TechCrunch Startup News
2,977 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 days ago - ★★★★ - 16 ratingsListen to select TechCrunch articles on startups coverage—who's raising, who's exiting, who's changing the world.
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Episodes
WHAM! Nuclear fusion experiment hits new record for magnet strength
July 19, 2024 20:00 - 3 minutesStrong magnets are essential for the type of fusion power being pursued by Commonwealth Fusion Systems and a number of other startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Deel acquires Hofy to build its own IT device management service
July 19, 2024 16:00 - 4 minutesBoth of Hofy's co-founders, Sami Bouremoum and Michael Ginzo, along with the rest of the startup's leadership team and 120 employees, are joining Deel to build Deel IT. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A company building Wordle for chess raises money from a16z Speedrun, Mark Pincus and Eric Wu
July 19, 2024 10:00 - 4 minutesEcho Chunk, a company that is building Wordle-styled daily chess puzzle game Echo Chess, has raised $1.4 million in pre-seed from a16z Speedrun (Andreessen Horowitz’s early stage games accelerator), founder of Zyanga Mark Pincus, South Park Commons (SPC), Opendoor founder and CEO Eric Wu and Stef Corazza, the Head of Generative AI at Roblox Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kandji raises another $100M for Apple device management as valuation rises to $850M
July 18, 2024 20:00 - 4 minutesAt a time when many startups have struggled to raise money and keep their heads above water, Kandji, an Apple device management platform, has been an exception. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Astor’s ‘community’ approach to financial advice aims to help women feel more confident about investing
July 18, 2024 10:00 - 6 minutesAstor is a free personal finance platform for women that merges community and investing in an approachable way, came to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Toddle wants to ‘change how we build software’ with a collaborative visual web app builder
July 17, 2024 20:00 - 6 minutesDanish startup Toddle has launched a no-code web app builder that's designed as a full-featured alternative to Javascript frameworks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Adaptive builds automation tools to speed up construction payments
July 17, 2024 10:00 - 3 minutesAdaptive is a platform that provides tools designed to simplify payments and accounting for general construction contractors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How VanMoof’s new owners plan to win over its old customers
July 16, 2024 20:00 - 5 minutesWhen VanMoof declared bankruptcy last year, it left around 5,000 customers who had pre-ordered e-bikes in the lurch. Now VanMoof is up and running under new management, and the company’s current owners are courting those same customers by offering them a €1,000 discount off a new bike. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Why Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ superconducting magnet sale is more than it seems
July 16, 2024 10:00 - 3 minutesFusion power may still be a few years away, but one startup is laying the groundwork for what it hopes will become a bustling sector of the economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A startup set out to fight climate change — it did it by helping plumbers
July 15, 2024 10:00 - 3 minutesThe founders of HERO Software didn’t start out to help small tradespeople in construction with a platform. They started out to fight the climate crisis. But in doing so, they stumbled on a way to help the whole business. Now, the company has closed a €40 million Series B financing round, and plans to expand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Beeble AI raises $4.75M to launch a virtual production platform for indie filmmakers
July 12, 2024 20:00 - 6 minutesVisual effects have emerged as essential in filmmaking and have transformed storytelling and creativity in the film industry with its diverse digital techniques. However, the high cost of VFX tools often leaves independent filmmakers and content creators working with modest budgets struggling to compete with larger productions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Joby Aviation is betting on hydrogen-electric aircraft for regional flight
July 12, 2024 10:00 - 5 minutesJoby Aviation is still a year away from commercially launching its electric air taxi designed for urban environments, but the startup is already looking towards its next chapter: Intercity flight, powered by hydrogen. To get the conversation started with regulators and demonstrate hydrogen’s capabilities, Joby told TechCrunch that it completed a 523-mile test flight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Iceland is dodging the VC doldrums as Frumtak Ventures lands $87 million for its fourth fund
