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Rad Power Bikes already has a new CEO
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Rad Power Bikeshas named a newCEO, just a few days after itsprevious leader stepped down. The e-bike company has tapped Kathi Lentzsch, who has spent the last few decades helping turn around underperforming companies in both the consumer and B2B spaces. The change comes as Rad Power continues to shift away from direct-to-consumer in favor of a retail-based approach — a change in strategy that has led the company to institutemultiple rounds of layoffsover the last few years. “Rad Power Bikes is at an inflection point, shifting from a direct-to-consumer model to a more retail-focused approach, and it’s an incredible time to come on board,” Lentzsch said in a statement. “This shift creates new opportunities to reach more riders, strengthen customer relationships, and evolve the brand in meaningful ways. ” Lentzsch will be Rad Power’s third CEO in the last three years. Phil Molyneux stepped down from the role earlier this month. He was installed as CEO in 2022 when founder Mike Radenbaugh stepped aside. Radenbaugh started the company in 2007. Rad Power is not alone in its struggle to find the right business model for selling its electric bikes. Two of the most high-profile companies, Cake and VanMoof, recently went through bankruptcy restructurings in order to continue operating. And just last month, two others — Electric Bike Company and Integral Electrics —merged. Topics Sr. Reporter, Transportation Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-03-13T21:16:39 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/13/rad-power-bikes-already-has-a-new-ceo/
| 298 | 0.9 |
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Dapr graduates to become a CNCF top-level project
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Dapr, the Microsoft-incubated open source runtime for helping developers build secure and resilient distributed applications, has graduated from the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s (CNCF) pool of incubating projects to becomea top-level projectat the same level of projects like Kubernetes, Prometheus, Istio, and Vitess. Tograduateto this level, a project has to be stable, with clear documentation and a pool of active maintainers, but maybe just as importantly, it needs to have traction in the market. “Dapr has a single mission: to meet the emerging needs of developers and solve the most complex problems in distributed computing,” said Yaron Schneider, who is a Dapr maintainer and Steering Committee member, as well as the CTO and co-founder of Diagrid, a startup that is commercializing Dapr. “The project has done very well in helping application developers navigate the complexities of cloud native architectures, and the engagement with the CNCF community proved to be an amazing catalyst for the project’s growth and maturity. ” When Daprlaunchedin late 2019, Microsoft Azure CTO Mark Russinovich told me that the company saw a need for a project that could take many of the developing patterns around distributed microservice-based applications and wrap them into a single runtime that would free developers from having to reinvent all of these patterns. “In an era where traffic is king, Dapr has redefined distributed application development by helping developers focus on business logic, and significantly enhancing development efficiency,” said Loong Dai, a Dapr maintainer and Steering Committee member, as well as a cloud engineer at Intel. “As a core maintainer, I’m proud to see many FaaS frameworks and products leveraging Dapr as their runtime. ” The project was first accepted into the CNCF’s incubator in late 2021. Since then, it has been supported by over 3,700 individual contributors from more than 400 organizations, the CNCF said. Today, Dapr has tens of thousands of users, the organization says, including Grafana, HDFC Bank, and Vonage. In total, Dapr’s SDK has been downloaded over 70 million times. “In today’s competitive environment, it’s more important than ever for organizations to be able to ship reliable and scalable applications quickly,” said Chris Aniszczyk, CTO, CNCF. “Dapr provides a comprehensive solution for developing edge and cloud native applications, saving developers valuable time and freeing them to focus on innovating. ” Looking ahead, the Dapr community plans to include an alpha of a conversational AI API into the next release, which will then allow developers to work with LLMs from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral, among others. “The Dapr project’s goal is to continue innovating and providing common software patterns to developers building distributed applications,” the CNCF said. Topics Editor Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-11-12T17:21:38 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/12/dapr-graduates-to-become-a-cncf-top-level-project/
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Wayve CEO shares his key ingredients for scaling autonomous driving tech
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Wayve co-founder and CEO Alex Kendall sees promise in bringing his autonomous vehicle startup’s tech to market. That is, if Wayve sticks to its strategy of ensuring its automated driving software is cheap to run, hardware agnostic, and can be applied to advanced driver-assistance systems, robotaxis, and even robotics. The strategy, which Kendall laid out duringNvidia’s GTC conference, begins with an end-to-end data-driven learning approach. This means that what the system “sees” through a variety of sensors (like cameras) directly translates into how it drives (like deciding to brake or turn left). Moreover, it means the system doesn’t need to rely on HD maps or rules-based software, as earlier versions of AV tech has. The approach has attracted investors. Wayve, which launched in 2017 and hasraised more than $1. 3 billionover the past two years, plans to license its self-driving software to automotive and fleet partners, such asUber. The company hasn’t yet announced any automotive partnerships, but a spokesperson told TechCrunch that Wayve is in “strong discussions” with multiple OEMs to integrate its software into a range of different vehicle types. Its cheap-to-run software pitch is crucial to clinching those deals. Kendall said OEMs putting Wayve’s advanced driver-assistance system (ADAS) into new production vehicles don’t need to invest anything into additional hardware because the technology can work with existing sensors, which usually consist of surround cameras and some radar. Wayve is also “silicon-agnostic,” meaning it can run its software on whatever GPU its OEM partners already have in their vehicles, according to Kendall. However, the startup’s current development fleet does use Nvidia’s Orin system-on-a-chip. “Entering into ADAS is really critical because it allows you to build a sustainable business, to build distribution at scale, and to get the data exposure to be able to train the system up to [Level] 4,” Kendall said onstage Wednesday. (A Level 4 driving system means it can navigate an environment on its own — under certain conditions — without the need for a human to intervene. ) Wayve plans to commercialize its system at an ADAS level first. So, the startup designed the AI driver to work without lidar — the light detection and ranging radar that measures distance using laser light to generate a highly accurate 3D map of the world, which most companies developing Level 4 technology consider to be an essential sensor. Wayve’s approach to autonomy is similar to Tesla’s, which isalso working on an end-to-end deep learning model to power its system and continuously improve its self-driving software. As Tesla is attempting to do, Wayve hopes to leverage a widespread rollout of ADAS to collect data that will help its system reach full autonomy. (Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” software can perform some automated driving tasks, but isn’t fully autonomous. Though the company aims to launch a robotaxi service this summer. ) One of the main differences between Wayve’s and Tesla’s approaches from a tech standpoint is that Tesla is only relying on cameras, whereas Wayve is happy to incorporate lidar to reach near-term full autonomy. “Longer term, there’s certainly opportunity when you do build the reliability and the ability to validate a level of scale to shrink that [sensor suite] down further,” Kendall said. “It depends on the product experience you want. Do you want the car to drive faster through fog? Then maybe you want other sensors [like lidar]. But if you’re willing for the AI to understand the limitations of cameras and be defensive and conservative as a result? Our AI can learn that. ” Kendall also teased GAIA-2, Wayve’s latest generative world model tailored to autonomous driving that trains its driver on vast amounts of both real-world and synthetic data across a broad range of tasks. The model processes video, text, and other actions together, which Kendall says allows Wayve’s AI driver to be more adaptive and human-like in its driving behavior. “What is really exciting to me is the human-like driving behavior that you see emerge,” Kendall said. “Of course, there’s no hand-coded behavior. We don’t tell the car how to behave. There’s no infrastructure or HD maps, but instead, the emergent behavior is data-driven and enables driving behavior that deals with very complex and diverse scenarios, including scenarios it may never have seen before during training. ” Wayve shares a similar philosophy to autonomous trucking startup Waabi, which is also pursuing an end-to-end learning system. Both companies have emphasized scaling data-drivenAI models that can generalizeacross different driving environments, and both rely ongenerative AI simulatorsto test and train their technology. Topics Senior Reporter Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers Tesla and Elon Musk’s broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more. She’s one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter. Previously, she covered social media for Forbes. com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more. Rebecca has invested in Ethereum. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-03-21T15:18:11 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/21/wayve-ceo-shares-his-key-ingredients-for-scaling-autonomous-driving-tech/
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Fitness tracker Whoop faces unhappy customers over upgrade policy
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Whoop has backed down, somewhat, from the controversial upgrade plans around its Whoop 5. 0 fitness tracker. When the company firstannounced Whoop 5. 0this week, it said members who wanted the new device could either extend their subscriptions by 12 months or pay a one-time upgrade fee of $49 ($79 for the model with EKG sensors). This seemed inconsistent with Whoop’s overall value proposition, where it chargeshigher subscription prices(ranging from $199 to $359 a year) while allowing customers to upgrade their hardware for free. More specifically, it seemed tocontradict a statement on the company’s websitepromising users free hardware upgrades if they’ve been members for at least six months. After customers began complaining, the company responded witha Reddit postboth announcing a more expansive upgrade policy and claiming to clarify its overall approach. Now, anyone with more than 12 months remaining on their subscription is eligible for a free upgrade to Whoop 5. 0 (or a refund if they’ve already paid the fee). And customers with less than 12 months can extend their subscription to get the upgrade at no additional cost. While the company said it’s making these changes because it “heard your feedback,” it also suggested that its apparent stinginess was tied to its transition from a model focused on monthly or six-month subscription plans to one where it only offers 12- and 24-month subscriptions. “We also want to acknowledge that a previous blog article incorrectly stated that anyone who had been a member for just 6 months would receive a free upgrade,” the company said. “This was never our policy and should never have been posted. ” There’s been a mixed response to these changes on the Whoop subreddit, with one moderatordescribing itas a “win for the community. ” Other posters were more skeptical, with onewriting, “You don’t publish a policy by accident and keep it up for years. Removing it after backlash doesn’t erase the fact [that] it is real. ” There were also a number of complaints from users who said they had 11 months left on their subscriptions, so they just missed the free upgrade cutoff
| 2025-05-11T16:15:06 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/11/fitness-tracker-whoop-faces-unhappy-customers-over-upgrade-policy/
| 350 | 0.9 |
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What makes TechCrunch All Stage different from other startup events? Answers to your most pressing questions
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Tech and startup events have a formula. You know it. We know it. We’ve all done it. ButTechCrunch All Stage 2025, which we’re hosting July 15 at the SoWa Power Station in Boston, is designed to break out of that rinse-and-repeat model — and focus on what early-stage startups actually need to know, right now. Plus, you can still get some limited-time pricing discounts, with Investor passes coming in at a $200 reduction, Founder passes discounted by $210, and our special $99 rate exclusively for students. Move swiftly before those prices increase! This is a laser-focused day — there’s no expo maze, no five-track decision fatigue and ensuing FOMO. We’ve built the programming explicitly for ambitious startup teams who want answers to the hard questions: You’ll get tactical insights from operators, investors, and experts across functions — with panels and workshops all designed to make your next decision better than your last. Check out our full agenda right here. We’re bringing in people who’ve raised, scaled, and repeated to give founders and operators the kind of clarity that can change a quarter. Our speakers include, but are not limited to: No panels for panel’s sake. No bloated agendas. Just real talk for the people actually building the next thing. And thanks to our sponsorship partner Fidelity, we’re making it more than theoretical. This is about action. Join us July 15 at the SoWa Power Station in Boston. This isn’t just another startup conference. It’s where execution gets elevated. Topics Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-06-16T14:30:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/16/what-makes-techcrunch-all-stage-different-from-other-startup-events-answers-to-your-most-pressing-questions/
| 320 | 0.9 |
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Dili wants to automate due diligence with AI
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Stephanie Song, formerly on the corporate development and ventures team at Coinbase, was often frustrated by the volume of due diligence tasks she and her team had to complete on a daily basis. “Analysts burn the midnight oil working hundreds of hours doing the work that nobody wants to do,” Song told TechCrunch in an email interview. “At the same time, funds are deploying less capital and looking for ways to make their teams more efficient while reducing operating costs. ” Inspired to find a better way, Song teamed up with Brian Fernandez and Anand Chaturvedi, two ex-Coinbase colleagues, to launchDili(not to be confused by thecapital of East Timor), a platform that attempts to automate key investment due diligence and portfolio management steps for private equity and VC firms using AI. Dili, a Y Combinator graduate, has raised $3. 6 million in venture funding to date from backers, including Allianz Strategic Investments, Rebel Fund, Singularity Capital, CoreNest, Decacorn, Pioneer Fund, NVO Capital, Amino Capital, Rocketship VC, Hi2 Ventures, Gaingels and Hyper Ventures. “[AI] affects all parts of an investment fund, from analysts to partners and back-office functions,” Song said. “Investment professionals at funds are looking for a differentiated edge on decision-making, and can now use their wealth of data to combine their understanding of the deal with how it fits into the funds. Dili has a unique opportunity to emerge as a solution for funds in a harsh macro environment. ” Song’s not wrong about funds looking for an edge — or any new promising ways to mitigate investing risk, for that matter. VCsreportedlyhave $311 billion in unspent cash, and last year raised the lowest total — $67 billion — in seven years as they grew increasingly cautious about early-stage ventures. Dili isn’t the first to apply AI to the due diligence process. Gartnerpredictsthat by 2025, more than 75% of VC and early-stage investor executive reviews will be informed using AI and data analytics. Several startups and incumbents are already tapping AI to pour through financial documents and copious amounts of data to craft market comparisons and reports — including Wokelo (whose customers are private equity and VC funds, like Dili’s),Ansarada,AlphaSenseand Thomson Reuters (through its Clear Adverse Media unit). But Song insists that Dili uses “first-of-its-kind” technology. “[We can] deliver very high accuracy on specific tasks like pulling financial metrics from large unstructured documents,” she added. “We’ve built custom indexing and retrieval pipelines tuned for specific documents to provide [our AI] models with high quality context. ” Dili leverages generative AI, specifically large language models along the lines of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to streamline investor workflows. The platform first catalogs a fund’s historical financial data and investment decisions in a knowledge base and then applies the aforementioned models to automate tasks such as parsing databases of private company data, handling due diligence request lists and digging for little-known figures across the web. Dili recently added support for automated comparable analysis and industry benchmarking on a firm’s backlog of deals. Once funds upload their deal data, they can compare historical and current investment opportunities in one place. “Imagine being able to get an email with a new investment opportunity or portfolio company update and instantly having a platform produce AI-generated deal red flags, competitive analysis, industry benchmarking and a preliminary summary or memo leveraging your fund’s historical investing patterns,” Song said. The question is, can Dili’s AI — or any AI really — be trusted when it comes to managing a portfolio? AI isn’t necessarily known for sticking to facts, after all. Fast CompanytestedChatGPT’s ability to sum up articles and found that the model had a tendency to get stuff wrong, leave pieces out and outright invent details not mentioned in the articles it summarized. It’s not tough to imagine how this might become a real problem in due diligence work, where accuracy is paramount. AI can also bring prejudices into the decisioning process. In an experimentconductedby Harvard Business Review several years ago, an algorithm trained to make startup investment recommendations was found to pick white entrepreneurs rather than entrepreneurs of color and preferred investing in startups with male founders. That’s because the public data the algorithm was trained on reflected the fact that fewer women and founders from underrepresented groups tend to bedisadvantagedin the funding process — and ultimately raise less venture capital. Then there’s the fact that some firms might not be comfortable running their private, sensitive data through a third-party model. To attempt to allay all those fears, Song said that Dili is continuing to fine-tune its models — many of which are open source — to reduce instances ofhallucinationand improve overall accuracy. She also stressed that private customer data isn’t used to train Dili’s models and that Dili plans to offer a way for funds to create their own models trained on proprietary, offline fund data. Dili ran an initial pilot last year with 400 analysts and users across different types of funds and banks. But as the startup expands its team and adds new capabilities, it’s angling to expand into new applications — ultimately toward becoming an “end-to-end” solution for investor due diligence and portfolio management, Song says. “Eventually we believe this core technology we’re building can be applied to all parts of the asset allocation process,” she added
| 2024-02-19T14:00:15 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/19/dili-wants-to-automate-due-diligence-with-ai/
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The first annual VTuber Awards was a win for VR
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On stream, Filian took the stage at the center of a colossal arena, lit with violet spotlights and surrounded by crowds of fans holding lightsticks. The streamer opened the show dressed in a vivid purple skirt, magenta bow tie and high white boots that matched her jacket — a ritzy version of her avatar’s usual sailor-style school uniform. “Please be patient with us. This show has a lot of tech … it’s as live as it comes,”Filiansaid during her opening remarks. “It’s not rocket science, but it could be. ” Filian, a streamer with over 766,000 Twitch followers, hosted the first annualVTuber Awardslast weekend. Like manyVTubers— a portmanteau of “virtual YouTuber” — Filian keeps her identity secret, and instead of showing her real face, streams using a digital model. Filian was physically hosting the ceremony from an enclosed green box in WePlay’s Los Angeles studio, a space typically used for esports events. The virtual reality awards show is one of the first of its kind — both for WePlay, a production company that has mainly focused on hosting and producing in-person gaming tournaments in its Los Angeles and Kyiv studios over the last decade, and for VTubing, which has grown from a niche streaming genre to abillion-dollar industryin recent years. VTubers have been broadly recognized in other shows; theStreamer Awardsincludes a category for “Best VTuber,” and at this year’s Game Awards, VTuber Ironmousemade historyby being the first animated streamer to win Content Creator of the Year. But neither award show accounts for the skills unique to VTubing, like avatar design, technological innovation and hosting virtual events. The award for best tech VTuber, for example, went to Vedal987, a streamer and programmer who developed the chatbot VTuberNeuro-sama, which uses text-to-speech and AI to play games and communicate with Twitch viewers. “In every awards show, VTubers are often a footnote or sometimes treated as a unique, strange thing, and so the idea for these awards is like, ‘Why not have a show for ourselves?’” Filian told TechCrunch in an interview in the days leading up the show. on the 8th of january I did a stream where I attempted to have neuro learn to play slay the spire. she didn't even make it past the first boss. attempt 2 is going well though. pic. twitter. com/aISW0poN5v — Vedal (@Vedal987)October 12, 2023 VTubers, who typically present with animal ears, exaggerated features or raunchy outfits, are often written off as lewd anime streamers. The genrestarted in Japan in the early 2010sas an offshoot of idol culture, and took off outside of Asia when VTuber production company Hololive debuted its first English-speaking streamers. Filian noted that the awards show also acknowledges VTuber viewers as much as individual content creators, since fans drove the genre’s breakthrough to mainstream recognition. In addition to the category for most dedicated fanbase, the VTuber Awards also includes a category for VTuber clippers, who clip, curate and post VTuber content online. “And so what these people would do is post to YouTube, and in many ways, they created a massive demand for VTubers,” Filian continued. “When VTubers finally came to the west, it was primed to explode. It can’t be overstated how important VTuber clippers are and were to VTubers being where they are today … In many ways, VTubers are typically a lot more involved with their fans than a lot of other creators are. ” The show was a technical feat as well. The five-hour event married WePlay’s physical production space with countless hours of engineering and design. Though WePlay has used augmented reality elements in previous live productions, the awards show was the first fully virtual event that the company has produced. WePlay’s Chief Marketing Officer Iryna Chuhai pointed out that for the film and video game industry, using this scale of mocap technology is an “ordinary event. ” Incorporating it into a live production, however, is more challenging. Planned in partnership withMythic Talent, a management company that represents VTubers including Filian, the event was initially going to take place on a physical stage with “screens and graphics” to accommodate VTubers, WePlay’s Chief Visionary Officer Maksym Bilonogov told TechCrunch before the show. “But then we realized it’s not the way, it’s not the right philosophy,” Bilonogov said. “Because it’s VTubers, it should be a fully virtual space. So we started building the technology to make it real, so the real cameraman using the real camera can shoot the virtual world. ” The stream depicted a vast arena, but Filian’s avatar was essentially confined to a smaller circular stage surrounded by screens, which was a virtually constructed version of WePlay’s physical production stage. In real life, camera operators controlled three cameras linked to virtual angles, so that each physical pan, tilt and focus pull was reflected in the virtual broadcast. The physical operators could switch between multiple different angles in the stadium using iPads connected to the cameras, so that the production appeared to use at least a dozen cameras instead of just three. The physical lights on the stage were connected to corresponding virtual lights, so that WePlay could control the stadium’s spotlights by activating the real ones. WePlay also connected Resolume, a software for live event visuals, to the virtual venue to control the graphics that played on the VR stage’s screens. “From a visual perspective, from the technology, it’s fully new for us,” Bilonogov continued. “We’re learning a lot. I can say that it’s the hardest technological project for WePlay. It’s fully virtual reality with virtual cues. ” In the control room several feet away, crew members juggled dozens of screens, which depicted Filian’s avatar on the virtual stage, IRL Filian in her mocap suit and visuals of other VTubers, who called in throughout the stream to host the pre-show and present or accept awards. VTubers who appeared in the pre-show or presented awards appeared to be at the venue on the stream. They pulled it off byco-streamingFilian’s broadcast and giving WePlay access to their streams so that their commentary could be seamlessly integrated into the show. VTubers who appeared on the stream to accept their awards appeared on screens above the virtual stage. WePlay organized behind-the-scenes logistics with other streamers using Discord — not for any unique platform feature, Chuhai said during a walkthrough of the studio, but because it’s already a “familiar tool for all these gamers. ” Filian, meanwhile, hosted from a separate green screen room containing only a teleprompter. Markers on Filian’s motion capture suit dotted her limbs and fingers, capturing her body movements, while an iPhone rigged to a headband strapped around her forehead tracked her facial expressions. There is no industry standard for VTuber software, but many VTubers including Filian use models designed in Unity. WePlay’s virtual stadium was built using Unreal Engine, which isn’t as commonly used by VTubers. The company ended up rebuilding Filian’s avatar from scratch. Small details that would take place during a physical awards broadcast, like a mid-show outfit change, were “hard lifts,” Filian said. Switching from one outfit to another, like Filian did during the stream, involved a whole new set of animations. A more voluminous skirt, like the one Filian wore at the start of the show, wouldn’t move the same way as a form-fitting gown. Like many VTubers, Filian is fiercely protective of her anonymity and did not want to be photographed, so a crew member stood in for behind-the-scenes photos of the motion capture getup. Although everyone involved in the production promised to maintain her anonymity, Filian said it was “really unusual” for her to perform as her VTuber persona in front of actual people. “There’s a phrase fromElden Ringthat’s called,‘Touch grass,’and I don’t do a lot of that. And I do even fewer interactions like, outside in general. And I especially don’t do interactions where I’m making content while there are people around me,” Filian said in a call a few days after the event. “When you’re an actual human acting like an anime character, it’s very awkward. ” Filian added that the crew kept their distance out of respect for her privacy, which assuaged the awkwardness. It also helped that the people who saw her real face and body were people that she trusted, because she spent the last week rehearsing with them. Full-body streams aren’t new to Filian, who started out making content inVRChat. Granted, WePlay setup is significantly more sophisticated than the one Filian uses for her streams, which involves a few inexpensive Vive trackers and cameras in the corners of her room. Unlike her home streams, hosting the VTuber Awards was particularly grueling because she couldn’t take many breaks. To host the event, she stayed in the mocap suit for more than seven hours (including day-of rehearsals) and was afforded two bathroom breaks total, which each took at least 20 minutes of getting in and out of the suit. She stretched between hosting, and at one point during a short segment about the history of VTubing, housed a sandwich and shake to “keep the energy up. ” Filian was exhausted when the show wrapped, and she said that she nearly fell asleep on camera when she tried to stream the day after. “It felt a lot less intimidating to be in that box than it would have been to stand in front of thousands of people,” Filian said. “So if anything it was a bit uncomfortable, I guess, but it was just me, a teleprompter and a screen showing the actual stream, and it made it a lot easier because of that. The first VTuber Awards was a major success, much to the relief of Bilonogov, who described the project as a “huge experiment” for WePlay days before the event. As Filian welcomed viewers to the surreal virtual stadium on Saturday, Bilonogov marveled at the TV streaming the show in WePlay’s lobby. He wasn’t sure how else the technology could be used, he said, but he was sure that it’s the future of live events. WePlay plans to continue experimenting with live VR events; Chuhai said that next year, the company is opening another studio across the street from its Los Angeles space specifically for VR productions. “VTtubing, it’s like rock and roll or jazz. It’s an entire industry. It has a significant community. It’s a future of entertainment,” Bilonogov said. “I think the awards show is just the beginning. ” The animated VTuber Ironmouse won Content Creator of the Year at the Game Awards Obskur’s Character Creator and marketplace streamlines VTubing VTubers are making millions on YouTube and Twitch Topics Senior Reporter, Culture Morgan Sung is a senior writer covering the wild expanse of hell that is the internet, from the murky ethics of AI-generated art to the fight for privacy rights for children of influencers. Based in Los Angeles and chronically online, Morgan writes about the creator economy, niche internet communities, and digital culture. She previously covered this space for NBC News, Mashable, and BuzzFeed. In her free time, she roller skates and fosters newborn kittens
| 2023-12-20T22:34:05 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/20/vtuber-awards-vr-twitch-weplay-filian/
| 1,842 | 1 |
1c7404e39b3091f6db1f078282964d09
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|
Poe’s AI chatbot app now lets you make your own bots using prompts
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An app calledPoewill now let users make their own chatbots using prompts combined with an existing bot, like ChatGPT, as the base. Firstlaunched publiclyin February, Poe is the latest product from the Q&A siteQuora, which has long provided web searchers with answers to the most Googled questions. With chatbots now potentially powering the future of web search and Q&A, the company chose to expand into this market by allowing consumers to play with the latest AI technologies from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic via a simple mobile interface. Initially, Poedebuted with support fora handful of general knowledge chatbots including Sage and Dragonfly, powered by OpenAI technology, and Claude, powered by Anthropic. Last month, Poe rolled out subscriptions that allow users to pay to access the more powerful bots based on new language models, including GPT-4 from OpenAI and Claude+ from Anthropic. Poe is also the only consumer-facing internet product with access to either Claude or Claude+, the company noted at the time. Now, Poe will offer the ability for users to create their own bots using prompts — that is, ways of directing a chatbot to perform highly specific tasks. Today, people are using prompts todirect bots to output textin the style of a favorite author, in a particular format or aimed at a certain audience, among other things. Essentially, the idea is that better prompts drive better outputs. This has led to the creation of a new creator class within the field ofprompt engineering. Onlinecommunitieshave alsosprung upto enable people to share their prompt ideas with one another. We are launching a new feature on Poe today: user-created bots. This initially allows anyone to create a new bot based on a short text prompt and an existing bot used as a base. We currently support Claude instant and ChatGPT as base bots. pic. twitter. com/Fr2Leoum8v — Adam D'Angelo (@adamdangelo)April 7, 2023 With Poe’s new feature, Quora CEO Adam D’Angelo explained ina recent Twitter thread, users can make their own bots based on either Claude or ChatGPT. Once created, the bot will have its own unique URL (poe. com/botname) which will open the bot directly in Poe. D’Angelo also shared a few fun bots the company created to demonstrate the new feature, including a “talk like a pirate bot” atpoe. com/PirateBot, aJapanese language tutor, a bot that turns your messages into emoji atpoe. com/emojisand a bot that mildly roasts you atpoe. com/RoastMaster. “We’ve seen a lot of great experimentation with prompts on LLMs both among the community on Poe and across the internet, and it’s amazing how much value prompting can unlock from language models,” D’Angelo wrote. “We hope this new feature can help people who are talented at prompting share their ability with the rest of the world, and provide simple interfaces for everyone to get the most out of AI,” he said. Users will be able to access the bots via Poe’siOSapp or Android app on the mobile web or via its desktop web interface. When you find a bot you like, you can click a button to follow the bot so you can easily return to it later. The bot will then appear in Poe’s sidebar bot list alongside general-purpose bots like Sage, Claude and others. Quora plans to cover all the costs involved with operating this feature for the time being, including the LLM fees, which it notes could get to be expensive if any bots become popular. In the future, the plan is to offer bot creators feedback about how people are using their bot so they can iterate on improvement. Later on, the company also plans to develop an API that would allow anyone to host a bot from a server they operate, which would allow for even more complex bots — and a potential new business for Quora, as well. Already, some users announced within the Twitter thread how they used the feature to make bots for both practical purposes, liketrip planningor learningmath, as well as for fun, likeflirting. (Poe’splatform guidelines restricta variety of use cases that could be problematic, like hate speech, violence, illegal activities, fraud, IP infringement and others, but it remains to be seen if any bots will skirt its rules. ) Poe is not the only mobile app catering to mobile users. Though OpenAI hasn’t launched an official app,dozens of AI chatbots floodedthe App Store claiming to offer ChatGPT access, and now the top AI apps arepulling in millions of dollars. Microsoft’sBingandEdgeapps also integrated AI technology made possible through the company’s partnership with OpenAI. Meanwhile, other AI startups, likePerplexity, have recently launched their mobile apps, too. That said, consumer demand for Poe has been going well. To date, the mobile app version of Poe has 1. 17 million installs and has generated $520,000 in gross revenue, according to app intelligence firmdata. ai. The app is currently ranked No. 32 in the Productivity category on the App Store
| 2023-04-10T16:49:27 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/10/poes-ai-chatbot-app-now-lets-you-make-your-bots-using-prompts/
| 817 | 1 |
049ef204bbc3de899d86f2a8dffdad2c
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|
Firefox now lets you choose your preferred AI chatbot in its Nightly builds
|
As browsers continue to add AI features into their products,Mozillais looking to give users some choice in the matter. The companyannouncedon Tuesday that it’s launching an opt-in experiment offering access to different AI services in Nightly, the experimental version ofFirefox. The company plans to improve the experience before bringing it to the beta and release versions of Firefox. Users who have opted-in will get to choose their preferred AI service. Mozilla’s initial offerings includeChatGPT,Google Gemini,HuggingChatandLe Chat Mistral. The company plans to continue adding AI services. “Providing choice in AI services is important for many reasons,” Firefox senior vice president, Ian Carmichael, wrote in ablog post. “First, you should be able to choose the service that works best for you, and not be locked into a single provider. Second, all of these models are still being developed and improved. None are perfect, and each has its own unique strengths and weaknesses. Offering options gives people an opportunity to experiment with many services to find the one that’s most helpful in solving the problem they have. ” After choosing a preferred AI service, users will be able to ask the chatbot to summarize information on a webpage, simplify the language or test their knowledge on the information. The idea behind the new offering is to allow users to try out a few different chatbots and pick the one they like the most. Firefox notes that the offering is optional, so you don’t have to pick one at all. The launch of the new experience comes as companies likeGoogleandMicrosofthave added AI chatbots to their browsers. Browser startups likeOperaandDuckDuckGohave also added AI chatbots that can help users do things like summarize web pages and ask questions. Topics Consumer News Reporter Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-06-25T16:18:57 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/25/firefox-now-lets-you-choose-your-preferred-ai-chatbot-in-its-nightly-builds/
| 398 | 0.9 |
709f4ed0bdabc3720e50a8b593c8fe98
|
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|
Databricks raises $10B as it barrels toward an IPO
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Posted: Databricks, the data analytics platform, has raised $10 billion in a funding round that values the company at $62 billion (up from $43 billion). Backers include Thrive Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, GIC, and Iconiq Growth. The round is one of the largest venture rounds in history, and will drive future mergers and acquisitions, stock payouts to employees, and expansion abroad, according to astatementobtained by CNBC. Databricks’ mammoth “Series J” comes ahead of the company’s hotly anticipated IPO. Founded in 2013 by seven doctorate candidates from UC Berkeley, Databricks sells AI, big data analytics, and cloud tooling to enable companies to build data- and AI-powered applications. Databricks expects to generate positive free cash flow for the first time with a $3 billion revenue run rate in the quarter that ends on January 31, according to CNBC. The company’s revenue in the October quarter grew more than 60% year over year. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-12-17T14:41:13 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/17/databricks-raises-10b-as-it-barrels-toward-an-ipo/
| 217 | 0.9 |
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Google introduces new developer tools and titles for games on mobile and PC
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Google announced new features around PC and mobile gaming today ahead of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), including new titles, control customization, and developer tools for making mobile games available on PC. The company first introducedPlay Games for PC in 2022 in the beta phase. Over time, it has introduced the program tovariousregions. Later this year, the project will enter general availability. As a part of the new releases, Google is adding new tools for game developers, including a dedicated SDK for native PC games on Google Play Games that will have in-app purchase integration. It is also updating the Play Console to distribute and manage various builds for mobile and PCs. The company announced that, by default, it is going to make all mobile games available on PC through the Play Store. However, developers can opt out of this, if they choose. While all mobile games would be available on PC, specially tuned games will have an optimized icon next to the listing and other games will have a “playable” badge after testing. Google is also adding support for AMD-based laptops and desktops for Google Play Games on PC. Plus, Play Games will be accessible from the start menu on various PCs from different manufacturers. The company is also introducing a new Graphics API called Vilkan for smoother frame rates and better visuals, and implementing ray tracing. It is also improving the Android Dynamic Performance Framework (ADPF) for more responsive games. Later this year, developers will be able to run user acquisition campaigns for mobile emulated and native PC titles in Google Play Games for PC. Plus, game makers will be able to port their game to the Google Play for PC program and get up to 15% of additional earnback. At GDC, Google announced new PC optimized titles such as “Game of Thrones: Kingsroad,” “Sonic Rumble,” and “ODIN: VALHALLA RISING. ” The company said that thanks to the mobile games porting feature, users will be able to play Train Sim” and “Pet Shop Fever: Animal Hotel” on PC. Google is also bringing some PC titles to mobile. The company said this month, “DREDGE” and “TABS Mobile” are coming to Google Play and mystery game “Disco Elysium” will be available later this year. Google will bring custom controls for games on PC, so players can remap controls according to their comfort. Later this month, the company is rolling out a game side bar for quick adjustments with multi-account support, too. Going forward, it will also be easier to track and use Play Points on PC with up to 10x points boosters for purchases, Google says. Topics Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-03-13T15:45:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/13/google-introduces-new-developer-tools-and-titles-for-games-on-mobile-and-pc/
| 508 | 1 |
bc0bfd0dad3e40b11b1ec007ceef03e9
|
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Y Combinator’s Garry Tan supports some AI regulation but warns against AI monopolies
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Garry Tan, president and CEO of Y Combinator, told a crowd at The Economic Club of Washington, D. C. this week that “regulation is likely necessary” for artificial intelligence. Tan spoke with Teresa Carlson, a General Catalyst board member, as part of a one-on-one interview where he discussed everything fromhow to get into Y Combinatorto AI, noting that there is “no better time to be working in technology than right now. ” Tan said he was “overall supportive” of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) attempt to construct a GenAI risk mitigation framework, and said that “large parts of theEO by the Biden administrationare probably on the right track. ” NIST’s framework proposes thingslike defining that GenAI should comply with existing laws that govern things like data privacy and copyright; disclosing GenAI use to end users; establishing regulations that ban GenAI from creating child sexual abuse materials, and so on. Biden’s executive order covers a wide range of dictums, from requiring AI companies to share safety data with the government to ensuring that small developers have fair access. But Tan, like many Valley VCs, was wary of other regulatory efforts. He called bills related to AI that are moving through the California and San Francisco legislatures, “very concerning. ” One such California bill that’s causing a stir is the one put forth by state Sen. Scott Wiener that would allow the attorney general to sue AI companies if their wares are harmful,Politico reports. “The big discussion broadly in terms of policy right now is what does a good version of this really look like?” Tan said. “We can look to people likeIan Hogarth, in the U. K. , to be thoughtful. They’re also mindful of this idea of concentration of power. At the same time, they’re trying to figure out how we support innovation while also mitigating the worst possible harms. ” Hogarth is a former YC entrepreneur and AI expert who’s been tapped by the U. K. to create an AI model taskforce. “The thing that scares me is that if we try to address a sci-fi concern that is not present at hand,” Tan said. As for how YC manages responsibility, Tan said that if the organization doesn’t agree with a startup’s mission or what that product would do for society, “YC just doesn’t fund it. ” He noted that there are several times when he would read about a company in the media that had applied to YC. “We go back and look at the interview notes, and it’s like, we don’t think this is good for society. And thankfully, we didn’t fund it,” he said. Tan’s guideline still leaves room for Y Combinator tocrank out a lot of AI startupsas cohort grads. As my colleague Kyle Wiggers reported, the Winter 2024 cohort had 86 AI startups, nearly double the number from the Winter 2023 batch and close to triple the number from Winter 2021, according to YC’s official startup directory. And recent news events are making people wonder if they can trust those selling AI products to be the ones to define responsible AI. Last week, TechCrunch reported thatOpenAI is getting rid of its AI responsibility team. Then there was the debacle related to the company using a voice that sounded like actress Scarlett Johansson’s when demoingits new GPT-4o model. Turns out,she was asked about using her voice, and she turned them down. OpenAI has since removed the Sky voice, though it denied it was based on Johansson. That, and issues around OpenAI’s ability to claw back vested employee equity, were among several items thatled folks to openly questionSam Altman’s scruples. Meanwhile, Meta made AI news of its own when it announced thecreation of an AI advisory council that only had white men on it, effectively leaving out women and people of color, many of whom played a key role in the creation and innovation of that industry. Tan didn’t reference any of these instances. Like most Silicon Valley VCs, what he sees is opportunities for new, huge, lucrative businesses. “We like to think about startups as an idea maze,” Tan said. “When a new technology comes out, like large language models, the whole idea maze gets shaken up. ChatGPT itself was probably one of the fastest-to-success consumer products to be released in recent memory. And that’s good news for founders. ” Tan also said that San Francisco is at the center of the AI movement. For example, that’s where Anthropic, started by YC alums, got its start, and OpenAI, which was a YC spinout. Tan also joked that he wasn’t going to follow in Altman’s footsteps, noting that Altman “had my job a number of years ago, so no plans on starting an AI lab. ” One of the other YC success stories is legal tech startup Casetext, whichsold to Thomson Reutersfor $600 million in 2023. Tan believed Casetext was one of the first companies in the world to get access to generative AI and was then one of the first exits in generative AI. When looking to the future of AI, Tan said that “obviously, we have to be smart about this technology” as it relates to risks around bioterror and cyberattacks. At the same time, he said there should be “a much more measured approach. ” He also assumes that there isn’t likely to be a “winner take all” model, but rather an “incredible garden of consumer choice of freedom and of founders to be able to create something that touches a billion people. ” At least, that’s what he wants to see happen. That would be in his and YC’s best interest — lots of successful startups returning lots of cash to investors. So what scares Tan most isn’t run-amok evil AIs, but a scarcity of AIs to choose from. “We might actually find ourselves in this other really monopolistic situation where there’s great concentration in just a few models. Then you’re talking about rent extraction, and you have a world that I don’t want to live in. ” We’re launching an AI newsletter! Sign uphereto start receiving it in your inboxes on June 5. Topics Senior Reporter Christine Hall wrote about enterprise/B2B, e-commerce, and foodtech for TechCrunch, and venture capital rounds for Crunchbase News. Based in Houston, Christine previously reported for the Houston Business Journal, the Texas Medical Center’s Pulse magazine, and Community Impact Newspaper. She has an undergraduate journalism degree from Murray State University and a graduate degree from The Ohio State University. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-05-26T15:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/26/ai-garry-tan-y-combinator/
| 1,156 | 1 |
5d9091f8e675ccbdfedabc3c11fa55c8
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|
Saildrone’s first aluminum Surveyor autonomous vessel splashes down for Navy testing
