Author: TechBrunch
The HVAC industry is undergoing a transformation. As private equity firms consolidate the industry, traditional security guard craftsmen are on the verge of retirement. Airship is building software solutions for the next chapter in HVAC. Airship builds point-of-sale software that gives HVAC contractors the knowledge they need to make more sales, including the energy-efficient heat pump incentive programs they need to earn the rebates their customers deserve. Masu. Craig Battin, co-founder and CEO of Airship, said the software is useful because many potential HVAC contractors have not yet adopted any technology and still rely on pen and paper to do…
Lex, a social and dating app for the LGBTQ+ community, has been acquired by 9count, a mobile app conglomerate focused on social networking. Lex started as an Instagram page in 2017, inspired by vintage lesbian personal ads. The page became so popular that founder Kel Rakowski turned it into an app in 2019. In less than a year, the app raised a $1.5 million seed round and added experienced entrepreneur Jennifer Lewis as co-founder and CEO. “Mainstream social platforms aren't really serving this audience,” Lewis told TechCrunch. According to GLAAD, LGBTQ+ people are twice as likely to be harassed online,…
Apps aimed at Chinese consumers and the broader Asian diaspora, especially food-focused urban consumers, could be big business. HungryPanda, one of the pioneering startups in that market, is announcing further funding. Founded in London, the food delivery app primarily targets Chinese and other Asian consumers living outside their home country, and generated $55 million in revenue. The company will use the capital to continue building its existing business and expand into new categories such as groceries. HungryPanda has not disclosed its valuation, but sources say it is currently valued at around $500 million post-money. For context, the last valuation listed…
Android's notification drawer can be both useful and distracting due to the sheer number of notifications you receive. You need to better manage per-app notifications through settings or set up your system so you don't miss important updates. An app called Pinnit lets you use the notification history feature to see missed notifications and create custom notifications. The app was created by an Android developer based in India Sashikant Milyanpalli and Brazilian-based designer Eduardo Platti. The app was first released in 2020, allowing users to pin tasks to their notification bar so they don't forget them. Now the developers have…
Raspberry Pi, which sells small, inexpensive single-board computers, has released add-ons that open up several use cases. And, sure, it's 2024, so there's an AI perspective as well. The image sensor, called the Raspberry Pi AI Camera, has onboard AI processing and will cost $70. More technically speaking, the AI camera is based on a Sony image sensor (IMX500) combined with Raspberry Pi's own microcontroller chip, the RP2040, with on-chip SRAM. Like the rest of the lineup, the RP2040 follows the overall Raspberry Pi philosophy of being cheap, yet efficient. In other words, AI startups aren't looking to replace Nvidia…
There is a lot of controversy going on in the world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites. The central issue is a dispute between WordPress founder and Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg and WP Engine, which hosts websites built on WordPress. WordPress technology is open source, free, and powers a huge portion of the internet (approximately 40% of websites). Websites can host their own WordPress instance or use a solution provider like Automattic or WP Engine for a plug-and-play solution. In mid-September, Mullenweg wrote a blog post calling WP Engine “the cancer of WordPress.”…
Elon Musk's X is now valued at less than a quarter of its $44 billion purchase price, according to new estimates from investor Fidelity. The asset management firm that helped Mr. Musk buy the social network formerly known as Twitter valued its holdings in X shares at the end of August, based on newly released disclosures from Fidelity's blue-chip growth fund. With further reductions, the total price reduction rate reached 78.7%. According to the fund's latest report, the fund currently values X shares at approximately $4.18 million. For context, Fidelity originally invested $19.66 million in X through its Blue Chip…
In September, California Governor Gavin Newsom considered 38 AI-related bills, including the highly controversial SB 1047, which the state Legislature sent to him for final approval. He vetoed SB 1047 on Sunday, ending California's controversial AI bill that seeks to prevent AI disasters, but signed more than a dozen other AI bills in September. did. These bills seek to address the most pressing issues in artificial intelligence, from AI risks and deepfake nudes created by AI image generators to Hollywood studios creating AI clones of deceased performers. “California, home to most of the world's leading AI companies, is leveraging these…
California Governor Gavin Newsom has vetoed SB 1047, a high-profile bill that would regulate the development of AI. The bill, authored by state Sen. Scott Wiener, would hold companies that develop AI models responsible for implementing safety protocols to prevent “significant harm.” This rule only applies to models that cost at least $100 million and use 10^26 FLOPS (Floating Point Operations, a measure of computation) during training. SB 1047 is expected to appeal to many in Silicon Valley, including companies like OpenAI, prominent technologists like Meta's chief AI scientist Yan LeCun, and even Democratic politicians like U.S. Congressman Ro Khanna.…
Kevin Ryan has had a long and storied career as a leading figure in New York City's technology. He is the founder and CEO of AlleyCorp, an investment firm that has invested in a variety of startups, and is a serial founder who has participated in the early stages of companies such as Business Insider, Zola, Gilt, Pearl Health, and Transcend Therapeutics. there is. As president and CEO in the 1990s and early 2000s, he helped found the ad tech company DoubleClick, which was later acquired by Google for $3.1 billion in 2007, transforming the online advertising industry. He later…