Author: TechBrunch
Paris's iconic startup campus, Station F, hosts over 1,000 startups each year. Sifting through 1,000 startup descriptions is difficult, so Station F selects the 40 most promising startups and shares a list called the Future 40. The campus has also invested in 10 of these startups (though the list has never been made public). The 10 startups the company invests in are part of programs run by Station F itself or partners such as Binance, LVMH, Meta, and Microsoft. Station F's flagship program is the Founder Program. Companies apply to participate in this highly competitive accelerator program and are invited…
App developers now have a new way to promote their app releases, updates, and other new features on Apple's App Store. First announced at the company's Worldwide Developer Conference in June, Apple this week introduced a “Featuring Nominations” option to App Store Connect. App Store Connect is a service that developers use to submit apps, games, and updates to the App Store. Now, instead of waiting for Apple to recognize their work, developers can nominate their apps to be featured. This allows developers to notify Apple about three different types of updates: new content, app enhancements, or new app releases.…
Millions of Hot Topic customers were informed that their personal data had been compromised during a data breach at an American retailer in October. Breach notification service Have I Been Pwned announced this week that it had alerted 57 million Hot Topic customers that their data had been breached. Stolen data includes email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers, purchases, gender, and date of birth. According to HIBP, the breach also included some credit card data, including credit card type, expiration date, and the last four digits of the card number. Hot Topic, which has more than 640 stores across the…
The European Union is developing new legal compliance guidance regarding AI. As part of that process, we have launched a council (here) seeking input on two areas. The first is how the law defines AI systems (as opposed to “simpler traditional” software). We are asking people from the AI industry, business, academia, and civil society to comment on clarity on key elements of the law's definition, as well as examples of software that should be excluded. The second question concerns prohibited uses of AI. The law includes several use cases, such as Chinese-style social scoring, that are considered “unacceptable risks”…
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says the next big thing for enterprise software, and Salesforce in particular, is AI agents, software bots that perform limited tasks themselves, separate from human workers. “What would happen if there were no limits for employees? That's a question I haven't been able to ask in not just the last 25 years of working at Salesforce, but in the 45 years I've been in the software business,” Benioff said. told TechCrunch on the Equity podcast. He said that “hundreds of customers” are already using Agentforce, the company's AI agent platform, for their businesses. “Our goal is…
Nokia, once the world's largest mobile phone company but now primarily a provider of infrastructure and services to carriers, made the acquisition with the aim of becoming a bridge between the worlds of technology and communications. Acquired Rapid (formerly RapidAPI), a startup that operates an API marketplace. Nokia plans to integrate Rapid into the platform it is building to help 5G carriers open up their networks to more developers. Raghav Sahgal, President, Cloud and Network Services, Noka We need to build bridges,” the statement said. The deal includes a public marketplace, enterprise services, and an enterprise-grade API hub designed for…
Coaching platform Leland raises $12M in Series A funding led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from GSV Ventures to achieve goals from college admissions to entrance exam success to product management excellence We have grown a platform aimed at matching coaches and aspirants. The company aims to build better tools for coaches to create content, manage schedules, and build enterprise services. The startup was founded in 2021 by John Koelliker, a former product manager for marketplaces like Uber and LinkedIn. The company has raised $17.1 million in funding to date from investors including Goodwater, FJ Labs, Next Play Ventures, and…
Karl Aignema, an early pioneer in the self-driving car industry who recently stepped down as president and CEO of Hyundai-backed Motional, is returning to the AV and robotics field. Vecna Robotics, a Massachusetts-based startup that uses robots to handle materials in warehouses, has hired Ignema as CEO. The robotics startup, which develops autonomous pallet movers such as forklifts and software to help businesses manage their operations, announced Wednesday that it has raised an additional $14.5 million in funding from existing investors. . The company said the funding will be used to accelerate automation technology and improve products for the automotive,…
Prosus aims to take fintech company PayU public in 2025 as Dutch investors look to shift more focus to India. The company on Wednesday said the market is a mainstay of its investment business, following the impressive listing of food delivery and quick-commerce company Swiggy for a $2 billion gain. PayU, which is wholly owned by Prosus, was originally scheduled to go public by this year at a valuation of $5 billion to $7 billion. “Although we are already in the second half of 2024, we are hopeful that this will be a 2025 event,” Prosus Chief Investment Officer Ervin…
DeepL has made a name for itself with its online text translations, which it claims are more nuanced and accurate than services like Google. The pitch catapulted the German startup to a $2 billion valuation and more than 100,000 paying customers. Now, as expectations for AI services continue to rise, DeepL is adding another mode to its platform: audio. DeepL Voice allows users to hear someone speaking in one language and have it automatically translated into another language in real time. Currently, the languages that DeepL can “listen” to are English, German, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, French, Turkish, Polish, Portuguese,…