Author: TechBrunch

Founders are often told to follow the fit of the product market more than anything else, but what if the scale is too fast and too fast, actually hindering them? At TechCrunch All Stage 2025, held in Boston on July 15th, Jon McNeill, CEO and co-founder of DVX Ventures (and former president of Tesla and COO at Lyft), will take the scale stage to flip through scripts with traditional startup growth advice. His session, “Operators' Playbook for Building and Expansion of Sustainable Enterprises,” explores why the next generation of persistent companies are built differently by operators who test both their…

Brad Feld has been run by simple principles for decades. It's about giving it without expecting anything in return. This philosophy goes beyond traditional wage thinking, he says. It's about helping others. If so, knowing that only meaningful connections and opportunities will emerge organically over time. The entrepreneur and VC, who began investing in angels in the 1990s, became prominent through his candid blog Feld Thinking, pulling back the curtains of the secretory venture industry of the time, sparking countless debates across Silicon Valley. After co-founding both Techstars and venture company Foundry Group, which supported hundreds of companies for over…

Kalshi has raised a $185 million round led by a crypto-centric VC company paradigm, bringing the company's valuation to $2 billion in money, with representatives from Paradigm and Kalshi confirmed to TechCrunch. “The forecast market reminds me of Crypto 15 years ago,” said Matt Fan, co-founder and managing partner of Paradigm. “There's no better team to expand the forecast market than calci and reshape what people think about everything, from elections and economic markets to weather and sports.” The Wall Street Journal first reported on the round. The news comes a day after Bloomberg reported that Calci's biggest but regulatory…

Meta announced on Wednesday that it is adding AI-powered summaries to WhatsApp. An optional new feature uses Meta AI to summarise unread messages in chat. This summary will only be visible to you, not others in your chat, the company points out. This feature is based on AI technology released by Meta in April, allowing you to implement AI features that do not affect encryption or user privacy. “Message Summary uses private processing technology. This allows meta AI to generate responses without meta or WhatsApp showing messages or private summaries. No one else in the chat can also summarise unread…

Can AI improve the dating app market? A new dating app called Sitch aims to leverage human expertise in matchmaking to enhance AI models. Dating app banks today with speeds of onboarding and millions of options. Users will create profiles within seconds by uploading photos and answering simple questions. The app relies on basic information and feedback from a user's swipe to find potential matches. Sitch aims to adopt a more thoughtful approach in the onboarding process, using a large-scale language model (LLMS) to bring human matchmaker expertise to your dating app experience, helping you find potential matches without swipes.…

The Apple Sports app, launched last year, introduced tennis coverage before Wimbledon, and along with a redesigned home screen experience, Apple announced on Wednesday. Users now have access to live tennis scores for Grand Slams and 1000 level tournaments, allowing them to track every point in all male and female single matches. Fans will also be able to keep players up to date with progress throughout the tournament, and get results for every match from the first round to the final. According to Apple, Revamped Home Screen Experience is designed to make it easier for fans to follow their favorite…

AI-Native startups are rewriting the rules of what early traction looks like. Glasswing Ventures partner Kleida Martiro will lead the breakout to cut straight to the core of this cutting at TechCrunch All Stage on July 15th in Boston. Her session, “Acquiring Capital in a Competitive Market: How to Finance AI-Native Startups,” explores the fundamental stages of how AI founders can frame growth narratives in ways that resonate with advanced investors, and excludes investors who are still stuck in SaaS-era metrics. Martiro brings the perfect blend of operator and investor experience to the table. Before joining Glasswing, she led the…

Dating app Bumble announced Wednesday that it will resolve 30% of its workforce and affect around 240 positions. In its securities application, the company said the cuts were part of a plan to reorganize “an operational structure to optimize execution with strategic priorities.” Bumble expects to save $40 million a year as a result of the workforce cuts, and plans to reinvest most of this money in products and technology development. The company said it would incur a non-repeated fee of approximately $13 million to $18 million, primarily related to employee retirements, benefits and related costs affected in the third…

TechCrunch Discrupt is launching its first public stage. This is a brand new destination for founders navigating the mid- and late stages of the company's building. This content is essential for any founder, but it will especially scale fast and rethink what will come next. This is because the most successful founders, whether they're seed stage or Series E, are always thinking about 10 steps ahead. We hear from some of the biggest names of high-tech and ventures, including Eric Ewan (Zoom), Julie Wainwright (Ralal), David George (Andressen Horowitz), and Nirav Tria (Nextdoor). From IPO preparation to AI-powered GTM strategies,…

The Amazon-owned ring announced Wednesday that it was introducing new AI-powered features in its doorbells and cameras. Now, when users receive real-time notifications about events on their properties, updates become more descriptive. For example, “a person is climbing the stairs with a black dog” or “two individuals are looking at a white car parked in a driveway.” This feature is intended to improve previously available ambiguous notifications. This allows users to know exactly what is going on and quickly decide whether or not they need attention. It should be noted that AI only describes the first few seconds of a…