Author: TechBrunch

Validus, a Singapore-based digital lending platform for SMEs, has secured a $50 million loan from HSBC under the ASEAN Growth Fund strategy. Validus will use the proceeds to support financial inclusion for Indonesian SMEs, addressing the challenges they face in accessing financial resources. According to the Indonesian Ministry of Economy, 64.2 million SMEs account for 61% of Indonesia's GDP, and the potential for growth is immense. These SMEs employ around 119.6 million people, which is 97% of the country's total workforce. However, only around 17.5 million SMEs are using the online ecosystem or e-commerce. According to a 2017 World Bank…

On August 5, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar stood before about 20 nervous new hires in the company's Washington, D.C., office and delivered the usual on-boarding speech about the company's mission and Palantir's history. But there was one thing that wouldn't have been clear to them a few years ago: Sankar was talking about the importance of a new wave of defense technology startups founded by people from Palantir, Tesla, and SpaceX. Its importance is ideological rather than financial — after all, the business Palantir gets from startups is tiny compared to government contracts — but you can't put a price…

On August 5, Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar stood before about 20 nervous new hires in the company's Washington, D.C., offices and delivered the sort of speech you'd expect at a new-hire conference: the company's mission, Palantir's history, etc. But there was one thing that wouldn't have made sense a few years ago: Sankar was talking about the importance of a new wave of defense tech startups founded by ex-Palantir, Tesla, and SpaceX. Its importance is ideological rather than financial — after all, the business Palantir gets from startups is tiny compared to government contracts — but you can't put a…

As companies experiment with incorporating AI everywhere, one unexpected trend is that they are using AI to help their newfound army of bots better understand human emotions. It's a field known as “emotional AI,” and the technology is predicted to be a growing trend, according to a new Enterprise SaaS Emerging Tech Research report from PitchBook. Here's why: When companies deploy AI assistants for their executives and employees, and make AI chatbots their front-line sales and customer service reps, how can the AI ​​perform well if it can't understand the difference between an angry “What does that mean?” and a…

The Jetsons premiered on September 23, 1962. The first episode, titled “Rosie the Robot,” was a sort of origin story for the character, depicting how overworked Jane decides to hire a housekeeper. 62 years after its premiere, Rosie remains an important pop culture touchstone that showcases the unrealized potential of domestic robots. That doesn't mean that robots won't be present in homes in 2024. iRobot says it has sold more than 50 million Roombas. But that's just a fraction of the total number of robot vacuums sold worldwide. Robot lawn mowers and pool cleaners are also popular, but their numbers…

Over the past few years, startups around the world have faced challenges in attempting to exit due to factors such as a frozen IPO market and reduced attractiveness to buyers. Additionally, large mergers and acquisitions (M&A) transactions, especially those involving large technology companies and multi-billion dollar conglomerates, have come under increased regulatory scrutiny. Notably, the decline in venture investment within the startup ecosystem is often linked to a lack of exit volume and value: in Africa, for example, the number of M&A exits peaked at 44 in 2021, when the continent attracted nearly $6 billion in venture capital, but in…

In the latest development in Bolt's aggressive fundraising efforts, the fintech company's CEO appeared to implicitly threaten legal action against Silver Bear Capital, the investment bank whose involvement in the deal remains controversial. “We believe there was an internal miscommunication at one of our major investors, Silver Bear Capital, which has caused unnecessary confusion,” CEO Justin Grooms said in an email reportedly seen by Forbes. “In fact, they have signed a binding agreement to commit $200 million. Our talented legal team at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher stands ready to represent the company to aggressively enforce our rights.” Bolt, which offers…

Amazon announced Friday night that it had hired Covariant founders Peter Abeel, Peter Chen and Rocky Duan, as well as “approximately a quarter” of the startup's employees, and also signed a non-exclusive license to use Covariant's robotic foundation model. Earlier this year, Chen told TechCrunch that Covariant is building “large-scale language models for robotics. In other words, the company is creating AI models for robots, with an initial focus on robotic arms that perform common warehouse tasks like bin picking. “We are conducting fundamental research with the brightest minds and combining our vast domain expertise to pioneer new ways for…

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. caused a stir a few months ago. Mason announced that the prestigious Grammy Awards would finally accept music made with artificial intelligence. At first people were confused, but Mason later explained that this meant that only humans could submit works for the awards, but AI could be used in the creative process. “It's a fine line, but it will evolve,” he told TechCrunch about how the Academy evaluates the use of artificial intelligence in music. “Hopefully we can continue to celebrate human creativity at the highest level.” The rise of AI is engulfing the…

Elle Russell, co-founder of Cairns, Australia-based NightCafe, which offers a suite of AI-powered art-creating tools, prefers to avoid the spotlight. “I like to remain hidden behind my monitors,” she told me in a recent interview. NightCafe is similarly low profile. The company, which Russell helped her partner, Angus Russell, launch five years ago, doesn’t get the same publicity as some of its rivals, like Midjourney. Yet NightCafe — an entirely bootstrapped venture that’s profitable “most months,” according to Elle — has enormous reach. Its over 25 million users have created nearly a billion images with its tools. To pull back…