The enterprise-focused Alchemist Accelerator is hosting its 26th Demo Day today, with 20 companies expected to debut. This is Alchemist’s third Demo Day to be fully virtual due to the ongoing pandemic. Alchemist Accelerator Director Ravi Belani tells me that this virtual format has thus far “outperformed the in-person Demo Day format,” with Alchemist’s […]
Can any news organization bridge the separate realities that the left and right seem to occupy in U.S. politics? A new startup with the odd-yet-memorable name Walking Duck is going to try. Walking Duck (an inversion of a “lame duck” president — a phrasing that has earned criticism as ableist — and a reference to […]
Otter.ai, the A.I.-powered voice transcription service that already integrates with Zoom for recording online meetings and webinars, is today bringing its service to Google Meet’s over 100 million users. However, in this case, Otter.ai will provide its live, interactive transcripts and video captions by way of a Chrome web browser extension. Once installed, a “Live […]
We asked some of our favorite health tech VCs from The TechCrunch List where we are headed in the next year, what they're most excited about and where they might be investing.
The Galaxy S21 is a tank. It’s a big, heavy (8.04 ounces versus its predecessor’s 7.7), blunt instrument of a phone. It’s quintessential Samsung, really — the handset you purchase when too much isn’t quite enough. In fact, it even goes so far as adopting S-Pen functionality — perhaps the largest distinguishing factor between the […]
Plaid is launching FinRise, a nine-month incubator for early-stage fintech founders from underrepresented backgrounds. Inspired by an internal hackathon amid Black Lives Matter protests last summer, the accelerator is explicitly looking at startups led by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Plaid Growth Manager Nell Malone and Design Manager Bhargavi Kamakshivalli are spearheading the […]
YouTube is embracing the hashtag. The company has been quietly working on a new feature that allows users to better discover content using hashtags — either by clicking on a hashtag on YouTube or by typing in a hashtag link directly. Before, these actions would return a mix of content related to the hashtag, but […]
As the global agricultural industry stretches to meet expected population growth and food demand, and food security becomes more of a pressing issue with global warming, a startup out of South Africa is using artificial intelligence to help farmers manage their farms, trees, and fruits. Aerobotics is a South African startup that provides intelligent tools […]
PlayVS, the esports company bringing organized leagues to high schools and colleges, is today announcing its first acquisition. The startup, which has raised more than $100 million, has acquired GameSeta, a Vancouver-based startup that is also looking to provide infrastructure for high school esports teams. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. The deal […]
MIT researchers are looking to address the significant gap between how quickly robots can process information (relatively slowly), and how fast they can move (very quickly thanks to modern hardware advances), and they’re using something called ‘robomorphic computing’ to do it. The method, designed by MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (CSAIL) graduate Dr. Sabrina […]
CloudNatix, a startup that provides infrastructure for businesses with multiple cloud and on-premise operations, announced it has raised $4.5 million in seed funding. The round was led by DNX Ventures, an investment firm that focuses on United States and Japanese B2B startups, with participation from Cota Capital. Existing investors Incubate Fund, Vela Partners and 468 […]
This morning TripActions, a software company whose tools help businesses book and manage corporate travel, announced a new $155 million investment. Three investors led the round: prior investor Andreessen Horowitz, Addition Ventures, and Elad Gil. The new investment, a Series E, values TripActions at $5 billion on a post-money basis, a company spokesperson wrote via […]
While the Biden administration is being celebrated for its decision to rejoin the Paris Agreement in one of its first executive orders after President Joe Biden was sworn in, it wasn’t the biggest step the administration took to advance its climate agenda. Instead it was a move to get to the basics of monitoring and […]
Soci, a startup focused on what it calls “localized marketing,” is announcing that it has raised $80 million in Series D funding. National and global companies like Ace Hardware, Anytime Fitness, The Hertz Corporation and Nekter Juice Bar use Soci (pronounced soh-shee) to coordinate individual stores as they promote themselves through search, social media, review […]
Apple is reportedly working on developing a high-end virtual reality headset for a potential sales debut in 2022, per a new Bloomberg report. The headset would include its own built-in processors and power supply, and could feature a chip even more powerful than the M1 Apple Silicon processor that the company currently ships on its […]
Creative Fabrica is best known as a marketplace for digital files, like fonts, graphics and machine embroidery designs, created for crafters. Now the Amsterdam-based startup is planning to expand into new verticals, including yarn crafts and projects for kids, with a $7 million Series A round led by Felix Capital. FJ Labs and returning investor […]
Google has reached an agreement with an association of French publishers over how it will be pay for reuse of snippets of their content. This is a result of application of a ‘neighbouring right’ for news which was transposed into national law following a pan-EU copyright reform agreed back in 2019. The tech giant had […]
But it’s been hard to argue against this position in the last ten years, as the country powered ahead, famously producing ground-breaking startups like Waze, which was eventually picked up by Google for over $1 billion in 2013. Waze’s 100 employees received about $1.2 million on average, the largest payout to employees in Israeli high […]
Springbox AI, an AI-powered financial forecasting application designed to replace financial market investment service and aimed at the average financial markets trader, has launched on iOS and Android. It’s been built by a team of founders who previously worked at Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, UBS, and BNP Paribas. It’s so far raised $2M in funding […]
