TechCrunch Startup News

AI creates a dilemma for companies: Don’t implement it yet, and you might miss out on productivity gains and other potential benefits; but do it wrong, and you might expose your business and clients to unmitigated risks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Once, not long ago, booking a table at a hot new restaurant didn’t entail a midnight dash to Resy. Truly, we didn’t know how good we had it then. Hours-long lines out the door are now the norm, not the exception, in major cities from New York to Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After nearly four years of working in sales at tradesperson software company ServiceTitan, Mark Hoadley (pictured above) was looking for a change and to potentially start something of his own in a similar industry. Hoadley’s brother-in-law, and now co-founder, Ben Sikma, was working on M&A in the waste management space at the time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoic...

Over the last decade, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance has graduated from dorm room activism to a thousands-strong global network of experts, investors, and “ecopreneurs” — all of whom believe the best way to save the ailing oceans is to embrace innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Drop by any given loading dock and a buzz of forklifts — loaded up with goods — can be spotted maneuvering in and out of truck trailers. This logistical dance can take up to an hour to fill a trailer, leaving truck drivers in idle limbo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Grammarly is acquiring productivity startup Coda, the company announced on Tuesday. As part of the deal, Coda’s CEO and co-founder Shishir Mehrotra will become the new CEO of Grammarly. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The massive lasers will be installed in the startup’s future facility, which it is building in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cybersecurity practitioners take a community-driven approach to solving problems. Security researchers share the vulnerabilities they find with the broader cybersecurity community, which allows companies to patch up their security holes before something catastrophic happens. Prequel is looking to bring that same approach to software. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho...

While I have fond memories of past efforts to combine VR content with real-world locations, I’d assumed the pandemic had put those ambitions to an end. If I wanted VR in 2024, I thought I’d have to buy a headset, and it would be a largely solitary experience at home or in the office Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Threat exposure management startup Flare thinks it has an answer to info-stealers with a service that watches the dark web, resets passwords. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With disinformation on the rise, especially given the explosion of AI, companies are just as vulnerable to its effects as individuals. Refute is a London-based startup that detects and responds to disinformation on behalf of these commercial entities. It’s now raised a £2.3 million ($2.9 million) pre-seed round led by UK investors Playfair and Episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...

Two prominent programs, Activate and The Engine Accelerator, have decided they can give founders an advantage if they team up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI models that understand videos as well as text can unlock powerful new applications. At least, that’s what Jae Lee, the co-founder of Twelve Labs, believes. Granted, Lee’s a little biased. Twelve Labs trains video-analyzing models for a range of use cases. But there may just be something to his assertion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Upvest might not be a familiar name if you don’t pay close attention to the fintech industry, but chances are you’ve already interacted with the company’s products. Founded by Martin Kassing (pictured above), the Berlin-based startup builds a white-label investment platform that is used by some of the biggest fintech companies in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...

If startup funding rounds are any metric, generative AI is seeing ample adoption in the sciences. It makes sense: there’s a lot of trial and error involved in research and development, and any tool that can speed up the process for researchers is bound to be useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Small and medium businesses are getting more love in the world of fintech these days, and one example of that is the growth of a startup out of Sweden. Mynt, which has built an AI-based platform for corporate cards and spend management catering to SMEs, has closed a round of €22 million ($23 million). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

LambdaTest, a cloud-based software testing platform, has raised $38 million in a funding round as it looks to expand its presence in existing markets and advance its AI capabilities. The San Francisco and Noida-headquartered startup’s Series D round has been led by Avataar Ventures with participation from Qualcomm Ventures, bringing its total funding to $108 million. Learn more about your ad choic...

The startup argues that its hot-water approach is not only more efficient, but also more useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Podcast recording platform Riverside said Monday that it has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from Seven Seven Six, and angel investor Sam Lessin. The company wants to use this funding to grow its team and build out solutions for the podcast and content creation space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Do we really need another social media app for college students? With the looming TikTok ban in the U.S., a new app called Connyct seems to think so.  Connyct closely resembles the popular short-form video app, providing all the features you would expect, such as a personalized content feed, private chatting, as well as video . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Ladder, an Austin, Texas-based fitness startup that makes a popular strength-training app, is accusing Peloton of ripping off its work with the launch of Peloton’s new Stength+ app, which exited beta on Wednesday. After receiving feedback from Peloton’s beta testers that the app looked, felt, and functioned much like Ladder’s own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoice...

Turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate has netted Munich-based B2B foodtech startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA) a $30 million Series B funding round. Now, the Y Combinator alum is gearing up for industrialization, with the funds set to be deployed to scale its production capacity by around 7.5x Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Not everyone agrees on what an “AI agent” actually is, but they are all still the rage. At a broad level, these so-called “agents” promise to go several steps beyond a mere chatbot, making decisions and taking actions on people’s behalf. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The overarching promise of companies working on AI-powered productivity tools is to build solutions that would do a task for you. Some of the early demos that we have seen don’t really fare well in fulfilling those promises. A to-do list app called Twos is approaching this problem differently. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this hyperconnected world we live in, it’s easier than ever to send feedback to the companies we patronize. But just because businesses offer more ways to get in touch doesn’t mean they’re poring over every comment. According to a 2020 survey from Productboard, 90% of companies fail to successfully capture feedback from all channels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...