to the public in June 2022, is shutting down, the company announced via the social network’s staff account earlier this week. The service had operated much like Twitter, offering users the ability to follow others, view posts in a feed, and like and repost content shared by others. However,

Humanz, a marketing platform for content creators and brands, has entered the U.S. market, the company announced on Thursday.  Having launched in Israel in 2017, Humanz has gained strong traction in global markets, including Europe, Latin America, South Africa, and the Middle East. Currently, Humanz works with over 300,000 content creators and has facilitated more

In a development that will surprise few, former WeWork CEO Adam Neumann’s climate/crypto/carbon-credit startup Flowcarbon appears to be in the process of curling up to die, Forbes reported today. Buyers of its “Goddess Nature Token,” pitched as the first step in putting carbon credits on the blockchain, have reportedly been contacted about receiving refunds over

On today’s episode of Equity, Rebecca Bellan sat down with Alok Sama, a Morgan Stanley veteran and former president and CFO of SoftBank Group International. They discussed the latest Apple tech announcements, Sama’s views on the AI hype cycle, and changes to the technology investment landscape since the dot-com era. He also provided insights from

Stefanos Loukakos, formerly a director at Meta’s business-focused Messenger division and, briefly, the tech giant’s blockchain org, noticed several years ago that online retailers were struggling to connect with potential shoppers. The problem, in his opinion, was that their marketing campaigns weren’t tailored enough. Merchants were sending generic social media, text, and email blasts that failed to

Cities spend hundreds of millions each year on paratransit services, or public rides for disabled residents, yet those services remain limited and unpredictable. Wheelchair users often face late pickups, hindering them from getting to work or medical appointments on time. As populations age, the strain on these services and city budgets continues to grow.  Vancouver-based

It’s not every day that you hear about a large funding round for a French startup in the current funding environment. But Neat, a Paris-based insurtech startup, has managed to raise €50 million (around $55 million at current exchange rates). There is some fine print however. In addition to the traditional equity-for-cash financial transaction, a

A love of food — and, well, cheese — has landed German fermentation startup Formo‘s co-founder Roman Plewka and its team a hefty $61 million Series B round to keep scaling production of their climate-friendly, animal-free cheese. The Berlin-based startup’s first products use a base of Koji protein, a type of fungal microorganism that’s been

While artificial intelligence (AI) promises to transform all manner of industries, the biggest game-changing breakthroughs in this new era of data-infused machine intelligence arguably lies in the field of drug discovery. By analyzing vast amounts of biological data, AI can help researchers predict how different chemical compounds will interact with specific targets in the body,

Steve Brotman started Alpha Partners in 2014 with a novel idea at the time: investing alongside early-stage VCs to help preserve their ownership in promising companies as they transition to later funding rounds. Alpha’s first fund was a mere $10 million. But as startups started staying private for longer, the VC industry invented various mechanisms

The SMB-focused bookkeeping, accounting and finance startup finally has raised $50 million in a Series B round of funding and secured a $150 million credit line, TechCrunch is the first to report. The financing comes just seven months after the fintech company announced it had raised $10 million in funding, and brings Miami-based finally’s total