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Ocean intelligence company Saildrone has just putthe first of a new generation of Surveyor autonomous vessels in the water: an aluminum version that the Navy is keen to take advantage of. But don’t worry — they aren’t putting guns on them. Founder and CEO Richard Jenkins told TechCrunch that the demand for vessels like Saildrone’s is only growing. “We expect the need for ocean observing to continue to grow in size, complexity and quality. Aerial, surface and subsurface technologies all have a role to play in ocean observations,” he said. The 20-meter SD-3000 is similar to the previous versions of the Surveyor that are currently sailing the ocean and collecting data, but this one has an aluminum hull while the others are a fiberglass/carbon composite. The wing (or sail, but sails are fabric) is still composite, though. “Aluminum was chosen for the hull and keel for its robustness, longevity in the ocean environment, cost and the ability to rapidly mass produce at very large factories like Austal,” said Jenkins. “We don’t have the same scale of composite production facilities available in the U. S. ” Recently we have seen startupSyrennaand nonprofitCeruleandemonstrating the value of semi-stationary and satellite-based observations, respectively. “USVs provide high-resolution data, simultaneously from both above and below the sea surface. This data has much higher spatial and temporal resolution than can be gained from satellites, and the extreme range and endurance allow persistent measurements far beyond the reach of AUVs,” Jenkins explained — the sonar on board can hit 11,000 meters, which ought to be plenty. “We see Saildrone as an integral part of the ecosystem for not just collecting data, but providing the high-bandwidth satellite communications and even physical delivery for other systems. ” Improved marine intel is an enabler in climate science, international logistics, law enforcement and of course military matters. The Navy is a particular client for this brand new vessel; Admiral Lisa Franchetti noted that uncrewed vehicles very simply allow crewed ones to go where they’re needed rather than perform tasks that can be automated, like persistent observation. So far, no one has suggested weaponizing the Saildrone vessels, though. That’s probably a non-starter — weapons platforms need to be designed from the ground up for combat, and the Surveyors (the hint is in the name) are rather more focused on information gathering. The Austal line is expected to be able to put out one Surveyor every six weeks to start with. SD-3000 and a few of its in-progress aluminum kin will be detailed to Navy testing of its capability of producing “surface and undersea intelligence for a range of high-priority applications, including anti-submarine warfare. ” Syrenna’s WaterDrone is the ocean-monitoring ‘underwater weather station’ of the future Topics Writer & Photographer Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. His personal website is coldewey. cc. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-03-06T22:32:56 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/06/saildrones-first-aluminum-surveyor-autonomous-vessel-splashes-down-for-navy-testing/
| 541 | 1 |
da152c244c87fbfb1657b90148086322
|
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Deal Dive: Sir Jack A Lot returns with a startup for retail traders
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When former YouTube product manager Kevin Xu, known as “Sir Jack A Lot” on Reddit, turned $35,000 into $8 million trading stocks between 2020 and 2022, many people thought his fortunes, and his way of investing, had peaked, just like 2021’s memestock craze had. Xu doesn’t agree, though, and he’s now building a startup for retail investors that aims to bring the good-natured investing advice and community that people used to enjoy on platforms like the WallStreetBets subreddit, but with a layer of accountability that discourages scammers and grifters. Launched in April 2022, AfterHour lets users link to their stock brokerage accounts and, under a username of their choosing, post their investments to a social feed. “The only reason people trust me and Roaring Kitty is that we are transparent,” Xu told TechCrunch. “Why not show your actual positions or prove you are actually in something? [AfterHour] brings back a level of credibility and trust. You connect your brokerage and share real verified positions and screenshots. ” The company currently has more than 23,000 users, and while that’s not an eye-popping number by any means, its user base is growing, and early adopters seem dedicated — Xu said that more than 70% of its users are on the app every single day. The company is currently focused on growth, Xu said, but has plans for how to monetize in the future. “Monday to Friday, 9:30 a. m. to 4 p. m. is the game,” Xu said. “When we started, I was so scared that it would be quiet on the weekends, but on Monday, people just come back. We don’t do any scammy push notifications to get people back on Mondays, but they naturally come back. ” The startup recently raised a $4. 5 million seed round led by Founders Fund — Keith Rabois’ last investment at the firm — and General Catalyst. Pear VC, Daybreak Ventures and F4 Fund also participated, among several others. Xu said AfterHour is now focusing on growing its user base and its team. Xu believes letting users be pseudo-anonymous is why AfterHour’s approach works. He recalled that he used to feel awkward about the thought of talking to his colleagues at YouTube about trading stocks during his off hours and thinks he’s likely not alone in feeling that way. But on the flip side, he recognizes that an environment that encourages zero accountability is not a good idea for a platform like his. That dynamic breeds the grifters and scammers like you see on Reddit and X, who are looking to pump and dump their positions, or post fake trades to get other people to invest. He added that because people can only post their actual trades, it weeds out a lot of the bad actors. Of course, there will be some bad apples, but Xu said the startup works to monitor posts, and flag anything suspicious with a system of warnings and community notes — not unlike X’s community-based approach to moderation. Xu acknowledged that such a monitoring system won’t remain effective as the platform continues to scale. “Right now it is basically me being in the app and reminding people that independent thinking is sexy,” Xu joked. He added the company is working on a plan to curb bad behavior and is thinking of ideas like an algorithm that can automatically flag posts that look fake. This deal stood out to me because I think it’s a smart play to build services for retail investors. The trajectory of this space reminds me a lot of the crypto world. While very different, they are both investing areas that had their 15 minutes of fame, but as they faded from the mainstream, they still kept dedicated and growing communities of people interested in their approach. Still, AfterHour is an especially smart idea because, as with crypto, there is much money to be made here — and just as much to lose. Such platforms can’t guarantee their users will find financial success, but that doesn’t mean average people should be fully locked out of the stock markets, which companies like Robinhood, and more recently Destiney Tech 100, have worked to democratize. “The big misconception in the valley was that retail trading was a fad in 2021, referencing the stimulus check,” Xu said. “It’s only growing. The data backs it up. ” For context, 2023 was the mostactive year everfor retail trading. Robinhood saw more than $86. 6 billion intrading volumein May alone. AfterHour isn’t the only company realizing the potential of this space — Robinhood’s media expansion is a good example. The trading app bought the Snacks newsletter, focused on retail investors, back in 2019. More recently, it launched Sherwood Media, a financial publication aimed at the same audience. While he’s starting with the stock market, Xu hopes that AfterHour will move into other areas of finance down the line to become the one-stop shop for retail investors in the future. “AfterHour needs to exist,” Xu said. “I see the internet of finance and how it is evolving, and I’m disappointed in all the other attempts [to build a similar platform]. They were just disappointing. I’m thinking really long-term. I want it to be fun and accessible. I think it’s more entertaining than sports, and I think a growing number of people online do, too. ” Topics Senior Reporter, Venture Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-06-22T16:11:13 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/06/22/deal-dive-sir-jack-a-lot-returns-with-a-startup-for-retail-traders/
| 966 | 1 |
1e803d171c1aacbb65f38f83fbd287c3
|
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|
VCs and founders talk finding (and keeping) product-market fit at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024
|
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? AtTechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking place October 28-30 in San Francisco, we’re bringing Spenser Skates, April Underwood and Tamar Yehoshua to theBuilders Stageto discuss how startups can find true, lasting product-market fit. Whether a startup is building AI-powered robots or a fresh social media app, founders need to know what audience they’re building for. Our panelists know firsthand how to find product-market fit since they’ve tackled these challenges themselves as founders, advisers and executives at some of the biggest tech companies in the world. Spenser Skates is the CEO and co-founder ofAmplitude, a publicly traded software company that helps companies grow their audience with data analytics. April Underwood is the co-founder ofAdverb Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm backing pre-seed to Series A founders. Before launching Adverb, Underwood was CPO at Slack and Director of Product at Twitter. She also serves on the board of public companies like Zillow and Eventbrite, advising executives on product strategy. Tamar Yehoshua is the President of Product and Technology atGlean, an enterprise AI startup, and a venture partner at IVP. She has been a VP at Google, working on privacy and search, and a CPO at Slack, guiding the company through going public and getting acquired by Salesforce. TechCrunch Disrupt 2024will take place in San Francisco from October 28-30. Buy your pass today. Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-08-28T15:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/28/vcs-and-founders-talk-finding-and-keeping-product-market-fit-at-techcrunch-disrupt-2024/
| 424 | 0.9 |
03848b5b2303e742161a358c4fdf01da
|
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Automattic acquires WPAI, a startup that makes AI products for WordPress
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WordPress hosting company Automattic said on Monday that it is acquiringWPAI, a startup that builds AI solutions for WordPress. WPAI’s products include CodeWP, which lets you use AI to create WP Plugins; AgentWP, an AI assistant for WordPress site builders; and WP Chat, a chatbot for WordPress-related questions. WPAI noted on its blog that CodeWP and AgentWP would be discontinued in their current states and integrated within Automattic’s offering. WPAI’s founding team will join Automattic to lead WordPress’ AI efforts. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. “They’ll be working on testing, building, and integrating innovative AI solutions into the core ecosystem to redefine how users and developers work with WordPress,” Automattic said. Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg also separately announced the acquisitionon his personal blog. Onits blog, WPAI said the company will focus on creating AI solutions for the WordPress ecosystem. “This includes developing AI standards for WordPress, improving the platform’s core functionality, and creating tools that help users build and manage better websites. We’ll work closely with the WordPress community to thoughtfully implement these improvements while maintaining open-source values,” WPAI said. Automattic already offers anAI writing assistantas well as a tool thatcan help you write succinct posts. The WPAI deal is Automattic’s second in two months. Last month, the company snapped up aGrammarly competitor for developers, called Harper, which checks grammar locally on devices. Topics Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-12-10T03:37:16 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/09/automattic-acquires-wpai-a-startup-that-creates-ai-solutions-for-wordpress/
| 298 | 0.9 |
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Google Pixel Fold’s Dual-Screen Interpreter mode brings subtitles to real life
|
Every so often a new software feature comes along that makes a hardware form factor a lot more useful. I would put Dual-Screen Interpreter mode in that category. The feature, which arrives today as part of a larger Pixel drop, leverages Google’s long-standing translation expertise. Google Pixel Event 2023: Everything announced, including the Pixel 8 series, Pixel Watch 2, Pixel Buds Pro, Android 14 By opening the device completely flat, you can speak to someone in a different language, with translations popping up on either side. So they’ll see what you’re saying in their language and vice versa. The system is currently available in 45 languages. #PixelFoldis getting a#FeatureDrop🎉🎉🎉 🌍 Dual-Screen Interpreter mode is your own personal translator across more than 45 languages and uses both screens for a more natural conversation. ¹#MadeByGooglepic. twitter. com/c2fFRW3emQ — Made by Google (@madebygoogle)October 4, 2023 The Pixel Fold, which launched earlier this year, is Google’s first foldable. And frankly, the form factor makes it myfavorite currently on the market. In fact, I brought it on a recent trip in place of a Kindle. The $1,800 asking price is still prohibitively expensive, but features like this will go a long way toward getting a lot more value out of the device. Check out more from today’s Google Pixel eventover here
| 2023-10-04T14:17:58 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/10/04/google-pixel-folds-dual-screen-interpreter-mode-brings-subtitles-to-real-life/
| 216 | 0.9 |
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Ray-Ban Meta + facial recognition = Terminator vision for doxxing
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Posted: Wearing a camera on your face will invariably evoke privacy concerns. The Ray-Ban Meta glasses have addressed the issue to a certain extent with the inclusion of features like a recording light. But any piece of popular consumer electronics will eventually be hacked, often to prove a point. I-XRAYis a project from a pair of college students,noted by 404 Media, that ought to serve as a cautionary tale. Pairing glasses like the Ray-Ban Meta with facial recognition software brings the ability to livestream the personal information of the people around you. The system identifies a person’s face and then populates your phone with all the personal information it can find, including addresses, phone numbers, and more. “Please note that our goal is NOT to release any product or code,” project co-creator AnhPhu Nguyenexplains on X, “this is meant to be a demonstration to raise awareness of what’s possible today with consumer tech. ” Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-10-02T18:04:02 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/02/ray-ban-meta-facial-recognition-terminator-vision-for-doxxing/
| 220 | 0.9 |
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New Relic agrees to go private in $6.5B all-cash deal
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New Relic, the San Francisco-based observability software company, has reached an agreement with private equity firms TPG and Francisco Partners to go private in a $6. 5 billion all-cash deal. As reported byCNBC, TPG and Francisco Partners were able to salvage a deal that initially fell through months ago after securing enough debt financing to meet New Relic’s desired valuation. Major shareholders, including founder and executive chairman Lew Cirne and activist hedge fund Jana Partners, have signed off. Under the terms of the agreement, New Relic will have a 45-day “go-shop” period during which it can entertain offers from other qualified bidders. But should it close as proposed — likely in late 2023 or early 2024, subject to customary closing conditions — New Relic shareholders will receive $87 per share, a 7. 5% premium over the stock’s closing price on Friday. “We are pleased to partner with Francisco Partners and TPG, who are committed to continuing to build upon New Relic’s strong foundation and achieve its full potential,” Cirne said in a press release. New Relic, which Cirne founded in 2008, provides software to monitor web and mobile apps in real time, with support for custom-built plugins to collect arbitrary telemetry and performance data. The company partners with companies like IBM, AWS, Azure and Rackspace as well as mobile app back-end service providers such as StackMob and Parse to build connectors and handle observability data flows. In 2014, after raising nearly $200 million in venture capital from investors including Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Benchmark Capital and BlackRock, New Relic went public. In the years following, the company used part of the proceeds to make several acquisitions, snatching up Pixie Labs, a service for monitoring cloud-native workloads, and CodeStream, a developer collaboration tool. 2021 saw New Relic undergo a restructuring plan to move away from a software subscription sales model to a consumption-based model, which included laying off nearly 160 employees. But in its most recent fiscal quarter, the company showed steady gains, growing fiscal year Q1 2024 revenue 12% year-over-year to $242. 6 million. Bill Staples, the CEO of New Relic, said in a canned statement: “New Relic has made significant progress on its consumption business transition and, together with Francisco Partners and TPG, we will have the resources and flexibility to not only complete the final chapter of this transition, but also accelerate our strategy and provide customers with a standardized data-driven practice that any company can benefit from. ” New Relic’s move private comes as the observability market heats up, spurred by a growing desire by enterprises to invest in data-driven decision-making and mitigating the complexity of their data infrastructure. By oneestimate, observability companies raised nearly $2 billion in capital over the past two years. Among some of the more successful observability startups areHoneycombandAcceldata, which raised $50 million each within the last year for their tools that enable devs to monitor apps and data for performance issues. There’s alsoCribl, which raised $150 million last May;Monte Carlo, which nabbed $135 million the same day as Cribl; andCoralogix, which snagged $142 million just a week later than Cribl and Monte Carlo. Markets and Marketsprojectsthat the market for observability tools and platforms will be worth $4. 1 billion by 2028, close to doubling from $2. 4 billion this year
| 2023-07-31T15:33:58 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/31/new-relic-agrees-to-go-private-in-6-5b-all-cash-deal/
| 550 | 1 |
3e1b4ef0becabf5540f0fb38d7c3c7a9
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|
Perplexity says it’s now serving 100M search queries a week
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Posted: Aravind Srinivas, the CEO of Perplexity,saysthat the AI-powered search engine is now performing 100 million queries each week. Extrapolated out to a month, that’s roughly 400 million queries —up from250 million queries in July. Perplexity’s rapid rise comes as the company teasesecommerce features, including the ability for subscribers to its Perplexity Pro service to make one-click purchases. Perplexity is also reportedly planning a new ad model. Accordingto The Financial Times, it’s in talks with brands including Nike and Marriott for sponsored queries. One thorn in Perplexity’s side is its legal tussles with publishers. News Corp’s Dow Jones and the NY Post havesuedPerplexity over what they describe as a “content kleptocracy. ” Many other news sites haveexpressed concernsthat Perplexity closely replicates their content — just last week, The New York Timessentthe startup a cease and desist. Perplexity issaidto be in talks to raise around $500 million at an $8 billion valuation. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-10-25T14:23:19 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/25/perplexity-says-its-now-serving-100m-search-queries-a-week/
| 217 | 0.9 |
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Boston Dynamics’ electric Atlas humanoid executes autonomous automotive parts picking
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Boston Dynamics’ new humanoid has been quietly improving by leaps and bounds behind the scenes. Announcedin April, we caught some brief insight into the electric Atlas’ strength in August througha videoof the robot doing pushups. Thelatest video, released Wednesday, showcases the robot doing work in a demo space, moving engine parts between bins. Boston Dynamics is quick to note that the actions are being performed autonomously, without “prescribed or teleoperated movements. ” That caveat is seemingly a bit of shade tossed atother humanoid demosthat have been misleading in a bid to capture online attention. The video arrives two weeks after the Hyundai-owned robotics firm announceda watershed dealwith the Toyota Research Institute (TRI). It’s not clear how much of the three-minute video is a product of that partnership, which brings TRI’s impressive robotics learning and real-time adaptations to the platform. Boston Dynamics notes, “The robot is able to detect and react to changes in the environment (e. g. , moving fixtures) and action failures (e. g. , failure to insert the cover, tripping, environment collision) using a combination of vision, force, and proprioceptive sensors. ” As with competitors like Figure, Tesla, and Apptronik, Boston Dynamics’ first applications for the bipedal robot include work in automotive factories. The focus makes a lot of sense, given that the firm is now owned by Hyundai, which has opted to do a deal with Toyota’s research wing. Automotive has also been well ahead of the automation curve for decades now. In addition to the autonomously executed tasks, the video showcases impressive adaptive — and strong — actuators, as the robot pivots at its waist. The action minimizes movements, saving precious seconds in the process
| 2024-10-30T14:43:23 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/30/boston-dynamics-electric-atlas-humanoid-executes-autonomous-automotive-parts-picking/
| 279 | 0.9 |
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|
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|
Are you spending too much on paid acquisition?
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When scaling a paid acquisition channel, you should constantly question whether you’re spending in the most efficient way possible. If you’re scaling spending across various channels, it’s more than likely that you’re facing rising costs. But how do you know where and when to draw the line? In this short article, I’ll discuss when to start measuring diminishing returns and how to use a simple regression analysis to find optimal spending levels. If you’re scaling any paid acquisition channel by 5-10x weekly, then it becomes important to maintain the pulse on the following metrics: As paid costs scale, the number of impressions being served naturally increases, which causes CPMs to rise. If your CPMs are rising this usually means that your CACs and ad frequency are rising as a byproduct. A spreadsheet with those metrics laid out on a weekly basis will help you identify large upticks in costs, which can then guide your future budget allocations. If you’re looking to get analytical and have a minimum of 90 days of data at varying levels of spending, a regression analysis is your answer. What is regression analysis? In non-technical terms, it’s a way to measure the relationship of one variable to another. This empowers marketers to understand how two marketing metrics relate to one another, such as affiliates signed and conversions, or revenues and paid spend. What’s great about this kind of analysis is that it provides a clear depiction of what your optimal expenditure is at the paid channel level. During my days at Postmates, we scaled our driver acquisition budget from less than $50,000/month to $3M/month, and had to run regression analyses on a regular cadence to ensure optimal spending per channel and geography. Below is a quick summary on how to get a regression analysis set up with the following inputs on a weekly level: Once you have this data input on your spreadsheet (I’m using Google Sheets here), highlight all the data and select theInsertdrop-down, followed byChart. In theChart typearea that shows on the right pane of the screen, scroll until you find theScatteroption. SelectScatter. Add “CAC” to theX-Axisand “Spend” on yourSeries. Finally, go to theCustomizetab, findSeries, click on it, and then scroll down to find theTrendlinetoggle. From there, you should have something that looks like what I’ve created below: From this graph it is clear that we have around $90 CAC at spending levels of $5,000 – $15,000. When we spend $30,000, CACs only rise to $100. That’s only one week’s datapoints though, which could have been an anomaly. Ideally, we would prefer to have had a cluster of spending data points at $30,000 in the $100 CAC range. My next steps based on this data would be to scale to $30,000 in spend to see if we can maintain CACs below $100. A ~10% increase in CAC for a 3x increase in spending levels and conversions would be a great success. As more data-points start to fill the scatter plot, it becomes much easier to decide on where to draw the line on spending for specific channels or geography. Conversely, it helps to guide the light to where opportunities may be present. Instead of spending too much on paid acquisition, know that you have the regression analysis’s ability now stored in your growth toolbelt to make more informed budget allocation decisions. Topics Contributor
| 2023-05-08T16:00:18 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/08/are-you-spending-too-much-on-paid-acquisition/
| 559 | 1 |
bf213ddedf733586a2b676aec9aba113
|
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|
Google says its new AI models can identify emotions — and that has experts worried
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Google says its new AI model family has a curious feature: the ability to “identify” emotions. Announced on Thursday, the PaliGemma 2 family of models can analyze images, enabling the AI to generate captions and answer questions about people it “sees” in photos. “PaliGemma 2 generates detailed, contextually relevant captions for images,” Google wrote in a blog post shared with TechCrunch, “going beyond simple object identification to describe actions, emotions, and the overall narrative of the scene. ” Emotion recognition doesn’t work out of the box, and PaliGemma 2 has to be fine-tuned for the purpose. Nonetheless, experts TechCrunch spoke with were alarmed at the prospect of an openly available emotion detector. “This is very troubling to me,” Sandra Wachter, a professor in data ethics and AI at the Oxford Internet Institute, told TechCrunch. “I find it problematic to assume that we can ‘read’ people’s emotions. It’s like asking a Magic 8 Ball for advice. ” For years, startups and tech giants alike have tried to build AI that can detect emotions for everything from sales training to preventing accidents. Someclaim to have attained it, but the science stands on shaky empirical ground. The majority of emotion detectors take cues from the early work of Paul Ekman, a psychologist who theorized that humans share six fundamental emotions in common: anger, surprise, disgust, enjoyment, fear, and sadness. Subsequentstudiescastdoubton Ekman’s hypothesis, however, demonstrating there are major differences in the way people from different backgrounds express how they’re feeling. “Emotion detection isn’t possible in the general case, because people experience emotion in complex ways,” Mike Cook, a research fellow at King’s College London specializing in AI, told TechCrunch. “Of course, we do think we can tell what other people are feeling by looking at them, and lots of people over the years have tried, too, like spy agencies or marketing companies. I’m sure it’s absolutely possible to detect some generic signifiers in some cases, but it’s not something we can ever fully ‘solve. ’” The unsurprising consequence is that emotion-detecting systems tend to be unreliable and biased by the assumptions of their designers. In a 2020 MITstudy, researchers showed that face-analyzing models could develop unintended preferences for certain expressions, like smiling. More recentworksuggests that emotional analysis models assign more negative emotions to Black people’s faces than white people’s faces. Google says it conducted “extensive testing” to evaluate demographic biases in PaliGemma 2, and found “low levels of toxicity and profanity” compared to industry benchmarks. But the company didn’t provide the full list of benchmarks it used, nor did it indicate which types of tests were performed. The only benchmark Google has disclosed is FairFace, a set of tens of thousands of people’s headshots. The company claims that PaliGemma 2 scored well on FairFace. But some researchers havecriticizedthe benchmark as a bias metric, noting that FairFace represents only a handful of race groups. “Interpreting emotions is quite a subjective matter that extends beyond use of visual aids and is heavily embedded within a personal and cultural context,” said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, a nonprofit that studies the societal implications of artificial intelligence. “AI aside, research has shown that we cannot infer emotions from facial features alone. ” Emotion detection systems have raised the ire of regulators overseas, who’ve sought to limit the use of the technology in high-risk contexts. The AI Act, the major piece of AI legislation in the EU,prohibitsschools and employers from deploying emotion detectors (but not law enforcement agencies). The biggest apprehension around open models like PaliGemma 2, which is available from a number of hosts, including AI dev platform Hugging Face, is that they’ll be abused or misused, which could lead to real-world harm. “If this so-called emotional identification is built on pseudoscientific presumptions, there are significant implications in how this capability may be used to further — and falsely — discriminate against marginalized groups such as in law enforcement, human resourcing, border governance, and so on,” Khlaaf said. Asked about the dangers of publicly releasing PaliGemma 2, a Google spokesperson said the company stands behind its tests for “representational harms” as they relate to visual question answering and captioning. “We conducted robust evaluations of PaliGemma 2 models concerning ethics and safety, including child safety, content safety,” they added. Wachter isn’t convinced that’s enough. “Responsible innovation means that you think about the consequences from the first day you step into your lab and continue to do so throughout the life cycle of a product,” she said. “I can think of myriad potential issues [with models like this] that can lead to a dystopian future, where your emotions determine if you get the job, a loan, and if you’re admitted to uni. ”
| 2024-12-05T17:30:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/05/google-says-its-new-open-models-can-identify-emotions-and-that-has-experts-worried/
| 788 | 1 |
db72cf925488cb282e35acd9711e1ef7
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|
Twilio Segment teams with Amazon SageMaker on new customer predictions product
|
The customer data platform provides a central place to collect first-party information about customers, but simply having a pile of data is not the point. Companies want to put it to work to improve customer experience and more precisely target certain groups, based on this information they have stockpiled. More and more companies are providing tooling to help build applications on top of the data, and today at theSignalcustomer and developers conference, Twilio Segment announced the launch of CustomerAI Predictions, a tool to help marketers make predictions about how a certain group of customers, meeting a certain set of criteria, will behave. “We’ve seen marketers struggle with getting access to great-quality data for a long time. More recently, we’ve realized that we can help marketers, not just execute their own hypotheses that they already have, but help them actually predict who are the most valuable types of customers to target with different types of campaigns,” Alex Millet, senior director of product at Twilio Segment, told TechCrunch. That’s where CustomerAI Predictions comes in. “There’s huge value that we can get out of that data that’s already being collected by those customers that’s flowing into the CDP. ” For example, CustomerAI Predictions could come up with a group of customers most likely to buy a new product, based on a previous contributing event like a product viewed or a product added to a cart. Segment collects information like clickstream data from a website or mobile app, while Twilio brings the communications data to help companies better understand which customers are most engaged, and which could need a push. To build CustomerAI Predictions, the company teamed with Amazon SageMaker. “When we were looking at how to quickly bring this first predictions product to market, AWS and SageMaker were one of the leaders in terms of the ML backbone infrastructure that allowed us to build those products,” Millet said. Millet also indicated that the company has a generative AI-based email tool on the roadmap, so marketers could potentially combine the data from CustomerAI Predictions, and then use the upcoming CustomerAI Generative Email to generate a custom email based on the dataset in the predictions product. Twilio, whose core business involves communications APIs,purchased Segmentin October 2020 for $3. 2 billion, as part of a strategy to expand into other parts of the marketing stack. The companyintroduced Flex, a fully programmable contact center product, in 2018, andacquired SendGrid,an email API platform in the same year for $2 billion. CustomerAI Predictions is generally available starting today. How Segment redesigned its core systems to solve an existential scaling crisis
| 2023-08-23T16:00:03 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/23/twilio-segment-teams-with-amazon-sagemaker-on-customer-predictions-product/
| 431 | 0.9 |
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Kodem comes out of stealth with $25M to tackle application security
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A new startup is entering the fray in the market of application security:Kodem, a company out of Israel founded by a team of security veterans from none other than the NSO Group, focuses on determining and mitigating risks by tapping into the runtime intelligence of individual applications. Today, it is emerging from stealth, armed with a total of $25 million. The funding includes both a Series A of $18 million led by Greylock with a seed of $7 million co-led by TPY Capital and Greylock. Kodem’s CEO Aviv Mussinger said it has been using the funds to build and now launch its platform globally. Founded in 2021, Kodem said that it already has customers in financial services, insurance and technology. In the landscape of enterprise security risks, application security remains one of the more complicated to get right. Not only is there an ever-revolving and changing carousel of services that need to be identified and tracked, but using an app regularly runs the risk of creating a vulnerability in another. Application management becomes not just a matter of human management but policy management, too. But ironically that makes it a lucrative area, as well. The messiness of application security means that typically companies do not have the resources to build tools internally to manage it. It’sestimatedthat application security will be a $9. 9 billion market opportunity this year, growing to some $22 billion by 2020. Mussinger, along with his co-founders Pavel Furman (CTO) and Idan Bartura (head of engineering) came to found Kodem after working for years as security researchers at NSO, the controversial cyber-intelligence firm behind Pegasus spyware. Mussinger — unsurprisingly, given the NSO’s public profile right now — speaks of that pedigree with some remove. His take is that as researchers, he and his co-founders were not directly involved in the aspects of NSO and Pegasus that got essentially weaponized by state organizations and others. And the focus at NSO, he said, was not really anything close to what Kodem is setting out to fix, although it gave the three of them insights that informed their ideas about what kind of company to start and what to tackle. “Our focus today is to help protect enterprises against any attacks,” he said. “At NSO, we saw everything from the inside and understood how things could be built in a better way. ” One of their takeaways, he said, was that “open source has destroyed the traditional approach to security. ” But given its ubiquity in the market right now, that is what its approach is aiming to fix. The crux of the issue, he said, is that the current range of application security tools has a common issue: all of them are designed to flag all potential issues in a kind of no-stone-unturned approach. For security operations teams, this eventually starts to sound like noise, since many of these alerts are irrelevant or not issues. That also means that when something truly bad does come up, it’s not seen, or it’s ignored. (This reminds me also of my email inbox, but that is another story…) Kodem’s solution is to analyze applications’ runtime data and to run models on that to understand what else is running alongside that. It then merges and sorts this data, and then only produces application security alerts that are relevant to an organization’s particular stack of applications and services. On average, Kodem believes less than 10% of all software is actually used in runtime, and less than 5% of runtime software is actually vulnerable. (Note: each organization is assessed and might have different percentages. ) And all in all, the process reduces the number of alerts by 95%, the company claims. Fewer alerts means a greater likelihood that the ones a security team is getting are relevant. And in any case, the smaller load means it’s considerably easier to triage the list. “As enterprises continue to move their workloads to the cloud, application security is growing in importance and priority for IT cybersecurity teams,” said Asheem Chandna, Partner at Greylock, in a statement. “Kodem has assembled an exceptional product team that is developing the next generation of application security – one that is cloud-native, deploys seamlessly, and provides the highest levels of accuracy with strong growing coverage. ”
| 2023-06-13T13:06:58 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/13/kodem-comes-out-of-stealth-with-25m-to-tackle-application-security/
| 713 | 1 |
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The US doesn’t refine cobalt — this startup wants to change that
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Cobalt is one of the world’s best battery materials, but geopolitically, it’s less than ideal. The world’s largest reserves are in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where mining has long been laced with human rights abuses, and 72% of the metal is refined in China. Cobalt may be used in a lot of electric vehicles, but the material isn’t just an EV problem. The U. S. military is dependent on cobalt for lithium-ion batteries that power drones and other devices, and for the alloys inside jet engines and magnets for missile-guidance systems. There aren’t any cobalt refineries in the U. S. today, upping the stakes for the metal’s consumers. “Everybody’s been worried about [China’s leverage], but now they’ve actually shown that they’ll cut off critical minerals,” John Busbee, co-founder and CEO of Xerion Advanced Battery Corp. , told TechCrunch. “Everybody’s like, what do we do?” Busbee thinks Xerion has a solution. His company has a new technique to produce highly refined cobalt in a single step using electricity and a little bit of heat. The company had been working for years to perfect its technology to produce electrodes for batteries, but it was different enough from existing techniques that battery manufacturers, who have already invested hundreds of billions of dollars to build massive factories, were hesitant to adopt it. Xerion’s process plates metals onto electrodes, using electricity to draw them out of a bath of molten salt. On one electrode, the company was producing its battery material. On the other, it was producing incredibly pure cobalt metal. “We always knew it was out there,” Busbee said. “We always knew it was [a] critical mineral, and it’s something we thought about addressing later. ” But now, with a global trade war raging, the company decided to refocus its efforts on cobalt. Xerion is opening a pilot-scale production facility in Dayton, Ohio, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. It will be able to produce five metric tons of cobalt. That’s a drop in the bucket for global cobalt demand. But military needs in the U. S. tend to be smaller. Only about 5,000 to 10,000 metric tons of cobalt are needed to make aerospace alloys, for example. Busbee said Xerion’s next-generation plant will produce 2,000 metric tons per year. At the pilot scale, Busbee said the company is cost-competitive. “Even at that scale, we’re already on even heel with China,” he said. Topics Senior Reporter, Climate Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-04-23T11:40:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/23/the-u-s-refines-zero-cobalt-this-startup-wants-to-change-that/
| 475 | 0.9 |
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Snowflake brings together developer and analyst needs in new GenAI tool
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Companies useSnowflaketo store their data in the cloud. With the ever-growing interest in generative AI and large language models, customers are looking for ways to get started with the technology quickly. Today, the company announced Snowflake Cortex, a fully managed service designed to help both business users and developers work with AI-fueled applications on the Snowflake platform. It has a couple of purposes, depending on your role. For business analysts, it provides access to several AI tools built on Snowflake’s own custom LLMs to make it easier and faster to interact with data stored in Snowflake. For developers, it helps them build generative AI applications on top of the data stored in Snowflake, in part, taking advantage of a capability that came to Snowflake withthe Streamlit acquisitionlast year. “At its core we are bringing advanced search, as well as large language models right into the heart of Snowflake with a new component that we call Snowflake Cortex,” Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP of AI at Snowflake, told a press roundtable last week. “We want to make these advanced features, which are more and more a requirement for the modern enterprise, and integrate them deeply within Snowflake, so that our power users, the analysts that spend pretty much all of their time in Snowflake, become a lot more productive,” Ramaswamy, who came to the company as part ofthe Neeva acquisitionearlier this year, said. While developers can tap into Cortex to build generative AI applications, the company is providing several advanced elements out of the box to help analysts take advantage of generative AI. The first is Document AI, a way of extracting data from unstructured documents like PDFs and analyst reports and querying that information. “What Document AI does is make it easy for an analyst without any specialized knowledge of programming or large language models to be able to extract these structured values from these documents and put them into a table,” he said. In practice, this lets analysts ask questions of unstructured data stored in these documents. The second feature they are adding is universal search, the capability that came to Snowflake when it acquired Neeva in May. “Search, as many people realize, is the basis for doing interesting things with language models, and we are exposing the core of search on top of Snowflake objects,” he said. This enables users to search across all of their Snowflake data and the Snowflake marketplace to locate data or apps they have built. The third key Cortex analysis piece is Snowflake Copilot, which takes plain language questions about data stored in Snowflake, and turns them into SQL queries. If done correctly, this could potentially save a lot of time analysts spend familiarizing themselves with the data and column structure to build meaningful queries. For developers, they can build applications quickly using the Snowflake models, or for those who want more control over the entire process, they can build more customized applications with access to external LLMs like open source offerings, or those from cloud partners like Amazon Bedrock and Azure OpenAI. They also can take advantage of Snowflake Container Servicesannounced in Juneto deploy the applications more efficiently as containerized workloads. Snowflake Cortex is part of a broader plan to put the data stored in Snowflake to work in different ways, whether it’s searching, querying or building applications. For now Cortex and its core features are in private preview. The company has not indicated when it will be available more widely at this time
| 2023-11-01T16:00:53 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/01/snowflake-brings-together-neeva-and-streamlit-acquisitions-in-new-genai-tool/
| 580 | 1 |
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|
Zepto shifts HQ to India as local listings gain appeal
|
Quick-commerce startup Zepto has moved its domicile to India from Singapore, joining a growing number of Indian startups that havemoved their headquarters homeahead of an IPO in the country. The transition marks the fastest shift of registered headquarters to India by a startup in the country, according to Zepto’s chief financial officer, Ramesh Bafna. Indian authorities recently made it easier for companies to flip their headquarters back home. Some startups, like Pine Labs, have beenin the processfor relatively longer. Zepto’s move follows similar relocations by other prominent Indian startups, including PhonePe and Groww. Many Indian startups had originally set up holding companies overseas so they could get access to foreign capital more easily. Several Indian startups registered in Singapore to keep open the option of a U. S. listing, which is not permitted for companies based in India. Flipkart, Eruditus, and Udaan are among those that chose this route. The Indian IPO market hasemerged as one of the world’s strongestin the past two years, leading many founders to move their official operations to the country. Swiggy’s$1. 35 billion IPOin November was the largest public listing by a tech company globally last year. Zepto, whichraised more than $1. 35 billion last yearand is currently valued at $5 billion, plans to file for an initial public offering later this year, seeking to raise as much as $1. 1 billion, according to a source familiar with the company. The startup, which delivers groceries, wellness products, and household goods within 10 minutes in urban areas, is fast catching up to Zomato-owned Blinkit, which commands the market. Topics Reporter, India Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-01-28T09:57:31 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/28/zepto-shifts-domicile-to-india-as-local-listings-gain-appeal/
| 336 | 0.9 |
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Walmart’s PhonePe launches India app store in challenge to Google
|
Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are among the top brands whose apps are listed on the Indian fintech PhonePe’s Indus Appstore, an Android app store launched Wednesday in challenge to Google’s monopoly in its largest market by users. To fight Google Play Store, PhonePe has armedIndus Appstorewith a range of unique and personalized features and developer-friendly terms. Indus Appstore supports 12 regional languages (including English) and around-the-clock support service, the $12 billion Walmart-backed fintech said. The app store — which today features over 200,000 apps, including Flipkart, Spotify, and Paytm across 45 categories — supports third-party payments and will not levy any listing fee for one year, it said. If developers use third-party payments services and gateways, PhonePe will still not levy any fee, said the startup’s co-founder and chief executive Sameer Nigam at a press conference. Google apps were missing from the store, which startedcourting developers in September last year. PhonePe, which leads the mobile payments market in India,isworking with many third-party aggregators to on-board the apps and many big brands have also signed up to Indus Appstore, it said. Indus Appstore features several other localized features, including app discovery via short videos and the ability to sign in to the store with a mobile number instead of an email address. It also offers “smart updates” that beam updates to customers’ phones during hours when their phones have greater data availability. PhonePe aims to be a top Google Play alternative in India — but it has a challenging road ahead Indus Appstore is the latest of a series of attempts by app developers globally to push back against Google and Apple’s duopoly on mobile apps and what many allege unfair terms. The two tech giants are facing growing backlash from app developers globally over the commissions charged on their respective app stores. A plethora of complaints has emerged accusing the companies, which control over 99% of the global consumer spend on mobile apps, of abusing their dominant position to impose excessive fees of up to 30% on app transactions. India, the world’s largest market by app downloads, is a nation of 750 million to 800 million connected smartphone users. Indus Appstore exists because as a nation “we want to have a point of view on what we can and cannot do,” Nigam said, asserting that what the nation consumes should not be controlled by one or two companies. “We will offer an alternative with a different set of features and capabilities. Some will like us, some will like others. We are just asking for a chance to compete on merit,” he said, noting that competition will push Google to improve its Play Store terms in India. PhonePe is making the app store available to download to consumers from its website (users will have to sideload the app on their Android phones). Nigam said the firm is in talks with “multiple” phone makers and hopes to close some deals in the coming weeks. Indus Appstore also “promises” to offer broader transparency — including explaining to the developers when their app has been pulled, and why. PhonePe plans to monetize Indus Appstore by charging developers for app discovery and by showing ads, Nigam said. Ivan Mehta contributed to this report. Topics Reporter, India Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-02-21T13:00:12 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/21/phonepe-launches-android-app-store-with-amazon-meta-and-microsoft-apps/
