TechCrunch Startup News

As generative AI touches a growing number of industries, the companies producing chips to run the models are benefitting enormously. Nvidia in particular, which commands an estimated 70% to 95% of the market for AI chips, wields massive influence. Cloud providers from Meta to Microsoft are spending billions of dollars on Nvidia GPUs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoi...

Wisk Aero, a subsidiary of Boeing, has acquired Verocel, a software verification and validation company with 25 years of experience in the aerospace industry.  Wisk has an autonomous-first approach to eVTOL. The company’s Generation 6 aircraft, which is slated to begin airborne tests this year, is designed to be supervised by humans, but not physically Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podca...

Rocketlane initially aimed to support customer onboarding. However, it has broadened its scope and doubled down on addressing the needs of professional services teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yet another generative AI venture has raised a bundle of money. And, like the others before it, it’s promising the moon. Emergence, whose co-founders include Satya Nitta, the former head of global AI solutions at IBM’s research division, today emerged from stealth with $97.2 million in funding from Learn Capital plus credit lines totaling more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices...

Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang set off another debate with an anti-DEI post. It revealed a lot about the current state of DEI in tech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

18-year-olds Christopher Fitzgerald and Nicholas Van Landschoot have founded APIGen, a platform to build custom APIs from natural language prompts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with an AI platform that they can configure to help other workers in the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Christopher O’Donnell has hobbies. He likes music and playing guitar, but above all, he loves building software. Which is why three years after leaving HubSpot, he built Day.ai, a CRM for the age AI. Unlike modern CRMs, which are essentially giant spreadsheets that somebody needs to populate and keep updated, Day learns everything Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoice...

Speak, the AI-powered language learning app, has raised new money from investors at double its previous valuation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Four years after acquiring Shine, a French fintech startup that offers bank accounts to freelancers and very small companies, Société Générale has announced plans to sell Shine to Ageras. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For retailers, e-commerce is a bit of a puzzle at the moment. Online shopping trends are expected to stay strong this year, so companies can’t afford to curtail their e-commerce budgets, but at the same time, e-commerce is more fragmented than ever before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We all know the feeling when we send a funny TikTok video, anticipating a response from a friend, only to receive a basic laughing emoji or, worse, no reaction at all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Self-driving vehicles rely on many sensors to detect objects and the world around them. The conventional approach is to work with cameras and lidars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cheap irrigation has transformed many regions around the world into breadbaskets, but it also means that there can be little left for other uses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Golf has exploded in popularity in recent years thanks to the pandemic and the popularity of Netflix’s Full Swing documentary series. More than 531 million rounds of golf were played in the U.S. in 2023 alone, according to the National Golf Foundation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

StepStone raised the largest fund dedicated to investing in venture secondaries ever, the firm announced last week. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

GPTZero's growth and financials made it one of the AI startups ruthlessly pursued by VCs. And Footwork's Nikhil Basu Trivedi won the deal. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Small VC firms require deep trust, mutual support, and long-term commitment among the partners —a kinship that, in many ways, resembles a family dynamic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AccountsIQ, a Dublin-founded accounting technology company, has raised $65 million to build “the finance function of the future” for mid-sized companies. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It’s not the sexiest of subject matters, but someone needs to talk about it: The CFO tech stack — software used by the chief financial officers of the world — is ripe for disruption. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With most residential solar panels installed by smaller companies, customer experience can be a mixed bag. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

French startup Kelvin, which uses computer vision and machine learning to make it easier to audit homes for energy efficiency, has raised $5.1M. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Who would have thought that Raspberry Pi, the maker of cheap, single-board computers, would become a public company? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anterior, a company that uses AI to expedite health insurance approval for medical procedures Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices