Author: TechBrunch

Aye Finance, an Indian small and medium-sized business lender, aims to raise $171 million in an initial public offering, it said in a filing on Tuesday. The offering consists of a $104 million issuance of new shares and a $67 million secondary sale to existing investors. Proceeds from the IPO will be used to expand the startup's financing portfolio and strengthen its capital base. The lender, which is backed by Alphabet's venture arm Capital G, is currently valued at about $400 million and operates 499 branches across 22 states in India. Assets under management as of September were $588 million.…

Hexa, a Paris-based startup studio that has launched dozens of B2B software companies, is sharing a list of upcoming projects that will soon become independent startups. Hexa originally started in 2011 as eFounders, a startup studio focused on B2B Software-as-a-Service products. Hexa usually comes up with ideas that form the basis of new companies. The Hexa team then tries to match the new project with the right founding team so they can make it their own. For the first year or so, Hexa's in-house team supports founders with product design, go-to-market strategy, recruiting, and financing. Once a startup raises its…

Meta's X rival, Threads, has more than 100 million people using its service every day and is growing steadily, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday. Zuckerberg also noted that Threads currently has 300 million monthly active users, and in November had 275 million monthly active users. Meta regularly releases updated numbers on monthly active Threads users, but this is the first time the company has revealed the number of daily active users. Over the past month, the company has been actively rolling out statistics and features as rival social network Bluesky, which has more than 25 million users, gains momentum.…

Cohere is one of the most well-known AI startups outside of OpenAI and Anthropic, with a valuation of $5.5 billion as of July. It was co-founded by the authors of the paper “Attending Is All You Need,” which helped launch the Large-Scale Language Model (LLM) revolution. Toronto and San Francisco-based Cohere sells AI to enterprise customers and doesn't have a viral consumer chatbot. Anthropic made headlines last month for its deal with Palantir and AWS to sell AI to defense customers, and TechCrunch has learned that Palantir is also a Cohere partner. And, according to information explained in a video…

Jay-Z's venture capital firm, Mercy Venture Partners, has merged with another black-owned investment firm, Pendulum Opportunities, the investment arm of Pendulum Holdings, to form MercyPen Capital Partners, a MercyPen spokesperson said. A representative confirmed this to TechCrunch. The newly formed MercyPen Capital Partners has $900 million in assets under management, according to PitchBook. A MercyPen spokesperson declined to comment further on the matter, but records filed with the private equity industry database PreQuinn and the California Secretary of State indicate the merger was completed around September. has been done. It looks like MarcyPen is already moving forward. Prior to merging…

Colin Angle, one of the co-founders of Roomba maker iRobot, is raising money for his home robot venture. A filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission revealed that Mr. Angle's new company, Familia Machines & Magic, is seeking to raise $30 million. To date, it has raised $15 million from a group of eight investors. The filing, known as Form D, does not identify the backers by name. However, Data Point Capital lists Familiar Machines on its website as one of the VC firm's portfolio companies. Familiar Machines has a domain name and a trademark application, but no functioning…

TuSimple co-founder and former CEO Xiaodi Hou is on a warpath heading into Friday's annual shareholder meeting, which will decide the composition of the company's board of directors. Over the past few weeks, Mr. Hou has sued TuSimple over voting control, demanding that the company immediately liquidate and return all remaining cash to shareholders and blocking TuSimple from transferring funds to China. asked the court. Now Mr. Hou is pushing shareholders to change the board, even if it means fighting outside the annual general meeting. Mr Hou sent an open letter to shareholders on Monday warning of plans to begin…

ConnectOnCall has issued a warning to approximately 1 million individuals whose personal and health information was stolen in a data breach in May. ConnectOnCall, owned by healthcare technology company Phreesia, provides healthcare providers with a digital answering service to answer patient calls during after-hours. The May breach included information such as patient names, phone numbers, and dates of birth, as well as information related to health conditions, treatments, and prescriptions, that was shared between patients and clinics that relied on ConnectOnCall. It contained information. ConnectOnCall said some Social Security numbers were also stolen in the breach. Freesia did not say…

ChatGPT Search, OpenAI's AI-powered web search experience, is now available to all ChatGPT users with several new features. By default, ChatGPT automatically determines which questions to route to ChatGPT Search. Alternatively, users can tap the new “Web Search” icon in the ChatGPT interface. ChatGPT search not only displays a summary of answers from various online sources, but also displays “rich” content such as embedded photos and YouTube videos. ChatGPT Search was launched in October as an evolution of OpenAI's SearchGPT prototype announced this summer. Powered by a fine-tuned version of OpenAI's GPT-4o model, ChatGPT Search provides web information such as…

Instagram has quietly rolled out a feature that allows users to schedule direct messages. The Meta-owned social network confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday that the new feature will be rolling out to all users worldwide. The option to schedule DMs is especially useful for creators and brands who want to schedule their outreach messages at the best time. It is also useful for ordinary users who want to contact their friends at a specific time due to different time zones. Additionally, you can also use this feature to send reminders about something at a specific point in the future. The…