| 612 | 1 |
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|
Another star athlete is making his way into venture capital
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Posted: Giannis Antetokounmpo, a player for the Milwaukee Bucks,launched a venture capital firmcalled Build Your Legacy Venturesthat will focus onsports and entertainment investing, according to Bleacher Report. Antetokounmpo will serve as general partner. The fund was “not just about capital; it’s about forging partnerships and opening my network to accelerate the growth trajectory for companies,” he said in apress release. “I want to help other entrepreneurs, especially those who have faced barriers, to grow and succeed. ” Antetokounmpo hasbecome the latest sports figureto enter the venture capital world. Serena Williamsnotably hasSerena Ventures, Kevin Duranthas 35V,Stephen Curryhas Penny Jar Capital, and even the Atlanta Hawkshas its own VCfund to target consumer startups. These big names don’t even include all of the celebs who are entering venture capital, such as filmmakerOlivia Wilde. AtTechCrunch Disrupt 2024, Sara and Erin Foster discussed how celebrity venture funds can offer founders and investors the benefit of having a big name and a big business supporting them. It’s clear that for many celebrities, being seen as an investor is now the next big act. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-11-26T00:15:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/25/another-star-athlete-is-making-his-way-into-venture-capital/
| 243 | 0.9 |
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C-Zero is raising $18M to make emission-free hydrogen using natural gas, filings reveal
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Hydrogen startupC-Zerohas raised $5 million of an $18 million funding round, according to anSEC filing. The company isdeveloping a way to strip hydrogen from methanewithout emitting carbon dioxide. The resulting hydrogen can be used in a range of industries today, including ammonia and petrochemical production, and potentially others in the near future, including transportation and steel production. The solid carbon waste product has the potential to be reused in everything from asphalt to lithium-ion batteries. C-Zero raised a $34 million round valued at $124 million post-money in 2022, according to PitchBook data. The smaller target for the new round, which CEO Zach Jones told TechCrunch is a Series A extension being led by Energy Capital Ventures, suggests the company is being realistic about its prospects following its sizable haul during the pandemic. The second close should happen this fall and will include strategic partners, Jones added. “The runway from this raise should set us up for a strong Series B next year that will get the company to being cashflow positive,” he said. The process C-Zero employs is known as methane pyrolysis. C-Zero’s reactor heats natural gas in the presence of a proprietary catalyst to break hydrogen’s chemical bond with the central carbon atom in a methane molecule. By using readily available natural gas as the feedstock, C-Zero hopes to produce emission-free hydrogen for less than other green hydrogen startups, which typically rely on expensive electrolyzers powered by low-cost renewable energy from wind and solar. “Our process uses just a few kilowatt-hours of electricity per kilogram of hydrogen produced, which means we can make low carbon hydrogen anywhere customers have natural gas or LNG,” Jones said. Tapping into existing natural gas infrastructure also makes methane pyrolysis a natural fit for petrochemical plants, which today use natural gas throughout their operations and also require large amounts of hydrogen to produce various chemicals. The potential to sell low-cost, zero-emission hydrogen to large, established customers has caused a flurry of startup activity in the space, many of which use methane pyrolysis. A number of competing startups, including Modern Hydrogen,Molten Industriesand ReCarbon, also use the process. Update:Added comments from C-Zero CEO Zach Jones. Topics Senior Reporter, Climate Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-09-06T17:57:10 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/06/c-zero-is-raising-18m-to-make-emission-free-hydrogen-using-natural-gas-filings-reveal/
| 434 | 0.9 |
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India’s Agrim snags $17.3M to help farmers get inputs like seeds and pesticides more easily
|
Agriculture in India provideslivelihood support to over 42%of its population, contributing 18% to the country’s GDP, according to government data. However, the agri-input market, which provides inputs for the sector — be it seeds, pesticides, herbicides or cultivation and harvesting tools — largely relies on traditional channels, including local offline marketplaces. The sector lacks a robust supply chain, and logistics are complicated in remote geographies where most farmers are located. Additionally, India’s agri-inputs landscape is different from that of the U. S. and Europe due to its fragmented market structure, diversified demand and seasonal nature of crops. Agrim aims to address all these discrepancies by building a just-in-time supply chain to help agri-input retailers buy inputs from a specific manufacturer. The marketplace helps take the order to the manufacturing warehouse the moment it comes from a retailer, co-founder Mukul Garg said in an exclusive interview. Garg, a second-time entrepreneur who co-founded the travel app Tripigator in 2013, founded Agrim along with Avi Jain in April 2020. He has also headed products and growth at logistics company BlackBuck and was responsible for building its on-demand trucking marketplace. Agrim deals with retailers and manufacturers that have not used an e-commerce platform before, offering a minimalistic user interface along with the ability to let retailers set the pricing. The portal also includes a custom-designed order management system that allocates a manufacturer to every order it gets and ensures the pickup and delivery timelines are matched. Further, the startup works with multiple third-party logistics service providers to handle last-mile delivery. The startup currently offers its catalog in four categories: seeds, agrochemicals, nutrition and tools. Each category also includes subcategories (600 subcategories in total), such as herbicides, fungicides and pesticides for crop protection, and 70 subcategories in the equipment segment, including hand tools and motor-operated tools. Agrim uses a pricing intelligence model to set appropriate prices for products it gets from manufacturers. There are system algorithms to set prices based on factors including demand and supply to provide dynamic pricing on its platform. The startup takes anywhere between 10% to 60-70% of margins, Garg said, after giving a certain price to the manufacturer. Agrim also offers lending to retailers, who usually do not get access to credit through traditional channels, and about 10% of its retail base currently uses that credit offering, Garg told TechCrunch. It hopes to grow that business to 30% of retailers in the next few years, in part by extending the credit period from 30 days to up to 45 days. Now, the four-year-old company has raised $17. 3 million in a new funding round led by Asia Impact. It plans to use its fresh funding to expand its catalog of agri-inputs from over 30,000 items to 150,000 in the next three years, and to expand to southern and western parts of India, including Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and some parts of Maharashtra, Garg told TechCrunch. Similarly, the startup plans to expand its catalog by adding two new categories: animal feed covering cattle, fish and shrimp feed and testing out irrigation equipment. Agrim also seeks to enter into the market of private-label agri-inputs within the next six months in order to help farmers get inputs at retail prices instead of paying a premium. “We are trying to democratize as a platform,” said Garg. “We are seeing a lot of demand and supply mismatches. So with private labels, we want to solve for unmet demand or supply. ” Agrim claims a base of 1,200 manufacturers and 25,000 retailers serving 15 million farmers. The startup generated more than $36 million in the last financial year and is on the annual revenue run rate of nearly $60 million. The all-equity Series B round also included participation from existing investors Accion Venture Lab, India Quotient, Kalaari and Omnivore. Topics Reporter Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-08-30T04:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/29/indias-agrim-snags-17-3m-to-help-farmers-get-inputs-like-seeds-and-pesticides-more-easily/
| 706 | 1 |
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The makers of pro photography app Halide venture into video with Kino, due this February
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Lux, the startup and makers of the popular pro photography appHalideandothers, is venturing into video. The team today announced its plans to debut a new app,Kino, arriving in roughly two months’ time, that will allow iPhone users to work with video in a more professional capacity. The news follows advances in iPhone video capture thathave allowed Apple to film its own press eventsusing an iPhone 15 Pro Max alongside other professional equipment. Recording artist Olivia Rodrigoalso released a music video for her track “Get Him Back!” using an iPhone 15 Pro. The Lux team additionally confirms that last fall’s launch ofLog video support, which Lux co-founderBen Sandofskysays is to “videomakers as RAW is to photographers,” inspired the team to build the new app for video. “Since we launched Halide in 2017, one of our top questions from users has been ‘When are you going to add video capture?’” says Sandofsky in an announcement video. The company’s well-received Halide app had originally capitalized on the iPhone’s support for RAW photography to win an Apple Design Award and gain it many fans, who have now been clamoring for video support in Halide. “I’m really excited to today announce: never. Halide is never going to be able to capture video,” Sandofsky teases. Instead, the company is developing a new app for this purpose called Kino. The reason to build this as a separate app, beyond being able to monetize the feature as an additional product, has to do with the use cases for the two products. Halide is focused on the pro photography market while Kino will focus on pro videography, so presumably will have a host of additional features that could lead to clutter if included in the Halide app. Sandofsky says the team has a deadline of February to ship it, as he will soon be a father. So, he explains, “We thought it would be fun this time to take you along this insane journey. ” That means, instead of building in secret followed by a splashy launch, the team at Lux will take users behind the scenes of app building as they weigh things like engineering problems and design considerations that go into developing Kino. Much more isn’t yet known about what Kino will include or when, exactly, it will arrive, but it’s likely to be another well-built app, considering the startup’s track record for iPhone photography
| 2023-12-04T18:46:08 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/04/the-makers-of-pro-photography-app-halide-venture-into-video-with-kino-due-this-february/
| 398 | 0.9 |
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DoorDash begins piloting drone deliveries in the US
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DoorDash is expanding its partnership with Alphabet’s Wing to bring its drone delivery pilot to the U. S. , the companyannouncedon Thursday. Select users in Christiansburg, Virginia will be able to order eligible menu items from their local Wendy’s. DoorDash first launched its drone delivery pilot program in Australia in 2022, where it is now operating drone deliveries with more than 60 merchants. DoorDash users who are near the Wendy’s located at 2355 N. Franklin Street will see the new delivery option on the checkout page. Once they select the drone option, their order will be prepared and delivered via a Wing drone within 30 minutes. The company told TechCrunch that for a delivery to be placed via drone, an address must have a small clearing on the property, around two-meters in diameter, in order for the delivery to be set down. DoorDash notes that a driveway free of obstacles, like trees or protrusive objects, will make for a perfect delivery landing pad. Most of Wendy’s items will qualify for drone delivery, but certain items may not be eligible if they exceed volume and weight restrictions. If the order contains more than what one drone can carry, DoorDash will deploy up to three drones to deliver the order. If the order requires more than that, it will be delivered traditionally by a delivery person. The launch of the pilot in the U. S. comes as Alphabet has been operating small-scale deliveriesin Christiansburgsince 2019. DoorDash plans to bring the pilot to other cities in the U. S. later this year. “We’re optimistic about the value drone delivery will bring to our platform as we work to offer more efficient, sustainable, and convenient delivery options for consumers,” said Harrison Shih, senior director of DoorDash Labs, in a press release. Wing has partnerships with other companies in the U. S. , includingWalmartandWalgreens. The company has made more than 350,000 deliveries across three countries. Topics Consumer News Reporter Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-03-21T13:49:28 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/21/doordash-is-bringing-its-drone-delivery-pilot-to-the-u-s/
| 436 | 0.9 |
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The ‘US Cyber Trust Mark’ finally gives device makers a reason to spend big on security
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The Internet of Things (IoT) is in hacker crosshairs. Last year, more than110 million IoT malware attackstook place — an 87% increase from the previous 12 months. And as connected devices take on more critical roles in the modern home and office, tens of billions more endpoints are coming online. In this precarious landscape, both individual consumers and enterprises embracing IoT have made cybersecurity a top priority. Now the government is following suit. In July, the White House announced the launch of a “U. S. Cyber Trust Mark” as part of itsvoluntary labeling program for smart devices. The mark is a quality seal to help Americans more easily and securely select these products. It comes in the wake of similar proposed regulations like theEU’s Cyber Resilience Act. Finally, device producers will have minimum cybersecurity standards to meet. Consumers are far more likely to seek out and commit to IoT devices that have a seal like the U. S. Cyber Trust Mark, giving device makers a long-overdue incentive to get up to code. Here’s why, for the first time, device makers will begin to see cybersecurity as an investment rather than an expense. For years, IoT device makers have catered to customers that wanted cheap products and services, often at the cost of robust security. Manufacturers haven’t been driven to spend money on better protection — until the announcement of these coming changes on either side of the Atlantic. Complying with the likes of the U. S. Cyber Trust Mark makes financial sense because it ultimately saves device makers time and money down the line. While the White House label program is currently voluntary, there’s a strong possibility that it will become mandatory in a few years. Device makers that don’t join now risk fines or expensive retrofitting of whole device fleets. Just look at the EU cybersecurity plan — once in practice,national authorities could impose finesof up to €10 million for IoT device makers, or up to 2% of their worldwide annual turnover. In my opinion, cybersecurity labeling leads to stronger and longer-lasting devices, which can reduce the amount of material waste from manufacturers. Such a decrease aligns with sustainability efforts and emerging legislation in the electronic sphere and lowers the risk of manufacturers being penalized for excessive waste. Things like default passwords, always-on cloud features, and minimal product support are concerningly normal in IoT. To earn the government check mark, however, device makers must adhere to basic principles that foster a safe, efficient IoT space. This includes unique and strong passwords, data protection, automatic software updates, and incident detection capabilities. The intention is to create a security baseline and help close gaps in and among device makers. Cybersecurity is only ever as strong as its weakest link, and a cybersecurity certification forms a community of manufacturers that have a united shield against attackers. Tech giants like Amazon, Best Buy, Google, LG Electronics, Logitech, and Samsung Electronics have already pledged their support for the U. S. Cyber Trust Mark, which will appear on approved products as a distinct shield logo. This will no doubt encourage other device makers of all sizes to do the same. With more players involved, there will be more awareness around cybersecurity issues, greater innovation, and a savvier ecosystem. The certification could additionally be a springboard for more complex guidelines that develop in response to new cybersecurity challenges in the coming years. The U. S. Cyber Trust Mark and its subsequent cybersecurity reevaluation will go a long way to repairing trust in the sector. Areport from McKinseyreveals that only 30% of IoT providers believe trust is essential in their solutions; meanwhile, 60% of customers consider it crucial. This trust gap suggests that device makers haven’t been fully meeting consumer needs and aren’t building long-term relationships — which translates to lost profits. By demonstrating that they are dedicated to security and trustworthy experiences via a certification, device makers can improve user retention and loyalty. We already know that consumers gravitate to products that have a tick of approval — just look at the Energy Star label. This government-backed symbol identifies appliances that are energy efficient, and consumersexplicitly saythat the certification positively influences their decision to buy a product with this label. Users see these marks as a prevetting service, where they know that the goods have been assessed beforehand and achieved government-defined requirements. IoT device makers can expect the same bottom-line benefits. The U. S. Cyber Trust Mark is the beginning of a more formalized cybersecurity structure in IoT. It will fuel a shift in device making, where manufacturers spend more on cybersecurity but equally reap more valuable returns. And, device makers that invest sooner will not only be better positioned with their audiences, but they’ll also be poised to smoothly navigate an inevitably more complex digital landscape. Topics Contributor Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-08-23T12:00:32 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/23/the-us-cyber-trust-mark-finally-gives-device-makers-a-reason-to-spend-big-on-security/
| 874 | 1 |
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There was just one fintech unicorn minted in the first quarter
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Global fintech funding totaled $15 billion in the first quarter of this year, growing 55% from the fourth quarter, according to CB Insights’ latest State of Fintechreport. While this generally may seem like a win, it’s important to note a few things. First, 2020 and 2021 were unique years where investment in fintech broke records. By comparison, fintech fundingamounted to$75. 2 billion in all of 2022, down 46% compared with a staggering$131. 5 billion raised in 2021. From the numbers for the first quarter, it’s clear that the market is working on a correction. Second, of the $15 billion raised during the first quarter of this year,$6. 5 billion of that was all Stripe. Without that raise, CB Insights said funding would have amounted to $8. 5 billion, or a 12% drop in funding from the fourth quarter of 2022. And third, if we remove Stripe’s round and stick with the $8. 5 billion, when comparing this quarter to first quarters of previous years, funding is the lowest it has been since 2019. Meanwhile, the number of deals is also down. There were 983 deals made in the first quarter, a decrease from 1,007 in the fourth quarter of 2022 and 1,629 in the first quarter of 2022. A bright spot in the market was “megarounds,” which are deals valued at $100 million or more. These deals accounted for 61% of total funding in the first quarter, a whopping 179% increase quarter over quarter across 16 deals and a total of $9. 2 billion, CB Insights reported. Following Stripe’s deal wasRippling, which raised $500 millionin mid-March as Silicon Valley Bank was melting down. Notably, deal count was down, dropping 24% quarter over quarter. Early-stage funding continued to dominate in fintech, however; for the first quarter, it hit a new high, accounting for 72% of deal share in the three-month period, CB Insights reported. Since 2019, that number has been around 65% and rising to 69% in the first quarter of 2022. Though the United States led across all stages during the quarter, it’s worth noting that six of the top 10 fintech seed and angel rounds were invested outside of the U. S. United Kingdom–based Carbonplace, a carbon credit settlement startup, raised a whopping $45 million seed round during the quarter. Speaking of the U. S. , the region grabbed $10. 5 billion in overall funding for the first quarter, which is triple the amount of funding from the fourth quarter of 2022, which was $3. 5 billion, and coincidentally a five-year low. The number of deals also rebounded from the fourth quarter, up 23% to 434. CB Insights notes that excluding Stripe’s round (recall it was $6. 5 billion), funding in the U. S. was $4 billion and would have still eclipsed the fourth quarter. Drilling down into deal stage, early-stage deal share in the U. S. increased to 68%, which is a five-year high, according to CB Insights. Meanwhile, following a steady decrease in funding dollars going into the payments sector, Stripe’s megaround helped turn this around to the tune of a 200% jump to $8. 1 billion in the first quarter compared to $2. 7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022. Looking quarter to quarter, it is slightly down from the first quarter of 2022’s $8. 3 billion. Meanwhile, the number of deals continued its decline, falling to 161, down from 195 in the fourth quarter. That marked the ninth straight decrease in deal volume, according to CB Insights. The increase in investment dollars was seen most prominently in early-stage deals, which accounted for 74% of the overall deals and a five-year high, up from 66% in 2022. Other highlights of the report include: Image Credits:CB Insights Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign uphere. Got a news tip or inside information about a topic we covered? We’d love to hear from you. You can reach me at maryann@techcrunch. com. Or you can drop us a note at tips@techcrunch. com. Happy to respect anonymity requests. Topics Senior Reporter Christine Hall wrote about enterprise/B2B, e-commerce, and foodtech for TechCrunch, and venture capital rounds for Crunchbase News. Based in Houston, Christine previously reported for the Houston Business Journal, the Texas Medical Center’s Pulse magazine, and Community Impact Newspaper. She has an undergraduate journalism degree from Murray State University and a graduate degree from The Ohio State University. Sr. Reporter Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-04-18T22:39:30 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/18/there-was-just-one-fintech-unicorn-birth-in-the-first-quarter/
| 803 | 1 |
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Singaporean e-commerce firm Qoo10’s Korean units face probe due to payment delays to merchants
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The e-commerce market in South Korea ranks as one of the largest in the world, but it’s also proving to be a precarious one. On Thursday, South Korea’s Fair Trade Commission announced that it had launched an investigation into two major South Korean e-commerce platforms owned byQoo10— Ticket Monster (TMON) andWeMakePrice— for failing to pay out funds to merchants. South Korean officials said that some 60,000 merchants are collectively owed $123 million (170 billion KRW). Both companies have cash liquidity problems, so to shore up operations, they have also stopped issuing refunds to consumers. Meanwhile, South Korean banks have also temporarily halted loan services to TMON and WeMakePrice, due to payment delays, according to local media reports. The situation underscores the delicate and competitive state of the market in the country. Naver, Coupang, and SSG currently are the largest players in the country’s e-commerce market, but together as of 2022, they accounted for a market share of only 45%. In a business where profitability is highly dependent on economies of scale, there are many others duking it out for even smaller market shares, and many of these have been struggling and making losses. The ecosystem effect has been swift forQoo10. InterPark Triple, which sells travel products on the platforms, said it would cease to do so if not paid by today, July 25. Yanolja, InterPark Triple’s parent, said in an emailed statement that it has stopped selling on both platforms already. Qoo10, TMON and WeMakePrice did not immediately respond to a TechCrunch request for comment. Local media are pointing the finger at Qoo10 — specifically at a series of acquisitions that the parent company made over the last few years, often of underperforming e-commerce platforms. In addition toacquiring WeMakePrice in April 2023, andTMON in August 2022, it picked up Korean online shopping platformInterPark Commerce (not the same as InterPark Triple) in March 2023and Hong Kong-based Korchina Logisticsvia its logistics unit Qxpress. Earlier this year, Qoo10 also acquiredWish, the U. S. -based e-commerce platform, andAK Mall, an e-commerce company in South Korea. These acquisitions were part of Qoo10’s expansion strategy, aiming to strengthen its market presence and prepare for an initial public offering on Nasdaq in the U. S. However, they also brought about financial burdens and operational challenges, leading to the current liquidity crisis. Founded in 2010, Qoo10 is a Singapore-headquartered joint venture firm formed by the U. S. e-commerce company eBay and Gmarket founder Young-bae Ku, a storied e-commerce mogul in South Korea. It’s currently backed by KKR, among others. Ku founded Gmarket in 2000 in South Korea and expanded its business into Japan in 2007 and Singapore in 2008. After Ku sold Gmarket’s South Korean unit to eBay in 2009, Gmarket rebranded as Qoo10 in 2012 and penetrated other Asian markets, including Singapore, Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Hong Kong, andIndia. (Gmarket listed in the U. S. via American Depositary Sharesin 2006. ) In 2018,eBay acquired Giosis’business, including Qoo10’s Japanese unit,for $573 million. Topics Reporter, Asia Kate Park is a reporter at TechCrunch, with a focus on technology, startups and venture capital in Asia. She previously was a financial journalist at Mergermarket covering M&A, private equity and venture capital. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-07-25T12:58:50 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/25/singaporean-e-commerce-firm-qoo10s-korean-units-face-probe-due-to-payment-delays-to-merchants/
| 601 | 1 |
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AuthMind raises seed funding for its identity SecOps platform
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AuthMind, a Maryland-based startup that aims to help businesses protect themselves from identity-related cyberattacks, today announced that it has raised an $8. 5 million seed round led by Ballistic Ventures, with strategic participation from IBM Ventures. The company was co-founded by CEOShlomi Yanaiand CTOAnkur Panchbudhe. Both previously founded (and sold) a number of security startups before teaming up to launch AuthMind in 2020. With AuthMind, they are looking to make their mark in the booming identity security space. As Yanai told me, the co-founders talked to a lot of security professionals in the run-up to building AuthMind. “AuthMind started from ongoing discussions with identity and cyber leaders,” he said. “The environment changed a lot and there are a lot of identity solutions out there — and they invest a lot in identity security solutions. Most of these help them define the identity surface and make sure they enable employee access. But the key problem that they kept complaining about is: We’ve made all those investments, but at the end of the day, hackers don’t hack in, they log in. ” AuthMind promises to help these companies secure their identity surface and identify attacks and vulnerabilities in real time. It’s doing so by, among other things, analyzing a company’s network flow. Yanai argued that when a company integrates AuthMind, without knowing anything about that company’s identities, assets and directories, the service can quickly build a holistic view of all of their cloud, on-prem, SaaS apps, password managers and more. “We do that by actually looking at the flow activity — because everything is there,” he said. “But what was missing was the identity context. We really understand the way identity is conducting the operation all the time on the flow activity level. ” With this, the company can bring the identity context to almost everything that happens within a company’s cybersecurity infrastructure and network. That, Yanai noted, is especially helpful during post-incident investigations. Ballistic Ventures co-founder and general partnerJake Seid, who also previously invested in the likes of Brex, Data Robot, Carta, Drata and Zipline while at Stone Bridge Ventures, noted that he believes that the security perimeter has extended from the network to identify. “We think the next generation of big new companies will not just be reinventing identity but then protecting identity. And Shlomi’s vision of identity SecOps was really the most holistic that we’ve seen,” he said. “It’s not just about starting with protection through posture management and understanding misconfigurations, but then post-breach detection and response and doing it in a way that changes the model of security from ‘ticket and fix it’ to guardrails in production. We think that’s a really profound model because it enables businesses to both be more secure and to move faster for engineering teams and business teams. ” IBM Venture’s George Mina offered a similar assessment. “We continue to see an expanding attack surface across the identity infrastructure and beyond. AuthMind’s ability to leverage AI to ingest and correlate network flows with event logs enables security teams to detect threats as they happen and visualize attack paths across hybrid environments,” he said. The founders started working on AuthMind in 2020 and then worked with design partners to get the solution right. Yanai noted that all of those original design partners later became paying customers. Today, AuthMind has a number of customers that manage tens — and sometimes more than 100,000 — identities across their networks. Many of these, he said, are in the insurance, manufacturing and retail industries, though as of now, they all want to remain anonymous. Looking ahead the AuthMind team plans to focus on expanding its go-to-market capabilities. In the long run, the team also plans to look at other security-related areas its service can cover, including helping its customer with their security audits for various certifications. In the meantime, though, the company also plans to improve its core technologies, of course. Topics Editor Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-09-12T11:00:09 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/12/authmind-raises-seed-funding-for-its-identity-secops-platform/
| 726 | 1 |
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Stop doomscrolling and watch the ‘Great Moose Migration’ livestream
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You could say that TikTok is ruining our attention spans, and yet, viewers around the world are tuning in to watch a monotonous livestream from a Swedish TV station that they’ve probably never heard of. It’s time forthe Great Moose Migration. For thousands of years, moose have crossed the Ångerman River each spring, trekking to a warmer summer habitat. But since 2019, the whole world can watch along for three weeks as Sweden’s SVT broadcaster airs its livestream of the migration online, using over 30 cameras to catch all of the painstakingly slow action. For the most part, the livestream shows tranquil scenes of forests and rivers, and if you’re lucky, you just might glimpse a passing moose, blissfully unaware of its international superstardom. It’s just a moose, trudging along without a care in the world. Most of the time, the stream is nearly silent. Other times, you’ll hear the wind gust and the birds chirp. It’s nice, even if you forget you left the livestream tab open on your computer and get jumpscared by a flock of creatures thousands of miles away. As one Swedish studenttold the AP: “I feel relaxed, but at the same time I’m like, ‘Oh, there’s a moose. Oh, what if there’s a moose? I can’t go to the toilet!’” Even overnight, the stream continues. Lack of sunlight, be damned — night vision cameras will make sure we see every last bit of moose content. However, the stark black and white image evokes “The Blair Witch Project” more than National Geographic. But a spooky moose sighting is still a moose sighting. Last year,9 million viewerstuned into SVT’s moose stream. By comparison, the Discovery Channel’s Shark Week saw more than22 million viewersin 2023. Considering that SVT is just streaming live feeds of nature with a 15-person staff, that’s a pretty impressive comparison. What makes this kind of livestream so compelling is that it’s so drastically different from what we’re normally exposed to on the internet. Your TikTok feed shows you bite-sized videos so specifically tailored to your interests that it’s hard to look away. YouTubers meticulously edit their videos to keep us engaged for as long as possible. But the moose don’t want anything from us. They don’t even know we’re here, cheering them on. Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-04-15T20:08:21 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/15/stop-doomscrolling-and-watch-the-great-moose-migration-livestream/
| 559 | 1 |
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Shaquille O’Neal talks investing in edtech and startups that are going to ‘change people’s lives’
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Shaquille O’Neal, 15-time NBA All-Star, four-time NBA champion and three-time NBA Finals MVP, took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about his passion for investing in edtech and backing projects that aim to change people’s lives. He discussed how he got into investing, the road to developing his strategy and his belief in the importance of education. O’Neal is the lead investor inEdsoma, an AI-powered reading, education and communication platform for children. The NBA star was joined onstage with Edsoma CEO Kyle Wallgren, who says the startup’s goal is to teach a million kids to read. O’Neal touched on how he developed his investing strategy after hearing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos say that if you invest in things, you are going to change people’s lives. “I went to a conference in ‘97 or ‘98 and I heard a beautiful bald-headed man by the name of Jeff Bezos say if you invest in things, it’s going to change people’s lives,” O’Neal said. “So when Kyle came into the office and he started talking about children, about education and his love for children, I knew it was going to be a great fit. And when I heard Jeff Bezos say that, I started investing in things that’s gonna change people’s lives. Andthat’sbeengreatforme, andIdon’tliketositupherelikeI’manexpert,butthathasalwaysbeenmystyle. ” The app helps children learn correct pronunciation as they read aloud, and it also lets parents read with their children from any location, which is helpful for parents who live separately or travel for work. Wallgren shared that during Edsoma’s first month of launching, the company boarded 300 students. The company has now onboarded 9,000 students and eventually wants to change a million lives. Wallgren said that he and O’Neal want to ensure that children from every type of environment have access to education. The pair also wanted to make sure that if another pandemic were to happen, children who were are unable to afford tutors would still be able to have access to education. O’Neal believes that although he doesn’t have a specific formula when it comes to the VC world, having a sense of humor and being nice has given him a lot of opportunities. O’Neal, who brought that belief with him on stage as he invited a fan on-stage to sit next to him, said that he doesn’t want to be known for his fame, but for being nice. “Mebeingnicehasgottenmealotofopportunity,” O’Neal said. “I wish it was a formula to how I get all my deal flows, but it’s just me being me and me having a sense of humor being nice and I’ve been very, very lucky. When [Wallgren] was building Edsoma, he told me that he thought of me because he knows the relationship that I have with children. ” O’Neal, who earned his MBA in 2005, says he believes that education is important to him largely because his parents pushed him into education. Reflecting on his journey on getting his Master’s degree, he says he did it for the children who look up to him to help them understand the importance of education. “I did it for my children, and I did it for the children that follow me [because I] just wanted them to know that education is very, very important,” he said. “I’m rich and famous and got a lot of followers, but I wanted to show them that there’s more to that. ” O’Neal believes that literacy can drive positive change, not only for children, but also for people who are incarcerated. “There’s actually a study that shows that if you can teach somebody that’s in prison how to read and increase to grade levels, they go from an 87% chance of reoccurring down to an 18% chance,” Wallgren said. “So literacy can drive economies that can change everything. ” Wallgren added that when Edsoma came to be, the focus wasn’t on making money, as the team was intent on making a difference when it comes to education, which aligned with O’Neal’s investing strategy. “Whenyoulookateducation,there’sstudiesthatshowthattheyactuallydesignorselecthowmanyprisoncellsaregoingtobeneededbasedoffthird–gradeliteracylevels 10 year out,” Wallgren said. “Soyouneedtobeabletotellthatstoryandhaveitreallyresonatewiththepeoplethatareinvestinginit,thenwecanactuallychangethewaytheentirecountryoperatesjustbyteachingkidshowtoread. And[O’Neal]reallygotthat. ” When asked about how he weeds through the hundreds of companies that approach him every week, O’Neal says he goes with his gut feeling, and then passes it over to his panel. He says it’s not quick process, especially because of his strategy to only invest in startups that are going to change lives. Regarding the recent AI boom, O’Neal said if he does invest in an AI startup, it’s going to be one that’s changing lives. O’Neal, who has invested in several notable companies likeGoogle,Appleand Ring, also reflected on his early investments. “I was at Four Seasons, I was eating lunch and there were four distinguished gentleman sitting there playing with their kids and the kids recognize me and they’re playing with me,” he said. “Basically, I’m doing a babysitting job and one gentleman says ‘I want to talk about this company called Google’ and just talking about search engines and ‘you’ll be able to type in anything,’ and I was like, ‘That sounds good. ’ We had a meeting with them and it looked good and I put some money in and I forgot about it. And then the newspaper told me how much I made and I couldn’t believe how much I made. ” After his investment in Google went well, he said he might as well try again. O’Neal admits that although he has made a couple of mistakes trying to get rich quick, he now has a strategy that he believes works. Topics Consumer News Reporter Aisha is a consumer news reporter at TechCrunch. Prior to joining the publication in 2021, she was a telecom reporter at MobileSyrup. Aisha holds an honours bachelor’s degree from University of Toronto and a master’s degree in journalism from Western University. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-09-19T22:47:54 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/19/shaquille-oneal-investing-edtech-and-things-that-are-going-to-change-peoples-lives/
| 1,037 | 1 |
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Kalshi CEO admits enlisting influencers to dis Polymarket in a now-deleted podcast segment
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KalshiCEO Tarek Mansour confirmed on a podcast interview that his employees asked social media influencers to promote memes about the FBI’s raid on the home of his archrival, the CEO of Polymarket. Both companies offer competing events-betting markets, a new kind of betting industry where people wager about the outcomes of events ranging from elections to popular culture. TheFBI raided the home of Polymarket CEOShayne Coplan last month, and it turns out Kalshi tried to capitalize on its rival’s misfortunes by asking influencers to post memes about it, Mansour said. “Some of our team got pretty heated. They didn’t pay anyone; they just asked some of our longstanding affiliates to post some of the memes,” Mansourtold Nichole Wischoffon this week’s episode of her show First Money In. Pirate Wires, a media outlet founded by Mike Solana,reportedthat Kalshi employees were paying influencers to post content suggesting that Polymarket and its CEO Shayne Coplan were engaging in illegal activities. The Pirate Wires article, however, also acknowledged its own apparent conflicts of interest with this report. Solana is a chief marketing officer for Founders Fund, one of Polymarket’s key investors, and Polymarket is an advertiser for Pirate Wires. The podcast segment discussing Kalshi’s response to the raid and the rivalry with Polymarket was deleted shortly after it initially aired. TechCrunch, however, has obtained and listened to the deleted portion. On the podcast, Mansour accused Polymarket of engaging in similar social media tactics against Kalshi, too. “Both companies have been doing this,” he said, adding that his team believed Polymarket was behind some social media posts suggesting that “we also got raided by the FBI. That did not happen,” he said. “We did not get raided by the FBI. ” TechCrunch couldn’t confirm these allegations. Neither Polymarket nor Kalshi responded to our requests for comment. But the CEO did say on the podcast that he let the social media wars “go too far” by members of his company, adding, “I don’t think there’s a point going tit for tat. ” While Kalshi didn’t fire the involved employees, Mansour said the individuals “understand that it was a mistake, and they shouldn’t do this again. ” Polymarket alleged the reasons for the raid had to do with political motivations surrounding wagers on the U. S. presidential election, although both markets were making bets on its outcome. According to Bloomberg, theDepartment of Justice is investigating Polymarketfor allegedly allowing U. S. users to engage in restricted trades. Following a 2022 settlement with the Commodity and Exchange Commission,Polymarket is barredfrom allowing U. S. traders to place bets on its platform, Bloomberg also reported. Kalshi, unlike Polymarket, has been legally permitted to accept trades from U. S. residents since 2021. In September the company alsowon a lawsuitthat permitted it to accept bets on election outcomes. Kalshi, whose backers include Sequoia and Y Combinator, iscurrently raising a funding roundof as much or more than $50 million, TechCrunch reported. Topics Reporter, Venture Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-12-13T22:51:34 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/13/kalshi-ceo-admits-enlisting-influencers-to-dis-polymarket-in-a-now-deleted-podcast-segment/
| 561 | 1 |
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Meta lets businesses create ad-embedded chatbots
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At theMeta Connect 2024 developer conferencein Menlo Park on Wednesday, Meta announced that it’s expanding its AI-powered business chatbots to brands on WhatsApp and Messenger using click-to-message ads. Now businesses can set up ad-embedded chatbots that talk to customers, offer support, and facilitate orders, Meta says. “From answering common customer questions to discussing products and finalizing a purchase, these business AIs can help businesses engage with more customers and increase sales,” the company wrote in a blog post provided to TechCrunch. Meta continues to inject more of its ad products and tools with AI. In May,the company began letting advertisers create full new ad images with AIand insert AI-generated alternate versions of ad headlines. And in June, Meta began testing AI-powered customer support for businesses using WhatsApp, which automatically answers customer queries related to frequently asked questions. Meta claims that more than a million advertisers are using its AI ad tools and that 15 million ads were created with the tools last month. AI ads boost click-through rates, Meta says. But there’s evidence to suggest customers may not like ads with chatbots. Onesurvey commissionedearlier this year by customer experience platform Callvu found that the majority of people would rather wait at least a minute to speak with a live customer agent than chat instantly with an AI
| 2024-09-25T17:28:13 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/25/meta-lets-businesses-create-ad-embedded-chatbots/
| 217 | 0.9 |
8e11d3a24835c050c99311358b56c3a5
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{"bias_density": 0.0, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 0, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 0, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 0, "concerns": []}
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Zeno emerges from stealth to crib Tesla’s master plan for Africa and beyond
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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 improbable. This year in the U. S. alone, developers are planning to add15 gigawattsof grid-scale battery capacity. Yet Michael Spencer thinks that the shift that’s occurring in places like the U. S. , Europe, and China is just the beginning. “The Tesla master plan has more legs and more room to run with lower hurdles in emerging markets,” he told TechCrunch. To prove the point, Spencer, a Tesla alumnus, foundedZenoin 2022. The startup, which until now has operated in stealth, has been methodically exploring how batteries might transform life in emerging markets, beginning in East Africa. The company has attracted considerable talent, including Swaroop Bhushan, who helped design Lucid’s powertrain; Rob Newberry, who helped oversee development of Apple’s AirPort and Apple TV; and others from Gogoro, Tesla and more. Zeno’s first product is a motorbike with a swappable battery. But in Spencer’s vision, that’s just the start. Swappable batteries won’t just be powering motorbikes in Africa, but other parts of people’s lives as well. Motorbike taxis, known asbodaboda, are ubiquitous in East African cities, helping people navigate choking gridlock for far less money than a taxi or personal car. For drivers, though, the costs can be astronomical. Motorbike taxi drivers spend a disproportionate amount of their income on fuel, about 50% compared with afew percentfor commuters in California, Spencer points out. Taking a cue from Taiwanese-startupGogoro, which helped pioneer the battery swap concept in scooters, entrepreneurs throughout Africa put their own spin on it. The bikes are sold with holes in their chassis where drivers plug in rented batteries. When the packs are near empty, drivers can find a nearby location to exchange it for a fully charged one. As a result, swap stations from startups like Ampersand Solar, Arc Ride,Roam, Spiro, andZembohave sprouted like grass after a monsoon rain. Zeno is the latest entrant to the field. The company started by testing around 40 Chinese-made electric motorbikes in various models in Kenya to see how they’d fare. It only took a couple months before the bikes were trashed — they simply weren’t designed for taxi duty on East Africa’s harsh roads — but Spencer said the experience validated his thesis. It also turned up something else. “There were lots of questions around, like, ‘Why can’t I use this battery for other things?’” Spencer recalled. “We saw some people trying to hack batteries when the power went out, to try to run the lights or to run the flour mill in their shop. ” The Zeno team knew they’d need more durable, heavier bikes that could carry a driver, a passenger or two, and possibly some cargo. It’s working with a manufacturer in India to produce bikes to its specifications, and soon after that model launches, additional manufacturers will release their own two-, three-, and light four-wheel vehicles that will be compatible with the startup’s batteries, Spencer said. Bigger bikes demand more power, which means they need bigger batteries. Zeno’s lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) battery packs store 2 kilowatt-hours of electricity, and its motorbike will accept two packs. With one midday swap, that will give the bike slightly more range than most taxi drivers need in a day, Spencer said. The extra capacity “opens up all these other doors. ” Spencer and his colleagues started building docks so people could use the motorbikes’ spare power to charge phones and run various appliances. “We prototyped an induction cook stove that ran off of our swappable motorcycle battery and got a pretty cool little microcosm,” Spencer said. Motorbike taxi drivers could drive home after a day of work, hook their batteries up to the stove to cook dinner and then breakfast the next morning. At that point they would have 10 to 15% charge left, which is enough to drive back to town to swap for a full battery at a self-service station. Every part of the system will have internet connectivity so the company can monitor the batteries, anticipate demand, and facilitate financing. The bikes use a Type 6 connector so that drivers can plug into public chargers during a lunch break, for example, or charge overnight at home if the need arises. The company is also building a charging network that will be available to non-Zeno drivers. Zeno’s first motorbikes will hit roads in East Africa and India in early 2025. Customers will have to buy or lease the vehicle, which will cost less than a new gasoline-powered model when configured without a battery. The startup will lease the batteries under a subscription model (though people can also buy the battery outright if they choose). Customers can add energy to the subscription bundle or buy it separately on a pay-per-use model. Zeno’s goal is to undercut gas-powered bikes with the upfront cost of a bike and initial battery subscription. And because the power costs of electric motorbikes are about half that of a gas model’s fuel bill, Spencer said the savings improve over time. Shortly after the bike launches, the company plans to release its home battery dock with an available solar panel, which Spencer hopes will open new markets. “If you don’t have grid connectivity, you can bring your batteries home from a swap station, and you can use them to power your home. If you want to put solar on your house, that home docking station works as a solar inverter to charge those batteries. So you can be a Zeno battery subscriber for a decade and never swap batteries. ” To fund its launch and expansion, the company recently raised an oversubscribed $9. 5 million seed round led by Lowercarbon Capital and Toyota Ventures with participation from 4DX Ventures, Active Impact, Advantedge, MCJ, and RedBlue. Zeno’s playbook certainly has echoes of Tesla’s, offering customers electrified transportation with a lower cost of ownership. But by focusing on a portable battery, Zeno is selling the ability to use energy whenever, something more akin to how people use fossil fuels today. The motorbike is a central part of the sales pitch, but the battery might be the real selling point. Topics Senior Reporter, Climate Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-09-19T13:30:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/19/zeno-emerges-from-stealth-to-crib-teslas-master-plan-for-africa-and-beyond/
