Author: TechBrunch

Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by former Okta executive Alex Salazar and former Redis engineer Sam Partee, has raised $12 million from Laude Ventures. Laude is a new fund launched in 2024 by Andy Konwinski, co-founder of Perplexity, a computer scientist at UC Berkeley, who co-founded Databricks. This isn't the only check that Laude cuts. But it was the first public announcement, and Peteson Sinni, a large co-founder and general partner, told TechCrunch. Sonsini has been a long-established NEA known and leads Databricks, early investments in all sizes and embarrassments. As for Salazar, he is a recurring founder.…

AI coding assistants are becoming extremely popular, with the majority of respondents in GitHub's latest poll saying they have adopted AI tools in some way. Jared Friedman, partner at Y Combinator, recently claimed that a quarter of YC's W25 startup batches have 95% of the codebase generated by AI. Feeling the opportunity, VCS is in a hurry to back up and build startups developing AI-powered support programming tools. One of these startups, Graphite, raised $52 million in the Series B round led by Accel on Tuesday, and announced its participation from the Humanity Anthology Fund with Menlo Ventures, Shopify Ventures,…

It's time to hear your voice. After receiving an overwhelming amount of application for speakers in a TechCrunch session: AI, selected six incredible finalists. TC Session: AI will be held on June 5th at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California. And you have the power to decide who you want to share their wisdom with 1,200 AI leaders and enthusiasts. Viewer choice voting continues until March 21st at 11:59pm. You can only choose one speaker, so please count your votes! Also sign up for tickets now to save up to $210, secure spots in the most voted sessions and other AI-focused…

The chat platform WhatsApp said today it will limit the number of broadcast messages that individual users and businesses can send to app curb spam. In the coming weeks, the company will begin testing limits for individual broadcast messages. Under these restrictions, WhatsApp will place a monthly limit on the number of broadcasts. There is a travel limit during the test, but one example of the example given by Meta was to allow 30 messages per month. Meta said that status updates or channels can be used if individual users want to send more messages to a large number of…

The new iOS social wellness app that exists wants to help middle-aged consumers connect and build meaningful communities to each other as they navigate their lives and the stress that comes with them. The app describes itself as being more gentle or edge-like in headspace, and its main feature is social journaling. The idea behind social and community-driven journaling in the app is to help people heal together rather than alone. The presence also includes daily mood trackers, audio exercises, guided meditations and more. The app was founded by iOS developer Jason Jardim, who founded a startup previously known as…

On Tuesday, Google announced new products and features aimed at healthcare use cases, including an improved overview of HealthQuery's search, medical record APIs, and a new health-centric “open” AI model. In the search, Google says it is using AI and ranking systems to expand its “knowledge panel” responses on thousands of health-related topics, adding support for healthcare queries in Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese on mobile. The search already provides knowledge panel answers for illnesses like the flu and common colds, but the update will significantly expand the number of topics the knowledge panel covers, the company said. Google is also…

The so-called “Vibe Coding” using LLM-driven tools such as Cursor Composer – a term coined by well-known computer scientist Andrej Karpathy – describes a handoff approach to writing code using the Genai model, and is really taking off these days. According to Y Combinator, a quarter of the latest batch startups rely on AI to generate 95% of the codebase. But despite its obvious speed, is it really the most efficient way to generate code? Can businesses leave unstable code and rising technical debt? This is the view of UK-Startup Turintech, which launches Artemis products at Nvidia's GTC event. This…

The incredibly successful large tech companies have some drawbacks. Apple lost its appeal against the special abuse control regime that Germany's competitive watchdog applied last year. iPhone manufacturers can expect to continue to face bespoke competitive management in major European markets, along with other similar laws (such as the EU DMA). On Tuesday, Reuters reported a ruling by the German Federal Court of Justice that confirmed Apple's five-year regulatory designation applied by the Federal Cartel Office (FCO) in April 2023. Last month, FCO said it suspects that the transparency framework tracking Apple's apps corresponds to self-likeness and is banned under…

Google has made the biggest acquisition in its history. The company's parent company, Alphabet, has acquired cloud security startup Wiz for $32 billion. Transactions will require regulatory and other approvals before closing. From what we can see, Google and Wiz have yet to confirm official things. Other outlets also report that transactions have been made. Previously, Google's biggest acquisition was to buy Motorola Mobility in 2011 for $12.5 billion. The deal has been repeated in nearly a year and appears to be revived this week. (Assaf Rappaort, CEO of New York-based WIZ, is currently in Israel.) Last year, Google offered…

Nigerian food procurement startup Bendase supported by Y combinations is changing employee wage structures and seeking fresh capital, TechCrunch learned. This comes after graduating from 44% of the workforce (about 120 employees) and then marking second round of employment cuts in five months a month. According to an internal document seen by TechCrunch, in the latest development, the startup has replaced the employee's traditional payroll with a performance-based pay system. The five-year-old startup, which raised $30 million in the Series A round led by Parttech Africa and TLCOM Capital, said restructuring was needed to navigate profitability. Vendease's new compensation model…