Veteran entrepreneur Rakesh Mathur stepped down as CEO of the college social network Fizz, handing over the reins to 22-year-old founder Teddy Solomon. It’s full circle for Fizz, the anonymous platform that Solomon started with his Stanford classmate Ashton Cofer before they dropped out to work on the app full-time. Mathur has been working with
Month: October 2024
Starting today, developers using Google’s Gemini API and its Google AI Studio to build AI-based services and bots will be able to ground their prompts’ results with data from Google Search. This should enable more accurate responses based on fresher data. As has been the case before, developers will be able to try out grounding
Smart ring maker Oura on Thursday announced that it has acquired Sparta Science, a Bay Area-based health tracking startup. TechCrunch spoke to Sparta back in 2018 at the offices of Playground Global, a key investor. The deal marks Oura’s third acquisition in two years. The company purchased digital identity platform, Proxy, in May 2023. This
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy hinted at an improved, “agentic” version of the company’s Alexa assistant during Amazon’s Q3 2024 earnings call — one that can take certain actions on a user’s behalf. “I think that the next generation of these assistants and generative AI applications will be better at not just answering questions and summarizing,
In a Reddit AMA, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that a lack of compute capacity is one major factor preventing the company from shipping products as often as it’d like. “All of these models have gotten quite complex,” he wrote in response to a question about why OpenAI’s next AI models were taking so long.
MealMe, a unified API that embeds food and retail ordering into consumer apps and websites, announced on Thursday that it secured $8 million in Series A funding. The newly raised capital brings the total amount raised to $16 million. MealMe has undergone several changes since its launch in 2019. Initially, it was a consumer app designed
It’s the topic on everyone’s mind: Are Gen Z workers actually different? TechCrunch sought to find out at this year’s Disrupt 2024. We sat down with SignalFire’s Heather Doshay, Comprehensive.io’s Roger Lee, and Lauren Illovsky from Capital G to chat about how to hire and retain talent. One topic that came up was how younger
Wonder Dynamics made a strong opening play in AI-enhanced visual effects, providing tools animators and filmmakers actually find useful — and earning the startup a prompt acquisition by Autodesk. Their latest tool further automates the animation process, letting you put in practically any video and get a fully editable 3D scene, characters and all. The
Ammonia may conjure thoughts of off odors, but the world is entirely dependent on the smelly stuff as a fertilizer and for use in myriad other industries. Problem is, nearly all the ammonia produced today is heavily dependent on fossil fuels. Making the compound releases more than 450 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every
Estonia-based startup Modash has raised a $12 million Series A led by henQ, a Dutch VC firm that prides itself in “funding the odd ones.” And what’s odd about Modash, according to CEO Avery Schrader, is that its team “has a really strong opinion in a space that nobody really has much faith in anymore.”
Watch as we announce the winner of TechCrunch’s iconic startup competition – Startup Battlefield 200. After impressing the judges, the winner walks away with the Battlefield Cup and $100,000 equity-free.TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 is the world’s preeminent startup competition with alumni like Vurb, Trello, Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Tripit, Redbeacon, Qwiki, Getaround, and Soluto. Startup Battlefield
More than 500 Amazon employees sent a letter on Wednesday to AWS CEO Matt Garman, urging the executive to reverse the company’s full return-to-office policy, Reuters reports. In September, Amazon asked employees to come back to the office five days a week starting in 2025. The AWS CEO previously told employees that nine out of
Apple wrapped up a half-week of Mac announcements Wednesday by debuting the latest addition to the M-series of chips. A day after announcing the M4 Pro alongside the tiny new Mac Mini, the company is showcasing the M4 Max, which is coming to the MacBook Pro line. Like the other members of the M4 line,
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg says the company is “very short-staffed” amid WordPress’s ongoing drama with WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress. The WordPress co-founder took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Wednesday. The saga began when Mullenweg called WP Engine a “cancer to WordPress.” Mullenweg called out WP Engine, claiming that they
Watch as we announce the runnerup winner of TechCrunch’s iconic startup competition – Startup Battlefield 200.TechCrunch’s Startup Battlefield 200 is the world’s preeminent startup competition with alumni like Vurb, Trello, Mint, Dropbox, Yammer, Tripit, Redbeacon, Qwiki, Getaround, and Soluto. Startup Battlefield 200 showcases the top 200 startups from around the globe, across multiple industries every
