Author: TechBrunch

According to Forbes, U.S. Vice President and then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris' cyber security was compromised before the election after a tool designed to detect spyware on iPhones reported anomalies on two devices belonging to campaign staffers. The security team has asked Apple for help. According to Forbes, Apple has refused to allow forensic analysis of the phone. The company's response comes as no surprise to digital defenders who work with at-risk populations who are often targeted by spyware. In recent years, Apple has sent notifications to targets and victims of government spyware, warning them they may have been hacked and…

What happens when a chemical engineer who previously developed hydrogen-powered drones becomes a venture capitalist? Energy Revolution Ventures, that's it. The company has now closed an $18 million seed and Series A fund to invest in deep technologies such as energy storage, carbon capture, and, of course, hydrogen technology. Marcus Clover, co-founder and partner at ERV, told TechCrunch: I ended up being hired as the first employee at an aerospace startup. We were building hydrogen-powered drones for communications applications. ” After doing that for five years, he joined another company that puts hydrogen fuel cells into heavy-duty vehicles. I realized…

While most students were stumbling back from bars over the weekend, Songye Yoon was rushing across campus in South Korea. When dinner time came around, she ran some programs on the university's supercomputer and waited sleeplessly in her dorm for the computer to run the programs at high speed. “I woke up at 2 or 3 a.m. and walked around campus because I wanted to know the results,” she said. She was such an oddity on campus that a writer used her as inspiration for a TV show about her college. “The idea was never to create a character based…

Social network Bluesky has released a new update to its app that includes a separate mentions tab in notifications, protection against username squatting, and new controls for sorting replies. The company announced that with the v1.96 rollout, it will add a new mentions tab, allowing you to view these posts individually. Previously, all notifications were under one tab. Bluesky also adds protection against username squatting by reserving the original Bluesky username (.bsky.social suffix) when changing the username to a custom domain. The platform said it only reserves the most recent Bluesky usernames and there is no expiration date. Recent incidents…

AI poses a dilemma for businesses. If you don't implement it yet, you could be missing out on productivity gains and other potential benefits. But if done incorrectly, it can expose your business and customers to unmitigated risks. This is where a new wave of “security for AI” startups arrives, assuming that threats such as jailbreaks and prompt injections cannot be ignored. Mindgard, a spin-off from a British university, is one of them, as is Israeli startup Noma and US-based competitors Hidden Layer and Protect AI. “AI is still software, so all the cyber risks you've probably heard apply to…

Robin Capital, the German-based solo GP-led VC fund of former entrepreneur Robin Haack, has reached the final close of 'Robin Fund One' at €13 million. Combined with an additional growth-focused investment vehicle of €2 million, the fund now has a total of €15 million under management. In the realm of European solo GPs, which typically raise much less than their US equivalents, this is a decent number. Founded in 2023, Robin Capital targets European B2B mid-sized enterprise SaaS startups with a focus on the DACH region at pre-seed and seed stages. This is being deployed across sectors such as HR,…

Apparently the writing was on the wall. Sequoia Capital partner Matt Miller announced Wednesday that he is leaving the major firm after a 12-year career to start his own new firm focused on European founders. He added that he intends to remain a venture partner at Sequoia and maintain a seat on the company's board while fleshing out “the details of what happens next.” London-based venture capitalists including Saul Klein, Tom Hulme, Matthias Ljungmann and Miller's colleague Luciana Liksandl are working with Miller, who moved to London in 2021 to lead Sequoia's expansion into Europe. blessed. Still, few people will…

Rapido, a popular ride-hailing platform in India, has fixed a security issue that exposed personal information related to users and drivers, TechCrunch has learned exclusively. The flaw, discovered by security researcher Renganathan P, was related to a form on a website aimed at collecting feedback from Rapido autorickshaw users and drivers. The form exposed an individual's full name, email address, and phone number, which TechCrunch confirmed based on details provided by the researcher. Researchers told TechCrunch that the leaked data pertained to one of Rapido's APIs and was intended to collect information from feedback forms and share it with third-party…

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before Congress about the dangers of AI in 2023. He has repeatedly told U.S. lawmakers at the time that he doesn't own any shares in OpenAI, insisting that he just runs the company because he loves it. However, Altman recently said that he actually held OpenAI stock through the Sequoia Fund at one point, and has since sold that stock. In an interview with Bari Weiss published Thursday, Altman was asked how much stock he might own if OpenAI were to successfully transform into a for-profit company. Here's what the OpenAI CEO had to say:…

AI-powered search engine Perplexity has reportedly completed a $500 million funding round, valuing the startup at $9 billion. The round was led by Institutional Venture Partners and closed in early December, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. In an email to TechCrunch, a Perplexity spokesperson declined to comment. As competition in AI-powered search intensifies, huge tranches emerge. OpenAI recently launched ChatGPT Search, its answer to Perplexity. And Google is developing features that rival some of the features Perplexity offers, such as AI-generated summaries and answers on search results pages. This week, The Information reported that Google is planning…