Author: TechBrunch
One of Africa's most active investors known for their early bets on unicorns such as Flutterwave, Andela and Wave has secured fresh capital to invest in startups across the continent. According to a report by VC Firm Parttech, this is because last year we only saw a small dip in Africa's funding transactions and volume. Loftink Capital, which has supported startups in the pre-seed and seed stages for more than a decade, has reached $43 million at the first end of its third fund, Loftink Alpha. Unlike its previous focus, the fund targets seed and series startups while maintaining a…
“We've come a long way from our pants,” Andy Dunn, founder of online fashion retailer Bonobos, told TechCrunch. Now, the former CEO is tackling a completely different challenge. He wants to help people make friends. Dunn's latest venture, Pie is a social app focused on bringing people together in real life. With the $11.5 million Series A Rase and funds paid to organizers to host the event, Pie has grown to over 130,000 active users despite being only available in San Francisco and Chicago. But more users meant that in-person events hosted through the app were also more crowded, making…
Foundation Capital has come a long way since being forced to reduce its fund size from $750 million in 2008 to $282 million (the sixth main fund) in 2013. On Tuesday, the 30-year-old company announced it had gathered its $600 million 11th flagship fund, 20% larger than its predecessor's $500 million fund, which was closed about three years ago. The Foundation believes that its revival is sticking to seed stage investment, which is knitting. “Most companies that have been around for 30 years have usually become multi-stage, multi-joe fiss, multi-tactics. Instead, we are still very focused on the early stages,”…
Hackers who stole around $1.4 billion in cryptocurrency from Crypto Exchange Bybit have driven almost all of their stolen revenues and converted them to Bitcoin. On February 21, Bybit said that a “sleek attack” on one of its wallets led to the theft of 401,346 Ethereum, worth around $1.4 billion at the time, making it the biggest crypto theft in history, and perhaps the biggest robbery. Blockchain surveillance companies and researchers, as well as the FBI, have accused the North Korean government of being behind the hack. Since the digital robbery, hackers have moved all Ethereum that they stole from…
June 5th, TechCrunch Sessions: AI kicks off. And you can be part of the industry-changing conversations that take place. Members of the AI community have open invitations to lead breakout sessions and discussions with more than 1,200 startup founders, VC leaders, and AI enthusiasts taking part in the latest event at Zellabach Hall in Berkeley, California. There's only one catch. By Friday, March 7, 2025, you will need to apply to be considered a speaker before midnight, so head here. You only have 4 days left to get your application before our team before we choose! As the AI field…
On Tuesday, Google announced a new software update for the Pixel Phone as part of its March “Pixel Drop” program. Pixel Watches and all Android devices also receive some new features in this release. The most notable parts of the update include using AI to detect message and call fraud, better categorization in the screenshot app, menstrual tracking on the Pixel Watch 3, and the ability to find the My Devices app and share live locations with friends. Pixel phone feature Google is launching call fraud detection using the company Gemini Nano model for all English-speaking Pixel 9 series users…
Venture investments in women-run startups are constantly slowing down the entire market, and with companies in the sector reducing their diversity, equity and inclusive efforts, things seem tougher than ever for female founders. However, this data tells another story from 2024. At least this one report by the Women Foundry of European venture platforms shows venture investments in startups founded by European women fell 12% from the previous year in 2024, but roughly along the line with an 11% decline in overall venture investments. In particular, women who have founded deep tech startups raise more men than they do in…
Polish Space Agency (POLSA) says it is working to restore services following a cybersecurity incident. Porsa, the Polish government agency responsible for the country's space activities, said in a post by X that it “quickly disconnected” the network from the internet after detecting a cyberattack on Sunday. Porsa's website remains offline at the time of writing. Polish digital minister Krzysztof Gawkowski confirmed in another post that the cybersecurity services were working to detect “unauthorized access to the Polish Space Agency's IT infrastructure” and identify the person behind the cyberattack. The nature of the incident is yet to be known, and…
Agents are the next big thing after AI. While some people define these “agents” differently than others, the general idea is AI-driven tools that allow tasks to be autonomously executed. Agent hype reached fever pitch, but one startup was relatively early in the game: Llamaindex. Founded in 2023 by former Uber research scientists Jerry Liu and Simon Suo, LlamainDex allows developers to build custom agents with unstructured data. “Llamaindex began in November 2022 as an open source toy project,” Liu told TechCrunch. “I was deeply interested in understanding how large language models (LLM) can be used on top of their…
The Mach Industry, backed by Sequoia, a defense technology founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, has signed a contract with the US Army and plans for its first factory, Thornton told TechCrunch. The factory will be 115,000 square feet in Huntington Beach, California, where Mach's headquarters are located, CEO Thorton said. It sounds like the expensive zip code of a Southern California arms factory in the shadow of SpaceX, but it has become a hot spot for America's burgeoning defense technology industry. Mach has also announced that it has been selected by the Army Application Institute to develop a vertical takeoff…