Over the last three days, 20 startups participated in the incredibly competitive Startup Battlefield at TechCrunch Disrupt. These 20 companies were selected as the best of the Startup Battlefield 200 and competed for a chance to take home the Startup Battlefield Cup and $100,000. After three days of intense pitching, we have a winner. The
Former NFL quarterback and civil rights activist Colin Kaepernick took the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Wednesday to talk about the challenges that people who want to disrupt something are facing — both inside and outside of the tech world. “One of the biggest challenges that you will likely face when you try to
Perplexity’s CEO, Aravind Srinivas, wouldn’t say how Perplexity defines “plagiarism” in an on stage interview with Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch’s Disrupt 2024 conference. It’s a touchy subject. News Corp’s Dow Jones and the New York Post have sued Perplexity over what they describe as a “content kleptocracy.” Many other news sites have expressed concerns that Perplexity closely replicates their
With its new miniaturized Mac Mini, Apple has a second product — and its first Mac — that qualifies for its “carbon neutral” label. As part of the push, the company is buying enough renewable power to offset emissions generated from customer use of the computers. Tech companies have been tracking, and in some cases
WordPress co-founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg, speaking on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 on Wednesday, said he’s not worried that the recent legal drama between his company, Automattic, and WordPress host WP Engine may lead to a fork of the open source WordPress software. In fact, he said, he’d welcome it. “There might be
Offers a SaaS platform for hosting, processing, viewing, analyzing, and sharing large volumes of LIDAR point cloud data, all in a real-time collaborative 3D viewer. Subscribe for more on YouTube: https://tcrn.ch/youtube Follow TechCrunch on Instagram: http://tcrn.ch/instagram TikTok: https://tcrn.ch/tiktok X: tcrn.ch/x Threads: https://tcrn.ch/threads Facebook: https://tcrn.ch/facebook Bluesky: https://tcrn.ch/bluesky Mastodon: https://tcrn.ch/mstdn Read more: https://techcrunch.com/
Apple on Wednesday wrapped up Macweek (well, Mac half week) by introducing an updated MacBook Pro. Apple’s most premium laptop is catching up to is brethren with the addition of M4 chips. The Pro and Mini are the first two Macs getting the new chip. The Pro will also be the first to sport the
The AI stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 got off to a fiery but constructive start on a panel about combating disinformation. But in a spirited exchange of views tempered by expressions of respect and agreement, all three panelists had harsh words for social media and generative AI. None was harsher, though, than Imran Ahmed, CEO
For its most recent Camp, VC and accelerator Betaworks was on the lookout for startups building native applications made possible by AI. The program was first announced in May. To explain this focus, managing partner John Borthwick wrote at the time that while things like AI chatbots and writing assistants exist, “we aren’t yet living
The Equity crew was live at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024! Hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey and Margaux MacColl took over the Builders Stage to kick off day 2 of Disrupt with no shortage of conference highlights, startups deals and venture news to chew through. Listen to the full episode to hear about: Equity will be back with a special interview episode on
Elon Musk-owned social network X made changes to its API pricing and limits today and also announced annual plans with a discounted rate. The company raised the prices of the basic API tier from $100 to $200 and said it would introduce higher limits and new endpoints for this subscription plan. We are changing our
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Eight years ago, Brian Garrett and his partners sensed the ground shifting. At the time, Crosscut Ventures, where Garrett is co-founder and managing partner, had been investing in early stage startups in Los Angeles and Southern California for nearly a decade. It focused mostly on software companies, but it started shifting its attention to hardware,
The time has finally come to announce the five finalists of the Startup Battlefield. It all started earlier this year when the TechCrunch editorial team selected 200 companies from thousands that applied. From there, the team then chose the 20 finalists who pitched this week onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to investor judges and packed
Swiggy, one of India’s largest food delivery and quick commerce startups, is seeking a valuation of up to $11.3 billion in its initial public offering, marking a 57% discount to rival Zomato’s market cap. The lossmaking Bengaluru-based company has set an IPO price band of ₹371 to ₹390 ($4.41-$4.64) per share for next month’s IPO.
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