Author: TechBrunch
It's no secret that the venture capital industry is facing a liquidity crisis, with few IPOs or other exits even after a record-setting 2020-2021. Now we have numbers that show how bad it has gotten. The U.S. venture capital industry invested $60 billion in startups in 2023, more than it recouped in revenue, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing data from PitchBook. This is the largest deficit recorded in PitchBook's 26 years of data. According to the data, U.S. venture capital firms returned just $26 billion worth of stock to investors in 2023, the lowest total since 2011. Despite the…
Online grocery shopping is generally convenient, but manually adding items to your cart one by one can be a bit tedious. To address this, food and grocery shopping app DoorDash has launched a new feature that lets you sync your grocery list to the app. The app will suggest what to add to your cart based on the items on your list. iOS users can also import lists from Apple's Reminders app. To use the new feature, first select the store you want to shop at. Next, look for the “Create List” or “Import List” button. Each item has a…
Marlon Nichols took to Afrotech last week to talk about the importance of building relationships when entering new markets. “One of the first things you do when you go to a new market is you have to meet new players,” he said. “For example, what do people need? What's hot right now?” Mr. Nichols is a co-founder and managing general partner of MaC Venture Capital. MaC Venture Capital has just raised $150 million Fund III and has invested more than $20 million in at least 10 African companies. He first invested in the African continent in 2015, before investing in…
From Keith Lavoie to Ethan Kurzweil, many VCs have changed companies or spun out of established VC firms to launch their own funds this year. These employment changes are surprising because unlike many other fields, venture capitalists traditionally don't move around much, especially those who reach the partner or general partner level. The lifecycle of a VC fund is 10 years, and partners have good reason to stay that way. In some cases, a company's fund may have a “key person.” This means that if they exit, the fund's LPs have the right to raise their capital if they wish.…
Elon Musk may sue OpenAI, accusing the ChatGPT maker of abandoning the company's original mission as a nonprofit, but Josh Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and one of the company's major investors, He has nothing but good things to say about companies around the world. the richest man. “I have deep admiration and respect for Mr. Elon,” Mr. Kushner said at the Fortune Global Forum last week. His position may not be surprising. Slive is an investor in SpaceX, and Kushner has family ties to Donald Trump, whom Musk helped elect. Kushner is the younger brother of the president-elect's son-in-law,…
Decentralized social network Mastodon is also seeing some excitement from the “escape” of X, founder Eugen Roszko shared on the platform ahead of the weekend. While Twitter-like startup Bluesky has been garnering headlines and attention for its rapid popularity among former X users, a smaller group appears to be turning its attention to open-source networking platform Mastodon. Mastodon saw a 47% increase in downloads and monthly actives on iOS. Rochko said users have grown to 894,000 across all Mastodon servers. In a post on Mastodon, the founder and CEO said that downloads of the official app are increasing. In addition…
Initiate Ventures co-founders Jessica Owens and Iana Dimkova are launching a new company focused on healthcare/life sciences after raising an impressive $45 million in debut funding. One of the ways they've convinced limited partners to become investors is because they're building companies that are a mix of early-stage companies and incubation companies. So, not only will they invest in early-stage startups at the intersection of technology and life sciences, but they will also seek to incubate some startups internally – finding founders to turn ideas into companies. . Incubation is “a model that has worked very well in life sciences…
AI chatbots have appeared in religious apps before, but a chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, went a step further by bringing artificial intelligence to its confessional. DW's report shows an “AI Jesus” operating, offering machine-generated spiritual advice via an avatar visible inside a wooden enclosure. Parishioners sitting on the other side interact with the AI by pressing a button and voicing questions or concerns. The technology was developed at a local university and the chapel's theologian describes it as an experiment aimed at provoking debate. He points out that, unlike human pastors, AI has the advantage of being available 24/7. “I…
New York-based event planning app Partiful, which employs older solutions such as Evite, Eventbrite, and Facebook Events, has been named Google's App of the Year, the tech giant announced Monday in its Best Apps on Google list. and as part of the “Games 2024'' list. The list also highlights top game AFK Journey, along with winners in other categories such as best multi-device app, hidden gem, and platform-specific apps like watches and TV. Masu. Partiful was founded in 2020 by Palanitr alumni Joy Tao and Shreya Murthy and raised a $20 million Series A1 round in late 2022. The round…
ElevenLabs, a startup that provides AI voice cloning and text-to-speech APIs, on Monday launched the ability to build conversational AI bots. The company announced that users can now build complete conversational agents on the Eleven Labs developer platform with customizable variables such as tone of voice and response length. Eleven Labs has primarily been engaged in providing various voice and AI tools for text-to-speech services. Sam Sklar, the company's head of growth, told TechCrunch that many customers are already leveraging this capability to create conversational AI agents. However, the most difficult part was integrating the knowledge base and dealing with…