Author: TechBrunch

Becoming a venture capitalist has become Hollywood's newest status symbol. These days, everyone from Olivia Wilde to Emma Watson is either starting a business venture or looking to back the next big thing. Robinhood, Uber, and Klarna all have glamorous names on the cap table, paving the way for the rise of “Hollywood angels.” For founders, having a celebrity on the cap table can bring a lot of buzz to a startup, and bonus points if that celebrity knows what they're doing. Here are some of the top celebrities who invest and what they typically look to invest in (this…

On November 15, Peter Wang posted a message seeking ideas for new incubators and funds to support experimental projects built on the burgeoning Bluesky/AT protocol ecosystem. Four weeks later, Skyseed showed up with an initial commitment of $1 million. The speed of this turnaround is underlined by the fact that the fund doesn't even have a website yet (although it does have a Bluesky profile), but it does prove a few things. People who abandoned X (nee Twitter). But by starting fresh with a new social platform built on an open, decentralized network like AT Protocol, you can avoid the…

Prominent investor Marc Andreessen recently met with Biden administration staff to discuss how they are working closely with two or three large AI companies to control AI and control other companies through burdensome regulation. He said it gave the impression that he wanted to shut him out. Although Andreessen did not name OpenAI, it was implied that OpenAI would have been a beneficiary of this alleged effort. But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman dismissed Andreessen's comments as a “conspiracy theory” on his podcast with Bari Weiss this week. “So we were in the same room with them and other companies and…

On the first day of Y Combinator's Winter 2024 session, shortly after orientation and taking photos in front of the YC sign, PearAI's founders were “canceled,” as founder Nang Ang explained to TechCrunch. , received a barrage of hate online. But they survived and graduated from YC's Winter 2024 class earlier this month with a revised idea and a new initial product. Now, they have also reached their $1 million seed funding goal and have raised a total of $1.25 million, including YC's standard deal of $375,000, Ang told TechCrunch. Summary: That Saturday in September, Ang and his co-founder Duke…

U.S. prosecutors in New Jersey on Friday announced charges against Rostislav Panev, 51, a dual Russian-Israeli citizen accused of being the primary developer of the LockBit ransomware group. Mr. Panev is currently in Israeli custody and faces extradition to the United States. LockBit is one of the most prolific ransomware gangs, accused of launching devastating data theft cyberattacks on thousands of companies around the world, including the United States, and racking up at least $500 million in ransom payments alone. is believed to be responsible. Although authorities identified and seized Rockbit's infrastructure in a takedown operation in February, Rockbit briefly…

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to supercharge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth with 300 million weekly active users. 2024 has been a big year for OpenAI, from its partnership with Apple for its generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, the release of GPT-4o with voice capabilities, and the highly-anticipated launch of its text-to-video model Sora. OpenAI closed the year with “12 Days of OpenAI,” a series of 12 streams highlighting new product reveals and…

Welcome to Startups Weekly — a weekly roundup of must-sees from the world of startups. Want it delivered to your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week has been full of news. This is probably because this week is also the “real” last week of 2024. This is another way we say goodbye for now and see you in 2025! This week's most interesting startup stories Image credit: We Are / Getty Images There was some M&A this week, but also a reminder that it's always worth watching things carefully, whether it's a future LP or a shiny announcement.…

Chip company Nvidia has received permission from the European Union to complete its acquisition of Run:ai. The EU reached a unanimous decision today that allows Nvidia to proceed with its acquisition of Israeli GPU orchestration platform Run:ai, Bloomberg reports. The European Commission has determined that this business combination will not create a monopoly, as other hardware options compatible with Nvidia will continue to be available on the market even if the merger takes place. However, despite the EU's approval, the deal is still being held up by the US Department of Justice, and it is unclear when or if it…

Google announced Friday that the company is expanding Gemini's latest in-depth investigation mode to 40 additional languages. The company launched deep exploration mode earlier this month, allowing users of its Google One AI premium plan to unlock a type of AI-powered research assistant. Advanced features work in multiple steps, from creating a research plan to finding relevant information. Then, based on that information, the tool performs the search again to extract knowledge. After repeating this process several times, a report will be created. Languages ​​supported by Gemini include Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Danish, French, German, Gujarati, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada,…

For some, AI fatigue is real. But clearly venture investors haven’t grown tired of the category. AI deals continued to dominate venture funding during the third quarter. AI companies raised $19 billion in Q3, according to Crunchbase data. That figure represents 28% of all venture funding. The fourth quarter of 2024 has been no less busy for these outsized rounds. Elon Musk’s xAI raised a behemoth $6 billion round, one of seven AI funding rounds over $1 billion in 2024, in November. That’s just months after OpenAI raised its $6.6 billion round. Here are the U.S.-based AI companies that raised…