Author: TechBrunch

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has sponsored a review of accessiBe, a startup that claims to make websites more compatible with screen readers used by visually impaired people to access the Internet. The company was fined for posting false advertisements without disclosing the facts and for rewarding reviewers. In the proposed order, the FTC would require accessiBe to pay $1 million, which can be used to refund money to its customers, and prohibit accessiBe from exaggerating the capabilities of its tools. The order would also require accessiBe to “clearly and conspicuously” highlight its connections to supporters of its services. “Companies…

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. Welcome to 2025! The first half of the week was relatively quiet in terms of startup announcements, but activity is already starting to pick up. We are also preparing for CES. If your hardware startup is participating, be sure to let us know. This week's most interesting startup stories Image credit: Bench Unlike other transactions, M&A activity did not stop. It didn't stop, at least not on purpose. Last-minute savings: Canadian accounting startup Bench,…

Hydrogen startups are widely seen as a promising way to eliminate fossil fuels from heavy industry and long-distance transportation. But they have been stuck in limbo for several years now, waiting for formal guidance from the U.S. Treasury on lucrative tax credits. Today, the wait is over as the Treasury Department releases final regulations making hydrogen producers eligible for tax credits under section 45V of the Suppression of Inflation Act. “We are grateful for the final rule,” Beth Dean, Electric Hydrogen's chief legal officer, told TechCrunch. “Without that, the industry is really at a standstill.” The rules, which took more…

PayPal is being sued by Nisha Desai, founder of venture firm Andav Capital, who says she was excluded from the payments giant's diversity and equity program because she is Asian, according to a lawsuit filed this week. claims. In 2020, PayPal committed $530 million to support more Black and minority-led businesses in response to Black Lives Matter. In the new lawsuit, Desai claims that her application for funding consideration was ignored because she is Asian because the program sought to focus only on Black and Hispanic businesses. It is claimed that According to PitchBook, Desai launched Andav Capital in 2018…

The US government has sanctioned a Beijing-based cybersecurity firm for its alleged ties to a Chinese government-backed hacking group tracked as Flax Typhoon. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Friday announced sanctions against Integrity Technology Group for its involvement in “multiple computer intrusion incidents against U.S. victims” involving U.S. critical infrastructure. The sanctions come months after the US government accused Integrity Technology, also known as Yongxin Zhicheng, of running a botnet associated with the Flax Typhoon hacking group. The botnet was dismantled by the FBI in a court-authorized operation in September and consisted of more than…

According to TechCrunch, Electra has raised $76.3 million to clean up the dirty steel industry. The startup has developed a new way to extract pure iron from low-grade ore using electricity, opening the door to cleaner steel. The new funding round, disclosed in a regulatory filing, aims to raise a total of $256.7 million. Today's iron production is highly polluted. The majority of emissions from steelmaking come from steel, which itself generates 7% of global carbon emissions. The main process used to make iron today, which involves burning fossil fuels and melting ore in scorching blast furnaces, has changed little…

An online gift card store in the United States has secured an online storage server that was exposing hundreds of thousands of its customers' government-issued identification cards to the Internet. A security researcher who goes by the online handle “JayeLTee” said late last year that his driver's licenses, passports and other forms of identification belonging to My GiftCardSupply, a company that sells digital gift cards that customers can redeem from popular brands or online, were stolen. I discovered a public storage server where it was stored. service. My GiftCardSupply's website states that as part of its compliance with US anti-money…

Consumer goods giant Hindustan Unilever is in talks to buy four-year-old direct-to-consumer startup Minimalist for up to $350 million, two people said. Unilever's subsidiary in India acquired Ojiva & Wellbeing Nutrition a year ago, expanding its business into the health and welfare sector, and if the acquisition goes through, it will further accelerate its buying spree in India. It will be. “In line with our business strategy, we are continuously evaluating various strategic opportunities for growth and expansion of our business,” a Hindustan Unilever spokesperson told TechCrunch in a statement. The acquisition also expands Unilever's Indian subsidiary's portfolio of skin…

More than half a dozen VPN apps, including the widely used Cloudflare 1.1.1.1, have been removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in India following intervention from government authorities, a TechCrunch investigation found. . India's Ministry of Home Affairs ordered the app to be taken down, according to documents reviewed by TechCrunch and disclosures Google made to Lumen, a Harvard University database that tracks government takedown requests around the world. Affected apps include Hide.me and PrivadoVPN. In an interaction with one of the affected developers seen by TechCrunch, Apple said that India Cyber, a part of the…

There's no doubt that Nvidia will host the biggest CES of 2025. After all, the company currently has almost all of the biggest ones. The semiconductor giant boasts a market capitalization of more than $3.4 trillion, largely due to its fundamental position in the ongoing AI boom. Companies like OpenAI and Meta have been buying Nvidia processors in bulk, and that's unlikely to change in the new year. According to Nvidia, founder and CEO Jensen Huang will appear at CES “in his trademark leather jacket and unwavering vision” on January 6 at 6:30pm PT, 9:30pm ET. We plan to cooperate…