TechCrunch

India’s EMotorad rides high with $20M investment for global e-bike push

Jagmeet Singh — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 23:30:17 +0000

EMotorad, an Indian startup manufacturing electric bikes, raised $20 million in a Series B round as it aims to disrupt China’s market domination and expand its presence in global markets. The three-year-old startup has raised more than $22.5 million in total funding, with Singapore’s Panthera Growth Partners leading the latest round, along with participation from […]

Reflections on Web Summit: Out of the frying pan, and out of the fire?

Mike Butcher — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 17:05:51 +0000

“What controversy?” said the journalist from a global mainstream television outlet to me at the Web Summit Media Dinner, earlier this month in Lisbon. For all the heat and light, the gnashing of teeth, the tearing of clothes and the clutching of pearls, the big technology conference had seemingly managed to pull itself out of […]

TC Startup Battlefield master class with Blumberg Capital: Make the most of your investors’ expertise

Neesha A. Tambe — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 16:00:57 +0000

David Blumberg, founder and managing partner at Blumberg Ventures, explains how early-stage startups can look to their investors for help with solving problems, scaling, hiring, and strategic planning.

What startup founders need to know about AI heading into 2024

Alex Wilhelm — Sun, 26 Nov 2023 10:00:05 +0000

Now that the OpenAI leadership saga has died down, startup founders building with AI can get back to work building the future. If that’s you, TechCrunch+ has a pile of notes, opinion pieces and forward-looking stories with your name on them. Sure, TechCrunch+ is a lot more than AI-related coverage, but we are also going […]

Sam Altman returns to OpenAI, Apple adopts RCS, and Binance’s CEO pleads guilty to charges

Kyle Wiggers — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 21:16:46 +0000

Hey, folks, welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular recap of the past few days in tech. The headlines have been dominated — nay, overwhelmed — by the drama unfolding at AI startup OpenAI, but plenty else happened in the half-week leading up to Thanksgiving. So much for a sleepy pre-holiday! In this edition […]

Black Friday online buying hits a record $9.8B in the US, $70.9B globally

Ingrid Lunden — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 16:36:50 +0000

A rush of deep discounts and the growth of flexible payment options were the drivers behind $9.8 billion in online sales in the U.S. on Black Friday — a record figure for the day. According to Adobe Analytics, sales were up by 7.5% on last year’s numbers (you can see those here). Sales easily surpassed […]

Neuralink, Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, quietly raises an additional $43M

Kyle Wiggers — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 16:25:38 +0000

Neuralink, the Elon Musk-founded company developing implantable chips that can read brain waves, has raised an additional $43 million in venture capital, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing published this week shows the company increased its previous tranche, led by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, from $280 million to $323 million in early […]

Fate of US venture capital in China teeters on uncertainty

Rita Liao — Sat, 25 Nov 2023 09:32:47 +0000

On a weekday afternoon at Red Rock Coffee, the cafe known for spotting venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, one is likely to overhear a few conversations in Mandarin. With China reopening its borders this spring following three years of COVID-19 restrictions, managers of U.S. funds in the country have been flocking the Bay Area. While […]

Adobe: Thanksgiving US online sales nudge up to $5.6B; Salesforce: $31.7B spent globally

Ingrid Lunden — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 15:43:51 +0000

Thanksgiving Thursday, when stores in the U.S. are closed and many are spending time off work, has become the de facto start of the holiday shopping season both for those looking to bargains online, and for online retailers to kick off holiday sales deals to meet that demand. But if there is a message from […]

Startups should consider hiring fractional AI officers

Carrie Andrews — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 15:35:18 +0000

Raphael Ouzan Contributor Share on X Raphael Ouzan is the founder and CEO of A.Team, a future-of-work company pioneering the world’s first AI-enabled team formation platform. More posts by this contributor A Developer’s Guide To The Wild West Of App Discovery The AI skills gap is real. A recent study from Randstad, the recruitment company, […]

