For many non-technical sales teams at product-led growth companies, it’s difficult to sift through reams of data to find out the best way to engage with potential paying customers. That’s a problem that HeadsUp, a conversion engine for product-led sales, wants to solve. The San Francisco-based startup announced today it has raised $8.5 million in
E-commerce roll-up startup Flora emerged from stealth mode with $9 million in seed funding from an investor group that included Lux Capital, Correlation Ventures, Climate Capital and Gokul Rajaram. Also known as an aggregator, the company acquires and grows brands — in Flora’s case, focused on offering sustainable products and reducing carbon emissions. Co-founders and
The European Union is to update product liability laws to tackle the risk of damage caused by artificial intelligence systems and address other liability issues arising from digital devices — such as drones and smart devices. Presenting a proposal for revisions to long-standing EU products rules — which includes a dedicated AI Liability Directive —
Apple’s new iPhone 14 lineup isn’t proving to be as popular as the company would have hoped for. So it is readjusting its production targets by cutting down additional orders for the device. A report from Bloomberg notes that the Cupertino-based tech company produced around 90 million units in the second half of the last
Cloudflare, the security, performance and reliability company that went public three years ago, said this morning that it will help connect startups that use its serverless computing platform to dozens of venture firms that have collectively offered to invest up to $1.25 billion in the companies out of their existing funds. It’s a smart, splashy
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. At TechCrunch, we love being a conduit for everything that happens in the startup ecosystem. This year, there’s been a lot of layoffs, and we got to thinking, how can we help
Now that the U.S. has finally committed to electrifying cars and trucks, there’s been a lot of handwringing over where they’ll charge. The Biden administration just approved all 50 states’ plans for where to install DC fast chargers, and while those plans will help fill massive infrastructure gaps, those chargers won’t be nearly enough to
French startup Stockly is raising a $12 million Series A round (€12 million) from Eurazeo, Daphni and several business angels. The company pools together the inventory of several e-commerce websites. When a retailer is out-of-stock on a popular item, they can still accept the order and process the order through a different retailer’s inventory. This
Ahead of the official relaunch of subscription-based movie ticketing service MoviePass, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a complaint against three of its former executives, claiming they lied to investors and the public. The SEC filing targeted former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe and Ted Farnsworth, the former CEO of parent company Helios and Matheson
Microsoft Corp. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said he’s confident regulators will approve of the deal to buy Activision Blizzard Inc. for $69 billion. He says the number one player in the video game industry, Sony, has already made several recent acquisitions. He spoke to Bloomberg’s Emily Chang.
During a recent Twitter Space, M13 Partner Anna Barber and I looked back at the dot-com crash in search of lessons operators can use to avoid missteps founders have made in past downturns. In our chat, Barber spoke about how founders can better align with investors and employees while managing uncertainty, the dangers of growing
Although today’s rocket engines are advanced and powerful, they tend to rely on traditional — and naturally volatile — fuels like hydrazine or liquid oxygen and kerosene. Firehawk Aerospace has a safer and more stable new fuel, new engines, and millions in new funding to take it through the next round of tests to its
China’s electric vehicle upstart Nio has joined Tesla in sourcing raw materials directly from mines rather than its own battery suppliers as soaring prices of lithium, a critical component of EV batteries, hurt manufacturers’ supply chain stability and bottom lines. Lithium carbonate prices in China hit a record 501,500 yuan/tonne in September, tripling the number
Some of the most prominent women in venture capital descended upon Paris this week for the first-ever Women in VC Summit, European edition. The event, organized by investors Sophie Winwood, Ruth Foxe Blader and Clarisse Lam, brought together top minds to discuss creating a more inclusive and equitable venture landscape. The conference was open only to
If you’re reading this, you almost certainly have a complicated relationship with screens. Every year that passes, they become larger and increasingly present in our lives. Meanwhile, we continue to embrace the technology all while complaining about the hold it has on our lives. Astrohaus’ products have long occupied the strange nexus of technologies designed
