Startups
Tech startup news that breaks down the funding, growth, and long-term trajectory of companies across every stage and industry. Startup coverage includes climate, crypto, fintech, SaaS, transportation, and consumer tech.
Deal Dive: Human Native AI is building the marketplace for AI training licensing deals
AI systems and large language models need to be trained on massive amounts of data to be accurate but they shouldn’t train on data that they don’t have the rights…
Former Autonomy chief executive Mike Lynch issued a statement Thursday following his acquittal of criminal charges, ending a 13-year legal battle with Hewlett-Packard that became one of Silicon Valley’s biggest…
Rippling bans former employees who work at competitors like Deel and Workday from its tender offer stock sale
Investor demand has been so strong for Rippling’s shares that it is letting former employees particpate in its tender offer. With one exception.
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In 2024, many Y Combinator startups only want tiny seed rounds — but there’s a catch
When Bowery Capital general partner Loren Straub started talking to a startup from the latest Y Combinator accelerator batch a few months ago, she thought it was strange that the company didn’t have a lead investor for the round it was raising. Even stranger, the founders didn’t seem to be…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje’s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Anna will be covering for him this week. Sign up here to…
BlackRock has slashed the value of stake in Byju’s, once worth $22 billion, to zero
HSBC and BlackRock estimate that the Indian edtech giant Byju’s, once valued at $22 billion, is now worth nothing.
Founders: Need plans this weekend? What better way to spend your time than applying to this year’s Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt. With Monday’s deadline looming, this is a…
The company is in the process of building a gigawatt-scale factory in Kentucky to produce its nickel-hydrogen batteries.
Shopify has acquired Threads.com, the Sequoia-backed Slack alternative, Threads said on its website. The companies didn’t disclose the terms of the deal but said that the Threads.com team will join…
Carta, a once-high-flying Silicon Valley startup that loudly backed away from one of its businesses earlier this year, is working on a secondary sale that would value the company at…
Revel to lay off 1,000 staff ride-hail drivers, saying they’d rather be contractors anyway
New York-based Revel has made a lot of pivots since initially launching in 2018 as a dockless e-moped sharing service. The BlackRock-backed startup briefly stepped into the e-bike subscription business.…
Long before product-led growth became a buzzword, Atlassian offered free tiers for virtually all of its productivity and developer tools. Today, that mostly means free access for up to 10…
Kleiner Perkins leads $14.4M seed round into Fizz, a credit-building debit card aimed at Gen Z college students
Carlo Kobe and Scott Smith believed so strongly in the need for a debit card product designed specifically for Gen Zers that they dropped out of Harvard and Cornell at…
Prolific Machines, with a $55M Series B, shines ‘light’ on a better way to grow lab proteins for food and medicine
Prolific Machines believes it has a way of transitioning away from molecules to something better: light.
While the transport industry does use legacy software, many of these platforms are from an earlier era. Qargo hopes its newer technologies can help it leapfrog the competition.
A growing number of businesses are embracing data models — abstract models that organize elements of data and standardize how they relate to one another. But as the data analytics…
When you look at how generative AI is being implemented across developer tools, the focus for the most part has been on generating code, as with GitHub Copilot. Greptile, an…
Fintech Torpago has a unique way to compete with Brex and Ramp: Turning banks into customers
Torpago’s Powered By product is geared for regional and community banks, with under $20 billion in assets, to launch their own branded cards and spend management programs.
Eyebot raised $6M for AI-powered kiosks that provide 90-second vision exams without an on-site optometrist
Over half of Americans wear corrective glasses or contact lenses. While there isn’t a shortage of low-cost and luxury frames available online or in stores, consumers can only buy them…
Starting in war-torn Sudan, YC-backed Elevate now provides fintech to freelancers globally
Inflation and currency devaluation have always been a growing concern for Africans with bank accounts.
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Amazon buys Indian video streaming service MX Player
Amazon has agreed to acquire key assets of Indian video streaming service MX Player from the local media powerhouse Times Internet, the latest step by the e-commerce giant to make its services and brand popular in smaller cities and towns in the key overseas market. The two firms reached a…
Dealt turns retailers into service providers and proves that pivots sometimes work
Dealt is now building a service platform for retailers instead of end customers.
Mistral is no doubt looking to grow revenue as it faces considerable — and growing — competition in the generative AI space.
TechCrunch has kept readers informed regarding Fearless Fund’s courtroom battle to provide business grants to Black women. Today, we are happy to announce that Fearless Fund CEO and co-founder Arian…
Bridgy Fed is one of the efforts aimed at connecting the fediverse with the web, Bluesky and, perhaps later, other networks like Nostr.
SoftBank-backed grocery startup Oda lays off 150, resets focus on Norway and Sweden
It’s not just instant-delivery startups that are struggling. Oda, the Norway-based online supermarket delivery startup, has confirmed layoffs of 150 jobs as it drastically scales back its expansion ambitions to…
ClickUp Knowledge Management combines a new wiki-like editor and with a new AI system that can also bring in data from Google Drive, Dropbox, Confluence, Figma and other sources.
Whizz wants to own the delivery e-bike subscription space, starting with NYC
New York City, home to over 60,000 gig delivery workers, has been cracking down on cheap, uncertified e-bikes that have resulted in battery fires across the city. Some e-bike providers…
TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 in San Francisco is the must-attend event for startup founders aiming to make their mark in the tech world. This year, founders have three exciting ways to…
Google’s newest startup program, announced on Wednesday, aims to bring AI technology to the public sector. The newly launched “Google for Startups AI Academy: American Infrastructure” will offer participants hands-on…