July 11, 2024 20:00 - 4 minutesIceland’s startup scene is punching above its weight. That’s perhaps in part because it kept the 2021 hype in check, but mostly because its tech ecosystem is coming of age. Iceland attracted the most venture capital per capita of all Nordic countries in 2023, but that stat is somewhat skewed by its relatively small population. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Deep tech startups with very technical CEOs raise larger rounds, research finds
July 11, 2024 10:00 - 5 minutesSaaS founders trying to figure out what it takes to raise their next round can refer to Point Nine’s famous yearly SaaS Funding Napkin. (The term refers to “back of the napkin” plans or calculations.) Now, European hardware deep tech teams have a similar resource from First Momentum, a pre-seed fund investing in technical B2B Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Nala to use $40M Series A to build B2B payments platform, scale remittance services
July 10, 2024 20:00 - 5 minutesNala, a remittance startup that is now widening its portfolio through a new B2B payments platform, has raised $40 million equity in a rare deal that becomes one of the largest Series A transactions in Africa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Byway is using AI to help travelers slow down and take the scenic route
July 10, 2024 10:00 - 10 minutesSolo founder Cat Jones took the plunge on setting up a travel business right around the time the pandemic was hitting Europe in March 2020. Fast forward to summer 2024 and her curated package tour business, Byway, is announcing close of an oversubscribed £5.4 million Series A round (around $6.9M at current exchange rates). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Investors chase wealthtech startups in India as affluent class grows
July 09, 2024 20:00 - 5 minutesInvestors are betting on Indian wealthtech startups as a growing middle class turns to diversify investments and startups challenge traditional financial advisors for high-net-worth clients. Premji Invest is in advanced stages of talks to lead a funding round of $30 million to $40 million in Dezerv, an app offering a suite of investment solutions Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Quantum Rise grabs $15M seed for its AI-driven ‘Consulting 2.0’ startup
July 09, 2024 10:00 - 2 minutesQuantum Rise, a Chicago-based startup which does AI-driven automation for companies like dunnhumby (a retail analytics platform for the the grocery industry), has raised a $15 million seed round from Erie Street Growth Partners. Its approach is somewhat akin to UIPath’s, a company famous for bringing robotic process automation to the enterprise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Amazon hires founders away from AI startup Adept
July 08, 2024 20:00 - 4 minutesAdept, a startup developing AI-powered “agents” to complete various software-based tasks, has agreed to license its tech to Amazon as the startup’s co-founders and portions of its team join the ecommerce giant. Geekwire’s Taylor Soper first reported the news Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Husband-and-wife former Olympians target $50M for new fund to invest in influencer-led consumer brands
July 08, 2024 10:00 - 6 minutesSamyr Laine and Ayanna Alexander-Laine now put their grit and determination to work for founders wanting to launch and scale consumer brands. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
News outlets are accusing Perplexity of plagiarism and unethical web scraping
July 05, 2024 20:30 - 11 minutesIn the age of generative AI, when chatbots can provide detailed answers to questions based on content pulled from the internet, the line between fair use and plagiarism, and between routine web scraping and unethical summarization, is a thin one. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
CoinDCX acquires BitOasis in international expansion push
July 05, 2024 10:00 - 3 minutesCoinDCX, India’s leading cryptocurrency exchange, is expanding internationally through the acquisition of BitOasis, a digital asset platform in the Middle East and North Africa, the companies said Wednesday. The Bengaluru-based startup said BitOasis’s team is joining CoinDCX, with the original leadership continuing to manage the exchange, which offers trading in more than 60 tokens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Indian edtech Unacademy cuts another 250 jobs
July 04, 2024 20:00 - 2 minutesIndian edtech giant Unacademy is laying off about 250 employees, the latest in a series of layoffs since the reopening of schools across the country after the pandemic. The Bengaluru-headquartered startup, valued at $3.4 billion in its last funding in 2021, is cutting 100 jobs in core roles (marketing, business and product) , Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Altrove uses AI models and lab automation to create new materials
