Author: TechBrunch

According to TechCrunch, Electra has raised $76.3 million to clean up the dirty steel industry. The startup has developed a new way to extract pure iron from low-grade ore using electricity, opening the door to cleaner steel. The new funding round, disclosed in a regulatory filing, aims to raise a total of $256.7 million. Today's iron production is highly polluted. The majority of emissions from steelmaking come from steel, which itself generates 7% of global carbon emissions. The main process used to make iron today, which involves burning fossil fuels and melting ore in scorching blast furnaces, has changed little…

An online gift card store in the United States has secured an online storage server that was exposing hundreds of thousands of its customers' government-issued identification cards to the Internet. A security researcher who goes by the online handle “JayeLTee” said late last year that his driver's licenses, passports and other forms of identification belonging to My GiftCardSupply, a company that sells digital gift cards that customers can redeem from popular brands or online, were stolen. I discovered a public storage server where it was stored. service. My GiftCardSupply's website states that as part of its compliance with US anti-money…

Consumer goods giant Hindustan Unilever is in talks to buy four-year-old direct-to-consumer startup Minimalist for up to $350 million, two people said. Unilever's subsidiary in India acquired Ojiva & Wellbeing Nutrition a year ago, expanding its business into the health and welfare sector, and if the acquisition goes through, it will further accelerate its buying spree in India. It will be. “In line with our business strategy, we are continuously evaluating various strategic opportunities for growth and expansion of our business,” a Hindustan Unilever spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement. The acquisition also expands Unilever's Indian subsidiary's portfolio of skin…

More than half a dozen VPN apps, including the widely used Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, have been removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in India following intervention from government authorities, a TechCrunch investigation found. . India's Ministry of Home Affairs ordered the app to be taken down, according to documents reviewed by TechCrunch and disclosures Google made to Lumen, a Harvard University database that tracks government takedown requests around the world. Affected apps include Hide.me and PrivadoVPN. In an interaction with one of the affected developers seen by TechCrunch, Apple said that India Cyber, a part of the…

There's no doubt that Nvidia will host the biggest CES of 2025. After all, the company currently has almost all of the biggest ones. The semiconductor giant boasts a market capitalization of more than $3.4 trillion, largely due to its fundamental position in the ongoing AI boom. Companies like OpenAI and Meta have been buying Nvidia processors in bulk, and that's unlikely to change in the new year. According to Nvidia, founder and CEO Jensen Huang will appear at CES “in his trademark leather jacket and unwavering vision” on January 6 at 6:30pm PT, 9:30pm ET. We plan to cooperate…

Tacora Capital, a Texas company specializing in venture debt, has raised $268.7 million for its second fund, according to a new SEC filing. Tacora's first fund in 2022 raised about $350 million, including $250 million from prominent Republican billionaire and investor Peter Thiel. , was considered an “unusually large investment” for Thiel, Bloomberg reported at the time. It's unclear whether Mr. Thiel is involved in Tacora's latest fund. The only disclosure in the filing is that there are 28 (anonymous) investors. Tacora founder and CEO Keri Findley declined to comment on whether Thiel invested. A representative for Thiel did not…

CES 2025 starts on January 7th. The annual event in Las Vegas sets the tone for the consumer electronics and automotive industries that year. As always, TechCrunch is there to sniff out stories from the most exciting startups and tech giants. If you really want to watch some of the action without paying for a hotel or flight, many of the event's biggest keynotes will be streamed. The show will officially run from January 7th to 10th, but most of the big news will be announced before the show through in-person press events. These are mainly set for the “Press…

The list of flagship AI models that have missed their promised launch window continues to grow. Last summer, billionaire Elon Musk, founder and CEO of AI company xAI, said xAI's next major AI model, Grok 3, would arrive by the “end of the year” in 2024. Grok is xAI's answer to models like OpenAI's GPT-4o and Google's Gemini can analyze images and respond to questions, powering many of the features of X, Musk's social network . “The end of Grok 3 should be really special after training on 100,000 H100s,” Musk said in a July post about X, referring to…

One person was killed and seven others were injured when a Tesla Cybertruck burst into flames just outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas on Wednesday morning, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD). Investigators have named Matthew Alan Reiblesberger, 37, an active-duty U.S. Army Green Beret from Colorado Springs, as the prime suspect. Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Sheriff Kevin McMahill revealed new details during a media briefing Thursday, saying Lieselberger's military ID, credit cards and passport were found in the Cybertruck. Libersberger was also identified as the person who rented the Cybertruck, and videos from various…

Spotify on Thursday announced the launch of a new “partner program” that will allow popular podcast hosts to monetize their video content. Spotify's new program gives eligible creators on the platform the opportunity to earn additional income beyond ad revenue, including video payments. The program was first announced in November and was officially available in the US, UK, Canada and Australia starting Thursday. The program is expected to boost Spotify's video podcast library, and is likely aimed at competing with YouTube, which currently dominates the entire video space. According to Spotify, more than 65% of eligible podcast shows have already…