Author: TechBrunch
French startup Karmen has secured a small funding round to improve its instant lending product. The company provides short-term loans to small and medium-sized enterprises facing a lack of working capital. This is a €9 million ($9.4 million at current exchange rates) equity and debt round in which Seventure Partners will buy a stake in the small startup. Financière Albevel and BPiFrance are supplementing the round with some debt. The company is not the only company operating in this field of instant financing for small and medium-sized businesses. French competitors include Silvr, Defacto, Unlimitd and Hero. Revenue-based finance has become…
OpenAI may be close to releasing an AI tool that can take control of your PC and perform actions on your behalf. Tibor Blaho, a software engineer with a reputation for accurately leaking upcoming AI products, claims to have discovered evidence of OpenAI's long-rumored Operator tool. Publications like Bloomberg have previously reported on Operator, which is described as an “agent” system that can autonomously handle tasks like writing code and booking travel. According to The Information, OpenAI is targeting January as the release month for Operator. Code discovered by Blaho this weekend lends credence to that report. According to Blaho,…
Friend, a startup developing a $99 AI-powered necklace designed to act as a digital companion, has delayed shipping its first batch until the third quarter. Friend planned to ship the device to customers who pre-ordered it in the first quarter. But co-founder and CEO Avi Schiffman says that's no longer possible. “We had hoped to ship in the first quarter of this year, but improvements are still needed. Unfortunately, we can only begin manufacturing electronics when the design is 95% complete,” Schiffman told customers. stated in an email to. “We hope to be able to start the final spurt by…
After TikTok's ban went into effect on Sunday, social network Bluesky launched a custom feed of videos on its platform. Now, Flipboard's newest app, Surf, which specializes in browsing the open social web and decentralized services like Mastodon and Bluesky, is taking advantage of the movement and introducing its own video feed. Initially, Surf's video feed was a combination of video posts on Bluesky's “trending videos” feed and posts with the hashtag #SkyTok. The company says it plans to personalize the feed for end users in the near future. This will help you differentiate between Surf's video feed and Bluesky's…
TikTok may be back, but that won't prevent other Chinese competitors from gaining users. Ahead of TikTok's ban (which started on Sunday and lasted for one day), many other video apps rose through the ranks and now dominate the App Store's top charts. Last week, Chinese app RedNote (listed as Xiaohongshu in the app store) became the No. 1 app in the US, followed by video apps like Clapper, Flip, and more. On Monday, after TikTok's service was restored, RedNote gained about 700,000 new users in the U.S. and maintained its No. 1 spot on the App Store. TikTok users'…
The AI startup market ranges from companies looking to develop new chips, to companies using AI to build robots, to companies looking to use AI to create niche solutions for industry-specific workflows. It's sprawling. There are many potential areas in which venture capitalists can invest, but there are clearly some subsectors that are more interesting than others. TechCrunch recently surveyed 20 VCs investing in startups looking to sell to enterprises about their predictions for 2025. Mark Rostick, vice president and senior managing director at Intel Capital, told TechCrunch that, at least in his opinion, now that the large-scale foundational model…
At a recent investor conference, early African investor Ui Capital returned $4 million of its debut capital to limited partners following the sale of a partial stake in business banking platform Monypoint. It was announced that. The African fintech unicorn has so far proven to be a standout investment for five-year-old Oui Capital. When it launched its first fund, it invested $150,000 in the Nigeria-based company, an early bet that has since earned $8 million in profits, enough to pay off the fund. produced. Specifically, last October, when Moniepoint raised $110 million in a Series C round led by Development…
All social networks that use TikTok's services are in the recovery stage, and the app is still unavailable on the App Store and Play Store. Bluesky announced Sunday that it is launching a custom feed of vertical videos within the app. Users can use Bluesky's mobile app.[探索]You can check the trending video section in the tab. Just like other vertical video apps, you can swipe up to see more videos. You can choose to pin the feed so it appears on your home screen or add it to your list of feeds. “We also needed to participate in video activities.…
In 2023, defense technology recruiter Peterson Conway VIII pulled up to the offices of fusion startup Hughes in his black Suburban, wearing his signature cowboy hat. He picked up a recent hire at Hughes and began regaling her with stories from his old days as a new employee. In one story, prostitutes attended a recruiting event (“not for sex,” Conway clarified to TechCrunch). The new employee was not satisfied. “I thought that was a funny thing to say,” Conway said with a sigh, admitting that he was “a hell of a person.” Fuse founder JC Btaiche overheard the conversation, agreed,…
After ByteDance's video editing app CapCut was removed from Apple's App Store and Google Play Store as part of the TikTok ban, Meta Sunday announced a new video editing app called Edits. Instagram head Adam Mosseri (pictured above) said in the thread that the app will be released on iOS next month, followed by an Android version. He added that the company is working with selected creators to gather feedback on the app. “Today we are announcing a new app called 'Edits' for those who are passionate about creating videos on their mobile phones. There's a lot going on right…