Author: TechBrunch
A new venture called Leitmotif has been suffering a silent blitz for the past 16 months, focusing on decarbonisation on roughly 20 startups. Its portfolio includes EV companies, space and battery play, and four fusion startups. However, the company only says that the funds come from “European Industrial Interests.” Now, Leitmotif has told TechCrunch where the money came from: the Volkswagen Group. The German automotive giant has committed $300 million to Leitmotif's first fund, and is its only limited partner. Leitmotif has deployed about a third of that so far. And Leitmotif wants to spin up a string of funds…
Hexa is trying something new. Instead of growing startups from scratch and incubating them in the first year or so, the Paris-based startup studio has acquired a majority stake in Veevart, a vertical software company as a farmer that offers tickets, funding, CRM and collection management solutions. Hexa is a familiar name in the French technology ecosystem. Startup Studio originally started life as Efounders in 2011 and regularly came up with ideas for new high-tech companies. They try to find the right founding team and support product design, market-bound strategies, employment and fundraising. After this first phase, businesses will become…
Medical imaging is a broad term that includes several different techniques. After working on AI-driven tools to enhance X-ray and mammography, French startup greamers are now aiming to work on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Instead of starting from scratch, Gleamer has already worked on Caerus Medical, an AI-powered MRI analytics, and has acquired a startup that is merging with Pixil. Greamers are part of a second wave of startups seeking to improve medical imaging using artificial intelligence. A few high-tech founders who created a startup on this topic in 2014 or 2015. Most of it went anywhere, but this space…
Infinite Uptime is an Indian startup that offers predictive maintenance solutions to its factories, raising $35 million in Series C funding rounds, expanding its footprint in the US and other markets. Manufacturing has slowed many industries to adopt technology, and many of the world's heavy industries still rely on machines, many of which are aging and consume a lot of energy. That said, modern technology is slowly and reliably entering the factory, especially for maintenance and repairs. The company says it will provide predictive maintenance and repair recommendations using proprietary sensors, software analysis, and AI-based diagnostics. There is also a…
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has taken over CEO of 9-year-old Rocket Startup, Relativity Space. This is Schmidt's first CEO job since leaving Google nearly 15 years ago. Schmidt told employees on Monday that he had invested heavily and had control of the company, the New York Times first reported. Schmidt will take over the startup co-founder Tim Ellis as CEO. In an X post, Ellis said he will continue to support the relativity space as director of the company's board. Schmidt is taking part in conjunction with Relativity Space for the 2026 launch of the Terran R, a larger…
BlueSky allows for up to 3 minutes of video. The platform began supporting video in September with a time limit of 60 seconds. With new, expanded time limits, BlueSky is more aligned with user experiences along threads from its competitors, X (formerly Twitter) and Meta. X allows non-paying users to upload videos for up to 2 minutes and 20 seconds long, while threads allow users to upload videos for up to 5 minutes. This change is also welcome news for all apps that work to become “Tiktok of Bluesky” such as Bluescreen and Skylight. The developers behind these apps are…
There could be two initiatives coming together to create a more open web where users control their own digital IDs and data. At SXSW 2025, entrepreneur Frank McCourt, who is developing an open internet infrastructure (and throwing hats at the ring as a potential buyer for Tiktok), announced that his organization is discussing the integration of Internet pioneer Timerers-lee with an open source project to control its own data. On a panel at SXSW, McCourt shared that his team “talked to Tim Berners-Lee about Solid”, adding that “Project Liberty is compatible with Solid.” He did not announce any official partnerships,…
We're only a few months until 2025, but the recent Edtech giant Powerschool hack is on track to become one of the biggest educational data breaches in recent years. PowerSchool provided K-12 software to more than 18,000 schools to support approximately 60 million students across North America, and disclosed a data breach in early January 2025. The California-based company, which was acquired by Bain Capital for $5.6 billion, said it would use a single compromised qualification to infringe the customer support portal in December 2024, allowing schools to have more access to the company's school information system used to manage…
Deepseek founder Liang Wenfeng is not in a hurry to get investment from outsiders, the WSJ reported Monday. Deepseek is currently one of the hottest AI startups in the world after a Chinese AI company swept Silicon Valley with its latest model earlier this year. Unlike the counterpart of Deepseek's AI model provider, who regularly announces mega-rounds filled with well-known investors, Liang has not announced his funding despite the interests of many VCs. Rumors about the expected investors even fueled (unfounded) gatherings in some Chinese stocks. The founders of Deepseek don't want to lose control An analysis of Chinese company…
Surf is the new Flipboard app for browsing the Open Social Web and expands support for Bluesky's social networks. On Monday, the company announced a new version of its beta software (known as “Blue Wave”). This will allow users to log in to the app using their BlueSky credentials and see all the BlueSky feeds, including the next feed, discovery feed, and custom feeds pinned to the BlueSky app. The new integration also allows users to access other Bluesky sources when building their own custom feeds. This is a list of recommended followers to build to help new users find…