July 04, 2024 12:00 - 4 minutesFor the past couple of years, innovation has been accelerating in new materials development. And a new French startup called Altrove plans to play a role in this innovation cycle. The deep tech startup has already raised €3.7 million (around $4 million at current exchange rates). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As the AI boom gobbles up power, Phaidra is helping companies manage datacenter power more efficiently
July 03, 2024 20:00 - 6 minutesElectricity demand is booming on account of AI. In a May 2024 report, Goldman Sachs predicted that data centers will use 8% of the U.S.’s total power supply by 2030, up from 3% in 2022, as cloud service providers expand to meet the demand for AI infrastructure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sensorita uses digital twins to help waste management companies streamline construction waste
July 03, 2024 10:00 - 4 minutesThe amount of waste produced by the construction industry adds up to more than a third of the overall waste produced each year in the European Union. And it’s no better in the U.S. Stateside, the construction industry produces more than double the waste that households do each year. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Illumex is using GenAI to ease pain of getting good data into LLMs
July 02, 2024 20:00 - 3 minutesBy now we know how crucial it is to have quality data for use by large language models (LLMs), but getting data ready for the models has been an early challenge for companies, an opening that represents an opportunity for an enterprising entrepreneur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cold shipping might be the next industry that batteries disrupt
July 02, 2024 10:00 - 4 minutesArtyc has raised $14 million to date and has a product on the market, Medstow Micro, that helps ship temperature-sensitive specimens. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rondo Energy funding shows a new way across the climate startup ‘valley of death’
July 01, 2024 20:00 - 4 minutesClimate tech startups especially those building hardware, face a particular challenge when trying to move beyond the prototype or pilot phase and start selling finished products to customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Austin-based Ironspring Ventures raised $100m to invest in industrial revolution
July 01, 2024 10:00 - 5 minutesWhen Ironspring Ventures launched in 2020 to back startups in industrial sectors like construction and manufacturing, it was one of very few early-stage venture firms paying attention to those capital-intensive sectors. Now, the firm is doubling down. The Austin, Texas-based firm raised $100 million for its second fund to focus on industrial startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sensi.AI grabs $31M Series B from Insight, Zeev to monitor seniors 24/7
June 29, 2024 10:00 - 4 minutesOlder adults increasingly want to age in their homes rather than nursing facilities. A study by the American Association of Retired People (AARP) found that nearly 90% of people over 65 want to stay in their homes as they grow older. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rainforest lands $20M to challenge Stripe with embedded payments for SaaS providers
June 28, 2024 20:00 - 7 minutesRainforest, a startup that embeds payment processing into other software platforms, has raised $20 million in Series A funding — less than a year after announcing the close of its seed financing. Raising back-to-back rounds was more common in 2021 but we don’t see it happening as often in this new environment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Etched is building an AI chip that only runs one type of model
June 28, 2024 20:00 - 7 minutesAs generative AI touches a growing number of industries, the companies producing chips to run the models are benefitting enormously. Nvidia in particular, which commands an estimated 70% to 95% of the market for AI chips, wields massive influence. Cloud providers from Meta to Microsoft are spending billions of dollars on Nvidia GPUs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Boeing’s Wisk Aero buys Verocel to boost software safety for self-flying eVTOL
June 27, 2024 20:00 - 3 minutesWisk Aero, a subsidiary of Boeing, has acquired Verocel, a software verification and validation company with 25 years of experience in the aerospace industry. Wisk has an autonomous-first approach to eVTOL. The company’s Generation 6 aircraft, which is slated to begin airborne tests this year, is designed to be supervised by humans, but not physically Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Rocketlane snags $24M to bring AI-led experiences for professional services teams
June 27, 2024 10:00 - 4 minutesRocketlane initially aimed to support customer onboarding. However, it has broadened its scope and doubled down on addressing the needs of professional services teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Emergence thinks it can crack the AI agent code
