Author: TechBrunch
A UK-based open source startup launches its first commercial product, backed by Silicon Valley's most prominent venture capital firm. Pydantic on Monday announced $12.5 million in Series A funding led by Sequoia, launching an observability platform called Logfire after five months of trials in open beta. But the company is best known for its eponymous Python library and open-source data validation framework, launched in 2017 by British developer Samuel Colvin. This project has become more and more powerful and is now used by developers in several companies around the world. Big names like Meta, Nvidia, Netflix, Google, and OpenAI. Businesses…
US asset manager Invesco estimates an implied valuation of about $13.3 billion in Swiggy, an Indian food delivery and quick commerce startup that plans to go public in about a month, and holds a stake in the company. It increased the value of Swiggy stock. Invesco's Developing Markets Fund said in a disclosure on Tuesday that its holdings of 28,844 Swiggy shares were valued at $237.24 million at the end of July 2024. The asset manager bought Swiggy stake for $190.47 million. Invesco invested in Swiggy in early 2022, leading a $700 million round in the Bangalore-based startup. This round…
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.”…
Tier and Dott, Europe's leading scooter and bike sharing services, will become one service called Dott. The two startups have already announced plans to merge and form a single company in January 2024. With this merger, both companies did not want to create a conglomerate of micromobility services. The operation was all about scale. Micromobility is a challenging industry with razor-thin margins, and scale is a key factor in increasing the number of vehicles available to improve unit economics and become more competitive with Lime, the leader in this space. is. “When we merged the two companies, we wanted to…
Meta's AI-powered Ray-Ban has a discreet camera on the front that not only responds when you're asked to take a photo, but also allows the AI feature to take photos with specific keywords like “see.” You can also take pictures when you take a picture. In other words, smart glasses collect a large amount of photos, both intentional and unintentional. However, the company has no intention of making these images private. We asked Meta if it plans to train its AI models on images from Ray-Ban Meta users as well as images from public social media accounts. The company wouldn't…
An AY Combinator startup called PearAI published an X post thread and YouTube video on Saturday that instantly caused controversy. And some of that is influencing YC itself. PearAI provides an AI coding editor. The startup's founder, Duke Pang, openly stated that it is a cloned copy of another AI editor called Continue, which is covered by the Apache open source license. But PearAI made a big mistake. PearAI originally created its own private license called the Pear Enterprise License, but Pan confirmed that this license was created by ChatGPT. License changes like this are a big deal in the…
11x.ai, a startup developing an AI-powered sales development bot, has secured about $50 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch has learned. The new round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and values the company at about $350 million, multiple sources told TechCrunch. This recent deal follows the company's $24 million Series A led by Benchmark with participation from other investors including 20VC, Project A, Lux Capital, and SV Angel. 11x.ai announced a Series A round earlier this month, with the deal now set to close in early 2024. According to one source, the company's Series A round was valued at $90…
Venture capitalist Neil Mehta, co-founder of Green Oaks Capital, has been involved in a growing number of building purchases spanning several blocks of San Francisco's once-glam Fillmore Street, and on Monday he wrote an op-ed in the San Francisco Standard. He defended himself and said the move was just for purpose. About revitalizing “a city that has given me more than I can give back.” The article aims to hit back at local politicians, including science fiction director Aaron Peskin. Mr. Peskin recently held a rally on a street lined with shops, telling onlookers and reporters that Mr. Mehta's hoardings…
Snapchat is quietly rolling out a new “Footprints” feature to all iOS users this week, the company confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday. This new feature, previously only available to Snapchat+ subscribers, lets you see how much of the world you've explored and track where you've traveled using Snap Map. When you use Footsteps for the first time, your first steps are calculated based on your memory snaps. This means your past trips will still count. Snapchat then no longer uses your memory to add to your footprints, but instead uses your location data to track your travels. Snapchat can only…
Apple's iOS 18 software update rolled out earlier this month, bringing significant changes to iOS Control Center, making it easier to access commonly used features by simply swiping down from the home screen. Now, in addition to existing controls like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and flashlight, Apple is allowing third-party app developers to create controls for their own apps. Below, we've compiled a list of iOS 18-compatible apps that users can try to take advantage of the redesigned Control Center. breaking news Image credit: Screenshot by TechCrunch Notice that Bulletin, an AI-powered news reader app that summarizes articles, has a total of…