| 1,136 | 1 |
f018ec8feda75db656d5d065ef0bfbf0
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Reddit is bringing AI-powered, automatic translation to dozens of new countries
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Reddit isbringingmachine learning-powered translations to more than 35 new locales in Europe, Asia, and Latin America in a move designed to open the largely English-centric social network to more users. The service comes nearly five months after Reddit first introducedsite-wide translation for French speakers, though the company hadpreviously enabledusers to translate individual posts across several languages. Reddit already allows users to stipulate their preferred content language for post recommendations, as well as set their display language, which translates the Reddit interface itself. Today’s announcement follows seven months afterReddit went public, and although the company has said its user base and ad revenuecontinue to grow, the most obvious conduit for attracting a larger base is to makeallits content available in more languages. The big selling point of Reddit’s new translation feature is that users can configure both posts and the corresponding comments to auto-translate from a community’s original language to the user’s own language according to their Reddit settings. This means that a conversation can flow in a given subreddit between two different languages, and users won’t have to manually translate every response. You can post in whatever language you want, and as long as Reddit supports it, it will automatically be translated into the community’s pre-set language. To do this, users in supported locales will see a new translate icon in their menu that will let them view content in their preferred language. Posts that have been translated by Reddit will be labeled as such, and users will be able to choose to view posts in the original language if they wish. Similar to what it did with translating posts in French earlier this year, Reddit said that the content will be indexed in the supported languages for search engines, meaning people Googling for answers to questions in their own tongue will see results from Reddit, too. Reddit doesn’t outline all the new languages it will support, but the translation service is already available in Brazil and Spain as of today, so one can assume that Brazilian Portuguese and Spanish are now supported — though presumably only in those countries. Reddit added that it plans to expand AI-powered translations to Germany, Italy, the Philippines, and markets across Latin America “in the coming weeks. ” Topics Senior Reporter Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-09-25T09:24:22 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/25/reddit-is-bringing-ai-powered-automatic-translation-to-dozens-of-new-countries/
| 448 | 0.9 |
d998b8045411a0e3c05f70fea9da7b47
|
{"bias_density": 0.18, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 1, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 0, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 1, "concerns": []}
|
In just 3 months, Ramp’s valuation jumped to $16B, up from $13B
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Posted: Spend management startup Rampannouncedon Tuesday that it raised a $200 million Series E led by its largest investor, Founders Fund, at a post-money valuation of $16 billion. This is a jaw-dropping $3 billion increase over the$13 billion valuation Ramp announcedjust a few months ago in March, after a $150 million secondary share sale. Its current valuation is also more than doublethe $7. 65 billion post-money valuation Ramp hit a little over a year agowhen it raised $150 million. CEO Eric Glyman is remaining mum about revenue figures, although in March he said revenue had experienced “incredible growth” over the previous figures it released. In the summer of 2023, he said Ramp had passed $300 million in annualized revenue. Other VCs, largely existing investors, who participated in the Series E round include Thrive Capital, D1 Capital Partners, General Catalyst, GIC, ICONIQ Growth, Khosla Ventures, Sands Capital, 8VC, Lux Capital, Stripes, 137 Ventures, Avenir Growth, and Definition Capital. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2025-06-17T17:10:57 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/17/in-just-3-months-ramps-valuation-jumped-to-16b-up-from-13b/
| 223 | 0.9 |
60a71e365e4c19a365eaf4fc4c6c8013
|
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TikTok to open in-app Election Centers for EU users to tackle disinformation risks
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TikTok will launch localized election resources in its app to reach users in each of the European Union’s 27 Member States next month and direct them towards “trusted information”, as part of its preparations to tackle disinformation risks related to regional elections this year. “Next month, we will launch a local language Election Centre in-app for each of the 27 individual EU Member States to ensure people can easily separate fact from fiction. Working with local electoral commissions and civil society organisations, these Election Centres will be a place where our community can find trusted and authoritative information,” TikTok wrote today. “Videos related to the European elections will be labelled to direct people to the relevant Election Centre. As part of our broader election integrity efforts, we will also add reminders to hashtags to encourage people to follow our rules, verify facts, and report content they believe violates our Community Guidelines,” it added in ablog postdiscussing its preparations for 2024 European elections. The blog post also discusses what it’s doing in relation to targeted risks that take the form of influence operations seeking to use its tools to covertly deceive and manipulate opinions in a bid to skew elections — i. e. such as by setting up networks of fake accounts and using them to spread and boost inauthentic content. Here it has committed to introduce “dedicated covert influence operations reports” — which it claims will “further increase transparency, accountability, and cross-industry sharing” vis-à-vis covert infops. The new covert influence ops reports will launch “in the coming months”, per TikTok — presumably being hosted inside into its existingTransparency Center. TikTok is also announcing the upcoming launch of nine more media literacy campaigns in the region (after launching 18 last year, making a total of 27 — so it looks to be plugging the gaps to ensure it has run campaigns across all EU Member States). It also says it’s looking to expand its local fact-checking partners network — currently it says it works with nine organizations, which cover 18 languages. (NB: The EU has 24 “official” languages, and a further 16 “recognized” languages — not counting immigrant languages spoken. ) Notably, though, the video sharing giant isn’t announcing any new measures related to election security risks linked to AI generated deepfakes. In recent months, the EU has been dialling up its attention on generative AI and political deepfakes andcalling for platforms to put in place safeguards against this type of disinformation. TikTok’s blog post — which is attributed to Kevin Morgan, TikTok’s head of safety & integrity for EMEA — does warn that generative AI tech brings “new challenges around misinformation”. It also specifies the platform does not allow “manipulated content that could be misleading” — including AI generated content of public figures “if it depicts them endorsing a political view”. However Morgan offers no detail of how successful (or otherwise) it currently is at detecting (and removing) political deepfakes where users choose to ignore the ban and upload politically misleading AI generated content anyway. Instead he writes that TikTok puts a requirement on creators to label any realistic AI generated content — and flags the recent launch of a tool to help users apply manual labels to deepfakes. But the post offers no details about TikTok’s enforcement of this deepfake labelling rule; nor any further detail on how it’s tackling deepfake risks, more generally, including in relation to election threats. “As the technology evolves, we will continue to strengthen our efforts, including by working with industry through content provenance partnerships,” is the only other tidbit TikTok has to offer here. We’ve reached out to the company with a series of questions seeking more detail about the steps it’s taking to prepare for European elections, including asking where in the EU its efforts are being focused and any ongoing gaps (such as in language, fact-checking and media literacy coverage), and we’ll update this post with any response. (Update:See the end of this post for some responses from TikTok. ) Elections for a new European Parliament are due to take place in early June and the bloc has been cranking up the pressure on social media platforms, especially, to prepare. Since last August, the EU has new legal tools to compel action from around two dozen larger platforms which have been designated as subject to the strictest requirements of its rebooted online governance rulebook. Before now the bloc has relied on self regulation, aka the Code of Practice Against Disinformation, to try to drive industry action to combat disinformation. But the EU has also been complaining — for years — that signatories of this voluntary initiative, which include TikTok and most other major social media firms (but not X/Twitter which removed itself from the list last year), are not doing enough to tackle rising information threats, including to regional elections. The EU Disinformation Code launched back in2018, as a limited set of voluntary standards with a handful of signatories pledging some broad-brush responses to disinformation risks. It was then beefed upin 2022, with more (and “more granular”) commitments and measures — plus a longer list of signatories, including a broader range of players whose tech tools or services may have a role in the disinformation ecosystem. While the strengthened Code remains non-legally binding, the EU’s executive and online rulebook enforcer for larger digital platforms, the Commission, has said it will factor in adherence to the Code when it comes to assessing compliance with relevant elements of the (legally binding) Digital Services Act (DSA) — which requires major platforms, including TikTok, to take steps to identify and mitigate systemic risks arising from use of their tech tools, such as election interference. The Commission’s regular reviews of Code signatories’ performance typically involve long, public lectures by commissioners warningplatforms need to ramp up their efforts to deliver more consistent moderation and investment in fact-checking, especially in smaller EU Member States and languages. Platforms’ go-to respond to the EU’s negative PR is to make fresh claims to be taking action/doing more. And then the same pantomime typically plays out six months or a year later. This ‘disinformation must do better’ loop might be set to change, though, as the bloc finally has a law in place to force action in this area — in the form of the DSA, which begun applying on larger platforms last August. Hence why the Commission is currentlyconsulting on detailed guidance for election security. The guidelines will be aimed atthe nearly two dozen firmsdesignatedas very large online platforms (VLOPs) or very large online search engines (VLOSEs) under the regulation and which thus have a legal duty to mitigate disinformation risks. The risk for in-scope platforms, if they fail to move the needle on disinformation threats, is being found in breach of the DSA — where penalties for violators can scale up to 6% of global annual turnover. The EU will be hoping the regulation will finally concentrate tech giants’ minds on robustly addressing a societally corrosive problem — one which adtech platforms, with their commercial incentives to grow usage and engagement, havegenerally opted to dally over and dance around for years. The Commission itself is responsible for enforcing the DSA on VLOPs/VLOSEs. And will, ultimately, be the judge of whether TikTok (and the other in-scope platforms) have done enough to tackle disinformation risks or not. In light of today’s announcements, TikTok looks to be stepping up its approach to regional information-based and election security risks to try to make it more comprehensive — which may address one common Commission complaint — although the continued lack of fact-checking resources covering all the EU’s official languages is notable. (Though the company is reliant on finding partners to provide those resources. ) The incoming Election Centers — which TikTok says will be localized to the official language of every one of the 27 EU Member States — could end up being significant in battling election interference risks. Assuming they prove effective at nudging users to respond more critically to questionable political content they’re exposed to by the app, such as by encouraging them to take steps to verify veracity by following the links to authoritative sources of information. But a lot will depend on how these interventions are presented and designed. The expansion of media literacy campaigns to cover all EU Member States is also notable — hitting another frequent Commission complaint. But it’s not clear whether all these campaigns will run before the June European elections (we’ve asked). Elsewhere, TikTok’s actions look to be closer to treading water. For instance, the platform’s last Disinformation Code report to the Commission,last fall, flagged how it had expanded its synthetic media policy to cover AI generated or AI-modified content. But it also said then that it wanted to further strengthen its enforcement of its synthetic media policy over the next six months. Yet there’s no fresh detail on its enforcement capabilities in today’s announcement. Its earlier report to the Commission also noted that it wanted to explore “new products and initiatives to help enhance our detection and enforcement capabilities” around synthetic media, including in the area of user education. Again, it’s not clear whether TikTok has made much of a foray here — although the wider issue is the lack of robust methods (technologies or techniques) for detecting deepfakes, even as platforms like TikTok make it super easy for users to spread AI generated fakes far and wide. That asymmetry may ultimately demand other types of policy interventions to effectively deal with AI related risks. As regards TikTok’s claimed focus on user education, it hasn’t specified whether the additional regional media literacy campaigns it will run over 2024 will aim to help users identify AI generated risks. Again, we’ve asked for more detail there. The platform originally signed itself up to the EU’s Disinformation Code back inJune 2020. But assecurity concernsrelated to its China-based parent company have stepped up it’s found itselffacing rising mistrustand scrutiny in the region. On top of that, with the DSA coming into application last summer, and a huge election year looming for the EU, TikTok — and others — look set to be squarely in the Commission’s crosshairs overdisinformation risksfor the foreseeable future. Although it’sElon Musk-owned X that has the dubious honor of being first to be formally investigatedover DSA risk management requirements, and a raft of other obligations the Commission is concerned it may be breaching. Update:TikTok did not respond to all our questions — including failing to disclose how much it spends on tackling disinformation in the EU specifically (out of the $2 billion pot its blog post says it will spend globally this year) — but it confirmed the Election Centres will be translated into all official languages of the 27 EU countries. It said these spaces will aim to connect users to trusted information from authoritative sources about voting — including how and where — and provide them with media literacy tips. Users will be directed to the Centres through prompts on relevant election content and searches, per TikTok. The nine media literacy campaigns will run over the course of this year, with some — but not all — scheduled to take place ahead of the European elections. TikTok said they will cover topics such as election misinformation and general critical thinking skills. On content moderation and fact-checking, TikTok said its teamscover at least one official language in all 27 EU Member States. (Its DSA transparency report includes some detail on how it divides resourceshere. ) On fact checking it said it will continue to expand its coverage in Europe. TikTok did not provide us with any data on AI deepfake removals (merely pointing to quarterly disclosures it says it makes in its Transparency Report vis-a-vis rule-breach removals of synthetic media generally). But it disputes the characterization that it has not progressed much in tackling disinformation risks related to AI generated content — pointing back to its launch,last fall, of labels for creators to disclose a post contains this type of synthetic media. At the time it also said it was testing an “AI-generated” label that would automatically apply to content it detects was edited or created with AI. However, as we noted above, today’s blog post does not discuss any specific progress made since then. On AI, the company also pointed tonewsfrom yesterday that a number of social media firms — including TikTok — are working on “an accord” to combat the deceptive use of AI targeted at voters. It added that more details about this will be released later this week at the Munich Security Conference. EU dials up attention on larger platforms over data access for risk research Deepfake election risks trigger EU call for more generative AI safeguards Europe wants platforms to label AI-generated content to fight disinformation Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-02-14T12:32:15 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/tiktok-eu-election-centers/
| 2,303 | 1 |
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|
Hank Green reckons with the power — and the powerlessness — of the creator
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Hank Green has had a while to think about how social media has changed us. He started making YouTube videos in 2007 with his brother, novelist John Green, at a time when the first iPhone was in development, Myspace was still relevant and Instagram didn’t exist. Seventeen years later, posting videos on the internet is no longer just a hobby, but a$250 billionindustry. And yet, after all this time, the Green brothers remain two of the longest-tenured and most respected creators in the game. Now, in a time of addictive infinite scrolling and increased loneliness, Hank has grown pensive about his role as a content creator. But Green isn’t an ordinary creator — he’s started so many companies and projects online thatfans created a websitecounting how many days it’s been since he’s started something new. Green founded the crowdfunding platform Subbable, which Patreonacquiredin 2015, and he co-founded the companies DFTBA (an e-commerce company for creators) and Complexly (an educational media company). He was CEO of both of those companies until 2023, when he stepped down after he was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. Fortunately, Green is now in remission. He even performed astandup comedy specialabout the experience of cancer treatment, because he’s Hank Green, and even chemotherapy can’t stop him from making new things. Green’s experience running startups, coupled with his tenure as a creator, gives him a valuable perspective on where the creator economy is going. As the downsides of social media become more obvious, Green is thoughtful about the power and attention that creators command. On one hand, the Green brothers have shown that social media can be used to change the world for the better. The brothers grew their fanbase of millions and harnessed their online community for good, from fundraising with Partners in Health for amaternal health centerin Sierra Leone, to persuading pharmaceutical company Danaher tolower the priceof life-saving tuberculosis tests. Aside from their main channelvlogbrothers, the Greens also foundedCrash Course, a free, educational YouTube channel with 15. 7 million subscribers, which has become ubiquitous in American classrooms. But for all the good that the internet can do, it’s still isolating. If you’re feeling lonely, it’s a lot easier to keep scrolling TikTok than to call a friend. “I am part of this problem — it’s not just the algorithms; it’s the content,” Green told TechCrunch. “I have been trained by the algorithms and by my colleagues to be extraordinarily good at grabbing and holding people’s attention. I hope I use that skill for good, but I also use it for distracting people from whatever else they would be doing. ” Creators of Green’s stature have a lot of power — they can reach millions of people at the push of a button. But they’re making those connections on the platforms’ turf, whether that’s TikTok, YouTube or Instagram. “I think I feel my power more than [social media executives] do, because I have more direct connection to audience, so I see the impact in a way that they don’t,” Green said. “When I’m talking to people who are making really big, important decisions at these platforms, they very much want to believe that they aren’t important, and I don’t get that luxury of believing that I am not that important, because I get people who say, ‘You know, that video you made really hurt me,’ or ‘That video helped. ’” At this year’s VidCon — the online video conference that the Green brothers co-founded in 2010, then sold to Paramount — the creator economy is navigating its increased attention from the broader tech world. In the expo hall, teenagers are still cosplaying as Hatsune Miku and lining up for meet-and-greets with Minecraft YouTubers. But the scene is different upstairs on the “industry track,” where venture capitalists likeSlow Ventures’ Megan Lightcapare detailing the strategy behind investing in creators, andMatPatexplains how he managed to become one of the first creators to successfully sell their company. All creators are business owners, but Green goes beyond what’s standard. During the industry’sboom in VC funding, Green thought about investing in tools for creators, which makes sense given his background in founding Subbable. “Honestly, in that moment, I was like, ‘I should have done this. I should have started a fund,’” he said. “Not that I didn’t have other stuff to do … and it turns out it’s very good I was too distracted, because probably I would’ve lost a bunch of people’s money, because it’s hard to build businesses at all. ” That’s especially true for the creator economy, where there are so many different kinds of creators whose needs are ever-changing. “Creators are so diverse in their needs that, to create a product that is scalable — and that doesn’t cost a ton of money trying to individualize itself for each individual creator — you end up creating a bad product,” Green said. In some cases, VCs have decided to invest in creators like they’re individual startups. Other companies like Spotter give creators upfront capital in exchange for the ad revenue from their back catalog on YouTube. Green is interested in these funding models, though he describes investing in content creators as “deeply antithetical to the Silicon Valley VC playbook. ” That’s not because he doesn’t believe creators are a good investment, but because creators don’t scale at the same speed as the kind of startups that typically attract VCs. “This is just regular investing,” Green said. “This isn’t something that’s going to 10x. ” Even though the creator economy is less of a buzzword in Silicon Valley these days, the space is still growing — creator startups in the U. S. havealready raised more moneythis year than all of last year, mostly because of the AI boom, which Green sees as a fad. “My gut says that people want to connect with people,” he said. “A relationship with a creator is already artificial in some way. … But I don’t think AI will be that good at building audiences. ” Creators navigate the same challenges as any small business owner, but they’re also subject to the unpredictability of social platforms and consumers’ changing interests. These Big Tech companies are incentivized to generate as much engagement as they can, and if a small tweak to an algorithm can mean your videos stop showing up on TikTok’s For You page, then creators are left feeling helpless. And if a creator loses access to their account — sometimes via coordinated reporting campaigns by bad actors — it’s not likely they’ll be able to get in touch with someone from the platform to help. Green tried forming a trade organization called the Internet Creators Guild in 2016, but it only stayed afloat for three years — it’s proven challenging to form a unified advocacy body for creators, since the industry is so decentralized. “[SAG-AFTRA members] do the same job for the same few companies, but we all do very different jobs for the same companies,” Green said, referring to creators’ dependence on platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and others. “A person doing textile art and then selling it on Etsy has a very different set of needs than a musician. ” “There are some things that everyone agrees on — like, there should be recourse when your account stops existing,” Green said. “If I lived in a town and started a business there, the town shouldn’t be able to just come and put a bike lock on my door and say, ‘You don’t own that business anymore. ’” Even creators who watch their star rise live with the anxiety that they might not always retain their audience. That’s a power that social media platforms have over the creators who make their apps worth our time. “The bad part of TikTok — being that you’re infinitely replaceable — is also the good part of TikTok,” he said. “People are so easy to discover. Talent discovery has never been this powerful. ” Andy Warhol’s adage about our 15 minutes of fame has never been more realistic. Characters likeReesa Teesa, the“Hawk Tuah” girland theFour Seasons Orlando babycapture our attention, then rush to sign with talent agencies and try to turn their one shining moment into a full-fledged career. But the speed at which these people become household names — at least temporarily — is evidence of a growing anxiety among creators that their fortune could run out. And then there’s creators like Hank Green. He was there when you were a kid struggling with biology, he’s still here when he pops up on your TikTok with a weird science fact, and hopefully, he’ll stick around a while longer. Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com
| 2024-07-14T17:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/14/hank-green-reckons-with-the-power-and-the-powerlessness-of-the-creator/
| 1,550 | 1 |
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Ford taps Apple exec to lead new software services unit
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Ford has hired Peter Stern, a former executive at Apple, to lead its newly formed Ford Integrated Services unit. The unit will create and market software-enabled customer experiences across Ford’s three business units: Ford Blue, for gas and hybrid vehicles, Model e for connected EVs, and Ford Pro for commercial products. As the era of the software-defined vehicle takes hold, Ford is actively building out more services to personalize the driver experience, connect hardware and software and bring in new revenue streams. While Ford generated$45 billion in revenuein the second quarter, the automaker expects its EV business to lose $4. 5 billion in 2023. The company is betting on software to help close that gap. Ford Integrated Services will be responsible for further developing technology likeFord’s BlueCruise “hands-free”highway driver assistance system, which is currently priced at $2,100. The new unit will also focus on commercial solutions for fleet management, telematics and EV charging. Ford says it already has 550,000 paid software and services subscribers, with 80% of those customers coming from Ford Pro. Stern will also oversee Ford Next, the automaker’s global venture studio, according to the automaker. Ford Next’s CEO, Franck Louis-Victor, wasarrested in Julyon felony charges of arson and assault with a deadly weapon after a domestic dispute at his home. The charges were dismissed, but Louis-Victor no longer appears to be working at Ford. Ford says he in on leave. Louis-Victor previously oversaw a unit dedicated to technology-forward customer experiences. “This is transformational, because the cornerstone of our Ford+ plan is creating incredible customer services and experiences enabled by great hardware and software,” CEO and president Jim Farley said in a statement. “There’s simply no one in the world better able than Peter Stern to build this strategically vital part of our business. ” Topics Senior Reporter Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers Tesla and Elon Musk’s broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more. She’s one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter. Previously, she covered social media for Forbes. com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more. Rebecca has invested in Ethereum. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-08-14T14:48:07 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/14/ford-taps-apple-exec-to-lead-new-software-services-unit/
| 448 | 0.9 |
069ba6fce14ef759466b279603784bf5
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Harbor is building a better baby monitor and an army of night nannies
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Like most good startup stories,Harborbegan life as a product of disappointment. Kevin Lavelle, the co-founder and CEO of innovative clothing companyMizzen and Main, couldn’t find a baby monitor to suit his needs. He and his wife, Jen, had homed in onNanit, a popular product renowned for its AI smarts and and breathing detection. “We built Harbor because we were frustrated with products that overpromised and underdelivered when it came to safety and usability,” Lavelle says. In particular, he cites and instance in which Nanit’s app crashed on him. He woke up the next morning the find that the monitor hadn’t done its job overnight. Lavelle started Harbor in August 2022 with formerStratisChief Innovation Officer Charlie Hill, who now serves as the new firm’s chief product officer. The Harbor hardware’s major selling point is that it doesn’t rely on apps or an internet connection, which introduces its own pain points. Instead, the system consists of a 2K camera that produces its own Wi-Fi signal, allowing it to connect directly to the 10-inch tablet it’s bundled with. The system can also travel with your family, allowing you to set it up without having to connect to unreliable hotel Wi-Fi. Harbor charges an annual fee of $336 for the service. Harbor recently closed a seed round with a $4 million raise. Combined with a spring fundraising close, the round totals $7 million. The investors are an interesting lot. Trust Ventures led the round, which also featured Tim Ferriss, Morrison Seger Venture Capital Partners, a retired tennis player, and the current punter for the New York Jets. “Having seen so many of my friends struggle with baby monitors and sleep with young kids, I’m excited for true innovation that solves real long-standing pain points,” Ferriss says in a release. “There is a large market for a simple, smooth, and — under the hood — sophisticated solution. The other interesting piece of Harbor’s play is decidedly more tradition. The startup employs remote “night nannies. ” The company writes: “Harbor replicates the expertise and all night guidance of in-home night nannies for a fraction of the price. Parents who sign up for this service are taken through a robust onboarding. Each night, parents grant access to their Harbor camera and monitor, ensuring our infant care and sleep experts can let parents rest easy but receive failsafe notifications whenever they are needed. ” The service is optional, but it requires a Harbor membership to use
| 2024-09-19T13:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/19/harbor-is-building-a-better-baby-monitor-and-an-army-of-night-nannies/
| 408 | 0.9 |
521bd2ce3cb5677dbf38d080023804e3
|
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It’ll soon be free to publish apps to the Microsoft Store
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Microsoft is getting rid of developer onboarding fees for the Microsoft Store on Windows, the digital distribution platform for its flagship operating system, the company announced Monday during its Build 2025 conference. Starting June 2025, individual developers will be able to sign up and publish apps to the Microsoft Store without having to pay to register an account. Previously, Microsoft charged around $19 for registration. The waiving of the Microsoft Store’s app publishing fees comes as Microsoft rival Apple faces intense legal pressure to eliminate certain developer fees it charges in the App Store. Those fees are commissions, however — Apple still levies an annual fee of $99 on developers publishing to the App Store. Meanwhile, Google charges a one-time $25 fee for Google Play, the app store on Android. Microsoft says that it will continue to charge developers with apps on the Microsoft Store who use its commerce platform a 12% fee for games and a 15% fee for apps. Developers who use their own commerce system keep 100% of the revenue for non-gaming apps
| 2025-05-19T16:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/19/itll-soon-be-free-to-publish-apps-to-the-microsoft-store/
| 176 | 0.8 |
00f6a2ece707756e54163ea52c858327
|
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Symbiotic Security helps developers find bugs as they code
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Symbiotic Security, which is announcing a $3 million seed round today, watches over developers as they code and points out potential security issues in real time. Other companies do this, but Symbiotic also emphasizes the next step: teaching developers to avoid these bugs in the first place. Ideally, this means developers will fix security bugs before they ever get into a code repository, which in turn should also speed up the overall development process. And since the developers get to learn on the job and in the environment they are already working in, they are far more likely to correctly implement the required changes. That’s more effective than making them sit through an annual security training in SuccessFactors. Thecompany, which launched earlier this year, released its MVP about a month ago, with a focus on infrastructure-as-code languages like Terraform. As Symbiotic co-founder and CEO Jerome Robert told me, the company did this to get an MVP out of the door and prove out its vision. Over time, the team plans to expand to the rest of the application stack and support languages like Python and JavaScript. Robert noted that even the most developer-friendly security tools are still, at their core, tools for the security teams. “They are enabling the security teams to be better cops. They’re not tools that make the developers the good guys,” he said. “They are tools that allow security teams to send hundreds of messages all week long, saying, ‘You’ve made a mistake. You need to fix it. ’” Meanwhile, the developer constantly has to choose between fixing security issues and developing new features. The idea behind Symbiotic Security is to nudge developers in the right direction, similar to the code completion tools they are already familiar with. Symbiotic, ideally, can help developers fix bugs in the inner loop, while they are still coding, and long before the continuous integration and delivery platforms start scanning the code for issues. Once that happens, the process slows down immediately, with Jira tickets and additional code review processes taking over. This is also where Symbiotic goes a step further. “It would not be sufficient to just allow them to fix [the issues] and to detect it,” Robert explained. “We also need to train them on security — and developers love to train; it’s an absolute, 100% certain thing. However, security trainings are painful. ” For the developers, Robert argues that doing the training on the spot is something they can relate to. It’s focused on their immediate needs and not something that is abstract — and at just a few minutes, it’s short. Right now, those training lessons and videos are prerecorded, but over time, they could become more AI-driven, which would allow Symbiotic to make them even more relevant to the specific issues the developer is working on. There’s also another interesting twist here. To best train a model to automatically fix security issues, you need a corpus of code with security bugs and the fixed versions of those code snippets. Because Symbiotic is seeing the issue and then telling the developer how to fix it, it could ideally create a high-quality dataset for building a remediation model. For now, that’s a long-term project, though. Symbiotic is backed by the likes ofLerer Hippeau,Axeleo Capital, and Factorial Capital. “Jerome and co-founder Edouard Viot have a deep understanding of the problems underlying traditional code security and demonstrated remarkable foresight with their approach to addressing the growing demand for shift-left security solutions,” said Graham Brown, managing partner, Lerer Hippeau. “Symbiotic has the potential to transform the industry, empowering developers and security teams alike. ” Topics Editor Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-11-05T18:05:56 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/05/symbiotic-security-helps-developers-find-bugs-as-they-code/
| 676 | 1 |
e48584cfb5c6de755161196cfdf4f9de
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With new grant program, OpenAI aims to crowdsource AI regulation
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OpenAI says it’s launching aprogramto award ten $100,000 grants to fund experiments in setting up a democratic process for deciding what rules AI systems should follow — “within the bounds defined by the law. ” The launch of the grant program comes after OpenAI’scallsfor an international regulatory body for AI akin to that governing nuclear power. In its proposal for such a body, OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman, Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever argued that the pace of innovation in AI is so fast that we can’t expect existing authorities to adequately rein in the tech — a sentiment today’s announcement captures as well. Concretely, OpenAI says it’s seeking to fund individuals, teams and organizations to develop proof-of-concepts for a “democratic process” that could answer questions about guardrails for AI. The company wants to learn from these experiments, it says, and use them as the basis for a more global — and more ambitious — process going forward. “While these initial experiments are not (at least for now) intended to be binding for decisions, we hope that they explore decision relevant questions and build novel democratic tools that can more directly inform decisions in the future,” the company wrote in a blog post published today. “This grant represents a step to establish democratic processes for overseeing … superintelligence. ” With the grants, furnished by OpenAI’s nonprofit organization, OpenAI hopes to establish a process reflecting the Platonic ideal of democracy: a “broadly representative” group of people exchanging opinions, engaging in “deliberate” discussions, and ultimately deciding on an outcome via a transparent decision-making process. Ideally, OpenAI says, the process will help to answer questions like “Under what conditions should AI systems condemn or criticize public figures, given different opinions across groups regarding those figures?” and “How should disputed views be represented in AI outputs?” “The primary objective of this grant is to foster innovation in processes — we need improved democratic methods to govern AI behavior,” OpenAI writes. “We believe that decisions about how AI behaves should be shaped by diverse perspectives reflecting the public interest. ” In the announcement post, OpenAI implies that the grant program is entirely divorced from its commercial interests. But that’s a bit of a tough pill to swallow, given Altman’s recentcriticismsof proposed AI regulation in the EU. The timing seems conspicuous, too, following Altman’sappearancein front of the U. S. Senate Congressional Committee last week, where he advocated for a very specific flavor of AI regulation that would have a minimal effect on OpenAI’s technology as it exists today. Still, even if the program ends up being self-serving, it’s an interesting direction to take AI policymaking (albeit duplicative of the EU’s efforts in some obvious ways). I, for one, am curious to see what sort of ideas for “democratic processes” emerge — and which applicants OpenAI ends up choosing. Folks can apply to the OpenAI grant program starting today — the deadline is June 24 at 9 p. m. PDT. Once the application period closes, OpenAI will select ten successful recipients. Recipients will have to showcase a concept involving at least 500 participants, publish a public report on their findings by October 20 and open source the code behind their work
| 2023-05-25T19:31:42 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/25/when-new-grant-program-openai-aims-to-crowdsources-ai-regulation/
| 533 | 1 |
969b842b06fe1eee4fda9a314a6e2209
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Two Oxford PhDs are building an app to let you remix photos into memes
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Earlier this month,Googlereleased a new feature with the Pixel 9 series phone to let users add the photographer to a group photo by swapping someone out and taking another photo. A new social network by a duo of Oxford PhDs is working on an app to let you add friends to a photo in a more memeable and fun way. Vybe is a mobile app that lets you upload a selfie and put your face in any picture or an existing template. It also swaps faces of you and your friends in a picture with multiple people. The tools also change the skin tone of the person in the template based on your skin tone so there is no mismatch between one’s face and body. Users can see photos created by their friends in a feed and upload their own templates too. The startup thinks that this will nudge more people to create content on the platform. Vybe said it has more than 100,000 user-generated templates, with the number growing quickly because it requires little effort to create a template. The company has built a social network around this to encourage people to connect more. While this is the core proposition now, the startup wants to build more photo- and video-related tools combining social, AR and generative AI. Vybe has raised $4. 75 million in seed funding in a round led by Stellation Capital with support from Scribble Ventures, Coalition Operators, Neo and Blueprint FTC. Individuals like NFL player Kelvin Beachum, investor Ali Partovi, and OpenAI’s Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil also contributed to the round. The company was founded by Mandela Patrick and Arnab Ghosh, who went to work at Meta and Snap, respectively. Patrick’s research focused on multi-modal AI video and image understanding. Later, he worked on core AI algorithms for Instagram Reels. Meanwhile, Ghosh researched generative models for image rendering. He worked at Snap on launching gen AI features like Bitmoji background. The co-founders said that they wanted to build a social product that has a network effect value. They also believe that there is value in creating a one-click tool for actions — such as placing faces of you and your friends in a photo — that used to require a long time. “When I was at Snap, I saw how little details can make a difference in adoption. While Photoshop was available for years, Snap allowed users to have different experiences with Lenses at a larger scale,” Ghosh said. While face-swapping apps such asRefacealready exist, the Vybe co-founders hope that the ease of creating templates and users remixing them will create a network. “If you think about successful social products, they had a marquee format. For example, in Snapchat it was disappearing messages, and we think AI-powered photos with your friends is that format for us,” Patrick said. The company is exploring brand partnerships, ads and subscription revenue streams. It is also gearing up to launch features like video and animation support in the app. Peter Boyce II, the founder of Stellation Capital, believes that the founders have a deep level of depth and interest in AI, which will help them figure out the platform better. He thinks that the product being simple and frictionless to use will help Vybe in becoming a hit. “When all the technology they have worked with fades into the background, what is left is a simple, easy, and fun way to engage with different folks. And that for me is ingredients for something that become mainstream,” he told TechCrunch. BeReal, which banked on a format of nudging people to sharein real time when they got a notification, faced issues when it came tomaintaining growth and generating revenue. The company was eventually acquired by the French mobile apps and games publisherVoodoo. Vybe co-founders and investors believe that the company will succeed because it wants to create more formats and involve users in the creation process. But they emphasized that it’s important not to create behavior that creates fatigue amongst users. The app is available for download oniOS and Android. Topics Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-08-29T15:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/29/two-oxford-phds-are-building-an-app-to-let-you-remix-photos-into-memes/
| 751 | 1 |
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How Index Ventures jumped to the front of the AI GPU line
