Author: TechBrunch
The year is 2030. A “notorious mystery hacker” known as Puppet Master is wreaking havoc on the Internet, infiltrating the so-called cyber brains of several humans and “every device on the network.” After all, Puppet Master is a creation of Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In other words, Puppet Master is what we would today call a government-sponsored hacker, or Advanced Persistent Threat (APT). However, in this case, the “mysterious'' hacker has become the villain, wanted on charges of “stock price manipulation, espionage, political manipulation, terrorism, and cyber brain privacy violation.'' That's the basic premise of the Japanese cult classic…
January Ventures co-founder Jennifer Neundorfer stopped by the Equity podcast during TechCrunch Disrupt to talk about raising money in this very AI-driven market. Founders and investors alike are excited about AI, and even Neundorfer said her company is looking at ways to use AI to make its work more efficient, such as helping with market and competitive due diligence. When it comes to companies that are starting up, I prefer founders who want to create something entirely new. “What excites me is when I see someone using AI to do something that’s not 10 times better, because it’s actually creating…
If you want to know how worried venture capitalists (and Silicon Valley in general) are about legal challenges to AI training using copyrighted material, look no further than the AI music site Suno. Suno, which allows anyone to create AI-generated songs through prompts, announced Wednesday that it has raised $250 million in a Series C round at a post-money valuation of $2.45 billion. The round was led by Menlo Ventures, with participation from Nvidia's venture arm NVentures, as well as Hallwood Media, Lightspeed, and Matrix. The company offers monthly subscriptions for consumers (a free tier plus $8 or $24 monthly…
While everyone is chasing the next AI infrastructure move in San Francisco, some of the most defensible AI companies are founded by founders with deep expertise in legacy industries, but are unfunded. January Ventures aims to fill that gap, writing pre-seed checks for underrepresented founders transforming healthcare, manufacturing, and supply chains with AI. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Dominic-Madri Davis spoke on a live episode of Equity with Jennifer Neundorfer, co-founder and general partner of January Ventures. The two delved into how early-stage investing is changing in the age of AI and why building different networks is important. Source link
The governments of the United States, United Kingdom, and Australia have sanctioned a Russian “Bulletproof” web hosting company and several of its affiliates for allegedly using ransomware attacks against American victims and critical infrastructure. The U.S. Treasury Department announced in a statement Wednesday that it has imposed coordinated sanctions on Russia-based web host Media Land and three related companies. The sanctions also target several executives at the company, including the company's general director (also known as Yarishanda), who allegedly provided servers and troubleshooting to cybercriminals. Officials said criminal hackers used Medialand to launch a distributed denial-of-service attack. Prolific ransomware gangs…
For Daniil Boiko and Andrei Tyrin, the idea for Onepot AI came from the same frustration. “The best ideas in drug discovery were often blocked by synthesis rather than biology,” Boyko told TechCrunch. Synthesis is the use of chemical reactions to create new molecules. It's like a recipe or a Lego piece, where smaller pieces, ingredients, and molecules come together to form broader puzzle pictures, food plates, and larger molecules. As you can imagine, creating small molecules to build larger molecules is extremely difficult. In Dr. Boyko's case, he was a candidate studying machine learning in chemistry at Carnegie Mellon…
Today's Internet presents new concerns. In addition to vibe coding tools and the codebases, sites, and apps built using them, security issues and blind spots have also proliferated. Cybersecurity company Guardio is targeting a new market created during this shift: using AI tools to discover malicious code written. The company says it has found that AI tools have made it easier than ever for malicious actors to build fraudulent or phishing sites and the infrastructure needed to operate them. Today, Guardio leverages its experience building browser extensions and apps that scan for malicious and phishing sites to build tools that…
Shivi Sharma has worked in credit risk for 10 years at companies such as American Express and Varro Bank. At one point, she realized that her team was spending the same amount of time analyzing every type of loan, whether it was worth $100,000 or $5 million. This means that valuing small loans is ultimately an unprofitable and time-consuming process for lenders. She and her husband, Utsav Shah, recognized an opportunity here. “She saw that the vast majority of small business owners couldn't access the capital they needed to grow, simply because the economy wasn't going well for banks,” Shah…
Jenny Button first remembered Em during the coronavirus lockdown. She used the Oura ring and Whoop monitoring band to gain insight into her body, but no device could provide her with data on one of the most important aspects: her reproductive and menstrual health. “That seemed crazy to me, because these are things that all women want to be able to track and understand more deeply,” she told TechCrunch. This is what she thought. Why not create a wearable device that could tell someone more about reproductive health? She wrote to one of Dyson's engineers, made a connection, and started…
Venture capital firm Atomico's annual European Technology Status Report has been published, showing an upward trend in investment. But this year's edition goes beyond the usual assessment of the technology ecosystem. It is part of an advocacy that reflects broader changes. European startups and investors are increasingly turning to lobbying. “It's no longer enough to show how far we've come; it's also important to use those insights to chart the path forward,” said report author Tom Wehmeyer, partner and head of intelligence at Atomico. It includes four policy recommendations with the descriptive names: “Removing Friction,” “Financing the Future,” “Developing Talent,”…