Author: TechBrunch

Bench, the venture capital-backed accounting startup that abruptly shut down last week, leaving thousands of customers locked out of their accounts, will be acquired by Employer.com for an undisclosed price in a last-minute deal. was obtained exclusively by TechCrunch. San Francisco-based HR technology company Employer.com focuses on payroll and onboarding, in contrast to Bench, which specializes in accounting and tax. Matt Charney, Employer.com's chief marketing officer, told TechCrunch that the company is bringing back the Bench platform and providing instructions for customers to quickly log in and retrieve their data. Charney told TechCrunch that customers will have the option of…

Nvidia has completed its acquisition of Run:ai, an Israeli startup that helps manage and optimize AI hardware infrastructure. As part of the merger, Run:ai said its software, which currently only works on Nvidia products, will be open sourced, meaning Nvidia rivals such as AMD and Intel can also adapt it to their own hardware. said to mean. “We are eager to build on our gains to date, expand our talented team, and expand our product and market reach,” Run:ai told Bloomberg in a statement. “Open sourcing the software allows us to extend its availability to the entire AI ecosystem.” Nvidia…

AI holds great promise for healthcare, but not just on the medical side. Many startups believe that machine learning-based systems can bring a lot of benefits to adjacent tasks such as scheduling and confirming reservations. Brazilian startup Carecode is one of these AI believers. The company has quietly emerged with ambitions to reduce healthcare costs and improve healthcare outcomes by developing AI agents that focus on tasks that occur before, during and after medical appointments, and typically Performed by a call center. “We tend to think that the moment with a doctor is the only thing that matters, but after…

Middle Eastern startup Calo has injected significant funding into offering time-poor customers and a growing range of heat-and-cook products, with a business built around increasingly customized ready-to-eat meals. We are trying to expand both of our customers. -Eat food. The Middle East meal delivery market is expected to reach $11.2 billion by 2030, according to a MarkNtel Advisors report released last year. Food aggregators like Careem, Deliveroo, and Talabat have built large businesses by capitalizing on the habit of busy professionals ordering meals rather than preparing them themselves. This was primarily driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. Riyadh-based Calo differentiates itself…

US telecommunications giant Verizon, which was targeted by the China-linked cyber espionage group Salt Typhoon, announced that it had secured its network. In a statement given to TechCrunch on Sunday, Verizon spokesperson Richard Young said the company had “contained the cyber incident brought on by this nation-state threat actor” and had “no security measures in place on our network for some time.” “We have not detected any threat actor activity.” ” Verizon's containment of the incident was confirmed by a “highly reputable cybersecurity firm,” the company said, but Young declined to name the third party. The scale of the Salt…

The proliferation of data centers aimed at meeting AI's computational needs could spell bad news for the U.S. power grid, according to a new report from Bloomberg. Using 1 million home sensors tracked by Whisker Labs and market intelligence data from DC Byte, Bloomberg found that more than half of the households with the worst power distortions were within 20 miles of significant data center activity. I discovered that I live in In other words, there appears to be a link between proximity to data centers and “bad harmonics” (a term used to describe less-than-ideal power flow to the home).…

Three cryptocurrency industry groups, the DeFi Education Fund, the Blockchain Association, and the Blockchain Council of Texas, are calling the Internal Revenue Service to block new regulations that would require decentralized finance (DeFi) entities to report customer information. I'm appealing. The IRS is finalizing cryptocurrency tax regulations as part of the Biden administration's Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The IRS says these new rules should help “close the information gap regarding digital assets.” The lawsuit, on the other hand, argues that this approach disproportionately relies on “DeFi trading front-ends,” online platforms that essentially allow users to access crypto protocols but…

It's been a busy year in the private equity space, with countless big acquisitions. There have been some huge deals, especially in the private equity space, with private equity firms leading deals worth billions of dollars or more for publicly traded technology companies. London-headquartered Permira was a key player, joining Blackstone in acquiring European online advertising group Adevinta for $13 billion, and in October closing on the popular deal in a deal ultimately worth $7.2 billion. Squarespace, a website building platform, has been made private. But Permira isn't just interested in multibillion-dollar acquisitions. In addition to closing a new €16.7…

CEO Sundar Pichai reportedly told Google employees that 2025 will be a “momentous” year for the company. CNBC reported that it obtained audio of a Dec. 18 strategy meeting in which Mr. Pichai and other executives, wearing tacky holiday sweaters, outlined next year's priorities. “I think 2025 is going to be a critical year,” Pichai said. “I think it's really important to recognize the urgency of this moment, and we need to move faster as a company. The stakes are high.” Of course, this is a time when technology companies like Google are investing heavily in AI, but the results…

Lawyers representing President-elect Donald Trump have asked the Supreme Court to suspend a law requiring TikTok owner ByteDance to sell short-form video apps or be barred from entering the United States. If the app is not sold, the ban is scheduled to go into effect just a few weeks later, on January 19th. ByteDance is challenging the constitutionality of the law (officially known as the Protecting Americans from Applications Controlled by Foreign Adversaries Act) to the Supreme Court. Argument is scheduled for January 10th. In a new filing, Trump's lawyers called the deadline for a ban or sale the day…