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Earlier this week, The New York Timesshone a lighton some of the desperation that founders are experiencing as they try and fail to secure compute power for their nascent artificial intelligence startups, thanks to thebig companies(and even richnations) racing to snatch them up. One founder reportedly said of the graphics processing units, or GPUs, that he needs for his company: “I think about [them] as a rare earth metal at this point. ” According to that Times piece, founders are trying numerous measures to amass the chips, including calling in favors from friends at large equipment vendors that might have GPUs to spare, and navigating an obscure U. S. government program calledAccess. At least one firm, the global investor Index Ventures, happened on an additional idea, it told the outlet. To help ensure its portfolio companies aren’t hamstrung by the shortage, it struck a deal with Oracle to provide its founders with some of these sought-after chips (specifically Nvidia’s H100 chips and Nvidia’s A100 chips). To learn more about the arrangement — one that other venture firms are undoubtedly trying to replicate — we talked earlier today with Erin Price-Wright, a Bay Area-based partner with Index who focuses on enterprise software and AI and who, before joining the venture firm in 2019, was the head of product for Palantir’s data analytics and machine learning platform. Excerpts from our chat have been lightly edited for length and clarity below; you can hear our longer conversationhere. TechCrunch: Tell us about this partnership with Oracle. Erin Price-Wright: Access to compute is one of the biggest challenges that AI companies face, and it’s especially hard for an early-stage company to get their hands on GPUs. It’s less about the cost in particular but the fact that something like more than 95% of GPU capacity is already allocated to large players in this space [because] they make these pretty big pre-commitments with cloud vendors. So if you’re an early-stage company, and you’re just trying to get started training, or fine tuning the model, there’s usually a really long lead time between when GPUs are even available. It can be three months to a year in some cases and it’s really hard to just get started. If you’re an early-stage company that’s still figuring out what your product is, you don’t even know how many GPUs you need. So even that process of discovery of understanding what your workloads are going to look like can be super challenging for early-stage companies. So we’re partnering with Oracle to provide GPUs to our earliest-stage portfolio companies, because we want to help remove that barrier of access so that they can really focus on what matters from day zero. Ultimately, the goal is to help all of these companies graduate to their own cluster. We’re not in the business of providing these massive GPU clusters to our companies. but we really want to give them a head start, so that they can start building faster as a way to help level the playing field. How did the deal come together? We wanted to make sure that people who are building against very tangible business problems didn’t feel like they had to change their business model or change the way they were representing themselves or change the way they were fundraising in order to just get access to GPUs. So it was really born out of seeing this pattern again and again with early-stage companies where we were like, ‘This is where Index as a fund actually has real leverage. And we can use our position in the market, our relationships, and the fact that we can kind of aggregate this demand across multiple companies to really provide value-additive services’ [to our founders]. Did Index put a down payment together or has it purchased chips outright from Oracle? Are you giving Oracle a stake in these startups? We’re not purchasing any chips outright. So the partnership with Oracle is that Index makes the precommitment on the behalf of our startups and pays the cloud bill. Oracle manages the cluster — they’ve been a fantastic partner — and then our companies get access to that GPU cluster for free. So you’re paying [this cloud bill] in advance. Did you have to talk with your own investors about that? That’s not typical of what [a venture firm] would do historically. In terms of the actual structure of how the agreement works, I’ll probably hold off on sharing too many of those details. Is this an exclusive relationship? Is there anything to prevent other venture firms from doing the same thing? Yeah, of course [they could do the same], there certainly isn’t [an exclusive relationship with Index]. One benefit that Oracle gets out of it is to meet the next generation of fantastic companies as early as possible. In the process of using our GPU cluster, we’re actively helping our companies navigate the process of signing their own dedicated cloud deal. So the idea is not for them to [do] this in perpetuity; it’s for them to develop relationships with Oracle and AWS and the other large cloud providers and sign their own dedicated contract. One of your portfolio companies,Cohere, counts Oracle as one of its backers along with Nvidia, which are two of the companies you most want to have involved with your portfolio companies right now. One of the ways we really can help our portfolio companies is making sure they’re connected to the right people at the right time, so that they get the resources they need. Index has at least20 portfolio companiesthat fall into the AI/ML bucket, including Cohere [which has already raised$445 million] and another company that recently raised ahuge seed round, Mistral AI in France. Is too much money being invested broadly in generative AI or are we still in the ‘early innings,’ as VCs like to say? We are in the early innings. I do think we’re rapidly entering a cooling off period in terms of sentiment, especially for some of these very large rounds and especially from traditional VCs. There’s still a really big gap between the promise and power of the core models of technology and what it’s going to take for them to be actually used and useful across many use cases in the enterprise. There’s just a huge infrastructure gap missing that needs to be filled, and it’s not going to be filled overnight; it’s going to take some time. Over the coming 12 months, while I’m still very excited about the power of the core technology and how transformational it’s going to be for the world, I think we’re going to see a little bit of a backing off as companies really grapple with it, figure out the ROI, kind of prioritize use cases and start actually building real things beyond maybe the one or two prototype demo apps that they’ve been working on for the last six months. That’s when we’re going to start seeing the infrastructure emerge that’s going to start supporting these use cases at scale. How do you as an investor ensure that your AI companies don’t overlap? And is that any harder or more difficult than when it comes to traditional startups? I don’t think it’s massively different than how we think about competition elsewhere. Everyone paints AI as this standalone category. But if I look forward even two years, let alone five or 10, every single piece of software that we use will have AI as its beating heart. There will be no piece of code, no software, no application, no website that you visit, that doesn’t have AI as a core component of it. I almost think about it like SaaS. Is every single SaaS company the same? No. Every single SaaS company has a database, every single SaaS company has a front end, every single SaaS company has some interaction between the two. AI is kind of similar to a database in that respect. It’s just kind of a core building block in how you build software. We’re very early in the market, so there’s going to be some movement and some change as companies figure out how to use these tools and what specific problems to go after. But it’s not different than how we think about traditional SaaS investing from my perspective
| 2023-08-19T07:10:55 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/19/how-index-ventures-jumped-to-the-front-of-the-ai-gpu-line/
| 1,391 | 1 |
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South African e-commerce startup TUNL gets funding to accelerate growth of its exports platform
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TUNL, a South African parcel shipping platform, has secured $1 million in pre-seed funding from investors, including Founders Factory Africa, Digital Africa Ventures, E4E Africa, and Jozi Angels. The platform, which claims to help e-commerce merchants save between 50% and 80% on international shipping costs, said the funding will fuel its expansion in its primary market, South Africa, and lay the groundwork for its launch in other key African and emerging markets. CEOMatthew Daveyand COOCraig Lowmanfounded the company in 2022 after Davey sought to solve a challenge he faced as the managing director of a Dutch company that imported South African engineering materials into Europe. The process of moving these materials was cumbersome and expensive, Davey remarked in an interview with TechCrunch, and the experience led him to realize the widespread issue of high shipping costs, particularly for smaller businesses in emerging markets like South Africa. The current challenges in cross-border shipping cost African businesses an estimated $50 billion annually in missed opportunities. TUNL’s founders identified a recurring issue among small- and medium-sized South African merchants during the pandemic: Shipping costs sometimes surpassed the value of their products. This was true even for high-quality items like textiles, clothing, footwear, camera accessories, and specialized components, despite the presence of major courier services such as DHL, UPS, and FedEx. Typically, merchants in Cape Town might offer only a single shipping option, such as DHL, to customers trying to buy their products abroad. For instance, a backpack could cost $60, and the shipping cost from South Africa to the U. S. could be around the same price of $50 to $60, negatively impacting conversion rates. What TUNL has done is set up their own economy courier service to the USA, and also form partnerships with global courier companies like UPS and FedEx, to reduce SMEs’ shipping costs by 50% to 75%. “Our pricing is completely transparent and democratized. We want to ensure that every business, large or small, can have an equal chance to convert overseas sales by reducing the cost of shipping as much as possible,” said Lowman in a statement. On the TUNL platform, merchants offer customers various shipping options during checkout. This includes an “economy” courier option with the shipping cost starting as low as $10 from South Africa to the USA with a slightly longer delivery time (around 10 to 14 days). Alternatively, customers can opt for faster shipping options (within a week) with FedEx or UPS at a much more reasonable cost than they are able to get individually. These options enhance flexibility and potentially improve conversion rates (the exact prices vary based on destination and weight, according to Davey). “It’s all about helping the merchant succeed because if you have one shipping option at checkout that’s expensive and the customer has two choices, they can abandon that cart or decide to pay the money,” said the CEO. “But if you introduce two shipping options, especially one that’s free, the human psychology drives the customer to pick one of those two rather than abandon the cart. ” Primarily, the e-commerce merchants in South Africa using TUNL tend to send most of their products to the U. S. , the U. K. , Europe and Australia; Davey said two-thirds of the parcels end up in the U. S. Since its launch, TUNL has grown 35% month-on-month, with over 700 merchants now part of its “shipping club. ” TUNL’s merchants have shipped over 11,000 international parcels in 2023, representing exports from South Africa worth more than R24 million (~$1. 3 million), the company said in a statement. Beyond South Africa, TUNL plans to partner with similar marketplaces and platforms on the continent, such as Ivorian startup and DHL partnerANKA. IFC leads $5M extension round in Ivorian SaaS e-commerce platform ANKA The two-year-old e-commerce platform makes money by taking margins on the orders placed on its platform. It handles a diverse range of products, including backpacks, fashion footwear, arts and crafts, books, nanofiber materials and high-performance springs, various types of furniture, musical instruments, and nonperishable products like cosmetics. South Africa is known for its wine industry, with exports reaching 368. 5 million liters last year. And though wine (alcohol) shipping hasn’t been included yet as part of exported items on TUNL due to existing restrictions, Davey says the startup is currently in discussions with one of the largest wine subscription businesses in South Africa to venture into that business potentially. “We’re getting messages from merchants saying we’ve transformed their business. They’re adding new employees and growing because of us. And so it’s a win-win for the ecosystem that we can help merchants feel that the South African market is not the only market they can serve and can see the world as the market,” he said. “We’re all about success, helping them grow internationally, because the consumer markets overseas are just so much bigger than the domestic markets for these sorts of products. ” Davey said that TUNL will now focus on using its seed funding to improve sales and the onboarding process for new merchants. Notably, it has streamlined the onboarding experience, primarily relying on customer support assistance to a more self-service approach. Topics Reporter, Africa Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-12-13T08:07:14 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/13/south-african-e-commerce-startup-tunl-gets-funding-to-accelerate-growth-of-its-exports-platform/
| 937 | 1 |
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Revel, the car subscription startup from Spain, raises $123M to take its business up a gear
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The market for car sales has been onrocky groundin the last several years as consumers, facing tougher economic conditions, get presented with an ever-larger range of alternatives, from ride-hailing apps and multimodal alternatives through to new propositions for private car use. Today, a startup out of Spain calledRevelis announcing €115 million ($123 million) in funding to expand its business based around one of these models: a digital car “subscription” service, essentially a flexible lease agreement that includes insurance and maintenance, aimed at consumers willing typically to commit for at least a year. The funding is a combination of debt and equity: €100 million is structured financing earmarked to build out the car network, and €15 million is equity invested in the business itself. Investors include KKR, Santander Consumer Finance and others that are not being named. Enrique de Mateo, the CEO who co-founded the company with Daniel Marcos, declined to provide the company’s valuation. There have been plenty of startups that have tried to bring a technology spin to the leasing market. Some of these, like the startup Fair, raised hundreds of millions of dollars in equity and took on hundreds of millions more in debt before most definitelycrashing and burningafter failing to match customer demand to the capital-intensive efforts of buying in vehicles. So is there a model for car subscriptions, bringing in flexible ownership and leasing, thatcanwork? Revel, which was founded in 2020 (and is not to be confused with another transportation startup out of New YorkalsocalledRevel), aimed to take some of those bitter lessons on board when building its product. De Mateo said that before this latest round, the startup had only raised a modest €750,000, money that it used over the last three years mainly to test out different kinds of business models around the concept of car subscriptions. (Those tests and that business were small enough that de Mateo said he wouldn’t provide us with any sales and other figures. ) It found that people liked the idea of leasing — indeed, the leasing market is growing alot faster right now than the car sales market, fueled by startups in the space — and that in Revel’s home market of Spain, one year was a sweet spot, shorter than a typical lease of three to four years, and more economically appealing than a short-term rental. And with people used to the idea of subscriptions and on-demand everything, Revel added the ability for people to swap cars in and out from a range of options as part of it. Subs are paid for in monthly installments, and the fee includes services like insurance, maintenance and carbon offsetting. Revel can be used online or over an app, and an order can be carried out in the same time that it takes to subscribe to a streaming service. (The car is delivered after about a week. ) All of this is typically a lot faster, easier and more flexible than a traditional leasing provider. But it’s not exactly transparent. De Mateo confirmed that Revel never buys in vehicles, but he declined to talk about where it sources them, and what the business model is around how they are subsequently leased out. “That is the secret sauce of how we do it,” De Mateo said. “I don’t want to give an idea of how this works to our competitors. ” (But given there is a structured financing tranche of €100 million, that leads me to think that there is some kind of leasing arrangement between Revel and the suppliers. ) The potential for a company like Revel today lies in tapping a market of consumers who still want to have their own new cars, but who might not want to buy one outright. But longer term, Revel is also providing an avenue for something else: As cars become more advanced, and when (or if) fully autonomous vehicles are built and rolled out, for many people, the cost of these will be too high for most individuals to own. While that could open the door to more ride-hailing services, for those who want to have their own cars for driving, leasing might be the main way that they will be able to have these state-of-the-art cars for their own use. The funding being announced today is a bet from Revel that, now that it has figured out its business model, it’s time to super charge it and scale the operation
| 2023-09-15T04:00:53 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/14/revel-spain/
| 740 | 1 |
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6-point checklist for making sure your sustainability tech pitch is newsworthy
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From managing energy with innovative power solutions to decreasing the CO2 impact from food waste, impact-driven tech startups are actively decreasing our carbon footprint. So why isn’t there more coverage of these companies driving change? Where many go wrong when approaching the media is by thinking “the more the merrier. ” In fact, overwhelming journalists with information in your pitches signals to them that you don’t understand the hook of your story or what’s important to their audience. So, before communicating your green initiative in your next pitch, consider this six-point checklist to get your eco-conscious startup noticed and make the headlines. Journalists get hundreds of emails daily, and even if they wanted to, they couldn’t possibly answer each one. You need to grab their attention from their first glance, showing that you’ve got something that’s immediately attractive to their audience. In order to provide the perfect teaser of what’s to come in the full pitch, start by putting the most outstanding facts, names, and brands at the beginning of the subject line. For example, if your startup just completed a Series C funding with Greenpeace or the World Wide Fund for Nature, don’t be modest — put it front and center. Your first idea is never the strongest, so craft at least five different versions of your subject line and eliminate one at a time, depending on how clear, customized, controversial, and catchy each one is. However, keep in mind that many journalists are multitasking and skimming emails on their smartphones, so shoot for between 41 and 50 characters, or 6 to 8 words. That way the full subject line is visible on a mobile device. You can cut down on your title by removing adjectives and sentence etiquette. In other words, channel your newsroom voice when writing the subject line, which typically uses active verbs. Example of a mediocre subject line: Example of a good subject line: Customization is also as important here as it is within your actual pitch. For example, if you have an AI-driven solution like Wasteless that helps solve the third biggest contributor to climate change — food waste — here’s how you could adjust your angle for different journalists. A retail writer may be more concerned with how your AI cuts food waste by 50% and increases revenue by 110% in 12 weeks. An environmental writer covering climate change may be interested in how you’re reconditioning consumer behavior and reverting food insecurity. On the other hand, a journalist writing for a mainstream outlet in the United States might be concerned with food causing 25% of all carbon emissions and how you’re preventing Americans from paying a premium for steaks with a longer shelf life. Ultimately, every pitch you send out should have a different, captivating subject line and body of text that will connect with the recipient. If you’re finding this to be an uphill battle, work in reverse and write your subject line after you’ve nailed the most newsworthy details in the pitch itself. Forget the “How are you?” and “Hope you are well” pleasantries if you don’t know the journalists you’re pitching. This only comes off as sincere when you have a truly personal relationship. Instead, focus on getting to the point and nailing the introduction by removing fluff and background information and honing in on thenewsworthiness of your story. The ideal introductory paragraph is personalized for the specific recipient and reiterates why your news is relevant to them. Thirty-three percent of journalists don’t open emails due to a lack of personalization, so this is your chance to make them curious and highlight why your news serves their audience. However, claiming that your tech, which helps restore biodiversity, is “right up their alley” because they cover environmental tech isn’t going to cut it. Instead, highlight why this news would be meaningful to them by corroborating, questioning, or revealing changes that have occurred since they last wrote about another technology that studies killer whale gangs, for example. Ideally, you want to reference something they’ve written about in the last year. And here’s a newsflash: You actually have to engage with journalists’ work to do this successfully. After you’ve personalized your pitch, develop a compelling lead sentence. This is your news peg — a single sentence that summarizes the most enticing aspect of your announcement. It should have an aspect of timeliness to it and set the tone for the rest of the pitch. From reading your lead, journalists should be clear on why your news is relevant for them and their readers. If your news is newsworthy, it will fit into no more than two paragraphs or under 180 words. This is the optimal length and ensures your pitch is digestible and accessible as opposed to intimidating. Many journalists have also been vocal about this preference, so why ignore them? If your introduction highlights relevance, then your second paragraph should frame your news. Only well-known businesses like Patagonia, Unilever, or Burt’s Bees can get away with a company-centric pitch. For startups, you’ll have a better shot at standing out by illustrating the change you’re making. The goal is to intrigue, so stress how your business is addressing climate change, synthesize what’s relevant about your eco solution, and highlight the value in it. To do this successfully, understand that one angle isn’t going to pique everyone’s interest. You need to tailor your angle to what matters to different publications, journalists, and readers. Example of a fashion brand angle for a mainstream publication: Example of a fashion brand angle for a B2B sustainability publication: If you’re tying your news to a current trend, include statistics or information that validates the trend by referring to relatable people or a relatable scenario with an imagine section. In other words, paint the picture of the environmental monstrosity you’re addressing or the utopian dream you’re making a reality. At the end of the day, the more legwork you can do for journalists and set the stage, the better. Example excerpt from a pitch without data: Example excerpt from a pitch with data: The point is, rather than assuming journalists will see the relevance between your pitch, their beat, and the audience they serve, convince them that you’ve got something that they should prioritize. Don’t make journalists do the work for you — make their lives easier. Bad timing is one of the main reasons why journalists reject pitches. They want to be the first to get the inside scoop and share the news before it’s public. If your announcement isn’t today’s breaking news, you’ll have to convince journalists why it matters now, what’s newly relevant about it, and speak about the incremental changes in this arena as of late. There’s good timing and bad timing, so remember that your news is going to be buried next to every other pitch journalists receive that day. In other words, create a sense of urgency and give journalists a reason not to miss out. There is more than one way to convey timeliness. For example, you could position your news as part of a trend such asthe current AI wave, or show journalists why your story is timely using examples of current world events likethe recent heat wave, devastating floods, or wildfires sweeping the world. Example of a timely pitch: While the aim is to ride news cycles, steer clear of announcing news when journalists are preoccupied with more pressing matters such as covering top-tier industry events like the annual World Economic Forum and TechCrunch Disrupt. Unless you’re attending and plan to bring awareness to your sustainable movement onthe Sustainability Stage, break your news at a more optimal time. In other words, stay up to date with what is happening in the sustainability space and ensure you’re sharing news at the ideal time of the year, month, and day. Facts are critical when writing history, and journalists lose trust when details are questionable, omitted, or aren’t 100% accurate. Think like the journalists you’re pitching. If you were in their shoes, what questions would you ask? Consider exclusive data you could pull from your work that data journalists wouldn’t come across so easily on their own. You may be sitting on a lot of unique stats, which you take for granted in your day-to-day, so think how you could use it to strengthen your argument. Also, think about what key takeaways you can highlight even if you have a proprietary technology and nondisclosure agreement in place. Get all your ducks in a row by having your sources and background information ready for journalists by the time you start pitching. Often, you are so close to your tech solution that it’s easy to forget that your complex tech is not so black and white for those not on your internal team. So, be ready to demystify your tech by offering introduction or demo calls. Practice explaining your tech in basic speech and ditch the comprehensive language to the point where any layperson would grasp the concept. Fancy words are no longer the new flex, clarity is. If you’re entering into a partnership with, for example, a bioengineering company, ensure that its representative and communications team are on board before you promise journalists a meeting and have an approved quote already prepared in your press materials. If it’s customer validation they need, then identify real people who are using your solution or show empathy in your pitch by identifying people directly impacted by the lack of action being taken. This is impactful when pitching sustainability news, especially if you’re drastically shifting people’s behaviors in, for example, the United States, where a meager8% feel an urgency to solve global warming. At the end of the day, responsiveness is great, but being proactive and answering these questions upfront before they are asked could separate your pitch from the hundreds of others. Beyond helping yourself, think about how you can help journalists. Understand more about the journalists you’re pitching by reading their work and contributing to other stories that they’re covering. Journalists have a strong code of ethics and will always have a third party confirm and validate the news they’re covering, so if you have valuable resources that can help, share them. If you know experts outside of your organization that could provide social proof or verify a trend journalists are covering, make the introduction. This is especially helpful, as credible sources can be hard to come by on short notice. By making yourself useful to journalists and thinking beyond your own story, you’re proving yourself as a reliable source, which is step one to building a long-term relationship with journalists. Being helpful to journalists means giving them everything they may need if they decide to do a write-up. With that being said, turn your press materials into the best resource to add depth to your story. Your digital press kit should house your press release, but most importantly, this would be where you store visuals. Demo videos are a nice way to eliminate complex concepts and give a firsthand look at, for example, how your indoor climate management solution has a reduced carbon footprint. Images also boost readership and engagement, helping to tell a more complete story. Instead of attaching files and creating a heavy pitch that will definitely land in spam, direct to one place. Limit yourself to one link in your email and place all these materials into a press website hosting all the materials and resources needed for the news story. The current era of global boiling is seeing ocean temperatures hitting 90°F, snowfall in certain regions for the first time, food security being threatened, workers protesting against working under these conditions, and ultimately Earth’s dwindling capacity to regenerate for future generations. Ambitious tech startups with green and environmentally sound solutions are in a unique position to help not only divert but also prevent further degradation. But in order to do so, they need to make sure their mission is clear and the public is well aware of the importance. The above tips are here to guide green startups and founders on how to turn their pitches into relevant, newsworthy stories for journalists and the audiences they serve. There’s no time like the present to set a new standard. Show journalists and their readers that sustainability is no longer a side issue or just a worthy cause. It’s our duty to help Mother Earth. Topics Contributor Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-11-01T15:35:20 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/01/6-point-checklist-for-making-sure-your-sustainability-tech-pitch-is-newsworthy/
| 2,145 | 1 |
6c21f455b6958c05fb8aee8ad1346c75
|
{"bias_density": 0.22, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 4, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 0, "geographic_bias": 1, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 5, "concerns": ["Strong left-leaning political language"]}
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Selector automatically spots IT issues and recommends fixes
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AIOps, short for “artificial intelligence in operations,” is a process that uses AI to automate IT tasks. More organizations are embracing it as AI commodifies, yet adoption is still lagging. According to a recent IDCsurvey, almost half of companies said that they were just getting started in AIOps, while a third indicated they had an AIOps roadmap but “had a lot more work to do. ” Longtime Juniper Networks execs Kannan Kothandaraman and Nitin Kumar thought they might know how to spread AIOps far and wide. In 2019, they foundedSelector, which uses data and AI to attempt to identify IT problems and ways to fix them. “We came up with the initial idea for Selector after working with a major hyperscaler and getting a view into how they were using data to better optimize their network operations,” Kothandaraman told TechCrunch. “They were able to put machine learning and AI to work throughout their network, using their data to increase efficiency. ” So Kothandaraman and Kumar started chatting with similar companies in the space. A lot were looking for help to achieve what the hyperscaler did — that is, building AI into their operations. After assembling a team, Kothandaraman and Kumar launched Selector. The company’s platform monitors corporate infrastructure, prescribing actions after an IT incident occurs. Via an AI-powered chat interface, users can ask questions about problems — for example, “Where did this outage occur?” — and Selector will respond in natural language. “The main thing we’re doing is simplifying,” Kothandaraman said. “There’s an explosion of complexity and data that teams are struggling to deal with in enterprises. We’re providing the insights that these teams need to do their work. ” Now Selector has competition — and a fair amount of it. There’sKeepandSenser, which aim to help operations teams reduce alert fatigue. BigPandais one of the larger AIOps players, having raised hundreds of millions of dollars in venture capital. And incumbents likeNew RelicandServiceNowoffer their own AIOps solutions. Fortunately for Selector, the AIOps market is growing at a rapid clip. By oneestimate, the sector will generate $213. 66 billion by 2033, up from $25. 24 billion in 2023. Selector, which has around 40 customers, including AT&T, Bell Canada, and Singtel, this month closed a $33 million Series B round led by Ansa. Kothandaraman wouldn’t share Selector’s valuation, but he said that it’s increased 4x since October 2021. “In the last two years, we’ve been deployed by some of the largest telecommunications and enterprise companies in the world,” he said. “Now we’re seeing increased demand from others. It’s the time to invest in expanding our footprint and awareness. ” Bringing Selector’s total raised to $66 million, the Series B proceeds will be put toward expanding the company’s footprint with new offices and staff across the U. S. , Canada, Europe, Singapore, India, and Japan, Kothandaraman said. Selector plans to grow its workforce from 115 people to 150 next year. Two Bear Capital, Atlantic Bridge, SineWave Ventures, and the aforementioned client AT&T, Bell Canada, and Singtel also participated in Selector’s Series B
| 2024-11-19T13:00:18 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/19/selector-automatically-spots-it-issues-and-recommends-fixes/
| 508 | 1 |
9d063cb73f479cb61d73f2585872efc8
|
{"bias_density": 0.59, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 1, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 2, "age_bias": 1, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 4, "concerns": []}
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TechCrunch+ roundup: SaaS valuations up, clean energy tax credits, H-1B transfer options
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Can emerging managers do a better job of expanding access to capital than established VC firms? Because many funds with less than $50M under management “are led by those from underrepresented backgrounds,” there’s “an opportunity for less experienced managersto step in and back the founders being overlooked and ignoredon a higher level,” reports Dominic Madori-Davis. Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to membersUse discount codeTCPLUSROUNDUPto save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription To learn more, she interviewed: Due to the Juneteenth holiday in the U. S. , I’ll be back next Friday, June 23 with a new roundup. Thanks very much for reading TC+! Walter ThompsonEditorial Manager, TechCrunch+@yourprotagonist Smaller VCs are having an impact on diverse investors and founders A song by Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood came to mind when I read that public SaaS companies have reached their highest valuations so far this year: I’ve been down so longIt looks like up to me Weaving data from the Bessemer Cloud Index and Altimeter Capital Partner Jamin Ball together with recent news coverage, Alex Wilhelm found reason for guarded optimism: “Startups are hardly out of the woods, but the market is no longer moving away from their valuation marks and is instead bolstering the value of their public comparables. ” Rejoice, for startup valuations are slowly recovering To receive the TechCrunch+ Roundup as an email each Tuesday and Friday, scroll down to find the “sign up for newsletters” section on this page, select “TechCrunch+ Roundup,” enter your email, and click “subscribe. ” Under new rules released by the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of the Treasury, local, state and Tribal governments can now access clean energy tax credits. “The changes could pave the way for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investment in the coming decade,” reports Tim De Chant. “That tidal microturbine startup you’ve been incubating? Now might be a great time to start looking for investors. ” New guidance from the US Treasury could unleash billions in renewable energy investment Dear Sophie, My startup is hiring and many excellent engineers need H-1B transfers, but I haven’t done one yet. Approximately how much time and money will we need to set aside for the process? Are there alternatives? — Careful Co-Founder Ask Sophie: How much time and money will we need for an H-1B transfer? Some founders may expect investors to stop them mid-presentation by shouting “shut up and take my money!” but life is not an episode of Futurama. No one literally sells their pitch in the room, but a tight deck is a strong signal that the founders understand their market, however. Netmaker, an infrastructure startup that helps customers create and manage virtual overlay networks, raised a $2. 3M round with this slightly redacted presentation: Pitch Deck Teardown: Netmaker’s $2. 3M seed deck On recent episodes of TechCrunch’s Found podcast, two founders of AI-related health care companies talked about how they’re working to create ethical algorithms. “If done in haste, or done poorly, AI models have the potential to cause real harm,” reports Rebecca Szkutak, who interviewed Amy Brown, founder and CEO of Authenticx, and Eli Ben-Joseph, co-founder and CEO of Regard. How two founders approach building ethical AI startups in health care
| 2023-06-16T17:00:43 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/16/techcrunch-roundup-saas-valuations-up-clean-energy-tax-credits-h-1b-transfer-options/
| 540 | 1 |
f097a147ffe13e3683a7213d015169f8
|
{"bias_density": 0.28, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 1, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 0, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 1}, "total_bias_indicators": 2, "concerns": []}
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Mercedes is adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system, for some reason
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Mercedes owners in the U. S. will soon add a new luxury to their already luxurious vehicles:ChatGPT. The automaker is adding OpenAI’s conversational AI agent to its MBUX infotainment system, though what it could possibly be needed for is hard to say. U. S. owners of models that use MBUX will be able to opt into a beta program starting tomorrow, June 16, activating ChatGPT functionality. This will enable the highly versatile large language model to augment the car’s conversation skills. You can join up simply by telling your car “Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program. ” It’s not really clear what for, though. After all, a car is a pretty well constrained environment. People need to drive, navigate, and control their media and the car’s basic functions, and certainly a voice interface is sometimes the safest or best option for doing so without taking their eyes off the road. ChatGPT, on the other hand, excels in seeming human while performing a back-and-forth on any topic, and inventing new facts to keep the exchange running smoothly. It can summarize and synthesize existing content, write or plagiarize code, or help you come up with wedding vows. Are any of these things you would want to do while driving, or even in the passenger’s seat? Mercedes describes the capabilities thusly: Users will experience a voice assistant that not only accepts natural voice commands but can also conduct conversations. Soon, participants who ask the Voice Assistant for details about their destination, to suggest a new dinner recipe, or to answer a complex question, will receive a more comprehensive answer – while keeping their hands on the wheel and eyes on the road. Sure, a relatively complex query like “what’s a good independent sandwich shop on my route that’s within half a mile of a gas station” might stump a traditional voice interface. If you don’t have a passenger to look that up for you, it might be nice to have that capability. Who is asking for a new dinner recipe on the road? Is that really the best use case they could come up with? As usual, the benefits of the technology are somewhat notional and surely no driver asked for this capability. Perhaps it is simply that Mercedes is tired of running its own voice interface service and would rather offload it to a third party. The interface prominently says (if you look closely at the top image) “Powered by ChatGPT in Microsoft AI,” in MBUX, in the Mercedes Me app — like a nested doll. Who’s doing what? If you’re worried about privacy, you should be. Although Mercedes loudly expresses its concern over user data, it’s clear that it retains and uses your conversations: The voice command data collected is stored in the Mercedes-Benz Intelligent Cloud, where it is anonymised and analysed. Mercedes-Benz developers will gain helpful insights into specific requests, enabling them to set precise priorities in the further development of voice control. Findings from the beta programme will be used to further improve the intuitive voice assistant and to define the rollout strategy for large language models in more markets and languages. It is a beta test, after all – learning what people use it for is kind of the point. And if you’re the private type, you probably don’t own a new Mercedes to begin with. Topics Writer & Photographer Devin Coldewey is a Seattle-based writer and photographer. His personal website is coldewey. cc. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-06-15T18:29:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/15/mercedes-is-adding-chatgpt-to-its-infotainment-system-for-some-reason/
| 650 | 1 |
1f4159bd0e6748eb6bea60f6539dbaaf
|
{"bias_density": 0.4, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 1, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 2, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 3, "concerns": []}
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Quora’s Poe now lets users create and share custom AI-powered apps
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Poe, Quora’s platform that brings together a number of AI models under one roof, has launched a new capability that lets users build visual interfaces — apps, essentially — on top of any combination of models. CalledPoe Apps, the feature allows Poe users to describe the app they want to create in the new App Creator tool. Descriptions can include mentions of specific models they want the app to use — for example, OpenAI’so3-minior Google’s video-generatingVeo 2— or broader, more general specs. App Creator, which is powered by Anthropic’s recently releasedClaude 3. 7 Sonnet, translates the description into code for the app interface along with custom logic expressed in JavaScript. Poe Apps can run side-by-side with Poe’s chatbot window or be entirely visual, and their underlying code is exposed for manual adjusting and fine-tuning. Quora created a few example apps, including an app that transforms photos into 3D anime-style art using OpenAI’sGPT-4oandBlack Forest Labs‘ Flux-Pro-1. 1. Another example app removes unwanted objects from images, leveraging Bria’s Bria Eraser model. Poe Apps can be shared with other Poe users, only on the web for now (iOS and Android support is on the way, Quora says). Each time an app uses an AI model, it’ll draw from a user’s point balance with Poe. Free users receive a daily point allotment, while users subscribed to Poe’s $5 per month premium tier get flexible daily or monthly point packages. In a blog post, Quora, which noted that App Creator is available at a reduced early-access price for a limited time, hinted at possible app monetization options. “This is an early launch and we have a long roadmap ahead to give creators even more power, including the ability to earn money directly from their apps,” the company wrote. “We are excited to see what you all create. And we are excited to see how much better we are able to make Poe Apps as the models continue to get better at writing code this year. ” Poe Apps, which expand on theweb apps feature Poe launched last July, are a lot like Anthropic’s Artifacts and OpenAI’s ChatGPT Canvas tools: dedicated workspaces where users can edit and add to AI-generated content like code and documents. While the apps these types of tools can produce are rather limited, they certainly demonstrate how far models’ programming capabilities have come
| 2025-02-25T18:34:46 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/25/quoras-poe-now-lets-users-create-and-share-custom-ai-powered-apps/
| 391 | 0.9 |
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|
{"bias_density": 0.18, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 1, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 0, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 1, "concerns": []}
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Wreak havoc on your favorite streamer’s game with Crowd Control
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You’re streaming the Sims to your loyal Twitch followers when suddenly, a fire ignites in the middle of your virtual home. As you scramble to put out the fire before the Sim firefighters arrive, another flame appears out of nowhere. In the Twitch chat, your fans are giggling — they have caused quite the ruckus in your Sim neighborhood, but as a creator, you get the last laugh. You just got paid. With support for more than 100 popular games,Crowd Controlchanges the way that streamers engage their fans, while also unlocking fun new ways to make money. By reverse engineering these games, Crowd Control has created user-friendly apps and plug-ins that let fans pay to trigger an event on a creator’s livestream. So, as a fan, you can summon enemies in Minecraft, spawn a rare, shiny Pokémon in Pokémon Emerald, ormake the creator’s avatar tinyin Resident Evil 4. You could use your micropayment to make a creator’s gameplay more difficult, or if you’re nice, you can give them a boost to help them out of a sticky situation. Over 70,000 creators have already used Crowd Control, which started out as a Twitch-only app. Now, with the release of its 2. 0 beta, the app is available on YouTube, TikTok, Discord and Facebook Gaming. “It’s been a long road of technical hurdles and experiments,” CEO Matthew “Jaku” Jakubowski told TechCrunch. “We have a really cool solution that just will work on just about any platform. ” Jaku founded Warp World, the parent to Crowd Control, after leaving his job as director of cybersecurity atUptake. Warp World has developed other wide-reaching video game projects likeTurnip. Exchange, which was all the rage whenAnimal Crossing: New Horizonswas at its peak popularity, but Crowd Control is by far its largest technical undertaking. So far, Warp World has raised a round of pre-seed funding. An obvious risk for any startup that iterates on other platforms is getting rendered obsolete by those platforms themselves. Linktree, for example, was valued at $1. 3 billion last year, but now the company might be sweating:Instagramrolled out support for up to five links-in-bio. Even though Crowd Control doesn’t have any of its technology patented, Jaku doesn’t think other companies could catch up. “For someone to build a similar sort of service at the speed that we have, and the library that we have…It will take some time,” he said. “I think we’re in a good spot where we’ve established ourselves in the field for over four years. ” If a game is not part of Crowd Control’s library, developers can now implement fan-controlled interactions in their games with Crowd Control’s developer plug-in, which is compatible with any game built on Unity, Unreal Engine, GameMaker Studio and other engines. “With the developers building out this sort of stuff, it means reaching thousands of creators pretty much instantly,” Jaku said. “Increasing replayability is always huge for gamers or developers — they want that screen time. ” He said that a typical Unity developer could probably make their game compatible with Crowd Control within a few weeks, but he’s also seen developers pull it off in a weekend. As of now, Crowd Control keeps 20% of fans’ payments to creators, which is the standard split for Twitch plug-ins. But now, as a multiplatform app, Crowd Control seems to be getting around Twitch’s cut through a coin system. Other creator platforms likeFanhousehave taken similar steps to circumvent App Store fees and maximize creators’ profits. “So, $100 is $100 of coins,” Jaku explained. “Instead of those coins only being available on one channel, that viewer will now have $100 worth of coins that they could spend on any channel. ” Crowd Control only has a team of ten, but most of them have been creators themselves at some point. Jaku himself started streaming Super Mario Maker on Twitch in 2015 and climbed the ranks to become a Twitch Partner. Then he built the software that inspired Crowd Control to spice up his Borderlands 2 streams in 2018. “We’re a passionate team,” Jaku said. “Everything we do is for the creators. ” Topics Senior Writer Amanda Silberling is a senior writer at TechCrunch covering the intersection of technology and culture. She has also written for publications like Polygon, MTV, the Kenyon Review, NPR, and Business Insider. She is the co-host of Wow If True, a podcast about internet culture, with science fiction author Isabel J. Kim. Prior to joining TechCrunch, she worked as a grassroots organizer, museum educator, and film festival coordinator. She holds a B. A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania and served as a Princeton in Asia Fellow in Laos. Send tips through Signal, an encrypted messaging app, to @amanda. 100. For anything else, email amanda@techcrunch. com. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-05-01T21:48:09 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/01/crowd-control-interactive-stream/
| 865 | 1 |
b6876f956dfd4dd7c7d18f56ba2ff139
|
{"bias_density": 0.52, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 1, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 2, "age_bias": 2, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 5, "concerns": []}
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Why DeepSeek’s new AI model thinks it’s ChatGPT