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway exits Paytm at a 40% loss

Manish Singh — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 14:36:37 +0000

Berkshire Hathaway exited Paytm-parent firm One97 Communications Friday at a loss of about 40% on the high-profile investment it made more than five years ago. The Warren Buffett firm invested about $260 million in Paytm in 2018, acquiring a 3% stake in the financial services startup at a valuation of about $10 billion. The investment […]

Saviu Ventures’ second fund reaches €12 million first close to back Francophone Africa startups

Annie Njanja — Fri, 24 Nov 2023 13:05:00 +0000

Saviu Ventures, a VC firm targeting startups in Francophone Africa, has made an initial close of €12 million for its second fund with the backing of private investors, including French and Kenyan family offices. The VC firm aims to close the fund at between €30 million and €50 million to primarily invest in startups within […]

I’m trying so hard not to gush over Teenage Engineering’s latest gadget

Harri Weber — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 19:17:58 +0000

Teenage Engineering’s new $300 groovebox has no business being this cute. That’s the whole point. The EP–133 K.O.II (we’ll just call it Knock Out II) is a combination drum machine, synthesizer and sampler. It’s a supersized upgrade to Teenage Engineer’s pint-sized PO-33 K.O, which offers many of the same features for a fraction of the price. […]

If I’m being honest, I didn’t have what it takes to be a founder

Haje Jan Kamps — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 17:00:33 +0000

If I map myself against the standards of fundraising today, none of those startups would’ve had a gnat’s shadow’s chance of raising money.

OpenAI, emerging from the ashes, has a lot to prove even with Sam Altman’s return

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 16:26:20 +0000

The OpenAI power struggle that captivated the tech world after co-founder Sam Altman was fired has finally reached its end — at least for the time being. But what to make of it? It feels almost as though some eulogizing is called for — like OpenAI died and a new, but not necessarily improved, startup […]

US chip export ban is hurting China’s AI startups, not so much the giants yet

Rita Liao — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 11:58:23 +0000

Well before Washington banned Nvidia’s exports of high-performance graphic processing units to China, the country’s tech giants had been hoarding them in anticipation of an escalating tech war between the two nations. Baidu, one of the tech firms building China’s counterparts to OpenAI, has secured enough AI chips to keep training its ChatGPT equivalent Ernie […]

Proton Drive encrypted cloud storage service arrives on Mac

Paul Sawers — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 11:57:17 +0000

Swiss privacy-focused company Proton has launched its end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) cloud storage service for Mac users, four months after it landed on Windows. Founded some nine years ago, Proton was originally focused on its flagship Gmail alternative called Proton Mail, but the company has expanded its horizons into VPNs, a password manager, calendar and, indeed, cloud storage. […]

DoorFeed raises another €7M for its platform allowing large-scale investors to hoover-up family homes

Mike Butcher — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 08:01:25 +0000

Institutional real estate investors have historically struggled to buy up tonnes of family homes (the so-called ‘Single Family rental sector’) so they can turn us all into rental slaves and lock millions to a rentier economy. A few startups are trying to ease the ‘pain’ of these rapacious harbingers of hyper capitalism. Immo Capital, a […]

Instagram now allows anyone to download public Reels

Ivan Mehta — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 07:50:04 +0000

Instagram head Adam Mosseri said Wednesday that the app now allows all users across the world to download public Reels to their devices. Prior to this rollout, you could only save Reels to the Instagram app for viewing them later. Mosseri said on his broadcast channel on Instagram that downloaded Reels will have an Instagram […]

India seeks to regulate deepfakes amid ethical concerns

Manish Singh — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 07:01:23 +0000

India is drafting rules to detect and limit the spread of deepfake content and other harmful AI media, a senior lawmaker said Thursday, following reports of proliferation of such content on social media platforms in recent weeks. Ashwini Vaishnaw, India’s IT Minister, said the ministry held meetings with all large social media companies, industry body […]