TechCrunch Startup News

Dark kitchens– also referred to as ghost kitchens, cloud kitchens, or virtual kitchens– often receive criticism for their food quality. Sizl, a cook-to-order delivery service based in Chicago, seeks to change this perception by delivering meals made with fresh ingredients in around 30 minutes flat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The startup has commissioned a demonstration unit of its organic flow battery. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie wants to bring his city back to its glory days. And he’s convinced tech leaders — who often pitch utopian ideals of their own — can help him deliver. “I’m a mayor that is picking up the phone and calling CEOs,” said Lurie during TechCrunch’s StrictlyVC event on Thursday night. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thirteen years ago, when Chris Farmer founded early-stage venture firm SignalFire with data analysis at the core of its investment strategy, many were skeptical about the approach — conventional wisdom dictated that nascent companies didn’t have enough data to make investment algorithms effective. “This was a very radical idea, and everyone thought I was crazy.” Learn more about your ad choices. V...

OpenAI just co-led a $43 million Series A into deepfake defense startup Adaptive Security. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thatch, a startup that aims to transform the health insurance experience for employers and employees alike, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Aetherflux, the space solar startup founded by billionaire co-founder of Robinhood Baiju Bhatt, has raised a $50 million in a Series A round as it works to launch its first low Earth orbit demonstration in 2026.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cloud infrastructure is dominated by several large industry players: AWS, Microsoft’s Azure, and Google Cloud. While to some it may look like AI is headed in a similar direction, the founders of Parasail think AI infrastructure will look very different — and are betting their company’s fate on it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rippling released the affidavit of the its employee who admitted he was spying for Deel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While working on their MBAs at Harvard Business School, Colombian immigrants Stephanie Murra and Lorenza Vélez noticed that most of the workers in the cafeteria were Hispanic. In conversations with them, a common theme kept coming up: how difficult it was for people who legally moved to the U.S. from Spanish-speaking countries. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Skylight, a startup taking on TikTok with a more open alternative, is launching its mobile app to the public on Tuesday after just ten weeks of active development. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI startup Runway on Monday released what it claims is one of the highest-fidelity AI-powered video generators yet. Called Gen-4, the model is rolling out to the company’s individual and enterprise customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite Google’s intentions for its default image viewing and editing app for Android, the Photos app has, over the years, become one of the most popular photo backup services around. In fact, it was one of the most attractive offerings for years until it stopped offering unlimited storage in 2020. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Charlie Javice, the founder of student loan application startup Frank that was purchased by JP Morgan for $175 million, was found guilty on Friday of defrauding the bank by greatly inflating the customer count. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Seattle-based Temporal has made its name over the last several years in the world of microservices — specifically providing a platform to orchestrate the messy business of building and operating integrations and updates across disparate services and apps in the cloud. But the AI boom has come at the company fast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

HoneyBook, a startup last valued in late 2021 at $2.4 billion, told TechCrunch that it hit $140 million annualized recurring revenue (ARR). This makes HoneyBook one of the few startups with peak-VC-era valuations to report their financials after the market cooled.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Twin came out of stealth in January 2024, AI agents were more of a theoretical concept than a reality. Today, the Paris-based is releasing an automation agent in partnership with Qonto, the fintech startup that offers business bank accounts to more than 500,000 customers across Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The proliferation of scarily realistic deepfakes is one of the more pernicious byproducts of the rise of AI, and falling victim to scams based on these deepfakes is already costing companies millions of dollars — not to mention the implications these could have on national security. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s only been a day since ChatGPT’s new AI image generator went live, and social media feeds are already flooded with AI-generated memes in the style of Studio Ghibli, the cult-favorite Japanese animation studio behind blockbuster films such as “My Neighbor Totoro” and “Spirited Away”. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Medina's new startup, called Paid, helps agentic startups profitably charge for their bots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Sam Weaver was vice president of product management at Unqork, he realized that the company needed a better way to manage its sprawling network of Kubernetes clusters — which are groups of computing nodes. When Unqork couldn’t find anything off the shelf, it assembled a 15-person team to build a Kubernetes management product. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoice...

Pruna AI, a European startup that has been working on compression algorithms for AI models, is making its optimization framework open source on Thursday. Pruna AI has been creating a framework that applies several efficiency methods, such as caching, pruning, quantization and distillation, to a given AI model. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Arcade, a generative AI marketplace for designing jewelry, is expanding its offerings to include home goods, starting with rugs. The company on Monday also introduced a new feature called “Match My Room,” which allows users to upload a photo of their room so that their design complements the existing colors and style Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After hitting record lows at the start of the pandemic, mortgage rates began to climb in 2022 and haven’t come down significantly since.  With 30-year mortgage rates hovering at over 6.5% today (they were as low as 2.49% in 2020!), buying a home is simply not that attainable for many people. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Aletiq has raised a €6 million funding round led by Point Nine a few months ago (around $6.5 million at current exchange rates). The French startup is announcing the founding round today. Aletiq has been developing product lifecycle management (PLM) software for manufacturing industrial companies working in aerospace, automotive, electronics, luxury and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visi...