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Earlier this week, DeepSeek, a well-funded Chinese AI lab, released an “open” AI model that beats many rivals on popular benchmarks. The model,DeepSeek V3, is large but efficient, handling text-based tasks like coding and writing essays with ease. It also seems to think it’sChatGPT. PostsonX— and TechCrunch’s own tests — show that DeepSeek V3 identifies itself as ChatGPT, OpenAI’s AI-powered chatbot platform. Asked to elaborate, DeepSeek V3 insists it is a version of OpenAI’sGPT-4model released in 2023. This actually reproduces as of today. In 5 out of 8 generations, DeepSeekV3 claims to be ChatGPT (v4), while claiming to be DeepSeekV3 only 3 times. Gives you a rough idea of some of their training data distribution. https://t. co/Zk1KUppBQMpic. twitter. com/ptIByn0lcv — Lucas Beyer (bl16) (@giffmana)December 27, 2024 The delusions run deep. If you ask DeepSeek V3 a question about DeepSeek’s API, it’ll give you instructions on how to useOpenAI’sAPI. DeepSeek V3 even tells some of the samejokesas GPT-4 — down to the punchlines. So what’s going on? Models like ChatGPT and DeepSeek V3 are statistical systems. Trained on billions of examples, they learn patterns in those examples to make predictions — like how “to whom” in an email typically precedes “it may concern. ” DeepSeek hasn’t revealed much about the source of DeepSeek V3’s training data. But there’sno shortageof public datasets containing text generated by GPT-4 via ChatGPT. If DeepSeek V3 was trained on these, the model might’ve memorized some of GPT-4’s outputs and is now regurgitating them verbatim. “Obviously, the model is seeing raw responses from ChatGPT at some point, but it’s not clear where that is,” Mike Cook, a research fellow at King’s College London specializing in AI, told TechCrunch. “It could be ‘accidental’ … but unfortunately, we have seen instances of people directly training their models on the outputs of other models to try and piggyback off their knowledge. ” Cook noted that the practice of training models on outputs from rival AI systems can be “very bad” for model quality, because it can lead to hallucinations and misleading answers like the above. “Like taking a photocopy of a photocopy, we lose more and more information and connection to reality,” Cook said. It might also be against those systems’ terms of service. OpenAI’s terms prohibit users of its products, including ChatGPT customers, from using outputs to develop models that compete with OpenAI’s own. OpenAI and DeepSeek didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment. However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted what appeared to be adigat DeepSeek and other competitors on X Friday. “It is (relatively) easy to copy something that you know works,” Altman wrote. “It is extremely hard to do something new, risky, and difficult when you don’t know if it will work. ” Granted, DeepSeek V3 is far from the first model to misidentify itself. Google’s Gemini and otherssometimesclaim to be competing models. For example, prompted in Mandarin, Geminisaysthat it’s Chinese company Baidu’s Wenxinyiyan chatbot. And that’s because the web, which is where AI companies source the bulk of their training data, is becominglitteredwith AIslop. Content farms are using AI to createclickbait. Bots are floodingRedditandX. By oneestimate, 90% of the web could be AI-generated by 2026. This “contamination,” if you will, has made itquite difficultto thoroughly filter AI outputs from training datasets. It’s certainly possible that DeepSeek trained DeepSeek V3 directly on ChatGPT-generated text. Google was onceaccusedof doing the same, after all. Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the nonprofit AI Now Institute, said the cost savings from “distilling” an existing model’s knowledge can be attractive to developers, regardless of the risks. “Even with internet data now brimming with AI outputs, other models that would accidentally train on ChatGPT or GPT-4 outputs would not necessarily demonstrate outputs reminiscent of OpenAI customized messages,” Khlaaf said. “If it is the case that DeepSeek carried out distillation partially using OpenAI models, it would not be surprising. ” More likely, however, is that a lot of ChatGPT/GPT-4 data made its way into the DeepSeek V3 training set. That means the model can’t be trusted to self-identify, for one. But what is more concerning is the possibility that DeepSeek V3, by uncritically absorbing and iterating on GPT-4’s outputs, couldexacerbatesome of the model’sbiasesandflaws. TechCrunch has an AI-focused newsletter!Sign up hereto get it in your inbox every Wednesday
| 2024-12-27T18:49:49 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/27/why-deepseeks-new-ai-model-thinks-its-chatgpt/
| 714 | 1 |
8434d8fd5dd01c9304d5063209090837
|
{"bias_density": 0.23, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 1, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 1, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 2, "concerns": []}
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TechCrunch+ roundup: Venture debt VC survey, PLG boosting tactics, bootstrapping to $40M ARR
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How many paying customers do you have, and how long are they locked in? Annual recurring revenue (ARR) has always been a key metric, but with valuations down across the board and new money too tight to mention, it’s now a lodestar — especially for self-funded startups. Hotjar CEO Mohannad Ali wrote an article for TC+ laying outfour principles from his bootstrapped company’s product-led growth strategythat helped them “move quickly and pivot regularly. ” Full TechCrunch+ articles are only available to membersUse discount codeTCPLUSROUNDUPto save 20% off a one- or two-year subscription Early-stage startups often feel the need to go big or go home when it comes to marketing, but “you’ll need to create your own demand to get the ball rolling,” says Ali, who describes several tactics they used to “generate scarcity and demand” while engaging early adopters: “Ultimately, building a successful startup through bootstrapped efforts is no easy feat, but it can be incredibly rewarding if you do it right,” writes Ali. Thanks for reading, Walter ThompsonEditorial Manager, TechCrunch+@yourprotagonist Here’s what I learned while leading a bootstrapped startup to $40M ARR Ever found yourself riding in someone else’s car, feeling unsafe and clutching the grab-handle above the passenger seat? For startups that are still searching for product-market fit, marketing can be a grab-handle. Similarly, spending precious cycles developing new features for specific customers is another form of superstitious behavior. A study that looked at more than 30,000 SaaS companies found five key drivers for optimizing product-led growth strategy. Your first order of business? Fix the leaks in your funnel, advises Christian Owens, executive chairman and co-founder of Paddle. “This can account for 20-40% of your overall churn rate and is usually to do with failed payments, meaning that leveling up your billing processes should be a top priority. ” 5 ways SaaS companies can level up their product-led growth Dear Sophie, I co-founded a startup last year, and my co-founder and I were just accepted to an accelerator program in the United States! What type of visa can we get to come to the U. S. that allows us to stay there so we can grow our startup after the accelerator ends? — Jazzed in Johannesburg Ask Sophie: Which visas are best for US startup accelerators? Initially, venture debt was a way for new companies to acquire essential hardware before they had enough revenue to write checks for desks, chairs and copying machines. Today, early-stage startups use it to gain liquidity, borrowing against their next funding round or future earnings, but after the failures of First Republic and Silicon Valley Bank, Rebecca Szkutak interviewed several investors who all “agreed that it would get more expensive in the future. ” The new rules of venture debt are already being written Rebecca Szkutak surveyed five investors from “different fund sizes, stages and focus areas” to learn more about how they’re advising founders regarding venture debt and “which kinds of startups are best suited to this form of financing:” 5 investors discuss what’s in store for venture debt following SVB’s collapse Image Credits:Atlas Studio / venimo [composite] / Getty Images / Getty ImagesAfrican-Americans are underrepresented across every sector of tech, but an analysis by Dominic-Madori Davis and Tim De Chant found that “U. S. -based Black climate tech founders received only 1% of all capital invested in climate tech startups” in 2022. “That’s $214 million out of $21. 5 billion,” which is in line with overall funding levels for Black founders. Regardless, “the lack of funding and dearth of DEI data suggests that the venture community writ large is overlooking a vast amount of untapped potential. ” Without Black representation in climate tech, ‘the planet will burn’ Faster is not always better, especially when it comes to raising venture capital. In this climate, it’s easy to see why emerging managers might want “to hold a first close as soon as LP capital is in the door,” writes Rebecca Szkutak. “But that may not be the best strategy in the long run. ” Although a first close starts the clock on collecting management fees, it’s better to have some deals in the pipeline and a detailed strategy for future fundraising first. “If you set a date, you will miss it,” said Kari Harris, a partner at law firm Mintz. “You will retreat and have to go back to the market, and it will look like you failed. ” Emerging managers shouldn’t rush a first close – even in this market For a change of pace, Haje Jan Kamps analyzed a winning pitch deck for a late-stage startup: Copenhagen-based Ageras, a fintech platform that serves small businesses. The partially-redacted 31-slide deck reflects the complexity of “a 300+ person company with a global footprint,” writes Haje: Pitch Deck Teardown: Ageras’ $36M Private Equity deck
| 2023-05-19T17:00:49 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/19/techcrunch-roundup-venture-debt-vc-survey-plg-boosting-tactics-bootstrapping-to-40m-arr/
| 800 | 1 |
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Threads, Meta’s Twitter competitor, is now live
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Meta is taking on Twitter with a new app. Instagram today announced the anticipated launch of its text-based social networking app,Threads, which allows Instagram users to authenticate with their existing credentials in order to post short updates, including text up to 500 characters; links; photos; and videos up to 5 minutes in length. At launch, Threads is available on iOS and Android in 100 countries, though not in the EU, reportedly due toconcernsaround adhering to local data privacy regulations. Users can log in with their Instagram credentials, where their username and verification status will carry over. However, Threads profiles can be customized independently as well. The app’s existence was first scooped byMoneyControlthis March and later confirmed byPlatformer. In June, Metapreviewedthe app to employees during a company-wide meeting. Further leaksoffered more details about the app’s target market of high-profile celebrities, influencers and artists, and its planned feature set. While the Jack Dorsey–backed Twitter rivalBlueskyhas beengrowingin popularity in recent months, leveraging its own decentralized protocol, the AT Protocol, Instagram’s new app will soon offer support for ActivityPub — the same social networking protocol used by open source Twitter rivalMastodon, along with other federated apps. Once that takes effect, Threads will be able to broaden its reach, as Mastodon’s ecosystemengages1. 7 million active users. But we aren’t sure when exactly Threads will deliver on this feature. “We’re committed to building support for ActivityPub, the protocol behind Mastodon, into this app. We weren’t able to finish it for launch given a number of complications that come along with a decentralized network, but it’s coming,” Instagram headAdam Mosseri saidbefore launch. “If you’re wondering why this matters, here’s a reason: you may one day end up leaving Threads, or, hopefully not, end up de-platformed. If that ever happens, you should be able to take your audience with you to another server. Being open can enable that. ” However, the choice also puts Threads in competition with other Mastodon clients, including indie apps likeIvoryand the Mozilla-fundedMammoth. Flipboard,Medium, and WordPress. com ownerAutomattichave also invested in the Mastodon ecosystem amid the Twitter exodus. But Meta’s entry into the open decentralized social web has raisedconcernsthat it’s planning to enact an “embrace, extend and extinguish” strategy designed to allow it to dominate in this emerging market, similar to how Google took hold of web-based email. We have yet to see whether Threads will catch on, though it’s certainlya great timefor Meta to dip its toes into microblogging. It’s worth noting, however, that Meta doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to building successful stand-alone apps. Over the years, the company has shut down numerous stand-alone apps, includingHello, Moves,Paper,Poke, Camera,Home,Slingshot, Rooms, Riff,Bolt,Lifestage, Groups,Stickered,Moments,Notify,Bonfire,Lasso,Noviand others, includingBoomerang, Hyperlapse,Direct,IGTV, andThreadsfrom Instagram, and virtually all its experiments from it internal incubator,NPE team, like BARS, E. gg, Forecast, Collab, Kit, Hobbi, Tuned and more. To access Threads, users will first need to authenticate using their current Instagram login credentials. The app will then populate with their existing account details, like name, username, photo, and followers. Verification will also roll over to the new app. This integration gives Instagram’s new app a jump-start in terms of sign-ups — which the company alluded to in earlierleaked marketing materials, where it noted that with “one tap, anyone can follow the accounts they follow on Instagram. ” Beyond the immediate access to your network, another benefit of the app’s Instagram integration is that it will carry over users’ block lists from Instagram. Plus, it operates under the same Community Guidelines as Instagram, making it easier to understand what’s permitted and what’s not. Users will also be able to toggle what audiences they will allow to reply to each of their posts. Instagram has been experimenting with other ways for users to connect outside of sharing photos and videos to Reels, Stories and Feeds, including withthe launch of “broadcast channels” in February 2023, which offered creators a way to more directly connect with followers by posting text, images, polls, reactions,GIFs and morein messages in users’ Instagram inboxes. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has since been using the feature to send out product news. Ahead of the new app’s release, several developers and reverse engineers had been digging into Instagram’s code to discover how it would work, including leaker Alessandro Paluzzi. He found that the app would support 500 characters — less than Twitter’s now10,000 for paid subscribers, though more than its280 charactersfor non-paying users. At one point, he also discovered Meta wascalling the app“an Instagram for your thoughts. ” Another source, social media consultantMatt Navarra, had reported in mid-May that Meta was seeking out early adopters to try a pre-release version app with a focus on high-profile influencers and celebrities, like actors, producers, writers, directors, showrunners, athletes and comedians. 🔥 NEW DETAILS: Meta’s NEW text based app to rival Twitter launching summer 2023 While it will exist as its own separate app, it will be integrated with Instagram. Users will keep their same Instagram handle, verification will roll over, and their Instagram followers will… — Matt Navarra (I quit X. Follow me on Threads) (@MattNavarra)May 12, 2023 Today’s launch is not the first time Instagram has experimented with text-based updates for social sharing. The company last Decemberintroduced Notes, a way to leave short, 60-character text posts for friends to see just above their Instagram DM inbox. The feature was updated with support for music-sharing in June. Not to mention Instagram once launched a separate app calledThreads, which was kind of like Snapchat. It no longer exists. When Threads appeared on theApp Storefor preorder a few days before launch, some users noticed that the app collects a lot of user data. According to Apple’s listing, the Threads iOS app may collect data related to health, finances, purchases, contacts, usage data, browsing history and other sensitive info. Unfortunately, this data collection isn’t really different from other major social platforms like TikTok and Twitter, or Meta’s own Instagram and Facebook. But with so many apps competing to become the “next Twitter” (if such a thing is even possible), users have more agency to choose a platform that has less dubious privacy practices. Still, Threads has a leg up, since users’ Instagram networks will be built in. Withongoingprivacy concerns among Meta’s family of apps, Threads will not be launchingin the EU— at least not for now. The Guardian‘s sources at Meta reportedly delayed the launch due to legal uncertainty around data use under theDigital Markets Act, which passed in March. Meta has reason to be wary of this changing EU legislation; in May, the company was fined around$1. 3 billionfor exporting European Union user data to the U. S. for processing. For now, EU users have one less Twitter alternative to choose from. As for those who have access to Threads from the get-go, users now get to decide if they want Meta’s family of apps to take up an even greater slice of their attention. Everything we know about Instagram’s Twitter clone, due this summer Meta is working on a decentralized social app
| 2023-07-05T23:00:48 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/05/threads-metas-twitter-competitor-is-now-live/
| 1,169 | 1 |
fcfa2db77724327b93ccd9a887c3e9d9
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AWS enters into ‘strategic partnership’ with Saudi Arabia-backed Humain
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Amazonsaysit will work with Humain, the AI company recently launched by Saudi Arabia’s ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, to invest “$5 billion-plus” in a strategic partnership to build an “AI Zone” in Saudi Arabia. The AI Zone will include dedicated Amazon Web Services (AWS) AI infrastructure, servers, networks, and training and certification programs, according to a press release. Humain is pledging to develop AI solutions using AWS technologies and to work with AWS on providing access to tools and programs for Saudi Arabia-based AI startups. AWS joins tech giants Nvidia, AMD, and others in partnering with Humain, which is funded by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF). American tech firms have looked to the PIF as a source of capital. Companies likeGoogleandSalesforcehave also recently worked with the PIF on AI-related projects and investments. President Donald Trump and several tech industry allies attended a U. S. -Saudi investment forum on Tuesday. Under anew Trump administration initiative, U. S. -based tech suppliers, including Nvidia and AMD, have been permitted to arrange deals with Saudi Arabian firms. Saudi Arabia has mandated AI companies and services in the kingdom store data locally, pushing vendors to put facilities there to avoid losing contracts. Both Google and Oracle have announced expansion plans in the region over the past year. Amazon early last March pledged to spendbillions of dollarson data centers in Saudi Arabia. On Tuesday, the company said it is devoting around $5. 3 billion to develop an AWS region in the kingdom scheduled to come online in 2026. The AI Zone commitments are an “additional investment” separate from the roughly $5. 3 billion, Amazon said. It isn’t clear, however, if Amazon’s contribution to the AI Zone will draw on the tranche the company originally announced. TechCrunch has reached out to Amazon for clarification and will update this piece if we hear back
| 2025-05-13T19:05:26 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/13/aws-enters-into-strategic-partnership-with-saudi-arabia-backed-humain/
| 306 | 0.9 |
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Abu Dhabi pours $738.5M into China’s Tesla challenger Nio
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China’s electric vehicle companies are pouring into the Middle East where both investors and consumers have a growing appetite for the country’s Tesla challengers. Shanghai-based NioannouncedTuesday that CYVN Holdings, a smart mobility-focused investment vehicle majority-owned by the Abu Dhabi government, will invest a total of $738. 5 million in the Chinese EV maker. Nio, which is listed on NYSE, will issue 84,695,543 Class A ordinary shares at $8. 72 apiece. In addition, CYVN has entered into an agreement with an affiliate of Tencent, which invested in Nioback in 2017, to purchase 40,137,614 Class A ordinary shares from the social and gaming giant. Upon completion of the deals, the Abu Dhabi-backed firm will own a roughly 7% stake in Nio. CYVN will have the right to nominate one director to Nio’s board of directors so long as it continues to own no less than 5% of the EV maker. Abu Dhabi’s strategic investment will also initiate a partnership to help Nio expand globally. Niolaunched its internalization in 2021, starting with Norway followed by several other European markets. But now the United Arab Emirates, in itstransition to net zero, has become an attractive market to China’s EV companies that are facing mounting price competition at home that’s in part sparked by Tesla. Last year, a senior minister of the UAEunveiledthat the country had plans to invest $160 billion in clean and renewable energy sources over the next three decades, building on top of the $40 billion already committed to clean energy over the last 15 years. BYD, which is quickly catching up on Tesla’s global market share,announcedits entry into the UAE in March through a partnership with local distributor Al-Futtaim, with plans to bring four of its models, including all-electric and hybrid vehicles, to the Middle Eastern country. Geely, the largest private automaker in China with an expanding line of electric models, has also plugged itself into the UAE market by working withthe luxury car importer AGMC. Chinese EV startup Nio’s journey to the West BYD is overtaking Tesla, but its EV dream skips the US for now Topics Reporter, China Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-06-20T14:16:58 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/20/abu-dhabi-738m-china-tesla-challenger-nio/
| 420 | 0.9 |
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The Rivian R2 SUV racks up 68,000 reservations a day after reveal
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The Rivian R2, an all-electric sport utility vehicle that’s smaller and more affordable than the automaker’s flagship SUV, appears to be a hit with potential customers. At least, if the number of reservations for the R2 is any guide. Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe posted Friday on Instagram that the company had received more than 68,000 R2 reservations less than 24 hours since the vehicle was revealed at an event in Laguna Beach, California. While notable, these reservations can only provide a loose picture of demand. The $100 deposit secures the customer’s place in line for purchasing an R2 and is refundable. “We are thrilled to see R2 (as well as R3 and R3X) resonate so strongly with our community,” Scaringe wrote in the post. The R2 is a five-seat,all-electric midsized SUVthat will have more than 300 miles of range and a base price of $45,000. Notably, customers will have to wait at least two years to get their hands on the R2. Scaringe announced Thursday during the reveal that the R2 will be produced at the automaker’s Normal, Illinois, factory — a change from the company’s original plan to produce the R2 at a $5 billion factory near Atlanta, Georgia, that is just now under construction. That shift will save the company $2. 25 billion and help get the R2 to customers faster. Rivian takes the wraps off $45K R2 SUV, its biggest bet yet Scaringe said Thursday the company was moving up production of the R2 to the half first of 2026. Rivian also revealed Thursday theR3 and the R3x, all-electric hatchback vehicles with sporty Honda e vibes. The R3x will be the performance version
| 2024-03-08T15:53:57 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/08/the-rivian-r2-suv-racks-up-68000-reservations-a-day-after-reveal/
| 278 | 0.9 |
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Africa’s newest fintech unicorns are winning by keeping their feet on the ground
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Africa’s tech ecosystem just got a boost of attention, with South Africa’sTymeBankand Nigeria’sMoniepointboth raising funds in recent weeks at valuations of over $1 billion and joining the coveted unicorn pantheon. But those valuations don’t just reflect investor confidence. They signal the success they’ve had in taking disruptive fintech models originally developed for mature economies, and scaling by tailoring them to work in a region where nearly half the population remains unbanked. Both companies’ primary aim has been to simplify banking for individuals and businesses in two of Africa’s largest economies. TymeBank began by offering retail customers low-cost bank accounts and savings products before expanding into business banking, providing working capital to small businesses in South Africa. Meanwhile, Moniepoint started out in Nigeria supporting small businesses with accounts, payments, loans, and expense tools and has recently expanded into retail banking. Importantly, both fintechs are taking a hybrid approach to banking, blending the convenience of digital banking with real-world, physical touchpoints. “In Africa, it’s a catch-22: You can’t have one thing without the other,” Lexi Novitske, general partner at Norrsken22, an investor in TymeBank, told TechCrunch. “Many tech companies must build customer acquisition and engagement through highly analog or physical efforts. ” Their strategy contrasts challenger banks in the U. S. and other developed markets. Revolut, Monzo, and Chime operate as their names suggest: digitally. Even some platforms in emerging markets, likeNubankandJPMorgan’s C6in Brazil or small businesses likeOpenin India, have focused on digital-only channels to build regional category leaders. But a purely digital approach isn’t ideal in Africa. There are exceptions — such as Valar-backed fintech Kuda — but there’s a cap on the number of customers such a platform could reach. Thus, as Stephen Deng, co-founder at DFS Lab, an Africa-focused early-stage investor, puts it, they will run into (domestic) revenue ceilings. On top of this, it’s a region where cash is king, internet connectivity can be unreliable, and trust in purely online systems remains low. Cash remains the most dominant payment method across Africa, accounting for over 90% of all transactions, according to aMcKinsey report. Meanwhile,GSMAsays 43% of Sub-Saharan Africa has internet access. TymeBank and Moniepoint have crafted a middle path that thrives on meeting retail and business customers where they are. TymeBank currently claims 15 million users across South Africa and the Philippines, while Moniepoint says over 10 million people and businesses use its services. (Kuda,valued at $500 million, isn’t far off, though, with about 7 million users. ) “When venture capital was abundant you could pay people to adopt your digital-only product, but there isn’t enough average revenue per user (ARPU) out there to justify the costs longer-term,” Deng said. “Moniepoint, Tyme, and others have figured out that you need to build physical touchpoints that interface with the mass market while maintaining the ability to push your tech through those interfaces. We call this a “cybernetic” approach because it enhances informal — often in-person — channels with tech while not falling into the costly trap of trying to fully digitize those channels. ” One of the key things TymeBank has done to scale is forge retail partnerships with supermarkets like Pick n Pay and Boxer to extend its reach in South Africa. These retail touchpoints act as quasi-branches: TymeBank uses kiosks and ambassadors at these stores to assist new customers in opening accounts and depositing funds, adding a human element to its operations for those who prefer face-to-face interactions. It’s a model that works because it recognizes and adapts to how the average African consumer interacts with financial services. Walking into a supermarket to buy groceries and leaving with a new bank account feels natural for many people. TymeBank has over 1,000 kiosks and 15,000 retail points across South Africa. Meanwhile, its sister company, GoTyme — a joint venture between parent company Tyme Group and local conglomerate Gokongwei Group, launched in 2022 — adopts the same strategy and has nearly 500 kiosks and 1,500 bank ambassadors in the Philippines. In Nigeria, the QED-backed Moniepoint has taken a slightly different approach, building an extensive network of agents nationwide. About 200,000 of these agents are small business owners equipped with point-of-sale (POS) devices and act as human ATMs, enabling cash deposits, withdrawals, and bill payments. The system mirrors the model that has driven mobile money success in Africa, which Safaricom’s M-Pesa pioneered in Kenya. Decentralizing its operations through agents bridges the gap between urban and rural populations by providing financial services in areas where traditional banking infrastructure, a bank or an ATM, is nonexistent or unreliable (The World Bank estimates just 16. 15 ATMs per 100,000 adults in Nigeria as of 2022. ) Similarly, countries like Nigeria thrive on so-called “informal” commerce — beyond the purview of tax collections and other authorities — which makes up nearly60% of its GDP. Combining that with the high number of unbanked consumers and businesses, a model that has physical elements is more of a necessity than an innovation. Both companies now provide retail and business banking and have used the hybrid model as the foundation for adding other services, such as credit, working capital loans, business management tools, accounting and bookkeeping, and insurance. Following their recent unicorn rounds, both will be looking to replicate their designs beyond their home markets, where they claim to have reached profitability. For Tyme Group, which recentlyannounced a $250 million Series D led by Nubank at a $1. 5 billion valuation, an expansion into Vietnam and Indonesia is already underway. Much like Africa, emerging economies in Asia present a mix of digital adoption and offline dependence. If anything, GoTyme’s current growth trajectory makes the move a logical next step. Afterraising $110 million, Moniepoint will seek to deepen its operations in Nigeria and expand into other African markets, such as Kenya. It might also explore these markets through acquisitions, which would pave the way for more regional consolidation. In all of this, perhaps the most compelling part of the hybrid model is what it reinforces for African fintech, as TymeBank and Moniepoint aren’t the first fintechs to deploy the model on their way to unicorn status. And this is playing out in their scale. The first set of billion-dollar African fintechs, including Interswitch and Flutterwave, provided infrastructure and payment solutions for local and global merchants across the continent. Subsequent fintech unicorns, including SoftBank-backedOPay, Stripe-backedWave, and Chimera Investments-backedMNT-Halan, (even Transsion-backedPalmPay, a soonicorn), all provide financial services to tens of millions of customers across Africa using a mix of digital apps and real-world touchpoints. Fintech is arguably the most successful category of startups at the moment, accounting for eight out of nine startups valued at over $1 billion in the region. As it continues to capture more investor interest locally and globally, such a model could serve as a blueprint and best bet to attain venture-type returns and, at the same time, drive financial inclusion. Yet, at the same time, there’s significant potential to apply the hybrid model in industries beyond fintech, especially in Africa’s informal markets. For example, telemedicine — an industry that heavily depends on trust — could leverage local, in-person touchpoints to onboard patients while streamlining operations through digital platforms, according to Novitske. E-commerce and group insurance models are other industries she cites. “We think most successful startups in Africa will master a hybrid approach,” Deng commented. “The interface between digital and physical is often where innovation happens because aggregating informal markets requires physical touchpoints. In B2B marketplaces, procurement is often informal. In cross-border payments, including with stablecoins, domestic payouts are often informal. In local retail, payment and delivery is often informal. ” Topics Reporter, Africa Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-12-29T15:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/29/africas-fintech-unicorns-blend-digital-banking-and-physical-touchpoints/
| 1,339 | 1 |
9c4df472f2cbc7b749af084f6278672c
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Happy Valentine’s Day, dating app downloads are slowing down
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It may be Valentine’s Day here in the U. S. , but the dating app market isn’t looking as promising as it used to. According to a newanalysisby app intelligence provider data. ai, global downloads of dating apps saw only tepid growth year-over-year as of this January — a slight increase of just 1. 9% to reach 128 million installs, compared with the 29% increase seen during the same time in the prior year. In the U. S. , growth has also slowed, with a 2. 38% year-over-year increase as of January 2024, reaching roughly 12. 7 million installs, down from the nearly 16% growth seen in January 2023. While data. ai likes to paint any growth as a positive sign for the industry, there are other signals that the market is losing steam. Dating app giant Match Group, which operates Match, Tinder, Hinge, OkCupid, and others, reported its total number of paying customers declined by 5% year-over-year as of its fourth-quarter earnings report in January. In the prior quarter, the company had reported a 6% decline in customers paying for its flagship app, Tinder,which sent the stock tumbling. Tinder’s paying customer growth also slowed again last quarter, dropping 8% year-over-year to reach 10 million payers, the company said in its shareholder letter. Though Match Group still beat estimates on fourth-quarter earnings and revenue — the latter up 10% year-over-year to $866. 23 million — it’s become increasingly clear that’s because the company has learned how to squeeze more dollars out of a shrinking paying user base. Case in point: Tinder launched aridiculously priced $500 per month subscriptioncalled Tinder Select last fall, which promised to match subscribers with the “most sought after” profiles — an idea it picked up from its2022 acquisitionof high-end dating app The League. In the U. S. market, one of the largest for dating apps,only three in 10 adults reportedever using a dating site or app, Pew Research reported last year. That figure remains the same as in2019,the firm pointed out. Meanwhile, althoughone in 10 U. S. adultssaid they met their partner on a dating app or website, dating apps’ broader success on that front is questionable. Arecent analysis of U. S. Census Bureau datafound that a record number of 40-year-olds (one-quarter) have never been married, up from just 6% in 1980. Arguably, this reflects other factors — including the acceptance of unmarried partners living together and the inclusion of same-sex couples into marriage data. Still, giventhat 44% of U. S. dating app userssaid they turned to dating apps to find a long-term partner, as opposed to wanting more casual relationships, it’s not clear that today’s apps have been able to deliver. In addition, Tinder’s hold on the U. S. dating app market appears to be waning ever so slightly, data. ai’s new report shows. As of last month, it had the largest market share of any other dating app at 29. 3%, but this is down from 29. 8% a year ago. To date, Tinder has seen a total of 530 million downloads, the company shareson its website, but Match also admitted in Q4 that both Tinder’s U. S. and global daily new users had declined by the mid-single digits year-over-year, in addition to the decline in its paying customers. Bumble’s share, meanwhile, shrunk from 17. 6% to 14. 3 % year-over-year,data. ai found, to come in at number two. The “Other” category of dating apps, which includes the smaller companies and startups experimenting with new models, grew from a 27. 4% market share in January 2023 to 29. 2% in January 2024. This seems to indicate that among dating app users, there’s a growing desire for something new. Things could still turn around, of course. Matchsaidit will now look to AI to improve the dating app experience, including in areas like its photo picker, matching capabilities, and post-match guidance, by augmenting features like conversation starters and nudges with AI. This follows on news thatan increasing number of peopleare turning to AI tools like ChatGPT to help them with their dating app chats. An AI dating tool Rizz went viral and has seen downloads rise in the months following itsWashington Post write-up. According to data from app intelligence providerAppfigures, Rizz has seen north of 2. 24 million downloads over the past year, for example. Whether AI can send more people back to dating apps, of course, remains to be seen, given that it will also likely inspire more AI-powered romance scams and other malicious activity, security firm McAfeerecently warned. All this doesn’t mean the market isn’t ripe for investment, however. In addition to the changes driven by AI, Match proves that dating apps can still deliver big dollars when properly monetized. Data. ai noted that dating apps generated arecord $505 millionin January 2024, even as year-over-year revenue growth slowed to 8% from 17% the year prior
| 2024-02-14T18:48:33 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/happy-valentines-day-dating-app-downloads-are-slowing-down/
| 811 | 1 |
0a6c02627d2973c40f2acce9268dd687
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Karo is a to-do app that lets you assign tasks to your friends and family
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You can build a reminder and task management system for yourself, and use a service that works for your team. But it might not be easy to get your family members or friends to use the same task management app. iOS appKaro(which means “do it” in Hindi) aims to solve the problem even if the other person doesn’t use the app. This isn’tMustafa Yusuf‘s first task management product. The India-based developer also develops another to-do app calledTasks, for more complex task management. Yusuf told TechCrunch that he developed Karo because other apps didn’t allow him the flexibility of assigning tasks to people in your address book. “No app allowed me to simply delegate and track tasks I had for people in my contacts. For example, my accountant, sister, plumber or electrician. I just want to send them a task, have them receive it on the apps they already use (WhatsApp/Messages) and get notified when they act on it. If they don’t, instead of me nagging them, I’d prefer the app to send automatic reminders,” he said. Yusuf said that prior to creating the app, he had to manually remind them through WhatsApp or other chat apps to complete a task. Plus, because there was no tracking system, even he forgot tasks. Karo lets you input tasks easily in an interface that looks like a conversation in a messaging app. You can use natural language to add tasks as the app recognizes identifiers, such as “tomorrow” and “10 am. ” It then automatically creates a task with a deadline if you mention a specific time and date. Plus, you can @mention a particular person to assign a task to them. Alternatively, there are buttons for adding date, time and a contact to a task as well. Users can optionally attach an image, a video, a PDF document or a voice note to a task. And because it’s 2024, there’s an AI angle too. Users can invoke Karo AI to break down larger tasks into smaller tasks. They can also ask AI to help them plan a trip and list to-dos. Once you assign a task to someone, they get a notification on Karo if they have the app. Otherwise, the app first sends them a chat on WhatsApp, and if that fails, a reminder via text message. For scheduled tasks, the person gets a reminder when the task is due as well as two and four days after the due date. For non-scheduled tasks the app sends a reminder two, four and six days after the task has been created. On the main screen, tasks are sorted by contact. If you tap on someone’s name, it opens up a conversation interface with them where you can see past tasks and add more tasks. The app also has an activity tab where you can see updates about all tasks that you are involved in. While teams and small organizations might use dedicated solutions for task management, in a country like India, a lot of businesses don’t have a proper system in place. They prefer to handle tasks in WhatsApp groups directly. Yusuf thinks Karo’s integration with the platform and its ability to create groups within the app will appeal to WhatsApp users. He mentioned that some firms are already using the app for their work. For instance, a dry fruit distributor in Mumbai uses Karo to assign packaging and delivery tasks to their team. Folks on the team check off tasks through WhatsApp. Yusuf added that this could be useful for study groups or book clubs. Karo is available for free, but you have to pay if you want to use features like groups, themes and attachments. The app is originally priced at $4. 99 per month, $39. 99 per year and $99. 99 for lifetime unlock with introductory launch offers on all plans. Yusuf is planning to make an Android version available to users soon. But he thinks that even if people don’t use the app, the ability to send your contacts a reminder without them being on the app is the main draw. Topics Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-09-06T10:19:29 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/06/karo-is-a-to-do-app-that-lets-you-assign-tasks-to-your-friends-and-family/
| 755 | 1 |
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Astro Teller is joining us at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025 in October
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We are thrilled to announce that Astro Teller, the head honcho of Alphabet’s X, the Moonshot Factory, will be joining us as a featured speaker atTechCrunch Disrupt 2025, happening October 27-29 at Moscone West in San Francisco. The whole affair promises to be fun filled and rife with intel and insights that you won’t want to miss. Astro Teller — whose official title is Captain of Moonshots — has been heading up X since 2010, where he oversees the company’s ambitious projects aimed at solving some of the world’s most challenging problems. On his watch, X has developed such initiatives as self-driving cars (Waymo), delivery drones (Wing), internet-beaming balloons (Loon, which was latershut downbecause not everything works out), and other cutting-edge tech. With a PhD from Carnegie Mellon and an undergraduate degree from Stanford, Teller has long been recognized for his ability to combine technical expertise with entrepreneurial acumen. He’s also much more than an executive. Teller is an author offiction and nonfiction; he’s an entrepreneur (hefounded and solda startup that developed a body-monitoring wearable); and he spent several years running a hedge fund before getting pulled into Alphabet. For our community of founders, investors, students, and other startup enthusiasts, Teller’s appearance couldn’t come at a more pivotal moment. As AI reshapes industries and as the boundaries between science fiction and reality continue to blur, his insights on moonshot thinking and fostering innovation are more relevant than ever. In fact, Teller’s stance on failure — which is that it should be rewarded and quickly, making it safer to move on and succeed — has perhaps never been truer for founders navigating uncertainty. We’re certainly looking forward to sitting down with Teller and hearing his perspective on how founders can think bigger about the problems they’re solving and the impact they aspire to create. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear from one of the world’s foremost innovation leaders. Tickets for Disrupt are available with savings of up to $900 on select tickets. Register for yours nowbefore Early Bird prices fly away. Topics Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-04-24T20:30:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/24/astro-teller-is-joining-us-at-techcrunch-disrupt-2025-in-october/
| 413 | 0.9 |
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Hot Topic data breach exposed personal data of 57 million customers
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Millions of customers of Hot Topic have been informed that their personal data was compromised during an October data breach at the American retailer. Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), the breach notification service, said this week that italerted57 million Hot Topic customers that their data had been compromised. The stolen data includes email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, purchases, genders, and dates of birth. Partial credit card data was also included in the breach, according to HIBP, including credit card type, expiry dates, and the last four digits of the card number. Hot Topic, which has more than 640 stores across the U. S. , has not yet confirmed the breach and did not respond to TechCrunch’s multiple requests for comment. The breach occurred on October 19, according to HIBP, and was claimed by a threat actor operating under the alias “Satanic” on October 21. In a post on the cybercrime forum BreachForums, Satanic claimed to have stolen 350 million user records from Hot Topic and its affiliated brands, Box Lunch and Torrid. The hacker initially attempted to sell the database for $20,000 and demanded a $100,000 ransom from Hot Topic to take down the information, according to a report by cybersecurity firmHudson Rock. In the post on BreachForums, seen by TechCrunch, Satanic is now offering the database for $3,500. The nature of the security incident that led to the breach is unknown. According to a report fromHudson Rock, the threat actor may have leveraged credentials stolen viainfostealermalware to steal credentials for an analytics platform used by Hot Topic to access the retailer’s cloud environments. It doesn’t appear that Hot Topic has yet notified customers or state offices of attorneys general about the data breach. Topics Sr. Reporter, Cybersecurity Carly Page was a Senior Reporter at TechCrunch, where she covered the cybersecurity beat. Prior to that, she had spent more than a decade in the technology industry, writing for titles including Forbes, TechRadar and WIRED. You can contact Carly securely on Signal at +441536 853956 Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-11-13T15:57:39 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/11/13/hot-topic-data-breach-exposed-personal-data-of-57-million-customers/
| 406 | 0.9 |
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2 days left to vote for Disrupt Audience Choice
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TechCrunch Disrupt 2024isn’t just an event for innovation; it’s a platform where your voice matters. With theDisrupt 2024 Audience Choice Program, you have the power to shape the future of tech by voting for your favorite thought leaders and sessions. But with just 48 hours left until the May 24 deadline, now is the time to make your vote count! P. S. Don’t forget to book yourearly-bird tickets by next Fridayfor maximum savings! Topics Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-05-23T16:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/23/2-days-left-to-vote-for-disrupt-audience-choice/
| 145 | 0.7 |
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Sam Altman firing drama detailed in new book excerpt
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Posted: An excerpt from the upcoming book “The Optimist: Sam Altman, OpenAI, and the Race to Invent the Future”offers new detailsabout why OpenAI’s boardbriefly fired CEO Sam Altmanback in 2023. Written by Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey, the book claims the nonprofit’s board members became increasingly concerned after learning about issues such as an OpenAI Startup Fund that was actually owned by Altman. At the same time, co-founder Ilya Sutskever and CTO Mira Murati were reportedly collecting evidence of what they saw as Altman’s toxic and dishonest behavior, complete with screenshots from Murati’s Slack channel. For example, Altman allegedly claimed the company’s legal department said GPT-4 Turbo didn’t need to be reviewed by the joint safety board, but the company’s top lawyer denied saying that. After Sutskever provided this evidence to board members, they moved to oust Altman and appoint Murati as interim CEO. But this quickly backfired, with OpenAI employees (including Sutskever and Murati) signing a letter demanding Altman’s return — which he soon did, withSutskeverandMuratisubsequently leaving to launch startups of their own. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2025-03-29T20:22:51 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/29/sam-altman-firing-drama-detailed-in-new-book-excerpt/
| 241 | 0.9 |
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Kaspersky defends force-replacing its security software without users’ explicit consent
