Author: TechBrunch

There's a huge qualifier on Tuesday in the big news that Google is getting its security startup Wiz for a record $32 billion. Google says it will position Wiz as a provider of “Multicloud.” This means that Wiz is not a Google-only shop. In reality, Google had no choice but to do this. A closer look at the reasons behind the decision also highlights Google's weaknesses over the coming months. Customer retention Wiz brings Google a large list of customers. As of today, the startup has already reached an annual return of $700 million. Before the news broke on Tuesday,…

Maju Kuruvilla, who resigned from the role of CEO of the controversial One-Click Checkout Startup Bolt last year, is back. He launches his own startup and focuses on another issue with online shoppers. He calls it “check-in.” Clicking on an ad like a T-shirt can make the experience afterwards feel a little clunky. The website you land may not even have the product you first clicked on. It bouncing off many shoppers and hurting conversion rates, Kurbila told TechCrunch. Kurubila wants to change that with AI. His new startup, Spangle AI, creates custom landing pages for shoppers based on what…

They say imitation is a sincere form of flattery, and Google seems to agree. On Tuesday, the company added functionality to its AI-powered Gemini chatbot. Similar concepts to OpenAI's identically named canvas tool for CHATGPT and Anthropic artifacts provide Gemini users with an interactive space to create, refine and share writing and coding projects. “Canvas is designed for seamless collaboration with Gemini,” writes Dave Citron, Gemini's product director, in a blog post shared with TechCrunch. “These new features make Gemini more effective collaborators and help you realize your ideas.” Workspaces such as Gemini Canvas, ChatGpt Canvas and Artifact are the…

The US government's cybersecurity agency oversees contacting more than 130 former employees after the Trump administration ruled that workers who were fired “illegally” must be recovered. US District Judge James Bleder last week ordered the Trump administration to revive the leisurely fired by many U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The ruling focuses on federal probation employees, including workers who have been employed or promoted within the past three years. The CISA fired 130 probation employees in February as part of the Trump administration's broad push to cut…

When it comes to climate-related investments, Lion's share was spent on companies working on energy and transportation. Most investors overlook the real lion. So nature-based solutions like biodiversity tend to be shorter in the investment world. In 2022, just $35 billion was invested in nature-based solutions, compared to $1.46 trillion for the rest of the climate finance sector. To address the shortage, Climate raised $175 million from Microsoft's Climate Innovation Fund and Calstrs. Just climate is a derivative of Algoa's generational investment management. Until this year, like most other private climate technology investors, they focused on what they called industrial…

This week, the StrictlyVC download has joined TechCrunch Editor-in-Chief Connie Loizos and StrictlyVC's Alex Gove, Michael Kim, longtime VC and founder of Cendana Capital, who manages $2.6 billion in funding. This episode discusses Sendana's latest $600 million funding. Secondary rises and how they affect returns. And what Sendana needs to help a new manager or small team. And of course, they address how AI is changing the startup ecosystem. StrictlyVC downloads posts every Tuesday. Subscribe to Apple, Spotify, or where you can listen to podcasts that will alert you when new episodes drop. Source link

Arcade, an AI agent infrastructure startup founded by former Okta executive Alex Salazar and former Redis engineer Sam Partee, has raised $12 million from Laude Ventures. Laude is a new fund launched in 2024 by Andy Konwinski, co-founder of Perplexity, a computer scientist at UC Berkeley, who co-founded Databricks. This isn't the only check that Laude cuts. But it was the first public announcement, and Peteson Sinni, a large co-founder and general partner, told TechCrunch. Sonsini has been a long-established NEA known and leads Databricks, early investments in all sizes and embarrassments. As for Salazar, he is a recurring founder.…

AI coding assistants are becoming extremely popular, with the majority of respondents in GitHub's latest poll saying they have adopted AI tools in some way. Jared Friedman, partner at Y Combinator, recently claimed that a quarter of YC's W25 startup batches have 95% of the codebase generated by AI. Feeling the opportunity, VCS is in a hurry to back up and build startups developing AI-powered support programming tools. One of these startups, Graphite, raised $52 million in the Series B round led by Accel on Tuesday, and announced its participation from the Humanity Anthology Fund with Menlo Ventures, Shopify Ventures,…

It's time to hear your voice. After receiving an overwhelming amount of application for speakers in a TechCrunch session: AI, selected six incredible finalists. TC Session: AI will be held on June 5th at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley, California. And you have the power to decide who you want to share their wisdom with 1,200 AI leaders and enthusiasts. Viewer choice voting continues until March 21st at 11:59pm. You can only choose one speaker, so please count your votes! Also sign up for tickets now to save up to $210, secure spots in the most voted sessions and other AI-focused…

On Tuesday, Google announced new products and features aimed at healthcare use cases, including an improved overview of HealthQuery's search, medical record APIs, and a new health-centric “open” AI model. In the search, Google says it is using AI and ranking systems to expand its “knowledge panel” responses on thousands of health-related topics, adding support for healthcare queries in Spanish, Portuguese and Japanese on mobile. The search already provides knowledge panel answers for illnesses like the flu and common colds, but the update will significantly expand the number of topics the knowledge panel covers, the company said. Google is also…