Netflix released the official trailer for “The Playlist” today, an upcoming limited series that loosely tells the story of how Spotify was created. The six-episode show will premiere on October 13. “The Playlist” will center around Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek, played by “Vikings” star Edvin Endre and how the company became one of
Kumo, a startup offering an AI-powered platform to tackle predictive problems in business, today announced that it raised $18 million in a Series B round led by Sequoia, with participation from A Capital, SV Angel and several angel investors. Co-founder and CEO Vanja Josifovski says the new funding will be put toward Kumo’s hiring efforts
Sexual wellness brand Cake this week is expanding its product placement in some major retailers, including new space in CVS stores, as it announces $8 million in new Series A funding. We last profiled Cake in April when its line of lubricants, condoms, toys and sexual hygiene products made its debut in Target and took
In a world of climate change-fueled food shortages, insect-based proteins are being viewed as an increasingly valuable potential alternative food service. Livin Farms has put insect larvae at the center of its own alternative protein play. The Vienna-based firm produces Hive Pro, a modular system designed to automate the process of rearing and processing black
Internal combustion engines still rule the roost when it comes to powering automobiles, but there are signs that they’re trundling into oblivion, at least in some markets. The likes of Sweden, Denmark, and the U.K. are planning to ban sales of diesel and petrol cars by the end of the decade, while markets such as
AmazeVR, a Los Angeles-based virtual concert platform, said Tuesday it has raised a $17 million funding round to create immersive music experiences through virtual reality (VR) concerts. Like other industries, the entertainment sector was affected by the coronavirus lockdown. Many music artists had to cancel or push back their live events during the pandemic. Some
Services that help folks make, share and profit from creative works — Maven to Bounty to Substack to Patreon to Canva — have proliferated and grown in recent years. The rise of creator-focused startups was not an accident; instead, a secular trend of more accessible software for more diverse areas of creative work was met
To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT, subscribe here. Good morning, you crunchistas. We hope you’ve had a chill weekend. Or if it wasn’t chill, that it was wild for all the right reasons. YOLO and all that. Okay, on with
French startup Regate has raised a $20 million Series A funding round (€20 million) led by Valar Ventures. The company has built a modern software-as-a-service product that integrates directly with your existing accounting stack and connects with your corporate bank account. This way, you can automate and simplify some of your financial and accounting tasks
IRobot makes robots that vacuum. IRobot makes robots that mop. Other companies make robots that vacuum and mop. So, why doesn’t iRobot? If you had asked the company that question as recently as a few weeks back, you likely would have gotten a stock answer about not doing something until you can do it right.
From the cringe-inducing Jar Jar Binks to unconvincing virtual Leia and Luke, Disney’s history with CG characters is, shall we say, mixed. But that’s not stopping them from replacing one of the most recognizable voices in cinema history, Darth Vader, with an AI-powered voice replica based on James Earl Jones. The retirement of Jones, now
An exclusive look at the Surface Laptop, a $999 machine that boots up in seconds, weighs 2.76 pounds and runs a sportier version of Windows. Video by Grant Slater, Brian Schildhorn ———- Like this video? Subscribe to Bloomberg on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/Bloomberg?sub_confirmation=1 Bloomberg is the First Word in business news, delivering breaking news & analysis, up-to-the-minute
Code-generating systems like DeepMind’s AlphaCode, Amazon’s CodeWhisperer and OpenAI’s Codex, which powers GitHub’s Copilot service, provide a tantalizing look at what’s possible with AI today within the realm of computer programming. But so far, only a handful of such AI systems have been made freely available to the public and open sourced — reflecting the
The communications world is an enigma, and at times, feels counter to the job of a journalist. So to hear that there’s an effort to help more comms people trade notes, share stories and prepare curated responses, I have the selfish worry that we’ll have less vulnerability coming from founders and executives around the startup
With a month of hindsight, we’re getting a better picture of what the Inflation Reduction Act will mean for the American economy and the climate tech sector itself. The new law caught many by surprise, both in the climate tech space and elsewhere. Few had thought sweeping climate legislation was possible. The final bill is