After nine generations of Pokémon, it can sometimes feel like the game developers are just pulling random words from a hat and seeing what they come up with. I still can’t decide if Klefki, the sentient keyring Pokémon, is a stroke of genius or madness. Now, there’s an AI generator for that. Justin Pinkney, a … Read more
Despite the boom of education technology investment and innovation over the past few years, founder Julia Stiglitz, who broke into the edtech world as an early Coursera employee, thinks there’s a lot of room to grow. Her new startup, CoRise, sells expert-led programming to people who want to up-skill their careers. It’s a fresh play … Read more
As we close out the third quarter and look ahead to Q3 venture capital results (early work here, here, and here), I am curious about present-day targets for startups at different stages. What does a startup need to have done — and what does it need to forecast — to raise a Series A today? … Read more
Google is revamping its Play Store in an effort to help users better discover and install apps to other devices via their phone. The company announced a series of changes to the Google Play Store that will enable cross-device discovery and new tools to help developers better showcase their non-phone apps, it says. Among the … Read more
Several months after launching DALL-E 2 as a part of a limited beta, OpenAI today removed the waitlist for the AI-powered image-generating system, which will remain in beta but let anyone sign up and begin using it. Pricing will carry over from the waitlist period, with first-time users getting a finite amount of credits that … Read more
What do more than 2,000 data scientists, engineers and machine learning professionals have in common? They’re all getting ready to hear from a fantastic lineup of speakers at the iMerit ML DataOps Summit on November 8. Over the course of the summit, you’ll hear from 18 of the the most influential and forward-thinking leaders in … Read more
For many non-technical sales teams at product-led growth companies, it’s difficult to sift through reams of data to find out the best way to engage with potential paying customers. That’s a problem that HeadsUp, a conversion engine for product-led sales, wants to solve. The San Francisco-based startup announced today it has raised $8.5 million in … Read more
Sophie Alcorn Contributor Share on Twitter Sophie Alcorn is the founder of Alcorn Immigration Law in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.” She connects people with the businesses and opportunities that expand their lives. More posts by this contributor Dear Sophie: My … Read more
Developers are a huge catalyst for growth in the competitive world of layer-one blockchains. Where the devs go, they build out applications and robust ecosystems, and user activity and interest tends to follow. Coral has been instrumental in building out dev tools for the Solana blockchain ecosystem. The startup created Anchor, which it says is … Read more
Billtrust, a company developing a platform to automate the invoice-to-cash process, today announced that it agreed to be acquired by EQT, the Sweden-based private equity firm, for $1.7 billion in an all-cash deal. Approved by Billtrust’s board of directors, the transaction is expected to close in Q1 2023 subject to the green light from Billtrust’s … Read more
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is sick and tired of having to pause before tweeting to consider the potential implications on his company’s stock price. The celebrity executive is urging a federal appeals court to throw out a provision in his 2018 consent decree with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that requires him to … Read more
The rise of so-called “smart factory” technologies is leading to a race to modernize manufacturing plant and warehouse floors. Old equipment is being replaced by newer, more advanced machinery as manufacturers look to keep pace with the competition — and wrestle with high turnover rates. According to a survey by Plex Systems, 50% of manufacturers … Read more
Hello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single topic, think about a question and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha asked: How does the “build in public” mindset impact the … Read more
Daniel Hoffer Contributor Share on Twitter Daniel Hoffer is the managing director of Autotech Ventures. He leads investments in B2C and B2B startups with a focus on marketplaces, SaaS, and logistics. Commerce is as old as humanity, and yet innovation in how to build better and more efficient companies not only continues, but is accelerating. … Read more
Just about every company is going to face a catastrophic incident at some point where a key part of the system goes down, and you need to know not only how to respond in the moment, but how you figure out what happened when it’s over. Jeli.io is an incident management startup from former Netflix … Read more
Large AI systems like OpenAI’s GPT-3 might grab headlines, but the practical limitations of power consumption and cost — not capabilities — often determine where AI is deployed. For the most part, highly capable systems are relegated to the cloud because they’re too complex to run on edge devices with weaker hardware and limited connectivity. … Read more
