TechCrunch Startup News

Following its $40 million fundraise at the beginning of this year, streaming media company Plex announced on Wednesday it’s rolling out a new TV show and movie reviews feature, putting its app in more direct competition with other apps, like Letterboxd and TV Time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Health and life insurance providers face a rising volume of claims due to chronic disease and aging populations, but their processes lack scalability. AI automation can help, but it takes more tailoring than for other insurance types. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After keeping Century under wraps for several months, the startup gave TechCrunch a peek under the hood. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Odysee CEO Steve Casley sees dollar signs in data. Or more specifically, AI-powered software that can analyze reams of data to help commercial airlines get the most out of its complex flight schedules. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Distributional, an AI testing platform founded by Intel’s former GM of AI software, Scott Clark, has closed a $19 million Series A funding round led by Two Sigma Ventures. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Middle and high schoolers are both the easiest and most difficult audience. If you’re developing a neat little video game, chances are they’re willing to download it right away. But if, like the team behind Revyze, you’re working on a learning app, good luck pitching them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The global pet food market has become fiercely competitive, with an estimated market share of $103.3 billion in 2023 and still growing. This growth has led many companies to target pet owners who are willing to invest in quality food to enhance their pets’ well-being and longevity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Many screenwriters have embraced modern tools over traditional PDFs to craft their film or TV show pilots. SoCreate, the latest entrant in the screenwriting software arena, is challenging established players like Final Draft and Celtx with its fresh approach to storytelling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

To some degree, every business that has a presence on the web is in the content business — whether that’s for informing customers, finding new clients, or for SEO. That means managing the production of those texts and images, updating them, and potentially optimizing them for a search engine to index and rank. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI tends to make things up. That’s unappealing to just about anyone who uses it on a regular basis, but especially to businesses, for which fallacious results could hurt the bottom line. Half of workers responding to a recent survey from Salesforce say they worry answers from their company’s generative AI-powered systems are inaccurate Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adc...

As the second anniversary of Spill rolls around, Spill has something else to celebrate: Emmy-winning actress Kerry Washington has made an investment in his app. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transportation and warehousing are multi-trillion-dollar industries, but the technologies that power them are often outdated, inefficient and siloed. Pallet, which is announcing an $18 million Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures today, has built an all-in-one transportation and warehouse management system that uses AI to help these businesses streamline their operations Learn more...

Numa, a startup developing AI-powered automation tech for car dealerships, has raised fresh capital in a Series B round. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A team of founders who sold their last company to Amazon to build a new business within AWS is setting out to reinvent the tricky business of backing up an organization’s cloud infrastructure. Today, Eon — as their new startup is called — is coming out of stealth with a product, a set of customers, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Beta Technologies unveiled Monday the next electric aircraft in its lineup — a passenger-carrying version of its ALIA vertical takeoff and landing and fixed-wing vehicles. Electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicles don’t rely on a runway, whereas fixed-wing aircraft do. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The HVAC industry is going through a transformation. The old guard of tradespeople are on the cusp of retiring while private equity firms are consolidating the industry. Airship is building a software solution for HVAC’s next chapter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Podcast listeners crossed half a billion people at the end of last year as listenership maintained steady growth. With countries in the Arab world having some of the most engaged listeners, a podcasting startup out of Dubai is doubling down on the opportunity Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Apps catering to the Chinese and wider Asian diaspora, especially urban consumers focused on food, can be big business. Now, HungryPanda, one of the trailblazing startups in that market is announcing more funding. The food ordering and delivery app, founded in London and aimed squarely at Chinese and other Asian consumers living outside their home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastch...

While online discourse would make it seem that venture has retreated to the Bay Area, with San Francisco being the most important place to build a startup, Index Ventures is looking to bulk up its New York-based investing team. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

UAE-based Redwood has acquired a majority stake in the game streaming platform Loco as the Indian firm looks to expand focus to international markets, TechCrunch has learned and confirmed. Redwood, a newly-formed investment firm, has signed a $65 million deal with Loco, an investment that also gives full exit to all existing Loco backers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/a...

A company that claims its tech can “revolutionize” emergency calls has raised $27 million in a Series B round led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company, Prepared, enables 911 dispatchers to get a caller’s real-time GPS location if their phone supports it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Japan has always been a strong market for bringing technology into the experience of consuming food, and now one of the startups leading on this idea is attracting investors from across the ocean. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Digital transformation — upgrading a company’s legacy apps and processes with new tech — has long been a buzzy and lucrative business. But the pandemic supercharged the market. Covid pandemic lockdowns and the widespread move to work-from-home spurred brands relying on old technology to modernize their organizations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Radian Aerospace has moved one step closer to achieving the “holy grail” of spaceflight: a reusable space plane that can take-off from an airfield and land on a runway like a conventional airplane. The startup just announced completion of a series of ground tests in Abu Dhabi earlier this summer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mortgage fintech Mesa has emerged from stealth on Tuesday with $9.2 million in seed capital and a novel idea for homeowners. It’s offering cash back and rewards on all spending done on the home, including the mortgage itself.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices