Startups

You’ve got the product — now how do you find customers? And once you find those customers, how do you keep them coming back for more? At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking place October 28-30 in San Francisco, we’re bringing Spenser Skates, April Underwood and Tamar Yehoshua to the Builders Stage to discuss how startups can

It’s back-to-school season, and that often means a surge in expenses. Or perhaps you’ve recently graduated and are navigating the job hunt. Either way, your wallet might be feeling the pinch. We’re here to help with a limited-time offer: $200 off the Student Pass for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Don’t miss out — this discount is

VerSe Innovation, India’s content tech unicorn that owns local language news aggregator Dailyhunt, digital newsstand platform Magzter and short-video app Josh, has acquired digital marketing firm Valueleaf Group in a cash and equity deal. Valueleaf will help VerSe to bolster its presence in the Indian digital ad space and build a significant retargeting platform, countering

Eric Ly has a storied career: he started as an engineering intern at IBM, and twenty years later found himself co-starting and serving as the founding CTO of LinkedIn. After that, he went on to start a slew of companies, including his most recent one, KarmaCheck, which uses AI-driven technology to make background checks easier.

You might not know Viggle AI, but you’ve likely seen the viral memes it created. The Canadian AI startup is responsible for dozens of videos remixing the rapper Lil Yachty bouncing on stage at a summer music festival. In one video, Lil Yachty is replaced by Joaquin’s Phoenix’s the Joker. In another, Jesus seemed to

Are you a Series A or B startup ready to make waves in the tech industry? The ScaleUp Startups Exhibitor Program at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 can be your launchpad to success. This program offers unparalleled exposure, connecting you with top industry leaders, investors, and potential partners. Don’t miss out — less than a week left

Shared e-scooter startup Beam Mobility has placed hundreds of extra “phantom” scooters on city streets in Australia and New Zealand to avoid paying vehicle registration fees to local governments, according to a two-part report from The Australian. Cities place caps on the number of vehicles operators can deploy to avoid saturating streets and sidewalks with

San Francisco’s AI startup boom is so big, even international founders who don’t run AI startups are relocating there to help their companies grow, according to several founders who recently moved.  This is largely because the tech talent and investor money is still overwhelmingly concentrated there, according to new data that VC firm SignalFire exclusively

The first defense startup to receive backing from Y Combinator, Ares Industries, launched earlier this week. In a post on the YC website, the startup outlined a vision to build low-cost cruise missiles that will be compatible with existing launch platforms, saying it will “deliver the capabilities that the [Department of Defense] wants in a

Travly is a new social-first discovery and hotel booking platform designed to cater to the growing number of travelers who rely on short-form video content for trip ideas.  The platform features user-generated content that provides authentic reviews of hotels instead of generic information and often outdated images. Creators who submit videos of hotels have the

Eruditus, an Indian edtech startup, is in advanced stages of talks to secure about $150 million in new funding, two sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch, in what would be the largest fundraise by an Indian education firm in years. TPG, a major private equity player, is discussing to lead the investment, the sources

VCs are increasingly buying shares of late-stage startups on the secondary market as they try to get pieces of the hottest ones — especially AI companies. But they are also increasingly doing so through financial instruments called special purpose vehicles (SVPs). Some of those SPVs are becoming such hot commodities that they are commanding premium

AI models are being applied to every dataset under the sun, but are inconsistent in their outcomes. This is as true in the medical world as anywhere else, but a startup called Piramidal believes it has a sure thing with a foundational model for analyzing brain scan data. Cofounders Dimitris Sakellariou and Kris Pahuja have

Time is running out! These are the last hours to save up to $600 on TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 tickets — offer ends tonight at 11:59 p.m. PT. Join 10,000+ startup and VC leaders from October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Be part of one of the year’s most anticipated tech events. Reserve your

We’re down to the last 2 days to save up to $600 on TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 tickets! Prices will rise after August 23 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Don’t miss your chance to save big on one of the most epic tech events of the year, happening October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Why