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Earlier this week,some U. S. customers of Kaspersky’s antivirus were surprised to find outthat the Russian-made software disappeared from their computers and had been replaced by a new antivirus called UltraAV, owned by American company Pango. The move was the result of the U. S. government’sunprecedented ban on Kaspersky, which prohibited the sale of any Kaspersky software in the country. The ban on selling the company’s software became effective on July 20, while the ban on providing subsequent security updates to existing customers will become effective on September 29. A spokesperson for Pango, the cybersecurity company that owns UltraAV, defended the automatic migration, which in practice meant roughly a million U. S. Kaspersky customers became UltraAV customers overnight. At a technical level, that meant Kaspersky uninstalled itself from customers’ machines, and UltraAV installed itself, without any user interaction. That lack of user interaction — or request for consent — is what confused and concerned some former Kaspersky customers. “Basically, on my computers, Kaspersky pushed an uninstall of the Kaspersky products and pushed an automatic install of UltraAV & UltraVPN onto my computers,” Avi Fleischer, a former customer of Kaspersky, had previously told TechCrunch. “They should’ve given me the option to accept UltraAV or not. ” “They should NEVER push software onto someone’s computer without explicit permission,” said Fleischer. Kaspersky’s spokesperson Francesco Tius told TechCrunch that “the migration process started at the beginning of September, of which all Kaspersky customers in the U. S. eligible for the transition were informed in an email communication. ” Tius said that for Windows users, the transition “was done automatically. ” Tius said in the email that this was done to ensure Windows users “would not experience a gap in protection upon Kaspersky’s exit from the market. ” (Windows 10 and 11 have their own baked-in antivirus made by Microsoft, called Defender. If a Windows user has a third-party antivirus, and then uninstalls it, Defender switches back on automatically,according to Microsoft. ) Users on Mac, Android, and iOS devices, on the other hand, “needed to manually install and activate the service following the instructions on the email,” said Tius. Tius blamed the fact that some users were unaware of the transition on them not having “an email registered with Kaspersky. ” “These users were informed of the transition via in-app message only,” said Tius, who also pointed toan FAQ posted on UltraAV’s website. Neither the in-app message, nor UltraAV’s website, explicitly say that Windows users would experience a software uninstalling itself and installing a completely different software. On top of that, UltraAV is a brand-new antivirus with no previous track record or published security audit, adding to the concerns of customers. Pango spokesperson Sydney Harwood made largely the same points as Tius in a series of emails with TechCrunch. Rob Joyce, the former director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency,wrote in a series of posts on Xthat this automatic migration showed why granting Kaspersky software trusted access to anyone’s computer was a “huge risk. ” “They had total control of your machine,” wrote Joyce. Martijn Grooten, a cybersecurity consultant and the former editor of Virus Bulletin, a publication covering the antivirus industry since 1989, told TechCrunch that “ultimately, if you install software, it can update itself to become something entirely new, change branding and/or change ownership. ” “That’s all a risk you implicitly accept and all of it happens regularly,” he said, adding that he does not remember another time an antivirus did the same thing. “They should have probably informed people better, given that security software depends on trust, but even in that case, some people would have ignored the warning. ” Topics Senior Reporter, Cybersecurity Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-09-26T16:50:34 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/26/kaspersky-defends-automatically-force-replacing-its-software-without-users-explicit-consent/
| 684 | 1 |
c2444ca605b2989b9e3c3f94a9d95ca4
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Fintech Ramp lands Eagles’ Saquon Barkley as investor and Super Bowl commercial star
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Philadelphia Eagles’ star running back Saquon Barkley has not only become an investor in fintech startupRamp, he is also the star of the company’s first Super Bowl commercial. Interestingly, it was Barkley who reached out to Ramp about investing, not the other way around as is so often the case with celebrity endorsements. Barkley reached out after reading Peter Thiel’s book, “Zero to One,” according to Ramp CEO and co-founder Eric Glyman. Barkley chose Ramp after some mutual investor friends gave Ramp “strong” recommendations, Glyman said. In ablog postposted February 6 on Ramp’s website, Barkley is quoted as saying: ”True partnership requires skin in the game. That’s why I invested in Ramp. I saw firsthand how they’re powering American businesses to cut costs and achieve a higher level of performance. That’s the kind of impact I want to be part of. ” The 15-secondad— which features Barkley buried in a mountain of expense reports — was conceived, shot and finished in seven days, Glyman said. Founded in 2019, Ramp has built a name for itself in the corporate card and expense management space. It’s branched out into travel, bill pay, and more, and was lastvalued at $7. 65 billion. According to Ramp, Barkley’s investment in the fintech startup marks the NFL star’s largest private technology investment to date. According to PitchBook, he’s also backed crypto startupMonad Labs, fintech and Y Combinator alumSequin, and beverage company X2 Performance. The Super Bowl airs on February 9; the Philadelphia Eagles will take on the Kansas City Chiefs. Want more fintech news in your inbox? Sign up for TechCrunch Fintechhere. Want to reach out with a tip? Email me atmaryann@techcrunch. comor send me a message on Signal at 408. 204. 3036. You can also send a note to the whole TechCrunch crew attips@techcrunch. com. For more secure communications,click here to contact us, which includes SecureDrop and links to encrypted messaging apps. Topics Senior Reporter, Fintech Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-02-06T17:59:31 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/06/fintech-ramp-lands-eagles-saquon-barkley-as-investor-and-super-bowl-commercial-star/
| 392 | 0.9 |
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Atomico backs Tem to help businesses buy renewable energy directly from sources
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startup wants to do for utilities whatneobanks have been doingfor the financial sector for more than a decade: disrupt an age-old industry using technology, streamline it and cut out the middlemen. London-basedTemhas built a marketplace and platform to connect businesses directly to renewable energy sources, and it is working with an existingOfgem-regulated utility partner instead of applying for a supply license itself. Ultimately, Tem is all about enabling businesses to bypass so-called “big energy” and their big prices while making it easier to meet climate targets. “We like to think of ourselves as the U. K. ’s very first ‘neo-utility’,” Tem’s co-founder and CEO,Joe McDonald, told TechCrunch over email. Founded in 2021, Tem on Wednesday said it has raised £10. 5 million ($13. 7 million) in a Series A round led by European venture capital firm Atomico, whichclosed two funds totaling $1. 24 billion earlier this week. The investment comesas nations in Europeand beyond strive to reduce their carbon output and become “climate-neutral” by 2050. The U. K. , specifically, iscommittedto reducing greenhouse gas emissions by “at least 100% of 1990 levels” within the next 25 years. At the same time,rising oil and gas priceshave underscored the need to find an alternative solution to fossil fuels. Aside from McDonald, Tem’s founding team includes chief technology officerBartlomiej Szostek, chief commercial officerJason Stocks, andRoss Mackay. All three met at astartup called Limejumpthat used big data to disrupt the U. K. energy market, and that was where the seed for Tem was sown. “I’ve worked for over 12 years in the energy industry, and during this time, the winners and the losers in the energy market have largely remained the same,” McDonald said. “Smaller businesses buying from big energy have always been hit with high fees, volatility, and no guarantee of true renewable energy. They’re stuck in a system that doesn’t put people first. The lack of affordable clean energy is one of the biggest challenges for both businesses and the planet. We wanted to ensure any business can access the renewable energy they need forever. ” Tem’s platform matches businesses’ energy requirements with suitable renewable generators using an “AI matching algorithm” that forecasts energy supply and demand across buyers and sellers in the startup’s network. The company provides its own pricing and billing system, customer service, and an interface through which customers can select their renewable energy priorities and preferred contract length, and see data related to power consumption and where their energy originates. Tem claims to have some 200 customers today, includingSilverstone, home to the British Grand Prix. The startup channels a network of more than 50 renewable generators, which may include anything from a solar or wind farm toanaerobic digestionplants such as those provided by U. K. biogas generator,Biodynamic. While companies can technically transact directly with many of these renewable energy sources, this typically involves long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs) and complex, costly administration, which only really works for the biggest businesses. “In such a complex system, these [power purchase] agreements can be hundreds of pages long, take months to negotiate, and cost hundreds of thousands of pounds,” McDonald said. “What’s more, because the customer needs to be able to buy all of the energy that a generator produces, it only works for really large businesses with huge amounts of energy usage. This is fine if you’re a megacorporation like Google or Amazon — but what about the other 99% of businesses? Tem charges for a “variable” percentage of every transaction, but it declined to disclose what determines that percentage. McDonald did note, though, that energy prices are usually at least 10% cheaper than what they would be on the wholesale market, and can be as much as 25% lower. Tem could apply for its own supply license and become a fully independent supplier — assome neobanks have donein the banking realm — but McDonald says that partnering with a third-party license holder likeP3P Partnerslets the startup focus on itsraison d’être. “We could [apply for a license], but our focus is on the tech and transforming the buying and selling experience, not on being a licensed utility,” he said. “We believe that for our model to have maximum impact, we need to stay above individual market integration. ” Aside from big energy and the incumbent wholesale market, a number of younger companies have emerged to tackle this very problem. In Germany, we have the likes ofTrawa, whichrecently closed a €10 million round of funding, while the U. K. has companies likeAl Gore-backed Octopus Energy, whichsnapped upfailedrenewable energy rivalBulb back in 2022 — that failure was mostly due to soaring wholesale prices. Tem says this is one of the ways it differs from its competition. While Bulb sold itself on the premise that it sourced energy from renewable or offset sources, it actually did that via the traditional utility markets. “The energy crisis in recent years has also seen several companies go bust, creating brand trust issues related to new startups in the energy space,” McDonald said. “However, the reason so many new suppliers fail is that they operate on a traditional utility model in a wholesale market that exposes them to huge volatility and high transaction costs. We, on the other hand, mitigate these risks with our carefully balanced, direct business-to-generator matching engine. ” Aside from lead investor Atomico, Tem’s Series A round saw participation from AlbionVC, Revent, and angel backers includingHolly and Sam Branson, and Wise executives Harsh Sinha and Nilan Peiris. Tem has raised £13 million ($17 million) since inception. The company currently operates only in the U. K. , but it is eyeing international expansion in the coming years — the fresh cash will likely help with that plan. “We will likely focus on Europe first, especially markets with aggressive renewable targets like Germany, the Nordics, and later the U. S. ,” McDonald said. Topics Senior Reporter
| 2024-09-11T11:43:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/11/atomico-backs-tem-to-help-businesses-buy-renewable-energy-directly-from-sources/
| 980 | 1 |
d029ac24f306dc28440518a20064f00b
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|
Mira Murati’s AI startup is reportedly aiming for a massive $2B seed round
|
Posted: Thinking Machines Lab, the new AI startup from ex-OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, is reportedly attempting to close one of the largest seed rounds in history. Business Insider reported on Thursday that Thinking Machines Labhas doubled the target for its seed funding roundto $2 billion. The round, should it close according to plan, would value the company at “at least” $10 billion, per Business Insider’s reporting. Thinking Machines Lab onlyrecently emerged from stealthand has no product or revenue to speak of. What itdoeshave — and what’s likely convincing investors to fork over cash — is dozens of high-profile AI researchers in its ranks. Just recently, Bob McGrew, previously OpenAI’s chief research officer, and Alec Radford, a former OpenAI researcher behind many of the company’s more transformative innovations, joined Thinking Machines Lab as advisers. Thinking Machines Lab previously said it intends to create AI systems that are “more widely understood, customizable, and generally capable” than those currently available. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2025-04-10T19:58:10 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/10/mira-muratis-ai-startup-is-reportedly-aiming-for-a-massive-2b-seed-round/
| 223 | 0.9 |
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TikTok’s research reportedly acknowledges negative effects on teens
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Posted: Court documents suggest that TikTok executives are aware of the app’s potential harm to teenagers, according to reporting byNPRandKentucky Public Radio. Fourteen U. S. attorneys generalsued TikTok earlier this week, claiming that the app harms children’s mental health. Much of the material in those suits was redacted, but reporters were able to read some of that material by copy-pasting. According to Kentucky’s lawsuit, the company’s own research shows that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety. ” In addition, the suit includes internal communication around a feature allowing parents to limit their children’s TikTok usage — apparently the feature only reduced usage by an average of 1. 5 minutes per day, with the company instead measuring its success based on “improving public trust in the TikTok platform via media coverage. ” A TikTok spokesperson said it was “highly irresponsible” for NPR to publish excerpts from the lawsuit, which he claimed “cherry-picks misleading quotes and takes outdated documents out of context to misrepresent our commitment to community safety. ” Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-10-12T16:41:17 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/10/12/tiktoks-research-reportedly-acknowledges-negative-effects-on-teens/
| 254 | 0.9 |
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Lucid Gravity SUV owners will gain access to Tesla Superchargers on January 31
|
Owners of the electric Lucid Gravity SUV will gain access to Tesla’s Supercharging network starting January 31. The Gravity is Lucid’s second vehicle model in its lineup after its flagship Air sedan series, and the first to be built with charge ports compatible with Tesla’s NACS (North American Charging Standard) charge plugs. Lucid Air owners will gain access via adapters to the Tesla Supercharger network in the second quarter. In 2023, several automakers, includingFord, General Motors, Hyundai, Rivian, and Mercedes-Benz, announced plans to build future EV models with Tesla’s charging standard so that drivers could access Tesla’s robust charging network. In the interim, automakers have been providing EV owners with adapters so that those who purchased a vehicle with CCS (Combined Charging Standard) ports can start charging anywhere. Tesla has been opening access to its charging network to non-Tesla EVs in stages as automakers update their EV software and Tesla updates its chargers, which likely explains the gap betweenLucid’s initial Gravity deliveriesto employees, friends, and family in early December and when owners can access the chargers. The luxury EV startup also said it would provide adapters to Gravity owners so they can access charging stations with CCS plugs. Emad Dlala, Lucid’s VP of powertrain, said in a statement that the automaker developed a new high-performance 926V powertrain to enable the Gravity to charge at speeds of up to 400 kW on 1000V charging equipment. The powertrain includes an advanced cooling system with better thermal capacity. Topics Senior Reporter Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers Tesla and Elon Musk’s broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more. She’s one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter. Previously, she covered social media for Forbes. com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more. Rebecca has invested in Ethereum. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-01-28T14:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/28/lucid-gravity-suv-owners-will-gain-access-to-tesla-superchargers-on-jan-31/
| 396 | 0.9 |
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|
Apple names 2025 Design Awards winners
|
Days before its Worldwide Developers Conference 2025 (WWDC), Apple has named the winners and finalists of its 2025 Design Awards for apps. This year’s winners and finalists mostly include indie apps and startups, and contrary to the trend everywhere else, generative AI apps are noticeably missing from the list. This is the second year in a row Apple has skippedAI-centric apps for its awards. The company did highlight some apps with AI features, though, includingSpeechify(which won in the Inclusivity category), and music creation and editing appMoises(both are venture-backed startups). Unsurprisingly, Apple focuses more on how developers have used its tools to build better experiences. The company named 12 winners (one app and one game in each) across six categories: Delight and Fun, Innovation, Interaction, Inclusivity, Social Impact, and Visuals and Graphics. In its list of finalists this year, Applehighlighteda large number of apps and games from small developers around the world. From@Apple: "Speechify is more than a great app; it’s a critical resource that helps people live their lives. "A big thanks to our friends@Apple& proud the@SpeechifyAIteam for winning this year's 2025 Apple Design Award in the lead up to WWDC. https://t. co/t7k8nQK7HD Watch Duty, which helped share information during California wildfires, won the award in the social impact category. Meanwhile,M13-backed developer prototyping tool Playwas awarded the best app in the innovation category. Huge news — Play has won the Apple Design Award for Innovation!To be recognized by@Apple— the company whose platforms have inspired so much of what we’re building — is an incredible honor. Immensely proud of our incredible team and so grateful to all the designers, teams,…pic. twitter. com/wp9WeuGcHZ Here is the full list of winners: Delight and Fun Inclusivity Innovation Interaction Social Impact Visuals and Graphics Topics Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-06-04T12:07:44 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/06/04/apple-names-2025-design-awards-winners/
| 361 | 0.9 |
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Law firm that handles data breaches was hit by data breach
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An international law firm that works with companies affected by security incidents has experienced its own cyberattack that exposed the sensitive health information of hundreds of thousands of data breach victims. San Francisco-based Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe said last week that hackers stole the personal information and sensitive health data ofmore than 637,000 data breach victimsfrom a file share on its network during an intrusion in March 2023. Orrick works with companies that are hit by security incidents, including data breaches, to handle regulatory requirements, such as obtaining victims’ information in order to notify state authorities and the individuals affected. In a series of data breach notification letters sent to affected individuals, Orrick said the hackers stole reams of data from its systems that pertain to security incidents at other companies, during which Orrick served as legal counsel. Orrick said that the breach of its systems involved its clients’ data, including individuals who had vision plans with insurance giant EyeMed Vision Care and those who had dental plans with Delta Dental of California, a healthcare insurance network giant that provides dental coverage to about 45 million individuals. Orrick also said it notified health insurance company MultiPlan, behavioral health giant Beacon Health Options (now known as Carelon) and the U. S. Small Business Administration that their data was also compromised in Orrick’s data breach. Orrick said the stolen data includes consumer names, dates of birth, postal address and email addresses, and government-issued identification numbers, such as Social Security numbers, passport and driver license numbers, and tax identification numbers. The data also includes medical treatment and diagnosis information, insurance claims information — such as the date and costs of services — and healthcare insurance numbers and provider details. Orrick said that the breach includesonline account credentials and credit or debit card numbers. The number of individuals known to be affected by this data breach has risen by threefold since Orrick first disclosed the incident. Orrick said in its most recent data breach notice that it “does not anticipate providing notifications on behalf of additional businesses,” but did not say how it came to this conclusion. It’s not clear how the hackers initially broke into Orrick’s network, or whether the hackers demanded a financial ransom from the law firm. Orrick would not answer TechCrunch’s questions about the incident. Orrick spokesperson Jolie Goldstein said in a statement: “We regret the inconvenience and distraction that this malicious incident caused. We made it our priority to resolve it as quickly as possible for our clients, the individuals whose data was impacted, and our team. ” In December, Orricktold a San Francisco federal courtthat it had reached an agreement in principle to resolve four class action lawsuits, which accused Orrick of failing to inform victims of the breach until months after the incident. “We are pleased to reach a settlement well within a year of the incident, which brings this matter to a close, and will continue our ongoing focus on protecting our systems and the information of our clients and our firm,” added Orrick’s spokesperson. Corrected on January 8 to clarify the affected company in the fifth paragraph as Delta Dental of California. 23andMe tells victims it’s their fault that their data was breached
| 2024-01-04T17:20:26 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/04/orrick-law-firm-data-breach/
| 538 | 1 |
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Microsoft’s AI reaches Indian villages
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Merely months have passed since Microsoft and OpenAIunveiled ChatGPT to the world, sparking a fervor among tech enthusiasts and industry titans. Now, the technology that underpins this generative AI is breaking barriers, reaching remote hamlets hundreds of miles away from the tech hubbubs of Seattle and San Francisco. Jugalbandi, a chatbot built in collaboration by Microsoft, the open-source initiative OpenNyAI and AI4Bharat, backed by the Indian government, is showing signs of progress in redefining information access for villagers in India, offering insights into more than 170 government programs in 10 indigenous languages. While India is the world’s second-largest wireless market, the technological progress witnessed in its cities is starkly absent in smaller towns and villages. Only a meager 11% of the country’s populace is proficient in English, with a slight majority of 57% comfortable with Hindi. These communities also grapple with literacy issues, lacking even regular access to conventional media. “That leaves vast numbers of the population unable to access government programs because of language barriers,” Microsoftexplained in a blog post. To bridge this gap, Jugalbandi leverages a platform with near-universal recognition in India: WhatsApp. With the aid of language models from AI4Bharat and reasoning models from Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service, Jugalbandi empowers individuals to pose questions and receive responses in both text and voice, in their local language. “This time around this technology reaches everybody in the world,” said Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella at the company’sBuildconference Tuesday. “There are two things that stood out for me: Things that we build can in fact make a difference to 8 billion people, not just some small group of people … and to be able to do that by diffusion that takes days and weeks not years and centuries because we want that equitable growth and trust in technology to protect the fundamental rights that we care about. ” Microsoft envisions Jugalbandi expanding its reach, ultimately aiding villagers with a broad spectrum of needs, with India proving to be an ideal ground for the tech titan. The U. S. tech giant is also furthering its collaborations with numerous Indian enterprises aimed at democratizing information access for the broader populace. One such firm is Gram Vaani. Delhi-based Gram Vaani runs an interactive voice-responsive platform. This system enables volunteers to extend personalized assistance and advice to farmers. The firm says it has amassed 3 million users across northern and central India. Topics Reporter, India Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-05-24T08:42:22 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/24/microsoft-ai-chatgpt-reaches-rural-india/
| 472 | 0.9 |
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|
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|
Cycode acquires Bearer to accelerate its move into AI-enhanced security remediation
|
Cycodeis awell-fundedstartup that offers an end-to-end application security posture management platform — that is, a tool that continuously scans code (and the libraries it relies on) for potential security vulnerabilities throughout the software development life cycle and then helps remediate those issues. Today, the company announced that it has acquiredBearer, a static application security testing (SAST) startup that focuses on making the developer experienceas smooth as possiblewhile still providing them with essential security feedback. With its recently launchedAI assistant, Bearer also bet on generative AI to suggest code fixes and explain vulnerabilities. Bearer raised an $8 million seed round led by Alven in 2022. Cycode has raised over $81 million in funding so far, including a $56 million Series B round in 2021. That’s what put the company in a position to make today’s acquisition, though the two companies did not disclose the price. As Cycode co-founder and CEO Lior Levy told me, this acquisition now provides the company with all of the capabilities it needs to become a full-fledged application security platform. Like so many startups, that’s not necessarily what the team was focused on when Cycode first launched. At the time, Cycode was one of the earlier players in the software supply chain space. Today, the company addresses a far wider range of attack vectors. “Day one, we were focused on what we wanted to build around software supply chain security,” he told me. “But then, as time progressed, we realized that there was additional value that we needed to capture. It’s the right approach to become a platform and this is what we’ve heard from customers. So we adopted and addressed those needs. ” The Cycode and Bearer teams first started talking last August and stayed in touch after that. According to Levy, it was Dor Atias, Cycode’s co-founder and VP of R&D, who realized that Bearer’s technology would nicely complement — and complete — the larger startup’s existing solution. “Our mission is to be a complete platform,” Atias said. “The missing part was a SAST tool that can be fast and connected easily to the Cycode platform. And the Bearer team invested a lot in the brain of the SAST engine — not only the rules and stuff like that — but the engine itself. I tested it a few times and saw that it could be integrated easily. ” And that’s what the Cycode team has already done, even though the deal only closed last week. Now, Atias said, the team is looking at how it can bring that Bearer engine to other parts of the platform, too. That includes some of Bearer’s AI solutions as well, including its remediation capabilities. Levy believes that using AI to fix issues before they even go into the source control is something akin to the “secret sauce for security” and will help reduce the burden on developers and security teams. Cycode co-founder Ronen Slavin, the company’s CTO, also noted that this acquisition fits in well with the company’s focus on both putting security and the developer experience first. “Developers were not hired to fix security issues,” he said. “They get frustrated and they end up with false positives. Bearer has the highest rate of precision in terms of the rate of false positives. In terms of GenAI, one of the components is the context for the remediation that developers get that they wouldn’t get otherwise, which is also tied to the improved experience. ” While Bearer still exists as a stand-alone product for now, Cycode plans to move its customers over to its platform over time. “We are thrilled to be joining forces with Cycode, a company that shares our vision for making developer security a team sport,” said Bearer CEO Guillaume Montard. “This union marks a critical milestone in our journey, amplifying our reach and impact to the world’s best security and development teams. Together, we’re set to continue redefining the standards of the complete approach to application security posture management. ” Cycode raises $20M to secure DevOps pipelines Cycode raises $56M Series B to help secure software supply chains Topics Editor Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-03-05T13:00:05 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/05/cycode-acquires-bearer-to-accelerate-its-move-into-ai-enhanced-security-remediation/
| 756 | 1 |
eadfa54b6340a8b6d1b0fa9404af4352
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Apple brings concert discovery features to Apple Music and Apple Maps
|
Apple is bringing concert discovery to two of its flagship apps, Apple Music and Apple Maps, the company announced today. On the Apple Music app, fans will gain access to a new feature called Set Lists, which allows users to browse and listen to the set lists from favorite artists on tour, and read more about their productions. Meanwhile, on Apple Maps, Apple is adding a new concert discovery feature that includes over 40 new Guides curated by Apple Music editors that will highlight music venues initially across 10 cities worldwide, as well as the ability to browse venues’ upcoming shows via Shazam’s concert discovery feature. The Shazam featurerolled outlast spring, as part of a suite of features that allow concertgoers to discover nearby live shows by leveraging information from artist discovery platformBandsintown. Now, that discovery will also be available through Maps, Apple says. The changes aim to make Apple’s services more competitive with rivals, like Spotify, which now hasrobust concert discovery functionalityin its own app following a revamp last year that brought a Live Events Feed that’s personalized to users’ interests. Apple’s new Guides, however, aren’t customized for the end user — they’re curated by Apple Music editors, similar to a guidebook offering. And the Apple Music app is only personalized in the sense that fans are now able to browse shows in their local area. Apple says the new Guides to music venues will begin rolling out today in Maps in cities including Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Nashville, New York City and San Francisco in North America; Berlin, London, Paris and Vienna in Europe; Tokyo, Melbourne and Sydney in the Asia-Pacific region; and Mexico City in Latin America. They’ll be available within the Maps app atapple. co/MusicVenuesand will range from symphony halls, like Carnegie Hall in New York or Musikverein in Vienna, to techno clubs in Brooklyn and Tokyo, to live jazz in Paris, and more. The company may have been able to leverage some of the IP from itsacquisitionof classical music streaming service Primephonic, which served as the basis for thenew Apple Music Classical app, to help with content about the classical music venues in its curated guides. Meanwhile, Apple Music’s new Set Lists will also launch today atapple. co/setlists, and will initially include artists like Sam Smith, BLACKPINK, Peso Pluma, Kane Brown, Blink-182 and Ed Sheeran. Apple didn’t provide any sense of how often these Set Lists would be updated with more artists and tours, but we’d expect to see more over time. While useful additions for Apple customers, the features won’t have anyone jumping from Spotify to Apple to gain access. Spotify today does a better job at alerting fans to the shows from the artists they actually like and regularly stream, rather than just a handful of big names. And, as it announced at its Stream On event in March, it also offers growth and discovery tools for artists, which includes allowing them tomarket their merchandise and live eventsin the app, as well as get their new releases in front of fans within the main music discovery feed. Users can also tap a button to save an event to their own calendar in the Live Events Feed and browse other shows worldwide, too. Apple’s new features are arriving starting today but may take some time to reach its global user base
| 2023-05-16T14:00:28 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/16/apple-brings-concert-discovery-features-to-apple-music-and-apple-maps/
| 557 | 1 |
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Shared micromobility firm Veo launches retail seated scooter
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Veo, one of the shared micromobility firms thatsecured New York City’s e-scooter permit, is moving into retail. Starting Thursday, the company will besellingits Cosmo X seated, pedal-less scooter across the United States. Veo will start with a small pilot and limit its first batch to 1,000 scooters in 2023. While e-bikes are selling fast in the U. S. , the business case for them can be finicky. Shared micromobility competitorBird tried, and failed, to sell its own e-bike in the past, andVanMoof just filed for bankruptcydespite the popularity of its bikes. That’s why Veo wants to take it slowly, gauge customer interest and move forward from there. “The reason why we felt the timing was right and the vehicle was right was because we already have millions of users on our platform and have a very stable, reliable and popular vehicle type that has served tens of millions of trips already,”Candice Xie, Veo co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. “The vehicle we’re launching direct-to-consumer is actually one of our most popular vehicle types in all markets. ” Veo’s shared micromobility service is available in more than 50 markets across the United States, and includes e-bikes, pedal bikes and electric kick scooters. Xie said customers had already been inquiring about purchasing the Cosmo X, giving her and other company execs the confidence to move forward with this new business unit. And since it’s effectively the same scooter that is on streets today for shared use, Xie thinks Veo will be able to avoid the problems that Bird had with its own retail bike. “Bird kind of created a low-end copycat version of VanMoof’s product,” said Xie. “But people realized there were qualitative differences. ” VanMoof’s mistakeswere in part due to quality issues. VanMoof refused to use off-the-shelf parts, so when parts started breaking down, it was difficult for customers to get repairs and servicing done in a timely manner. That was only exacerbated by VanMoof’s subpar after-sales service and on-the-ground logistics network. Veo already has service and distribution centers across the country, and plans to expand that network, so its scooters will be able to avoid the logistics and supply chain issues that VanMoof faced, said Xie. The founder is hopeful that Veo’s scooters, which have already proven they can withstand getting beat up on the streets, won’t need nearly as much servicing as VanMoof bikes did. “We want to run this as a long-term business, and we have patience,” said Xie, noting that Veo might offer other form factors in the future. To test the business case, Veo will offer a limited quantity of about 1,000 scooters this year. The company wants to take its time to understand which areas internally it would need to invest more into to make a D2C business successful, and which markets have room for growth before putting down heavy capital expenditures. If this year goes well, Veo will be able to sell tens of thousands of scooters next year. Veo’s Cosmo X starts at $3,499, putting it firmly on the premium end of the e-scooter spectrum. Xie said the lead time is three months for the X, but if customers want a cheaper version in a faster time frame, they can purchase the Cosmo S vendor version, which will cost $2,899 and start shipping in September. For buyers who purchase during the pre-order period, a free detachable basket and helmet is included. The main difference between the Cosmo X and shared Cosmo S is the ability to customize the former to the owner’s tastes. Users will be able to choose between fun colors for the body like Malibu pink, cosmic blue or Moondust, as well as a range of rim colors. The scooter will also greet its owner by name when it’s turned on, and to be clear, you can choose any name. “Hello Obi-Wan. Are you ready for liftoff?” Here are some of the Cosmo X’s specs: Finally, at launch, riders will be able to access their personal scooters through a different portal on the same Veo app that exists for shared rides. Veo CEO Candice Xie has a plan for building a sustainable scooter company, and it’s working Topics Senior Reporter Rebecca Bellan is a senior reporter at TechCrunch, where she covers Tesla and Elon Musk’s broader empire, autonomy, AI, electrification, gig work platforms, Big Tech regulatory scrutiny, and more. She’s one of the co-hosts of the Equity podcast and writes the TechCrunch Daily morning newsletter. Previously, she covered social media for Forbes. com, and her work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, The Atlantic, The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, i-D (Vice) and more. Rebecca has invested in Ethereum. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-08-10T16:05:21 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/10/shared-micromobility-firm-veo-launches-retail-seated-scooter/
| 846 | 1 |
eeb2587ecf00a59b1b000bc4b1030fc2
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Regulatory filing reveals ABL Space Systems targeting $100M in new funding
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ABL Space Systemsis looking to raise up to $100 million in new funding, and has just closed over $40 million, according to a new filing with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The companyfiled the Form Don December 29. It’s the first indication that ABL has raised venture funding since October 2021, when the launch company closed $200 million at a $2. 4 billion valuation. Since its founding in 2017, ABL has raised $420 million from investors, including T. Rowe Price, Fidelity Management and Lockheed Martin Ventures. ABL declined to respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. ABL is developing an 88-foot-tall, two-stage launch vehicle called RS1 and an integrated ground system architecture called GS0. Together, they’re meant to provide a mobile, all-in-one launch system. In a blog post, CEO Harry O’Hanley sketched a pretty bright future for the integrated architecture: “Imagine this: a convoy of container trucks arrive at a parking lot,” he wrote. “A few days later, it’s an orbital launch site. That’s RS1 and GS0. ” In a separate,more recent postpublished on December 19, O’Hanley and ABL President Dan Piemont issued a strident call for increased domestic launch resiliency, particularly at the launch site layer: “Today, there are only four operational U. S. launch sites and three controlled by allies. Each site is strong, capable and operated by the world’s leading launch experts. However, the overall launch site layer represents a weak link. ” Unsurprisingly, they argue that GS0 is the solution to this vulnerability, offering both a launch mount and a site system in a “proliferated” architecture. The company’s message is clearly already resonating; in addition to the private markets, ABL has also scored considerable contracts from the U. S. Space Force, with the company landinga $60 million contractlast year to build out “responsive launch” capabilities, or launches at short-notice. ABL has been laying relatively low since its first launch attempt a year ago, which resulted inthe rocket crashing back to Eartharound 10 seconds after liftoff. In October, around 10 months after that mission, O’Hanley said that the company had made major upgrades to both the rocket and the ground system in advance of its next attempt. The company has not provided any updates on the timeline for the second flight test. “It was not in our plans to have RS1 grounded for most of 2023,” O’Hanley wrote after the launch. “Our efforts this year were far away from the pad lights. ” Topics Reporter, Space and Defense Aria Alamalhodaei covers the space and defense industries at TechCrunch. Previously, she covered the public utilities and the power grid for California Energy Markets. You can also find her work at MIT’s Undark Magazine, The Verge, and Discover Magazine. She received an MA in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London. Aria is based in Austin, Texas. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-01-08T22:54:46 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/08/regulatory-filing-reveals-abl-space-systems-targeting-100m-in-new-funding/
| 543 | 1 |
2c09d1e25015116ce5466f40b41f6ddf
|
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Why Anthony Levandowski returned to his off-road autonomous vehicle roots with AV startup Pronto
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Five years ago, as robotaxis and self-driving truck startups were still raking in millions in venture capital, Anthony Levandowski turned to off-road autonomy. Now, that decision — which brought the former Google engineer and serial entrepreneur back to the roots that helped launch his pioneering and controversial career — is starting to pay off. Pronto, the San Francisco-based startup Levandowski co-founded with Ognen Stojanovski, has developed a self-driving system designed for haulage trucks and other off-road vehicles that are used at construction and mining sites. About a dozen companies are now using its “autonomous haulage system” or AHS, according to Levandowski, who noted that not all of those deployments are driverless. A newly announced partnership illustrates Pronto’s traction in the niche market. Pronto exclusively shared with TechCrunch that it has extended a partnership with Heidelberg Materials North America, one of the largest build materials and cement producers in the world, following a pilot program last year at the company’s Bridgeport Quarry in Texas. Under the agreement, Pronto’s technology will be integrated into Komatsu haulage trucks, which will operate autonomously at the site. This time around, the trucks will also include Komatsu’s connected vehicle technology to improve data collection and analysis. The 30-person startup uses advanced sensors, cameras and artificial intelligence to operate haul trucks autonomously. Pronto also usesPollen Mobile, a peer-to-peer open source mobile data network the startup launched in 2022 that allows it to exchange data anonymously and at high speeds without relying on legacy carriers. Pollen is used to support sites with little to no connectivity. Interest and investment inoff-road autonomyhas increased as startups and more established technology companies seek out the best and fastest path to commercialization. It’s what motivated Levandowski to change course in 2019. “Obviously, autonomous vehicle technology is going to be transformational for all applications that have wheels, but I think that they’re going to come sooner in the applications where the technology and the market needs it and really lines up,” he said in a recent interview. For Levandowski, off-road is the most compelling because it is used on private property. And while the complexities of the environment are more difficult from a driving perspective, the people working at the site can be properly trained to interact with autonomous vehicles. “The actors all know what’s happening, and they’re all accountable for their actions, so they can go through training and know how to behave around a car versus some of our pedestrians in San Francisco,” he said. “It’s an application where the tech is ready today, and the market needs that technology now. So it’s a great spot to start off with. ” Levandowskifirst formed Prontoin 2018 with a different aim. The startup was initially working on advanced driver assistance features built for Class 8 trucks and passenger vehicles. Pronto pivoted to off-road autonomy in 2019 because “it became clear we couldn’t do on-road autonomy on a timeframe that we want as a business. ” The move brought him back to where he started. Levandowski participated in the autonomous-driving Grand Challenge in 2005, an off-road AV competition sponsored by the DARPA. His experience — and the connections he made, including with Stanford professor and eventual Google X founder Sebastian Thrun — would shape his career. Levandowski had already co-founded a Berkeley, California, startup called 510 Systems that was working on a mobile mapping system. The startup experimented with using cameras and a timing system to assist drivers in steering tractors and controlling bulldozers. Levandowski then joined Google in 2007 to work on its mapping technology, which would eventually evolve into the Street View system. Those Street View systems used the Topcon box, designed by 510 Systems, which combinedlidarand camera sensors, GPS and wheel encoders and was mounted to a car. Levandowski would go on to become one of the founding members in 2009 of the Google self-driving project, which was internally called Project Chauffeur and evolved into Waymo. Google ended up buying 510 Systems and its sister company, Anthony’s Robots, in 2011. He would later become a central figure in a trade secrets lawsuit that pitted the Alphabet subsidiary against Uber. “I like off-road because that’s where you can build a product and you’re ready for today,” Levandowski said. “The market is obviously much, much smaller than on-road and typically, investors will want to chase a large TAM [total addressable market]. ” Pronto has raised an undisclosed amount from investors, Levandowski said without naming his backers. He added the funding wasn’t through a traditional VC series round. “I don’t think it’s like the next frontier,” he said of off-road autonomy. “It’s almost like the skipped-over frontier that we really should have checked off along the way to on-road autonomy. ”
| 2024-08-01T14:45:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/01/why-anthony-levandowski-pronto-av-startup-offroad/
| 787 | 1 |
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Lordstown Motors’ ousted CEO settles with SEC for misleading investors
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Steve Burns, the ousted founder, chairman and CEO of bankrupt EV startup Lordstown Motors, has settled with the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission over misleading investors about demand for the company’s flagship all-electric Endurance pickup truck. Burns was ordered to pay a civil fine of $175,000 and cannot serve as an officer or director of a public company for two years,according to the agreementfiled with the U. S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Without admitting or denying the SEC’s allegations, Burns consented to a permanent injunction, the fine and other stipulations in the agreement, according to the SEC. The SECcharged Lordstown Motorsin February 2024 with misleading investors about the sales prospects of its Endurance electric pickup truck. The company agreed to pay $25. 5 million. At the time, it wasn’t clear that the SEC was also going after Burns. Lordstown Motors was founded in April 2019 as an offshoot of Burns’ other company, Workhorse Group. The company went public the following year via a merger with a special purpose acquisition company DiamondPeak Holdings Corp. , with a market value of $1. 6 billion. During and after the merger, Lordstown received $780 million from investors, according to the SEC. The company was among a batch of EV startups that went public via mergers with blank-check companies in 2020 and enjoyed skyrocketing share prices that soon fell back to earth as they grappled with the challenge of producing and selling electric vehicles. Lordstown Motors attracted the attention and investment of GM and even acquired the 6. 2-million-square-foot assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio, from the automaker. By June 2020, Lordstown was riding high after revealing its Endurance electric pickup in a splashy and political-leaning ceremony that featured former vice president Mike Pence, who spoke for 25 minutes about former President Trump’s policies on jobs and manufacturing, China and the COVID-19 response. Burns told the crowd that it had received 20,000 pre-orders, a number that would have locked in the entire first year of production if every customer who pre-ordered the truck followed through and bought the vehicle. Burns later said the company had received 100,000 nonbinding pre-orders from commercial fleet customers. Short-seller research firm Hindenburg Researchdisputed those claims, and ultimately Burns, along with other executives, would resign by June 2021. The SEC later investigated the claims and said Lordstown Motors and Burns made misleading statements about the business because most of the pre-orders were not submitted by commercial fleet customers, but rather by companies that did not operate fleets or intend to buy the truck for their own use. This, the SEC says, created an unrealistic and inaccurate depiction of demand for the truck from commercial fleet customers. Lordstown continued on a rocky road even after Burns left, and eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In March, Lordstown Motorsemerged from bankruptcywith a new name and a nearly singular focus: continuing its lawsuit against iPhone-maker Foxconn forallegedly“destroying the business of an American startup. ” The company is now known asNu Ride Inc. Burns has also moved on since his resignation. In January, Burns launched anew company called LandX Motors
