Author: TechBrunch

After a career as an incident investigator at risk management firms such as Kroll and FTI Consulting, Aaron Narva worked with large international banking clients at compliance software maker Exiger. He was responsible for monitoring the client's compliance after it made headlines a decade ago in a money laundering scandal. “During my time at Exigar, we acquired several software businesses, including an AI software tool that helps extract risk from unstructured public documents. We've built a tool to help identify risks,” Narva told TechCrunch. That work gave him the idea for Conflixis. Hospitals and other large healthcare organizations face similar…

The FBI says hackers have compromised government and law enforcement email addresses to submit “urgent” data requests and obtained personal user information, including emails and phone numbers, from U.S.-based technology companies. warns. The FBI's public notice filed this week is a rare acknowledgment by the federal government of the threat posed by fraudulent emergency data requests. This is a legal process designed to help law enforcement and federal authorities obtain information from businesses in response to an imminent threat affecting someone's life or property. Abuse of emergency data requests is not new and has been widely reported in recent years.…

President-elect Donald Trump has made a number of “Day 1” promises, including repealing President Biden's AI policies. While it's unclear exactly whether President Trump will take action on his first day in office in January, it's clear that reform of technology regulation is on the horizon. Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Devin Coldewey, and Margaux MacColl take a deep dive into what Trump's victory means for the future of AI policy and innovation. AI always makes a cameo appearance on Equity, and this week there was a lot of startup and venture news to watch for Equity…

The idea of ​​someday becoming a venture capitalist was always in the back of TJ Taylor's mind. After all, he had an extensive technical background. He co-founded Stock Apps and worked in the communities of dating app Raya and photo-sharing app Dispo. After retiring from Dispo at the end of 2022, he found himself in a new situation. “It was the first time I didn't know what was going to happen next,” he told TechCrunch. He wandered a bit and started a startup consultancy, where he said he loved working with early-stage teams. “Some people in my network straight up…

There is a huge opportunity for generative AI in the world of translation, and a startup called Panjaya is taking the concept to the next level. It is a hyper-realistic generative AI-based video dubbing tool that recreates the original voice of a person speaking a new language. , the video and speaker's physical movements are automatically modified to naturally match the new audio pattern. The startup, which has been operating in secrecy for the past three years, announced the first version of its product, BodyTalk, along with its first external funding of $9.5 million. Panjaya is the brainchild of two…

Jack Dorsey's Block will wind down its investment in TIDAL, the music streaming platform formerly owned by Jay-Z, according to a shareholder letter Thursday. Block will also shut down TBD, a Bitcoin-focused business unit that previously sought to build a decentralized internet called Web5. These reductions will free the company to invest in Bitcoin mining and cryptocurrency wallets. “We plan to reduce our investment in TIDAL and reduce TBD,” Block said in the letter. “This gives us the scope to invest in Bitcoin mining initiatives with strong product market fit and a healthy demand pipeline, as well as Bitkey, our…

The CEO of Canadian cryptocurrency company WonderFi was kidnapped on Wednesday and held for ransom, according to CBC. Dean Skurka was reportedly hit by a car in downtown Toronto during rush hour, but was released unharmed after electronically transferring $1 million (possibly Canadian dollars) to his captors. That's what it means. WonderFi CEO is the latest crypto celebrity to fall victim to a violent robbery. A security firm told CBC this is the 171st incident of physical violence to steal cryptocurrencies. Skurka's company reported third-quarter earnings the day before the incident, and had generated C$41 million in revenue over the…

Amazon is considering increasing its investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic. According to The Information, Amazon is in talks to invest billions of dollars in Anthropic, which would be the company's first financial commitment since a $4 billion deal last year. The new investment is structured similarly to the previous investment, but with a twist. Amazon wants Anthropic to use Amazon-developed silicon hosted on Amazon Web Services to train its AI. Anthropic prefers Nvidia chips. But the money may be too good to part with. Earlier this year, it was reported that Anthropic expected to burn through more than $2.7 billion…

AI wants to help us drive better, write better, and diagnose diseases faster. Imagine if AI could help you be a better parent. Andreessen Horowitz partner Justin Moore shares his new investment thesis for the firm on Thursday's X, endorsing “a new wave of 'parenting co-pilots' built with LLMs and agents.” did. She works with Cradlewise, a maker of AI-powered baby monitors that detect your baby's sleep patterns and rock the crib, and Nanit, which uses AI to process crib footage to determine if your baby is breathing. He pointed to companies like . “Imagine having an AI parenting buddy…

Yelp, which became famous for providing restaurant information, just acquired an auto service website. Yelp announced in its earnings call Thursday that it has agreed to acquire auto repair quote site RepairPal for $80 million in cash. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year, subject to customary closing conditions. “RepairPal expands our offering in the multi-billion dollar U.S. auto services advertising space, and we are proud to be able to I believe this will accelerate our efforts to provide a wide range of services.” It may not seem like an obvious marriage, but RepairPal fits…