Author: TechBrunch

Lithuania's Vinted has been given a new valuation of 5 billion euros (approx. 5.4 billion). The deal was led by private equity giant TPG, with additional participants including Baillie Gifford, FJ Labs, Hedosophia, Invus Opportunities, Manhattan Venture Partners, and Moore Strategic Ventures. It's unclear how much Vinted's existing investors have cashed out, but the company said all existing institutional investors, including Accel, EQT, Insight Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners, retained at least some stake. That's what it means. This year is proving to be a bumper year for secondary market deals, as scale-up companies look to free up liquidity for…

Perplexity, an AI-focused search startup, released a native Mac app today to compete with other AI apps like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Quora's Poe app. The latter aggregates various large-scale language models. Perplexity teased the app earlier this month, asking users to sign up for pre-orders to receive notifications when the app becomes available. The Mac app is free to use, but Perplexity Pro can be purchased for $20 per month or $200 per year. With this subscription, users can benefit from over 300 Pro searches, which provide more detailed search results compared to the free Quick Search pane. In the…

Spotify let listeners comment on podcast episodes on the app in July, and now the company is rolling out a new set of controls to help podcasters moderate and manage comments. When comments first started, podcasters had to first review and publish their comments. The platform now has configurable automated moderation tools that allow you to filter out and review sensitive or inappropriate comments, and publish the rest. When set to the “Standard” level, Spotify's new tool will not publish comments it detects as potentially sensitive or inappropriate and will instead redirect them to the podcaster for review. When set…

Nvidia has embarked on a series of partnerships with Indian companies to deploy its AI chips and technology, strengthening its reach into key growth markets. Jensen Huang, CEO of the US chip design company, said the company has partnered with Reliance, India's most valuable company, to build infrastructure for AI applications in India. He also said Tech Mahindra will use NVIDIA chips and software to develop the Hindi AI model 'Indus 2.0'. Infrastructure providers Tata Communications and Yotta Data Services also plan to purchase and use tens of thousands of Nvidia H100 chips by the end of the year. Huang…

Upflow, a French startup that we've been covering for quite some time, originally focused on managing unpaid invoices. The company is now announcing a shift in its strategy to become a B2B payments platform with its own payment gateway to complement its accounts receivable automation solution. Like many Software-as-a-Service products, Upflow started by building a central hub specifically designed for the specific role of the CFO. From the Upflow dashboard, CFOs and finance teams can see all of their company's invoices, track payments, communicate with team members, and send reminders to clients. It integrates well with other financial tools and…

Startup VC firm Chemistry has raised $350 million for its debut fund, Forbes reported Wednesday. The company was founded by Mark Goldberg, a former partner at Index Ventures. Christina Shen, former general partner of Andreessen Horowitz; and former Bessemer partner Ethan Kurzweil (pictured above). Axios first reported in April that the three were planning to launch a fund together. Chemistry's debut fund was twice as oversubscribed, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The firm primarily invests in early-stage startups at the Series A stage, but also invests in seed across categories such as fintech, infrastructure, developer tools and work…

Humane on Wednesday announced a $200 price cut for its flagship product, the Ai Pin. The Bay Area startup founded by two former Apple executives is reportedly struggling to sell the product, which launched in April for $700. Humane is highlighting its return policy in the new offer in a message sent to its email list. “Ai Pin starts at $499 and includes the first month of the Humane Plan,” the company writes. “With a 90-day return period, you can try it completely risk-free.” The device received poor reviews from reviewers. By August, Ai Pin returns reportedly began to outpace…

Miles Brundage, a longtime policy researcher at OpenAI and senior advisor to the company's AGI readiness team, has retired. In a post on Today's It will continue to rise.” “Part of what made this a difficult decision is that working at OpenAI is now more of an opportunity to make an enormous impact than ever before,” Brundage said. “OpenAI requires employees who think deeply about its mission and are committed to maintaining a culture of rigorous decision-making around development and deployment, including internal deployments that will become increasingly important over time. ” With Brundage's departure, OpenAI's economic research division, which…

Last week, police surveillance startup Flock Safety announced it had acquired drone startup Aerodome. The deal was valued at more than $300 million, according to people in the venture world. This number had not been previously reported. Flock Safety and Aerodome are both backed by Andreessen Horowitz and have raised more than $680 million and $28 million, respectively, according to PitchBook. Rahul Sidhu, a former police officer, founded Aerodome just 17 months ago, proclaiming it a “Speedrun of American Dynamism” after the name of the A16Z defense technology-focused initiative. Sidhu also called the deal “one of the largest technology acquisitions”…

Hello everyone, welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. If you'd like to have this sent to your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. An agent, an AI agent, is coming. This week, Anthropic released an upgraded version of its latest AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet. It can interact with web and desktop apps by clicking and typing, just like a human would. It's not perfect. But 3.5 Sonnet, which involves what Anthropic calls “computing,” could revolutionize the workplace. At least, that's the elevator pitch. It remains to be seen whether Anthropic's new model lives up to the hype. But its…