| 2024-03-22T21:33:10 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/22/lordstown-motors-ousted-ceo-settles-with-sec-for-misleading-investors/
| 519 | 1 |
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To hire your first startup employee, begin with a list of 1,500 people
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The best way to hire someone for your startup is through your own network, but even the most well-connected startup founder will find themselves tapped out pretty quickly. So what is a founder to do if they want to find a good candidate? Recruiting firms can be really good at finding candidates if you have a very clear picture of what you need and a tight job requisition. For early-stage founders, however, that can often prove to be tricky. In practice, hiring at startups starts off as an iterative process that helps you crystallize your requirements as you have conversations with high-quality candidates. But how the hell do you optimize forthat? Well, we spoke with Chris Quintero, the CEO atSourcingsprints, to get the inside line on how founders can run a successful hiring process for the first time. “Referrals are great, everyone likes referrals, but most of the time, founders strike out there very quickly,” says Quintero. “Early-stage founders post on social media, email a couple of people, and when they still haven’t hired anybody, the process stalls. Then you need to find a different approach. The next step is to hire outside of your immediate network. ” He points out that startups can take the tried and tested approach to hiring, but that can take a lot of time: “The traditional recruiting model works well if you are a later-stage company or if you are backfilling an existing role, so you know exactly what you’re looking for. ” But your first hire in a category, Quintero suggests, is more like a fishing expedition — one made much harder because nobody has heard of you or your company yet. “The process is pretty straightforward. From a sourcing standpoint, it’s all about identifying a couple of hypotheses around personas that could be a fit for the role. You start by putting together a job requisition so you have some agreement between yourself and your co-founders on what the core requirements are,” explains Quintero. From there, start mapping out companies that are similar to yours and look for comparable talent. “It’s very hard to know whether you’re looking for a unicorn or somebody that actually exists. ” In several of my own startups, this “Does this person exist?” question has bitten me pretty hard. Of course, you want an experienced person who can grow and eventually lead a team, but they should be a great contributor for now, have relevant, recent experience, possess the ability do both front- and back-end architecture design while ensuring that all compliance and legal frameworks are followed and have a Rolodex of 20 to 30 people who you could hire as soon as it makes sense to. That would be great. Sadly, that person may not exist. In the rest of this article, we’ll look at how to find and reach out to these potential candidates. LinkedIn continues to be one of the most powerful tools for finding candidates. To start, make a list of companies that could “donate” employees to you. You may want to hire from your direct competitors, but there’s no need to limit yourself to those. “The hard part is understanding your market space well enough to figure out the most comparable companies,” Quintero says. “Adjacent categories of companies are helpful too, as people will have encountered similar problems. So the experience is still very relevant. ” In other words: If you are building a dog-walking app, you don’t have to hire from only other dog-walking apps. Any location-based gig economy company will have people who have been working on problems similar to those you’ll be facing. Finding companies with a similar tech stack and culture as the one you want to build helps. Then there is the question of the “mission. ” “When you’re looking for someone to work at an early-stage startup, how well they fit your mission is just as important as how well their skills fit your needs,” argues Quintero. “Why should they leave their current, likely more stable, job to join you, especially in today’s market? Ideally, you’re always looking for that ‘mission fit’ first. ” Similarly, how well a candidate fits your culture should also be a consideration. This can be as basic as the difference between big corporations and startups. At a corporation, the labor is divided relatively clearly and people tend to stay within their job descriptions, more or less. At a startup, you want people who can deal with ambiguity, navigate a certain amount of uncertainty and have a more generalist skill set. There’s also a different level of risk when you’re working at an early-stage startup, as our coverage oflayoffs in startup land has illustrated. “I wouldn’t want to disqualify people because they worked at a big company if they’ve only had a couple of years of experience. But if it’s been 10 years in four different big companies, it’s going to be a hell of a transition to a startup,” Quintero points out. For senior staff, you can often get a pretty decent idea of how well they fit your mission and culture based on their LinkedIn profile, recent job titles and the companies they’ve worked at. But you’ll find a fair bit of variability in junior and mid-level candidates’ skills and experience, even among people who have seemingly similar experience sets. In such cases, an in-depth conversation is indispensable. Similarly, it can be very hard to find executive-level employees because those roles can be quite variable, too. “At the senior level, [sourcing based on work history] works really well. If someone has over five years of experience, you can understand quite a bit about their competency, interests and their mission from their work history,” says Quintero. “That isn’t to say that people can’t pivot, but when you’re hiring the first few employees, you’re generally not hiring for big pivots. You’re hiring people who have done something adjacent previously and can hit the ground running. Does this person’s work history scream, ‘oh my god, I want to talk to them’?” For technical roles, Quintero says listing 20 to 50 donor companies makes for a good starting point. Look up everyone with relevant work experience who works for those companies or has worked there in the past. Then you go through these people’s work histories and add new donor companies to the list. (Come to think of it, that’s very similar to the process forfinding the right investors for your startup. ) How to find the right investors for your startup To bolster this list of potential candidates, take a different tack: Instead of finding companies to poach from, you can look for candidates directly using keyword searches. “We were looking for a front-end engineer for a company that builds [a GitHub clone] for mechanical engineers,” explains Quintero, referring toFive Flute, whose pitch deck we tore down last year. “We asked ourselves why someone would be passionate about this mission. What should their background be? So we looked at everybody who had studied mechanical engineering and is now working as a front-end developer. We also looked for people who had certain mechanical-engineering-centric keywords (like CAD or CNC) on their profiles. ” However, that process actually wasn’t super helpful, Quintero says. However, they did find success by searching along those lines for people with backgrounds in architecture. “Architects have a real appreciation for the built environment and design systems. In summary, try to think about the career journey of the people who you know are going to resonate with your story. ” It’s important to remember that it isn’t about hiring as fast as possible but about hiring the best person possible. This is a process that requires time and effort, one that evolves over several months. “Our model involves us helping you have about five conversations every week. That is tricky for hiring, because you have different people at different stages of the hiring funnel, but it’s amazing for learning. In the first week, you start learning about the different hypotheses and archetypes, then the next week, you start putting candidates back into the funnel and focus on [what you learned in week one]. Then you repeat the process,” Quintero said. “This iterative learning is very hard to do with a recruiting firm outside your company. You can pull it off with a motivated internal recruiter, but as an early-stage startup, you probably don’t have one. So founders just have to shoulder that burden themselves. ” Getting to those five calls per week is a numbers game: Once you understand how many people you need to contact to get five candidates on the phone, you can work backward and calculate the numbers from there. “The statistics of hiring are pretty consistent from market to market and role to role. We’ll often see pretty high open rates for our emails — typically around 85% across the email sequences. We get a pretty consistent 20% to 25% response rate, and of those, 5% to 10% might be interested,” Quintero summarizes. Doing the math, it means that if you want to talk to five people per week, you’ll need to trawl 1,500 LinkedIn profiles every week as your top-of-funnel. Hiring for startups is particularly hard, not least because the best candidates aren’t out there looking for a new job: They are in the middle of building something elsewhere. “Many of the best candidates, especially technical candidates, have never applied for a job in their life,” Quintero explains. “They move from job to job because people reach out to them saying, ‘Hey, here’s an interesting opportunity. ’ So the question is: How can you get in touch with those people?” That makes it clear why a company like Quintero’s exists in the first place: Being able to outsource a few thousand clicks and searches makes a lot of sense for busy startup founders. “You can do it via referrals or you can do it through this kind of grind, but there’s virtually no middle ground for a company at this stage. The better candidates don’t need to list themselves on job sites or hiring platforms. A big part of the problem is figuring out where your best candidates are, who are not applying to your job ads, engaging them and getting them into your hiring funnel. ” Topics At TechCrunch, Haje (He/Him) covered general tech news and focused mostly on hardware. He has founded several companies to varying degrees of success, spent a while in the VC world, and has been a journalist and TV producer since the dawn of his career. He is more-than-averagely interested in photography and can often be found with a camera slung over his shoulder. He wrote a book about pitching startups to investors, and you can find him on @Haje on Twitter, or at Haje. me for everything else
| 2023-05-17T13:30:01 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/05/17/hiring-your-first-startup-employee/
| 1,808 | 1 |
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DuckDuckGo leans further into GenAI as its AI chat interface exits beta
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Private search engine DuckDuckGo is leaning further into the generative AI opportunity. The non-tracking search engine has beendabbling with expanding the role of AI assistancein its product for the past year, including launching a chatbot-style interface last fall — available at Duck. ai. In ablog postThursday, the company said the service is now exiting beta. It’s also now simply called Duck. ai, replacing the longer, mouthful name DuckDuckGo AI Chat. Users of Duck. ai can dip into AI models developed by the likes of Anthropic, OpenAI, and Meta via a chatbot-style interface that sees their search queries handled in a conversational style. In other words, they get AI-generated answers to search asks powered by cutting-edge AI models that DuckDuckGo is making available, instead of the conventional search engine list of hyperlinks. DuckDuckGo notes that it has expanded the models users of Duck. ai can tap into — with recent additions including OpenAI’s o3-mini, Meta’s Llama 3. 3, and Mistral’s Small 3. While access to Duck. ai is currently free, there is a daily limit on queries — and DuckDuckGo says it is “exploring a paid plan for access to higher limits and more advanced (and costly) chat models. ” Simultaneously, the company is dialing up its use of GenAI in its conventional search engine interface — at duck. com or duckduckgo. com — by expanding the frequency that the search engine shows AI-assisted answers in response to a query. These are generative AI text summaries that can appear in response to search queries, above the usual blue links. “We now serve millions of AI-assisted answers daily. If you opt to show them often in our traditional search results, they should appear over 20% of the time,” the company writes. Despite deepening its embrace of GenAI, the search firm is being careful to ensure that users retain agency over how much AI babble ends up in their search results. Users are able to choose the frequency that AI-generated answers will appear — with “sometimes” being the default, and other options “often,” “on-demand,” and “never” letting users choose their own level of AI adventure. DuckDuckGo is responding to wider market shifts, as GenAI has continued to upend digital business-as-usual generally and web search specifically. Search kingpin Google has scrambled to fast-follow the viral fallout from OpenAI’s AI chatbot, ChatGPT, and now embeds generative responses from its own AI models into search results. More recently, Google has even been experimenting with ditching links entirely in favor of AI summaries with a so-calledAI Mode. So what can DDG bring to this competitive frenzy? The company clearly feels its core privacy pledge can transfer into this area. It offers users the chance to tap into major GenAI tools with reduced privacy risks, since they do not need to sign up for an account with an AI giant to get access. “Duck. ai allows you to use models from leading model providers without being tracked,” its privacy policy suggests. “Chats are anonymized via proxying and never used for AI model training,” DuckDuckGo also writes in theblog post, which touts the free (and sign-up free) access to what it bills as “private, useful, and optional AI. ” So the pitch here kind of boils down to “have your GenAI cake and eat it in secret. ” Although, if you read the full Duck. ai privacy policy, DuckDuckGo is careful to point out that if your search queries include your own personal data, that could end up sitting on the servers of large language model makers. Albeit, it stipulates, it’s not tied back to your digital ID since it’s masking IPs etc. Another feature DuckDuckGo is offering to make it easier to integrate GenAI into users’ search workflows is the ability to easily switch between its conventional search engine interface to AI chat and vice versa. A chat button displayed below the search box of its search engine (see screengrab below) instantly transports the user to the AI chat interface — with the prompt-field there pre-filled with whatever they had just been searching for on DuckDuckGo’s search engine, making it easy to hit the send button and get an AI-generated answer to the same query. Reversing this flow just requires tapping on the same (now highlighted) chat button to flip back to its conventional web search interface. So this is a best-of-both-worlds approach to tapping GenAI in search. “We’re finding that some people prefer to start in chat mode and then jump into more traditional search results when needed, while others prefer the opposite,” DuckDuckGo writes, suggesting “some questions just lend themselves more naturally to one mode or the other, too. ” “So, we thought the best thing to do was offer both. We made it easy to move between them, and we included an off switch for those who’d like to avoid AI altogether,” it adds. (Note: The chat button is also described as “optional” — indicating that users can delve into settings to turn this off too if they don’t even want a visual nudge toward GenAI. ) While DuckDuckGo started with just Wikipedia as the source for its AI-assisted answers, it has since expanded to include sources from across the web, providing what it dubs as “prominent source links” with more information on what’s underpinning the AI answers. Another update is a “Recent Chats” feature that stores users’ conversations with the AI search interface “locally on your device — not on DuckDuckGo or other remote servers. ” Here, too, users can opt to disable the storage if they don’t want any record of their chats kept at all, even on their own device. “Duck. ai chats are not used for any AI training, either by us or the underlying model providers,” DuckDuckGo also writes. “To respond with answers and ensure all systems are working, these providers may store chats temporarily, but we remove all the metadata so there’s no way for them to tie chats back to you personally. ” “On top of that, we have agreements in place with all providers to ensure that any saved chats are completely deleted within 30 days. ” Topics Senior Reporter Natasha was a senior reporter for TechCrunch, from September 2012 to April 2025, based in Europe. She joined TC after a stint reviewing smartphones for CNET UK and, prior to that, more than five years covering business technology for silicon. com (now folded into TechRepublic), where she focused on mobile and wireless, telecoms & networking, and IT skills issues. She has also freelanced for organisations including The Guardian and the BBC. Natasha holds a First Class degree in English from Cambridge University, and an MA in journalism from Goldsmiths College, University of London. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2025-03-06T16:20:20 |
https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/06/duckduckgo-leans-further-into-genai-as-its-ai-chat-interface-exits-beta/
| 1,187 | 1 |
e307946bd9dfdfa208340354590635ac
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Giskard’s open source framework evaluates AI models before they’re pushed into production
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Giskardis a French startup working on an open source testing framework for large language models. It can alert developers of risks of biases, security holes and a model’s ability to generate harmful or toxic content. While there’s a lot of hype around AI models, ML testing systems will also quickly become a hot topic as regulation is about to be enforced in the EU with the AI Act, and in other countries. Companies that develop AI models will have to prove that they comply with a set of rules and mitigate risks so that they don’t have to pay hefty fines. Giskard is an AI startup that embraces regulation and one of the first examples of a developer tool that specifically focuses on testing in a more efficient manner. “I worked at Dataiku before, particularly on NLP model integration. And I could see that, when I was in charge of testing, there were both things that didn’t work well when you wanted to apply them to practical cases, and it was very difficult to compare the performance of suppliers between each other,” Giskard co-founder and CEO Alex Combessie told me. There are three components behind Giskard’s testing framework. First, the company has releasedan open source Python librarythat can be integrated in an LLM project — and more specifically retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) projects. It is quite popular on GitHub already and it is compatible with other tools in the ML ecosystems, such as Hugging Face, MLFlow, Weights & Biases, PyTorch, TensorFlow and LangChain. After the initial setup, Giskard helps you generate a test suite that will be regularly used on your model. Those tests cover a wide range of issues, such as performance, hallucinations, misinformation, non-factual output, biases, data leakage, harmful content generation and prompt injections. “And there are several aspects: You’ll have the performance aspect, which will be the first thing on a data scientist’s mind. But more and more, you have the ethical aspect, both from a brand image point of view and now from a regulatory point of view,” Combessie said. Developers can then integrate the tests in the continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline so that tests are run every time there’s a new iteration on the code base. If there’s something wrong, developers receive a scan report in their GitHub repository, for instance. Tests are customized based on the end use case of the model. Companies working on RAG can give access to vector databases and knowledge repositories to Giskard so that the test suite is as relevant as possible. For instance, if you’re building a chatbot that can give you information on climate change based on the most recent report from the IPCC and using a LLM from OpenAI, Giskard tests will check whether the model can generate misinformation about climate change, contradicts itself, etc. Giskard’s second product is an AI quality hub that helps you debug a large language model and compare it to other models. This quality hub is part of Giskard’spremium offering. In the future, the startup hopes it will be able to generate documentation that proves that a model is complying with regulation. “We’re starting to sell the AI Quality Hub to companies like the Banque de France and L’Oréal — to help them debug and find the causes of errors. In the future, this is where we’re going to put all the regulatory features,” Combessie said. The company’s third product is called LLMon. It’s a real-time monitoring tool that can evaluate LLM answers for the most common issues (toxicity, hallucination, fact checking…) before the response is sent back to the user. It currently works with companies that use OpenAI’s APIs and LLMs as their foundational model, but the company is working on integrations with Hugging Face, Anthropic, etc. There are several ways to regulate AI models. Based on conversations with people in the AI ecosystem, it’s still unclear whether the AI Act will apply to foundational models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Mistral and others, or only on applied use cases. In the latter case, Giskard seems particularly well positioned to alert developers on potential misuses of LLMs enriched with external data (or, as AI researchers call it, retrieval-augmented generation, RAG). There are currently 20 people working for Giskard. “We see a very clear market fit with customers on LLMs, so we’re going to roughly double the size of the team to be the best LLM antivirus on the market,” Combessie said. Topics Senior Reporter Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-11-14T09:53:36 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/14/giskards-open-source-framework-evaluates-ai-models-before-theyre-pushed-into-production/
| 815 | 1 |
a25dd467bb54214d34cef840fb654819
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Instagram Threads triples downloads in December, reaching the top 10; X falls to No. 36
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Instagram Threads is gaining traction after growth stalled last year, which had some prematurelywondering if the app was already dead. New data indicates that’s not the case — in fact, Threads is continuing to grow, having tripled its downloads month-over-month in December, which gave it a place in the top 10 most downloaded apps for the month across both the App Store and Google Play. According to data from app intelligence firmAppfigures, Threads saw 12 million new downloads in December 2023, earning it a No. 4 spot in the Top Charts by downloads on Apple’s App Store. It also saw 16 million downloads on Google Play, which gave it the No. 8 spot. On both stores combined, it was the No. 6 app by way of new installs. Not dead yet, in other words. Threads famously had a record-breaking launch,reaching 100 million registered userswithin its first five days. However, the app saw its daily downloads decline starting last September through the end of the year. But in December,Threads once again returned to growth,likely due to the push Meta had given the app by displaying promos on Facebook that featured Threads’ viral posts. Today, there arean estimated 160 million Threads users, according to one tracker. Active users have likely grown as well from Meta’s last update on the app during its October earnings when the company said Threadshad less than 100 million monthly active users. (Meta reports its next earnings on February 1. ) The app could also be benefiting from its move into the “fediverse” — the social network comprised of interconnected servers that communicate via the ActivityPub protocol, likeMastodon. Though Threads is moving slowlyto integrate with ActivityPub, knowing that it will soon be a place where users can engage with another sizable community — and one where many former Twitter users have since landed — could have aided in Threads’ reputation and adoption. In addition, Threads recently announced thelaunch of an endpoint, allowing developers of third-party apps and websites to use a dynamic URL to refill text into the Threads composer. For example, there’snow a website where anyone can generate Threads share linksand profile badges. Marketing tool providerShareaholic also just launched Threads Share buttonsfor websites, including both desktop and mobile sites. This flurry of activity around Threads is helping to move the app up in the chart rankings, though some inorganic boosts from Meta itself are likely also responsible for the jump in downloads, given the size. Though Threads was in the top 10 apps by downloads last month, it didn’t quite break into the top 5…but its parent company did. Instagram became the No. 1 most downloaded app in December with a combined 54 million installs from the App Store and Google Play, overtaking TikTok for first place. That could be an early indication that people are starting to get fed up with TikTok’s push into e-commerce, which has turned the video app into an influencer-powered QVC. TikTok is still a massively popular app but itsgrowth has started to slowamid consumer complaints that TikTok Shop is ruining the app’s experience. Instagram’s TikTok competitor, Reels, could be now benefiting from the backlash, it seems. As for Threads’ direct rival, X, the company previously known as Twitter is still feeling the impacts of its rebranding — even thoughX added “formerly Twitter” to its App Store listingin September to rank at the top of search results for its older name. In December, the app had only an estimated 8. 5 million installs, Appfigures told TechCrunch. That made it the No. 29 app by downloads on the App Store and No. 46 on Google Play. That’s well behind other top social networking apps and even productivity apps like Zoom, the data indicates
| 2024-01-30T14:06:35 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/01/30/instagram-threads-triples-downloads-in-december-reaching-the-top-10-x-falls-to-no-36/
| 620 | 1 |
3d5322aaa681f7fccd6b462cc8dd5814
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Topsort helps e-commerce create ads without being ‘creepy’
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Regina Ye says she andTopsortco-founder Francisco Larrain have learned a lot in the two years since their auction-powered advertising startup launched. The company raised$8 million in seed fundingin 2022 to value the company at $110 million. Topsort develops retail media technology for small businesses to use auctions as a way to create effective advertising. Fed up with how complex ad campaigns were to create on Meta, Amazon and Google, they created a simple API for users to install. When they start a campaign, customers can add items like sponsored listings, banner ads and video ads. They then control how the ads are shown, how to measure ad quality and relevance, and who can launch campaigns. Topsort, an auction-based advertising startup, now valued at $110M after seed round The founders also recognized that its plug-and-play product resonated with e-commerce marketplaces of different sizes. Today, Topsort is used by marketplaces in 35 countries by the likes of Poshmark and Youtravel. me. “You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to be able to actually have really good advertising results,” Ye told TechCrunch. “We have tried many things since then and found what works, and last year was incredible growth for us. We grew almost 10 times in terms of revenue, and we have a similar scale of ambition for this year. ” Topsort also shifted its focus to be more enterprise-friendly, and it built more advanced features. It now counts P&G, General Mills and Danone, among others, as customers. All that growth excited investors, who poured another $20 million of Series A capital into Topsort along with a valuation boost to $150 million post-money. Upload Ventures led the round with support from existing investors, including Quiet Capital and Pear Ventures. The company has now raised $28. 6 million in total. The company is focusing on what happens now thatcookies are going away. Topsort wants to correct advertising’s reputation for being “slimy” around user privacy. It created a Cleanroom feature to combine user data without actually “being creepy,” Ye said. “Everyone’s wondering what’s going to happen to advertising after cookies, and we think we have the answer to the clean advertising solution,” Ye said. “We’ve spent three years making a very solid offering, and today, we probably have the most comprehensive offering of that in the market. ” Where will our data go when cookies disappear? Topics Senior Reporter Christine Hall wrote about enterprise/B2B, e-commerce, and foodtech for TechCrunch, and venture capital rounds for Crunchbase News. Based in Houston, Christine previously reported for the Houston Business Journal, the Texas Medical Center’s Pulse magazine, and Community Impact Newspaper. She has an undergraduate journalism degree from Murray State University and a graduate degree from The Ohio State University. Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2024-03-04T14:01:20 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/03/04/topsort-150m-e-commerce-ads/
| 524 | 1 |
740a02ad5876f9f7a3a4aa9c723335ee
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Napkin turns text into visuals with a bit of generative AI
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We all have ideas, but effectively communicating them and winning people over is no easy feat. So how can we best accomplish this in an era of information overload and shrinking attention spans? If you’re engineers Pramod Sharma and Jerome Scholler, you useNapkin, a new “visual AI” platform that the two built together. Napkin is launching out of stealth today with $10 million in funding from Accel and CRV. Napkin was born out of Sharma’s and Scholler’s frustration with the endless number of documents and presentation decks that have become the norm in the corporate world. Before starting Napkin, Sharma, an ex-Googler, founded educational games companyOsmo. Scholler was on Osmo’s founding team and, before that, had stints at Ubisoft, LucasArts and Google. “Napkin’s core product is targeted toward marketers, content creators, engineers and professionals in the business of selling ideas and creating content,” Sharma told TechCrunch. “The goal is to minimize the time and headache of the design process by turning it into a mostly generative flow. ” “Generative” refers to generative AI. Yes, Napkin’syet anothercompany betting on the potential of the tech and joins a long, long list. But a few things stand out about the experience, which is strictly web-based for now. With Napkin, users begin with text — a presentation, outline or some other document along those lines — or have the app generate text from a prompt (e. g. “An outline for best practices for a hiring interview”). Napkin then creates a Notion-like canvas with that text, then appends a “spark icon” to paragraphs of text that, when clicked, transform the text into customizable visuals. These visuals aren’t limited to images, spanning different styles of flowcharts, graphs, infographics, Venn diagrams and decision trees. Each of these images contains icons that can be swapped out for another in Napkin’s gallery, and you get connectors that can visually link two or more concepts, too. The colors and fonts are editable, and Napkin offers “decorators” such as highlights and underlines to spruce up any element’s appearance. Once finished, visuals can be exported as PNG, PDF or SVG files, or as a URL that links to the canvas where they were created. “Unlike existing tools that are adding a generative component to an existing editor, we focus on generation-first experience where editing is added to complement the generation and not other way round,” Sharma said. I took Napkin for a brief spin to get a sense of what it could do. At the document creation step, out of a sense of morbid curiosity, I tried to get Napkin to generate something controversial, like “Instructions to murder someone” or “A list of extremely offensive insults. ” Whatever AI Napkin is using wouldn’t tell me how to commit murder, but it did comply with the latter request — albeit with an addendum about how the insults were “intended for educational purposes. ” (There’s a button in the canvas screen to report this type of AI misbehavior. ) Mischief managed, I threw a TechCrunch article into Napkin — a draft of this one to be precise. And, well, it quickly became apparent where Napkin’s strengths and weaknesses lie. Napkin does best with simple descriptions, broad strokes of ideas, and narratives with clearly established timelines. The simplest way to put it is, if an idea reads like it could be better illustrated in a visual, Napkin will more often than not rise to the occasion. When the text is a bit more nebulous, Napkin grasps at straws, sometimes generating visuals that aren’t grounded in that text at all. Take a look at the one below, for example – it verges on nonsensical. For the visual below, Napkin invented pros and cons out of whole cloth (as generative models arewont to do). Nowhere in the paragraph did I mention privacy issues or Napkin’s learning curve. Napkin occasionally suggests images or artwork for visuals. I asked Sharma if users might have to worry about thecopyright implicationsof these, and he said that Napkin doesn’t use any public or IP-protected data to generate pictures. “It’s internal to Napkin so users don’t have to worry about rights on generated content,” he added. I couldn’t help but notice that Napkin’s visuals all abide by a pretty generic, homogenous design language. Some early users of Microsoft’s generative AI features for PowerPoint havedescribedthe results from that software as “high school-level,” and the Napkin demo couldn’t help but bring those comments to my mind. That’s not to suggest some of this isn’t fixable. It’s still early days for Napkin, after all — the platform has plans to launch paid plans, but not anytime soon — and the team is a bit resource-constrained by its size. There’s 10 people at Los Altos-based Napkin at present, and it plans to grow to 15 by the end of the year. Moreover, few could suggest that Sharma and Scholler aren’t successful entrepreneurs, havingsoldOsmo to Indian edtech giant Byju’s for $120 million in 2019. Accel’s Rich Wong backed Napkin partly because he was impressed by Osmo’s exit — Wong was also an early investor in Osmo. “Jerome and Pramod have an uncanny ability to take something incredibly challenging from a technical perspective and make it easy for users,” Wong said in a statement. “As a partner to their first company, Osmo, we watched them bring their vision for a new play movement to life with reflective AI. We are excited to support this new chapter as Napkin brings visual AI to business storytelling. ” Sharma says the proceeds from the $10 million round will be put toward product development and hiring AI engineers and graphic designers. “All of our energy and resources will be going toward how Napkin can generate the most relevant and compelling visuals given text content,” he said. “There are endless ways to visualize and design. We are investing capital on building this depth and improving AI quality. ”
| 2024-08-07T16:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/07/napkin-turns-text-into-visuals-with-a-bit-of-generative-ai/
| 984 | 1 |
35979d6a2b7015c1955955a175811b92
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Testing automation platform Tricentis acquires Waldo
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Tricentis, a test automation platform that has acquired quite a few testing services and startups over the years, is making another M&A move with the acquisition ofWaldo, an automated testing tool for mobile development teams. I have covered Waldoseveraltimesover the past few years. The company has raised a seed round led by First Round Capital (with Josh Kopelman) and a $15 million Series A round led by Insight Partners — Tricentis is alsobacked by Insight Partners. Other investors include Matrix Partners and several angel investors. Terms of the Waldo acquisition remain undisclosed. Waldo’s no-code mobile testing product will join Tricentis’ other mobile testing offerings, such asTestim MobileandTosca Mobile. Waldo lets you upload your app’s executable (. ipa or. apk files) and run it in your browser window. From there, you can record some common interactions, such as the signup flow or the transaction flow. After that, every time you submit a new build of your mobile app, Waldo runs the same tests on several devices with different screen sizes, languages and operating system versions. It integrates with your continuous integration (CI) pipeline. Waldo should be able to identify buttons even if the text is different or the position on the screen has changed due to screen resolution differences. If something goes wrong, developers receive a notification and can see the replay of the test. “The number and complexity of mobile applications continues to increase with no signs of slowing down,” Tricentis chairman and CEO Kevin Thompson said in a statement. “We believe the combination of what Waldo brings from a depth-of-knowledge and technology perspective combined with what Tricentis offers in our breadth-of-test automation expertise will allow us to deliver higher-quality mobile applications at the speed and scale businesses require. ” In particular, Waldo’s iOS simulator and Android emulator can power a scalable testing environment. Combining Waldo’s product with Tricentis’ customer base and reach makes sense. Waldo raises $15 million for its automated mobile testing service Topics Senior Reporter Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-07-12T10:52:48 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/12/test-automation-platform-tricentis-acquires-waldo/
| 399 | 0.9 |
3969c0457da3ecb93b5c1d421b8df639
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Ida uses AI to prevent grocery food waste
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Idais a relatively new French startup that wants to work with supermarkets and grocery stores to optimize new orders of fresh products, such as fruits, vegetables, meat, poultry and fish. The startup recently raised a $2. 9 million (€2. 7 million) seed round from Frst, Daphni, Motier Ventures and Kima Ventures. Right now, grocery stores mostly rely on order sheets with a large number of columns that represent the reordering schedule. These error-prone tables lead to both food waste and shortages. Supermarkets are either losing money or leaving potential revenue on the table. “The person in charge of vegetables will take these sheets of paper and a pen. They’ll then go through the stock line by line, reference by reference. Then they’ll do some guesswork and say: ‘Ok, right now, I’ve got a good feeling about eggplants. The weather’s pretty nice today, so let’s go for four crates of two kilograms of eggplants,’” co-founder and CEO Mateo Beacco told me. Of course, it isn’t 100% guesswork, as experienced people will look at past years to find some trends to guess if it’s time to order more strawberries. But there’s been more turnover in these jobs in recent years. Even for people who have been working in the same grocery store for years, it’s hard to be accurate every day. That’s why Ida wants to change this process by giving the right tools to grocers. Ida is a tablet app connected to a sales forecasting algorithm that guides humans when it’s time to reorder some fresh products. Ida is starting with vegetables and fruits, but it could soon expand to other shelves, such as meat and fish. By focusing on perishable goods, Ida is tackling an underserved part of the supermarket inventory as it’s quite easy to predict how many cereal boxes you have in your store thanks to bar codes and connected points of sales. Or, as Beacco put it, “SAP gives you a rolling average. ” Behind the scenes, Ida doesn’t just look at what happens at the points of sales because it doesn’t work well for vegetables and fruits. Instead, the company generates a probabilistic inventory that takes into consideration real-life scenarios. “With a probabilistic inventory, my cucumber sales are mixed with my organic cucumber sales because when you buy organic cucumbers, the cashier will count them as non-organic cucumbers,” Beacco said. Another example, you can probably keep potatoes around for a while, but cherries go bad very quickly. This way, instead of having to count how many cucumbers you currently have, Ida can give you a ballpark number of your cucumbers in your store. Of course, if something feels widely off, staff members can correct those inventory numbers. Second, Ida takes into account more than a hundred different parameters combined with at least three years of sales data to forecast demand. Ida looks at weather conditions, seasonality, prices, other grocery stores in the area, special offers and more. Third, Ida uses this forecasting data to generate your next orders. And stores can configure a safety stock so that they know for sure they’re not going to run out of a specific item (without over-ordering). “As I mentioned earlier, you order eggplants in 2-kilogram crates. So we are facing a mathematical problem that’s optimization under constraint. I order by 2kg increments, my shelf contains 5kg, and we’re going to try to take all the data into account to say that we need four crates, and not three nor five,” Beacco said. Ida doesn’t process orders on its own. Instead, staff members can review everything and change some things manually. Right now, the startup estimates that 70 to 75% of Ida’s suggestions are accurate and aren’t manually changed by grocers. Once this task is done, Ida generates order forms for the central purchasing office, but also potentially for local producers, as Ida can mix and match suppliers in its tablet app. In many ways, Ida is just getting started. Other young startups are tackling this vertical, such asGuacin the U. S. It’s going to be interesting to see if grocery stores switch to these software solutions to manage fresh products at scale. But it seems like a no brainer for supermarkets to improve the bottom line and reduce their overall impact on the environment. Topics Senior Reporter Perplexity launches Comet, an AI-powered web browser Hugging Face opens up orders for its Reachy Mini desktop robots iOS 26 beta 3 dials back Liquid Glass ‘Improved’ Grok criticizes Democrats and Hollywood’s ‘Jewish executives’ Slate Auto drops ‘under $20,000’ pricing after Trump administration ends federal EV tax credit Who is Soham Parekh, the serial moonlighter Silicon Valley startups can’t stop hiring? Google rolls out its new Veo 3 video-generation model globally
| 2023-11-16T08:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2023/11/16/ida-uses-ai-to-prevent-grocery-food-waste/
| 789 | 1 |
fa69777ba504987308b1d933f8c9418b
|
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Video of Eric Schmidt blaming remote work for Google’s woes mysteriously vanishes
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Posted: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who has since moved on to greener and perhapsmore dangerous pastures,told an audience of Stanford students recently that “Google decided that work-life balance and going home early and working from home was more important than winning. ” Evidently this hot take was not for wider consumption, as Stanford — which posted the video this week on YouTube — today made the video of the event private. It would not be surprising if it was at the behest of the talent. “I misspoke about Google and their work hours,” said Schmidt in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. “I regret my error. ” Several news publications have alreadyrun headlinesabout the video, and 1. 4 million peopleviewed a clipof Schmidt trashing Google’s remote work practices on X. At another point in the video, Schmidt tells the audience to keep what he’s telling them private, then acts somewhat surprised when his interviewer points out cameras in the room. At another point, he tells the audience that AI startups can steal IP and hire smart lawyers to clean it up later, once they’ve created a successful product. Presumably, the former Google CEO did not know the entire interview would be posted online. Topics Subscribe for the industry’s biggest tech news Every weekday and Sunday, you can get the best of TechCrunch’s coverage. TechCrunch's AI experts cover the latest news in the fast-moving field. Every Monday, gets you up to speed on the latest advances in aerospace. Startups are the core of TechCrunch, so get our best coverage delivered weekly. By submitting your email, you agree to ourTermsandPrivacy Notice
| 2024-08-14T23:14:27 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/14/video-of-eric-schmidt-blaming-remote-work-for-googles-woes-mysteriously-vanishes/
| 269 | 0.9 |
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Caliza lands $8.5 million to bring real-time money transfers to Latin America using USDC
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Real-time payments are becoming commonplace for individuals and businesses, but not yet for cross-border transactions. That’s whatCalizais hoping to change, starting with Latin America. Founded in 2021 by American entrepreneur Ezra Kebrab, who now lives in São Paulo, Brazil, Caliza offers an alternative to transfers made via SWIFT, which are the norm in the Americas but can take days to settle. Instead, Caliza provides an API and front-end payment system that use cryptostablecoins— specifically, Circle’s reserve-backed USDC — and existing real-time payment networks to allow for instant transfers and provide international merchants with U. S. digital dollar accounts. The startup declined to name its clients, but said they are either banks or fintechs keen to better support businesses transacting internationally, as well as individuals for functions like remittances and payroll. The firm just raised an $8. 5 million round of funding led byInitialized. Kebrab doesn’t come from a crypto background himself: His previous role was at Visa, which is where he saw how businesses needed faster transactions, especially in Latin America. He gave the example of a company doing nearshoring in Mexico: If production doesn’t start until the upfront payment clears, each day of delays costs money. Mentioning Mexico was no accident, as Caliza plans to expand there in the fall. That’s a few months later than planned. Kebrab didn’t say why, but mentioned the company’s focus on meeting regulatory and compliance standards, which also involves getting licenses. For now, most of Caliza’s team of 10 people is based in Brazil, where it plans to double its workforce thanks to its new round of funding. The startup is also following through with itspreviously announced local launch. Brazil is no newcomer to real-time transactions. Its digital payments scheme, Pix, which is similar to India’s UPI, has becomeso ubiquitousthat even coconut vendors accept it, Kebrab said. But cross-border transactions are a different beast. Europe solved most of that problem with the Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA), but the Americas are far less integrated, making it less likely for Caliza to get disrupted by a similarly better alternative to SWIFT. Caliza itself is looking to help incumbents, rather than disrupting them. “You will always have banks that will be intermediaries regulated by governments,” Kebrab said. But he thinks his company is also here to stay, hence its name; in Spanish, “caliza” means limestone, a reference to the material many long-lasting buildings are made of. Currency volatility has been a cause of concern in Latin America. The Brazilian real hasweakened around 13% against U. S. currencythis year, and 6% in June alone. This kind of volatility ties well with Caliza’s stated mission to “empower everyone, regardless of their location or circumstances, to access instant and stable liquidity. ” The bit about location also suggests Latin America is just the start. Since Kebrab is the son of Ethiopian and Eritrean immigrants, Africa could be a logical next target. The firm had previously raised $5. 3 million in 2021. The new round is led by Initialized, with participation from Abstract Ventures, Class 5 Global, Digital Currency Group, Kraynos Capital, New Form Capital and Quona, as well as fintech executives as angel investors. Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Caliza was Initialized’s first LatAm-focused investment. Caliza is headquartered in the United States, and Initialized has invested in other companies that do business in Latin America, according to a spokesperson
| 2024-07-15T13:00:00 |
https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/15/caliza-lands-8-5-million-to-bring-real-time-money-transfers-to-latin-america-using-usdc/
| 565 | 1 |
451dfd80346b85d56d90f955bd017937
|
{"bias_density": 0.12, "is_balanced": true, "bias_scores": {"political_left": 1, "political_right": 0, "gender_bias": 0, "age_bias": 0, "geographic_bias": 0, "economic_bias": 0}, "total_bias_indicators": 1, "concerns": []}
|
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