In March 2020, Sami Bouremoum and Michael Ginzo, two tech entrepreneurs with a background in consulting (Bouremoum worked for Bain & Company) and software development (Ginzo led product at hiring startup Deel), came together to co-launch Hofy, a company that delivers office equipment to remote hires. It wasn’t long after that Hofy began earning “low-six-figure” … Read more
Investment app Public.com (Public), a Robinhood competitor that pivoted away from the contentious payment-for-order-flow (PFOF) revenue model, is expanding its offerings in a big way. The three-year-old company purchased Otis earlier this year to allow consumers to buy and trade fractional shares in alternative assets. Today, the company announced that it has integrated Otis’s offerings … Read more
The European Union is to update product liability laws to tackle the risk of damage caused by artificial intelligence systems and address other liability issues arising from digital devices — such as drones and smart devices. Presenting a proposal for revisions to long-standing EU products rules — which includes a dedicated AI Liability Directive — … Read more
TikTok is continuing its PR offensive to convince the world that it takes its content moderator responsibilities seriously, as the Bytedance-owned social video platform today published its latest Community Guidelines Enforcement Report. Covering the period from April 1 to June 30 this year, the report spans a wide gamut of self-reported data points around video … Read more
Michael Haddix Jr. is a former college basketball player who was pre-med until he discovered investing once finishing undergrad. After being exposed to it, Haddix says he got “really excited” about investing and went on to get an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School so that he could work in the field. Upon completing graduate school, … Read more
E-commerce roll-up startup Flora emerged from stealth mode with $9 million in seed funding from an investor group that included Lux Capital, Correlation Ventures, Climate Capital and Gokul Rajaram. Also known as an aggregator, the company acquires and grows brands — in Flora’s case, focused on offering sustainable products and reducing carbon emissions. Co-founders and … Read more
Money continues to flow into new venture capital funds. For example, in the past month, Runa Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Razor’s Edge Ventures, First Star, OurCrowd, Northzone, Janngo Capital and Kapor Capital all announced new funds. Now it’s Scale Venture Partners’ turn, announcing it secured $900 million in committed capital for its eighth fund, also its … Read more
Facebook Pay is officially being renamed to Meta Pay for users around the world, the company announced on Wednesday. Meta kicked off the rebrand in the United States in June, and is now making the change globally. Starting today, users will see the rebrand roll out across Meta’s products in nearly 200 countries. The company … Read more
Autonomous ride-hail and shuttle service May Mobility and transit tech provider Via are launching a small fleet of wheelchair-accessible autonomous vehicles in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Via, which started as an on-demand shuttle service before acquiring Remix, and May have been partnering for years to bridge the gaps in public transit systems with AVs. They have … Read more
While many layer-1 blockchains out there were built for a pretty general purpose, other networks were designed around very specific use cases. Sei, a layer-1 blockchain designed for trading, has launched a $50 million ecosystem and liquidity fund to support new decentralized finance (DeFi) applications on its platform, its co-founders Jeff Feng and Jay Jog … Read more
Coalesce is a startup that offers data transformation tools geared mainly toward enterprise customers. Today the company closed a $26 million Series A funding round led by Emergence Capital with participation from 11.2 Capital and GreatPoint Ventures, bringing the company’s total raised to $31.92 million. Co-founder and CEO Armon Petrossian tells TechCrunch that the cash … Read more
Ahead of its Connect conference in October, Cloudflare this week announced an ambitious new project called Turnstile, which seeks to do away with the CAPTCHAs used throughout the web to verify people are who they say they are. Available to site owners at no charge, Cloudflare customers or no, Turnstile chooses from a rotating suite … Read more
During a family trip to India, Jagadeesh Ambati was shocked by how broken the local recycling system had become. After complaining about it to his wife, she challenged him to make a change. He did, eventually, founding EverestLabs to develop an AI system to help recycling facilities recover more waste on average than they did … Read more
Apple has taken down Russian social network VK’s app from its App Store globally. The social media company said the VKontakte app is not “not available for download and update in the App Store.” However, apps that are already installed on Apple devices will continue to work but there might be some issues with payments … Read more