Author: TechBrunch

BDO, the auditor for Indian edtech startup Byju's, has resigned with immediate effect, marking the embattled startup's second auditor departure in about a year and further raising concerns about the company's financial health and governance. In its scathing resignation letter, BDO subsidiary MSKA highlighted several problems at Bijoux, including significant delays in financial reporting, inadequate management support and concerns about whether it would be able to recover large amounts owed to it by Dubai-based companies. The auditor's departure comes as Bijoux, once India's most valuable startup valued at $22 billion, faces a series of crises, including the Supreme Court's recent…

Hydrogen startup C-Zero has raised $5 million of an $18 million funding round, according to an SEC filing. The company is developing a way to extract hydrogen from methane without emitting carbon dioxide. The resulting hydrogen can now be used in a variety of industries, including ammonia and petrochemical production, and may soon be available in others, such as transportation and steelmaking. Solid carbon waste could potentially be reused in everything from asphalt to lithium-ion batteries. C-Zero has raised $34 million in 2022 at a post-money valuation of $124 million, according to PitchBook data. The smaller target for this new…

Meta on Friday provided an update on how it will comply with the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a European law aimed at promoting competition in digital markets, which concerns its messaging apps Messenger and WhatsApp. As Meta noted in a blog post, the DMA requires WhatsApp and Messenger to offer the option to connect with interoperable third-party messaging services and apps: Meta said it is building notifications into WhatsApp and Messenger to let users know about these third-party integrations and alert them when new compatible third-party messaging apps come online. Image credit: Meta The company also said it will introduce…

At its annual Roblox Developer Conference on Friday, the company announced a series of changes coming to the platform over the coming months and years. Most notably, Roblox will be adding more ways for creators to earn money from their experiences, as well as announcing a project to encourage generative AI creation on the platform. The company is introducing a new program that will give creators a higher percentage of revenue from paid experiences on desktop. Creators will receive 50% of revenue from $9.99 paid experiences, 60% of revenue from $29.99 experiences, and 70% of revenue from $49.99 experiences. Currently,…

Welcome to Startups Weekly, your weekly dose of the can't miss happenings from the startup world. Want to receive it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. There won't be any stories about Founder Mode in this week's newsletter, but the memes will still be there. Instead, we'll bring you the usual startup news, from mega rounds to pivots to new product launches. This week's most interesting startup stories Image credit: Bryce Durbin / TechCrunch When facing bigger rivals, startups often have to think smartly about how they compete, and since there's no right answer, it's no surprise that…

Meet the Drapers, an international pitch competition hosted by venture capitalist Tim Draper, is partnering with TikTok for its seventh season. In this new partnership, entrepreneurs will pitch their startups to the public through the short-form video app on upcoming episodes of the show. The public can vote for their favorite submissions via the app's landing page and then watch the pitch reviews live on TikTok. Four finalists will ultimately be selected to compete in an episode of the show in front of a panel of judges and win a $1 million investment from Tim Draper. For TikTok, the deal…

It's tempting to think that the trend of EV startups going public by merging with special acquisition companies (SPACs) is over, with so many of them struggling or going bankrupt. But that's not necessarily true. A startup called Thunder Power Holdings went public on the Nasdaq exchange through a SPAC in June, and is now trying to raise up to another $100 million through a stock sale agreement. All this is happening while the company's CEO, Wellen Shum, is facing 11 criminal charges from the Taiwanese government. Thunder Power's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission include all the details…

Some Canva customers are in for some serious price shock, but the company cites new AI features as the reason for the price hike. The company has positioned itself as a simpler, more affordable alternative to traditional design software, but the “more affordable” part of the equation is becoming a bit less true, with some Canva Teams subscribers seeing their prices increase from $120 to $500 a year — a 300 percent increase. Canva says it's offering a 40% discount for the first 12 months, so there's some wiggle room, but we'll likely see a full price increase down the…

In the modern AI world, data is more than just a resource. It is the fundamental core that aligns decision makers, supports processes, and enables innovation. As AI applications become more robust and pervasive, their progress will only match the evolution of the data infrastructure behind them. We're excited to discuss the data deluge live on the SaaS stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 with industry experts George Fraser, CEO of Fivetran, Chet Kapoor, Chairman and CEO of DataStax, and Vanessa Larco, Partner at NEA. The panel will take a deep dive into the shift from simple data accumulation to meaningful…

Transport for London, the government body that oversees public transport in the British capital, said it was experiencing online outages due to an “ongoing cyber security incident” that is expected to last into the weekend. TfL, which runs the London Underground (Tube) and buses and trams across London, said that while public transport in the city was “operating as normal”, some customer-facing systems were offline, including some ticketing systems and online real-time tube arrival information. Details of the incident are unclear. TfL disclosed the cyber attack on September 2 and said it had taken steps to “prevent further access to…