Author: TechBrunch
Welcome to Startups Weekly – Summary every week everything you need to miss from the startup world. Want to put it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week we showed more optimism among startups than any other corner of the world. The entrepreneurs were so confident they bought other companies, raised fresh funds, and even said no to money. The most interesting startup story of the week Image credit: Hinge Health It's not four weddings and funerals, but most of them. Hinge: Hinge Health, a virtual physiotherapy startup that helps treat chronic musculoskeletal conditions using technology, is…
Tiktok, owned by Chinese company Bytedance, has been at the heart of US controversy for four years due to concerns about user data that the Chinese government may access. Just last month, the app experienced a temporary suspension in the US, leaving millions of users suspenseful before it was quickly restored. Tiktok returned to the App Store and Google Play Store in February. Nevertheless, Tiktok's future remains uncertain, with many investors competing for the opportunity to buy the app. As Angelo Zino, senior vice president at CFRA Research, estimates the platform's US business could raise its valuation to more than…
This week, Openai signed a five-year, $11.9 billion deal with GPU-heavy cloud provider CoreWeave, protecting its own AI computing pipeline and its $350 million stake. With CoreWeave's pending IPO and its deep connection with Microsoft, Openai's deal marks a major change in AI Cloud Wars. Today, TechCrunch's equity podcast is hosted by Kirsten Korosec, Max Zeff, Anthony HA, and Rebecca Bellan. Listen and listen to the entire episode: What Kirsten and Rebecca are watching on Austin on the ground, and what are they moving towards the Y Combinator's latest demo day, and why the founder is making less of a…
The 51-year-old dual Russian and Israeli national Rostislav Panev have been accused of being a key developer of the infamous Lockbit Ransomware gang, and has been handed over from Israel to the US, the Justice Department announced Thursday. Panev was arrested in Israel in December 2024 and became a third party arrested for his role in Rockbit. Since then, Panev has been waiting for Israel to be handed over. Prosecutors claim that PANEV is a developer working for the Lockbit Ransomware Group, working from the beginning of 2019 until February 2024. Panev and other Lockbit developers design gang malware, design…
A group of bipartisan US lawmakers are urging the head of the UK surveillance court to hold a public hearing on Apple's anticipated challenge of suspected legal demand for the UK government. US Sen. Ron Wyden, along with four other federal lawmakers, wrote this week to the president of the UK Tribunal of Inquiry (IPT), which stated that it was in the public interest that hearings on the suspicious order were not kept secret. The MP also said the alleged British orders bar California-based Apple from engaging in speeches that are “constitutionally protected” under US law, hindering lawmakers' ability to…
Kelly Washington expands her angel investment portfolio and is the lead investor in the pre-seeded round of Cheercee in the wedding market. Founded in 2024 by Amy Shack Egan, Cheersy helped couples find day service wedding coordinators, raising a total of $550,000 from other investors, including Soul Cycle co-founder Elizabeth Cutler and Save the Date founder Jennifer Gilbert. Advised by Joanna Rothholm, former spokesperson for First Lady Michelle Obama, and Christina Tosi, founder of Milkbar. Washington did not immediately respond to our request for comment. Shack Egan said he met Washington through the actor's director of social influence. They both…
The UK government's Apple secret order demands backdoors an end-to-end encrypted version of the iCloud storage service, being challenged by two civil rights groups, Liberty and Privacy International, who filed a complaint on Thursday. They called the orders “unacceptable, unbalanced” and warned about “global outcomes” as access orders are thought to be extended to non-KUK users as well. The pair, along with two nominated individuals, Gas Hossain, executive director of Privacy International, and Ben Wisner, civil liberty advocate, directed the law firm Rayday to challenge the Secretary of the Interior.YvetteCooper's decision to provide Apple with the so-called Technical Capability Notification…
According to a Wall Street Journal report, President Trump's family is weighing their investments in Binance.us. The investment will come years after Binance's US division pleaded guilty to violating anti-money laundering regulations. As part of that guilty plea, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, paid a $4.3 billion fine in 2023 and spent four months in prison. According to Forbes rankings, Zao is currently the 24th wealthiest person in the world. The WSJ claims he is seeking pardon from the Trump administration. Zhao's conviction has made it difficult for Binance to find a commercial partner in the US or…
AI Company Sesame has released a basic model that promotes Maya, an impressive and realistic voice assistant. Models with a size of 1 billion parameters (“parameters” that refer to individual components of the model) are under the Apache 2.0 license. This means it can be used commercially with little restrictions. Called the CSM-1B, this model generates “RVQ audio codes” from text and audio inputs, as explained in SESAME on the AI Dev platform. RVQ refers to “residual vector quantization,” a technique for encoding audio into discrete tokens called code. RVQ is used in many recent AI audio technologies, such as…
Flock Safety and one of its longtime VCs, Bedrock Capital, announced Thursday that the startup has raised $275 million new $7.5 billion in value. Flock creates computer-vision-enabled video surveillance technology used by law enforcement agencies, businesses, real estate management companies, and more. Best known for its automatic license plate recognition technology, Flock sold gunshot detection technology to schools and recently acquired public safety drone company Aerodome. Flock was founded in 2017 and passed the Y Combinator in the same year. In the years that followed, growth exploded. Flock spokesman Holly Beilin told TechCrunch that Flock exceeded $300 million in annual…