Author: TechBrunch

JB Hunt, a transportation and freight network giant, is looking for software and digital products that will help it accelerate its business, adapt to the modern world, and even dominate its industry. And it's using startup incubator UP.Labs to help build it. On Wednesday, at the UP.Summit event in Bentonville, Arkansas, the companies announced a logistics and freight venture lab that will launch up to six startups over the next three years. The first of these startups will be launched in 2025 and will focus on some of the biggest problems in logistics and freight. UP.Labs is not structured like…

Poolside, an AI-powered software development platform, has raised $500 million in new funding. The cash came in the form of a Series B led by Bain Capital Ventures, with participation from big tech players like eBay (via eBay Ventures) and Nvidia. This brings Poolside's total funding to $626 million. Bloomberg reported that the startup is currently valued at $3 billion. TechCrunch revealed this summer that Poolside is in the midst of raising a significant amount of funding. Poolside, which has offices in the US and Europe, was founded last year by CEOs Jason Warner and Eiso Kant, both software engineers.…

Competition in the email market is fierce. After Apple's iOS 18 introduced a number of Gmail-like features to Apple's Mail app, including categorizing transactions, updates, and promotions and adding smart replies (in the upcoming iOS 18.1 update), Google on Wednesday announced a series of announced the functionality of Also includes enhancements to Gmail. Google's popular email service now lets users better organize and take actions like tracking packages, checking in for flights, setting reminders, and marking bills as paid right in their inbox. , a revamped “Summary Card” is added. The company says summary cards visually organize information from all…

Instant hopes to recapture some of the magic of Firebase before the Google acquisition by building a modern Postgres-based open source version. Like the original Firebase, San Francisco-based Instant focuses on giving front-end developers easy access to a real-time database with offline capabilities without having to manage the back-end architecture. Masu. The service supports applications written in React, React Native, and vanilla JavaScript. In addition to the database, it also provides tools to manage authentication and permissions, as well as real-time features such as shared cursors and presence. The team recently open sourced this project. Instant was founded by former…

Agence France-Presse, one of the world's largest news organizations, has notified French regulators of a possible data breach following last week's cyber attack. AFP News Agency, which has editorial offices in 260 cities in 150 countries, said in a brief statement on Saturday that it had detected an “attack on its systems” that affected some of its news distribution services to customers. “AFP's technical team is working on this incident with support from the French National Information Systems Security Agency (ANSSI),” the organization said. “We are currently working to analyze and address this incident.” AFP did not post further details…

Transportation and warehousing are multitrillion-dollar industries, but the technology that powers them is often outdated, inefficient, and siled. Pallet, which today announced an $18 million Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures, is building an all-in-one transportation and warehouse management system using AI to help companies from order entry to driver dispatch and management. We have made it possible to streamline our operations. Inventory and accounting. Sushanth Raman, CEO and co-founder of Pallet, was an early engineer at low-code startup Retool before leaving to start his own company with co-founder and fellow Retool engineer Andrew Spencer. In fact,…

Whatnot, a livestream marketplace platform for trading card collectors and sneakerheads, announced Wednesday that it has surpassed $2 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV) this year. GMV's milestone comes on the heels of recent product launches. Rewards Club is a customizable loyalty program where merchants can create their own rewards and customers can earn, including coupons, free shipping, and access to exclusive shows and products. Whatnot's new growth metrics not only highlight the company's strong momentum, but also highlight the growth of its live-commerce business in the U.S., although it's still far behind China, where livestream shopping is a…

Whatnot, a livestream marketplace platform for trading card collectors and sneakerheads, offers a bit of positive news at a time when the overall livestream shopping industry isn't gaining traction in the United States. The company announced Wednesday that its annual gross merchandise volume (GMV) in livestream sales exceeded $2 billion this year. This is a milestone following the recent launch of our new product 'Rewards Club'. It is a customizable loyalty program that allows sellers to create their own rewards that buyers can earn. , coupons, free shipping, and access to exclusive shows and products. Watnot believes the company's growth…

During COVID-19, Wiley Webb and his wife embarked on a year-long journey to uncover the most pressing problems in our food system. He talked to people at over 70 farms and always heard they wanted more buyers. Major buyers told Webb they had wanted to find these farm suppliers but were unable to find them due to slow and opaque sourcing. Webb decided to build on the missing pieces. “Despite trillions of dollars in trade and all the sophistication, food buyers are having a hard time finding and contracting new suppliers,” Webb said. “The core issue that prevents the level…

Character.AI is starting a new chapter after signing a $2.7 billion licensing deal with Google. The licensing deal includes CEO Noam Shazeer returning to the search giant. We hired Erin Teague, a former YouTube executive with global head of sports movies and product management, as chief product officer. Teague has worked at Google since 2016 and will join Character.AI next week. She also previously served as technical advisor to SVP for Search, Ads, Maps, Gemini, Assistant, Shopping and Payments. Recently, “Character.AI sets a new standard for how everyday users interact with AI, pioneering personalized and engaging AI experiences at scale,”…