Tens of millions of customer dollars remain unaccounted for at his previous startup, fintech Synapse. But that’s not deterring Sankaet Pathak from forging full steam ahead with his new robotics venture. Foundation is a robotics startup with a self-proclaimed mission “to create advanced humanoid robots that can operate in complex environments” to address the labor

Formula One teams are looking at a startup called BeyondMath to bring their car construction to the next level. BeyondMath is working in the field of computational fluid dynamics, which attempts to digitally model how an object moves through water or air. But that’s a lot easier said than done – even with excessive computing

In 2020, Kathryn Wu launched a side hustle while she was working as a product engineer at Pinterest. Wu started a milk tea company, OhTea, with the hopes of connecting with local grocery stores and gift shops to get them to carry the tea. She quickly realized how difficult it was to not only be

Ashesh Shah, the founder and CEO of The London Fund is, as you might imagine, bullish on Bolt. The London Fund is a U.K. venture firm with “over $1 billion in cash and assets” in AUM that is leading a proposed $450 million raise for Bolt, a one-click checkout startup that has been embroiled in

Tick-tock! We’re in the last 3 days to save up to $600 on TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 tickets. Lock in these low prices before August 23 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Be part of the 10,000+ innovators, founders and investors gathering at Moscone West in San Francisco from October 28-30. Disrupt 2024 is your chance to scale

SleekFlow, a Singapore- and Hong Kong-headquartered social commerce platform that has built a conversational AI suite for customer engagement targeted to Asian markets, said Wednesday it had secured a further $7 million in funding. The money will be used to continue developing its AI, as well as penetrate deeper into Southeast Asia and the Middle

Parker Conrad, founder of Rippling, an HR startup valued at $13.5 billion, shared some interesting thoughts about AI during a recent appearance on our Found podcast.  “No one actually wants to chat with their HR software beyond the sort of novelty of like, oh, my gosh, it responds to me,” he said. He also thinks

The countdown continues! You have 4 days left to lock in your TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 tickets at the discounted rate. Don’t miss the chance to save up to $600 — offer ends August 23 at 11:59 p.m. PT. Join 10,000+ enthusiastic startup leaders, founders, and investors from October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco.

Pakistani startup PostEx, offering financial and logistics services to online merchants, is set to enter new markets, beginning with Saudi Arabia this year, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. “We want to go into other markets to really disrupt them because we see the gap,” said Muhammad Omer Khan, founder and CEO of PostEx, in an interview.

OpenAI and Anthropic spend billions of dollars a year training models like GPT-4 and Claude, but competitive price dumping is making the business around these platforms rather precarious. Aidan Gomez, CEO of competing AI provider Cohere, says that selling access to models is quickly becoming a “zero margin business” in a podcast appearance on Monday.

The clock is ticking! You’ve got just 5 days left to lock in discounted tickets for TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. Save up to $600 on individual ticket types. This limited-time offer ends on August 23 at 11:59 p.m. PT— after that, prices go up. Disrupt 2024 is your gateway to connecting with over 10,000 driven startup leaders,

HR startup Rippling has grown into a company valued at $13.5 billion with more than 3,200 employees. Despite that size, its founder and CEO Parker Conrad still approves every expense report over $10 and is still the one who does routine HR tasks like running payroll. That’s because doing such tasks means he’s using his

While the best startups are doing well, even in this tough venture capital market, others are struggling to raise new funding. If they can’t raise and haven’t become self-sustaining businesses, their best bet is to get acquired, even if it’s for a fraction of their last valuation. The alternative would be to run out of

Most consumer brands have become “completely disassociated” from the manufacturers who actually create their products, says Keychain CEO Oisin Hanrahan. “They don’t own anything except a brand and a set of marketing functions,” Hanrahan said. That’s what Hanrahan is trying to change with Keychain. Brands can use the website to look up different products and

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. I’m Anna Heim from TechCrunch’s international team, and I’ll be writing this newsletter moving forward. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week, we’re looking at some companies being created, funded, shut down and