June 26, 2024 20:00 - 7 minutesYet another generative AI venture has raised a bundle of money. And, like the others before it, it’s promising the moon. Emergence, whose co-founders include Satya Nitta, the former head of global AI solutions at IBM’s research division, today emerged from stealth with $97.2 million in funding from Learn Capital plus credit lines totaling more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Silicon Valley leaders are once again declaring ‘DEI’ bad and ‘meritocracy’ good — but they’re wrong
June 26, 2024 10:00 - 8 minutesScale AI founder Alexandr Wang set off another debate with an anti-DEI post. It revealed a lot about the current state of DEI in tech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
How 2 high school teens raised a $500K seed round for their API startup (yes, it’s AI)
June 25, 2024 20:00 - 7 minutes18-year-olds Christopher Fitzgerald and Nicholas Van Landschoot have founded APIGen, a platform to build custom APIs from natural language prompts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
‘Lawyer-in-the-loop’ startup Wordsmith wants to bring AI paralegals to all employees
June 25, 2024 10:00 - 7 minutesWordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with an AI platform that they can configure to help other workers in the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ex-HubSpot exec builds an AI-powered CRM that learns for you, with $4M seed led by Sequoia
June 24, 2024 20:00 - 3 minutesChristopher O’Donnell has hobbies. He likes music and playing guitar, but above all, he loves building software. Which is why three years after leaving HubSpot, he built Day.ai, a CRM for the age AI. Unlike modern CRMs, which are essentially giant spreadsheets that somebody needs to populate and keep updated, Day learns everything Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Language learning app Speak nets $20M, doubles valuation
June 24, 2024 10:00 - 2 minutesSpeak, the AI-powered language learning app, has raised new money from investors at double its previous valuation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Société Générale to sell its freelancer challenger bank Shine to Ageras
June 21, 2024 20:00 - 3 minutesFour years after acquiring Shine, a French fintech startup that offers bank accounts to freelancers and very small companies, Société Générale has announced plans to sell Shine to Ageras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Daydream rakes in $50M seed funding to build an AI-powered search engine suited for e-commerce
June 21, 2024 10:00 - 6 minutesFor retailers, e-commerce is a bit of a puzzle at the moment. Online shopping trends are expected to stay strong this year, so companies can’t afford to curtail their e-commerce budgets, but at the same time, e-commerce is more fragmented than ever before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Seen is a new app for friends to record reactions to TikToks and other content
June 20, 2024 20:00 - 4 minutesWe all know the feeling when we send a funny TikTok video, anticipating a response from a friend, only to receive a basic laughing emoji or, worse, no reaction at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Bitsening raises $25M for its high-resolution radar in autonomous driving
June 20, 2024 10:00 - 6 minutesSelf-driving vehicles rely on many sensors to detect objects and the world around them. The conventional approach is to work with cameras and lidars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Kilimo helps farmers save water and get paid for it
June 19, 2024 20:50 - 3 minutesCheap irrigation has transformed many regions around the world into breadbaskets, but it also means that there can be little left for other uses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
EV startup Fisker files for bankruptcy
June 19, 2024 10:00 - 3 minutesCheck out TechCrunch.com for more news. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Loop Golf looks to take the stress out of booking a tee time
June 18, 2024 20:05 - 5 minutesGolf has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the pandemic and the popularity of Netflix’s Full Swing documentary series. More than 531 million rounds of golf were played in the U.S. in 2023 alone, according to the National Golf Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
What StepStone’s $3.3B venture secondaries fund tells us about LPs’ current appetite for venture
June 17, 2024 20:00 - 5 minutesStepStone raised the largest fund dedicated to investing in venture secondaries ever, the firm announced last week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
GPTZero’s founders, still in their 20s, have a profitable AI detection startup, millions in the bank and a new $10M Series A
June 17, 2024 10:00 - 7 minutesGPTZero's growth and financials made it one of the AI startups ruthlessly pursued by VCs. And Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi won the deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices