Author: TechBrunch

Two years ago, Xiaodi Hou was ousted as CEO of TuSimple, the self-driving trucking startup he co-founded, which subsequently ceased operations in the United States and was delisted from stock exchanges. In a strange turn of events, the company pivoted in the following direction. Chinese AI animation and games. Now, Hou is back at a Houston-based self-driving truck startup called Bot Auto. The startup recently made its public debut armed with $20 million in pre-Series A funding. In a sense, Hou is trying to reunite the AV band. Most of his 40-person team is made up of former TuSimple engineers…

Juno, the popular app that brought YouTube videos to Apple's Vision Pro, is shutting down, its developer announced Tuesday. YouTube had not released its own app for Vision Pro, so Juno allows users to watch videos in an immersive environment and use gestures to interact with the player to resize windows, scrub videos, and more. By making it executable, we filled an important hole in the app ecosystem. . Built by Christian Selig, an indie developer known for the now-shuttered Apollo app for Reddit, Juno was released shortly after Vision Pro arrived in February 2024. The app helped Selig familiarize…

The offices of plant-based protein startup Heura are tucked away down a narrow street a short distance from one of Barcelona’s main tourist draws. But the team of entrepreneurs and food scientists won’t be remixing their protein cocktails in close proximity to La Sagrada Família for much longer — they’re moving to new, larger digs in Poblenou, a district where industrial-scale office space is a lot easier to come by. As we’re shown around the “Heura House :)”, as the startup’s HQ is named (complete with beaming smilie), you can see why they want a bit more room to cook…

Traditional retailers have a pressing problem. Fast-moving companies like Shein and Tem rely on dedicated end-to-end supply chains to eat their lunch. Meanwhile, incumbent retailers remain stuck with traditional platforms, grappling with myriad data sets and struggling to respond to the demanding speed of the market. One London-based startup thinks it has a solution to this problem. Ameba claims it can harness unstructured data within retailers' supply chain systems and sprinkle it with generative AI to make the whole thing more efficient. The startup has now raised $7.1 million in a seed round led by London-based VC firm Hedosophia. Hedosophia…

Pererel, a women's health company, announced Wednesday that it has acquired LOOM, a women's education and health platform, for an undisclosed sum. LOOM founder Erica Chidi will join Pererel as a strategic advisor. Chidi co-founded LOOM in 2017 as an in-person experience to provide women with educational content about reproductive and sexual health. By 2020, we expanded to an online subscription digital platform, providing courses, content, and community support to women. The company has raised a total of $6.5 million from investors including Slow Ventures and Founders Fund, as well as celebrities including actress Tessa Thompson and Goop founder Gwyneth…

On Tuesday night local time, Paris-based early-stage technology investment firm Motier Ventures announced a startup hub called La Maison. This relatively new investor in the French tech ecosystem is the family office of the Houze family, owners of luxury fashion retailer Galeries Lafayette Group. Since Galeries Lafayette's main assets are brick-and-mortar stores, they believe having physical space will give startups an advantage over other technology investment firms. Founders of early-stage startups based in Paris have more options than ever when it comes to raising a seed round. Many unicorn founders become angel investors on the side. Family offices are diversifying…

Peak XV, the largest venture firm focused on India and Southeast Asia, is reducing the size of some of its funds and lowering fees as it seeks “closer collaboration” with its limited partners. The company, which has secured capital commitments totaling $2.85 billion in mid-2022, told backers on Tuesday night that they would receive $465 million from the 2022 Vintage Fund, according to a letter to investors seen by TechCrunch. It announced that the dollar debt would be waived. The region's largest venture group has not only scaled back its growth and multistage funds (it closed five of them in…

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 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…

When Harry Jones, Tom Reeses, and Alex Battle set out to found Motorway, a startup that connects car owners with dealers looking to buy and resell their cars, in 2017, it was the founding team's first It wasn't a startup rodeo. It wasn't even the second time. Motorway was actually the founding team's fifth startup, Motorway CPO Jones said on a recent episode of TechCrunch's Found podcast. He added that the co-founders met in 2002 when they were all young, and Reese and Jones worked at the same startup and were able to grow alongside each other. Despite their experience…

Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said Tuesday that users who connect their accounts to the Fediverse, also known as the open social web, will be able to see who follows them from other Fediverse servers such as Mastodon and PixelFed. It has been announced that you can now check whether your posts are liked. The company said users will also have up to 15 minutes to change or edit posts on the social network. Tap on a post's activity or follower list to see a complete list of followers and likes from other fediverse servers. You must click on the “Fediverse…