Author: TechBrunch

Skich, an app like Tinder for discovering mobile games, announced the launch of a new marketplace on Thursday that will take part in close competition with alternative game stores such as Aptoide and Epic Games. The new alternative mobile game store, Skich Store, will be available to iOS users in the European Union. The company plans to begin adding titles at the end of March after the Game Developers Conference (GDC). Skich's iOS Marketplace announcement follows the recent implementation of new regulations in the EU, known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA). DMA is looking to enhance fairness and competition…

Next week, Meta will begin one of the company's most important overhauls on how to check the platform information. On March 18th, Meta will begin releasing versions of Community Notes for Facebook, Instagram and US thread users. The program copied the crowdsourcing fact-checking system announced by Twitter in 2021, and became the only way to fix misleading information after Elon Musk changed the platform to X. Meta executives say they are focusing on getting community notes correctly in the US before deploying the feature to other countries. Given that the US is the most profitable market for meta, it is…

At the heart of many copyright lawsuits against AI companies, AI-powered image generators are frequently trained on huge amounts of data from public websites. Most of these companies argue that fair use doctrines protect data scraping and training practices. However, many copyright holders disagree. That's why some startups and companies developing image generators are trying out different tacks. I train the generator using only licensed content. Founded in 2023 by entrepreneurs Yair Adato and Assa Eldar, Bria is one of these. Bria pays images from around 20 partners, including Getty Images, and uses these to train image generation models on…

Telegram's independent Crypto Wallet was developed by a third-party company called The Open Platform (TOP) and introduced new features for people who don't use Telegram as a messaging app. Updates include multi-asset trading and surrender capabilities. Based on the TON blockchain, Top launched its wallet in 2023. The company reported that over 100 million users have signed up for accounts with Telegram wallets. Furthermore, we noted that most of these users are new to the crypto ecosystem. Wallet products are primarily focused on Toncoin cryptocurrency, which can be used on the Telegram platform to lean creators and pay for mini-games…

The issue of Europe's ability to survive the storm is looming heavily amid geopolitical tensions and unstable markets, especially as President Trump appears to be intended to have his pound tariffs from the continent. However, the large new report argues that it will become an important pillar of Europe's security, defense and future autonomy, particularly from the United States. DeepTech raised 15 billion euros ($16.3 billion) in venture investments in 2024, according to a 184-page report from venture companies Reikestar, Walden Catalyst, Dealroom and DeepTech Conference. The report also found that almost a third of all venture capital invested in…

Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi said on Thursday that Android smartphones for sale in India will be pre-installed with the App Store of Indian fintech company PhonePe. Xiaomi Android smartphones usually come with Google's Play Store and Chinese companies' own GetApps pre-installed. Xiaomi said it has signed a multi-year agreement with Phonepe to replace GetApps with the latter Indus Appstore. This confirms TechCrunch's report on the partnership last year. Google's Play Store is still pre-installed on Xiaomi devices. The company did not specify whether the Indus Appstore will also be deployed to existing Xiaomi devices already on sale, or whether it…

A huge portion of online traffic comes from bots, both for the good and for the bad, but AI is driving the latter. From DDOS attacks to scraping, there is a new barrage of threats that businesses must deal with. According to cybersecurity entrepreneur Nikita Rosenberg, the impact of SMB is even more severe. “The main difference is that large companies can usually survive with it. Most of these threats can simply kill small businesses.” This led him to launch Blackwall, an Estonia-based startup previously known as Botguard. This focus also influenced the product roadmap. Recently, e-commerce websites have launched…

Over the past 15 years or so, as European venture capital has moved to higher gear, one way to help the country's ecosystem flourish has been to invest in the country's founders, regardless of where they are. This helps bring the entrepreneur's mindset back to home. In Europe, this approach was partially pioneered by Paris-based Kima Ventures. Now, the new venture company wants to replicate the idea from Italy. One of Italy's most active private early VCS, Vento is launching a second hard-cap fund for 75 million euros, particularly to support the founders of Italian startups both domestically and internationally.…

Humanity CEO Dario Amodei worries that a spy from China, who is likely to get expensive “algorithm secrets” from top American AI companies. Speaking at the Council on Diplomatic Relations on Monday, Amodei said China is known for its “large industrial spy” and that AI companies like humanity are almost certainly targeted. “Many of the secrets of these algorithms have a $100 million secret, a few lines of code,” he said. “And you know, I'm sure there are people trying to steal them, and they may be successful.” More help from the US government in defending this risk is “very…

Food Delivery Startup Wonder has acquired Media Company Tastemade for around $90 million, according to the Wall Street Journal. Founded in 2021, Tastemade produces food, travel, home videos and operates a free, ad-supported streaming television (high-speed) channel. This acquisition gives you mysterious access to content studios, production companies and advertising businesses. Wonder will use all of these assets to promote its brand to a larger audience, the company says. The agreement marks Wonder's latest steps towards his mission to create a mealtime “super app.” Wonder Founder and CEO Mark Roar, who previously headed e-commerce at Walmart, wants to turn Wonder…