Author: TechBrunch

Google may be behind on climate goals, but that's not stopping the tech giant from building new AI-focused data centers in fossil fuel-dependent Saudi Arabia. The new AI hub will support research into Arabic language AI models and “Saudi-specific AI applications,” the Saudi Public Investment Fund and Google said in an announcement. State oil company Aramco said it is now using AI across its operations. In one oil field, this technology increased production by 15%. Google announced in 2020 that it would stop developing algorithms for oil and gas production, and in 2021 pledged to cut emissions in half by…

Many people who want to have children cannot or should not get pregnant for various reasons. Gestational surrogacy can be a great option for these individuals if they can tolerate long wait times and can afford the high cost of services. New York-based Nodal aims to make this process cheaper, more transparent, and faster. Nodal is a marketplace for matching prospective parents with vetted surrogate mothers. Dr. Brian Levine, founder and CEO of Nodal, told TechCrunch that his company wants to solve supply and demand problems in the industry. Dr. Brian Levine is the founder and CEO of Nodal. Image…

Publishing platform Substack is currently encouraging users to install its mobile app by offering gifted subscriptions. Substack itself is available on a variety of platforms, including the web, but if you want to take advantage of the free subscription offer, you can only do so after downloading the mobile app to your device. Free subscription offers are emailed to Substack users with a subject line like “It's $6” or “It's $7” (or whatever the cost of the free month is). However, if you click on the link and receive the gift from your desktop, you'll see a pop-up that says,…

This week's episode of Found takes you behind the scenes at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024. After chatting on stage with prominent investors The Chainsmokers, Becca Schuchtak had the opportunity to speak with Dan Lorenc, CEO and co-founder of cybersecurity startup ChainGuard. The two discuss how the EDM duo's venture fund MANTIS went from being viewed with skepticism by traditional VCs to becoming a highly sought-after investment partner in the B2B space, discuss how they scaled their companies and the value celebrity investors can get. Add to startup. In this conversation, we will also discuss: Navigating difficult market timing after the 2021…

Symbiotic Security, which announced a $3 million seed round today, watches developers as they code and flags potential security issues in real time. Other companies are doing this, but Symbiotic also emphasizes the next step: teaching developers to avoid these bugs from the beginning. Ideally, this means developers fix security bugs before they enter the code repository, which should also speed up the overall development process. Developers can also learn on the job and in the environment they already work in, making it much more likely that they will be able to successfully implement the changes they need. This is…

Today is Election Day in the United States, so you should be glued to the latest news about which presidential candidate is currently in the lead. To help with this, Apple has released a Live Activity widget within the Apple News app. This brings real-time election updates directly to your iPhone or iPad's home and lock screen. Rather than providing a static view of data that doesn't change, this widget takes advantage of the ability for iOS apps to continually update the widget with new information. The feature, which Apple calls “Live Activity,” will be introduced with the release of…

The richest man in the world buys one of the most popular social media platforms and uses it as a propaganda and disinformation machine to support his presidential candidates. What could go wrong? Elon Musk has made at least 87 claims about the U.S. presidential election this year that fact-checkers have rated as false or misleading, according to an analysis by the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a nonprofit organization that tracks misinformation. It turns out that he posted something. These false and misleading posts generated more than 2 billion views, and not just because Musk is an influential…

Swiggy will sell more than 75 people as part of its $1.35 billion initial public offering, as Indian food delivery and quick commerce startups prepare for the country's second-largest public offering of the year next week. It has raised approximately $606 million from major investors. The Bangalore-based startup is seeking a $11.3 billion valuation in its IPO and received bids worth $15 billion for the $600 million portion. Indian institutional investors received about 56% of the total anchor allocation, sources said. Eight of the top 10 mutual funds in India have invested in anchor rounds. Major investors include BlackRock, Fidelity,…

Google has confirmed plans to require all Google Cloud customers to use multi-factor authentication (MFA). The process begins this month and will embed prompts and “helpful reminders” within the Google Cloud console before it goes into effect in stages starting in the new year. year. The internet and cloud giant quietly announced its MFA plans in a document published in October, but Mayank Upadhyay, the company's vice president of engineering, formally announced it in a blog post this week. “We plan to implement mandatory MFA in Google Cloud in a phased approach and roll it out to all users globally…

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has more than 130,000 job cuts across 457 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized startups have also seen a fair amount of cuts, and in some cases, have shut down operations altogether. By tracking these layoffs, we’re able to understand the impact on innovation across companies large and small. We’re also able to see the potential impact of businesses…