TechCrunch Startup News

A new company is emerging from stealth today with backing from Google’s AI-focused venture fund to help businesses compile their open-source AI infrastructure and reduce their engineering overheads. Cake integrates and secures more than 100 components for enterprises. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yurts has raised a $40 million Series B led by XYZ Venture Capital to provide the DoD with gen AI. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cancer incidence is on the rise, particularly among younger adults, but most new drug compounds fail to progress through clinical trials. According to French entrepreneur Fanny Jaulin (on the right in the picture above), the problem lies with clinical trial design.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On a September morning in 2024, two Jonathan Cohens — one from the Rockaways in Queens, the other from London — stood in an empty 15,000-square-foot parking garage near Hudson Yards in New York City. As they walked over chipped yellow lines, they explained how the space would help Joco, their shared e-bike startup. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As one of the most decorated track cyclists of all time, Sir Chris Hoy might not seem an obvious candidate to back the burgeoning electric bike movement. The common refrain, after all, is that e-bikes aren’t real bikes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

India has bucked the global trend in initial public offerings this year, establishing itself as a rare bright spot for tech listings while other major markets face continued headwinds. The world’s most populous nation is now preparing for an even more substantial wave of startup IPOs in 2025 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Decarbonizing our economies in the race to fight climate change demands a wholesale overhauling of all sorts of production processes to make them as sustainable as possible. Greening chemicals, which are used as ingredients in all sorts of products, is where U.K. startup Deep Blue Biotech is putting its energies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Volta, a new startup with a team split between two headquarters in Milan and Paris, has secured a €6 million pre-seed round ($6.3 million) to develop a new vertical software-as-a-service platform focused on B2B sales. In more practical terms, the Volta team pitches its product as an equivalent to Shopify but focused on B2B transactions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/ad...

Europe must get much better at scaling startups. That’s the prognosis of the European Union’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, who’s on the cusp of taking up her second five-year term steering the bloc of some 449 million people — with a December 1 start date now locked in. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Writing the documentation that must go alongside the development of new drugs is a highly labor-intensive process: not much software is used and there’s a shortage of expert writers. Paris-based Biolevate helps medical writers go faster with a platform that uses NLP and visual document reading to assisting in writing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Battery tech is pivotal as the world leans into electrification to power decarbonization in the race against climate change. But rising demand is putting more attention on the limits and drawbacks of current generation lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Meet the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 W, a tiny board designed around a microcontroller that lets you build hardware projects at scale. Raspberry Pi is once again using the RP2350, its own, well-documented microcontroller. But what is a microcontroller again? As the name suggests, microcontrollers let you control other electronic components or devices. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

Anthropic, OpenAI’s close rival, has raised an additional $4 billion from Amazon, and has agreed to make Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud computing division, the primary place it’ll train its flagship generative AI models. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The company chose Chapter 11 in an effort to right its listing finances.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic, OpenAI’s close rival, has raised an additional $4 billion from Amazon, and has agreed to make Amazon Web Services — Amazon’s cloud computing division — the sole place it’ll train its flagship generative AI models. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Here is yet one more sign of the travel industry’s noticeable boom: a major growth round for one of the B2B startups servicing it. Lighthouse, a data analytics platform for hotels and others in the hospitality industry, has closed a Series C of $370 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Manufacturing has been one of the hottest categories in venture this year, but there are still many innovative materials and processes yet to scale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bling Capital, one of the more prolific and well-connected seed VC firms, has nabbed another $270 million for a new flagship, fourth fund. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Dual-use drone startup Tekever has raised €70 million ($74 million) to develop its product and expand into new markets, specifically the U.S.. The news is part of a trend of smaller tech-driven startups moving into markets normally dominated by large ‘defense primes’. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As college tuition increases and the student loan debt crisis continues, three former executives from language learning app Duolingo are building a new startup aimed at making college education more affordable and accessible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AIOps, short for artificial intelligence in operations, is a process that uses AI to automate IT tasks. More organizations are embracing it as AI commodifies, yet adoption is still lagging. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the wake of the U.S. 2024 presidential election, one fact became clear: Disinformation proliferated online at a startling rate, shaping Americans’ views about each candidate as well as a diverse set of topics, including public health, climate change, and immigration. Generative AI – with its ability to produce deepfakes in seconds Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adcho...

Moonvalley, a new generative video startup, claims it's building models using more ethical and transparent approaches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As the influencer economy grows, startups like PassionFroot, Agentio, and One Impression, along with social platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are trying to build marketplaces to connect brands with creators. Miami-based startup Influur, is banking on two unique aspects of its platform: quick response from creators and financial tools to ensure they are paid Learn more about your ad cho...

When you board a plane, the pilot already knows the weather on the flight path and can steer clear, or at least warn you it’s coming. The same can’t be said of “space weather” from solar events, which can seriously affect satellites and even passenger planes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices