Author: TechBrunch

Durex India, the Indian subsidiary of the British condom and personal lubricant brand, has published personal information of customers, including their names and order details. Security researcher Sourajeet Majumder contacted TechCrunch this week about a condom manufacturer's website leaking sensitive customer data. The brand's website exposed customer names, phone numbers, email addresses, delivery addresses, products ordered, and amounts paid. The exact number of customers affected is unclear, but researchers found evidence that hundreds of people's information was exposed due to a lack of proper authentication on the order confirmation page. “Privacy is crucial for intimate goods brands,” Majumdar told TechCrunch.…

Apple has released new developer betas of iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS 15.1 Sequoia. The updates bring new Apple Intelligence features, including the ability to remove objects from photos. Called “Clean Up,” the feature allows users to identify and remove objects from photos without affecting the photo. Once an object is removed from an image, the system uses AI to generate a background. Apple says the system even understands the object's shadow and reflection and processes them when filling in the background. Users can use smart detection to select objects and remove them with a single tap, or simply…

New Enterprise Associates (NEA) is returning to the secondary market. The Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm has raised more than $468 million for its NEA Secondary Opportunities Fund, according to an SEC filing. The fundraising closed on July 3 but has not attracted much attention, according to sources familiar with the matter. The fund raised capital from more than 60 limited partners, including the San Francisco Employees Retirement System, which contributed $20 million to the fund, according to conference documents. The NEA did not respond to a request for comment. This is not NEA's first foray into the secondary market,…

One-click payment technology company Bolt is still waiting to see whether shareholders will approve a proposed funding round, on the condition that founder Ryan Breslow return as CEO. Meanwhile, Axios' Dan Primack has investigated London Fund, the company that is set to provide Bolt with up to $250 million in “marketing credits” as part of the proposed deal, and found that many of the firm's so-called portfolio companies aren't actually portfolio companies at all. The fact that the London Fund may have overstated its past investments is particularly concerning given that the proposed deal also called for Bolt to invest…

OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is reportedly in talks to raise a significant amount of funding led by previous backer Thrive Capital at a valuation of over $100 billion, a significant increase over OpenAI's previous valuation of $86 billion and by far the highest valuation of any AI startup to date. Thrive is reportedly planning to invest about $1 billion. Microsoft is also expected to participate, according to the WSJ, which reported the deal. It's unclear whether the company will also participate in the round. Khosla Ventures, Infosys and Y Combinator are among OpenAI's existing backers. The funding is expected…

Despite previous silence, OpenAI's startup accelerator program, Converge 2, has actually gone live, according to two sources familiar with the program, and TechCrunch has also confirmed that the Open AI Startup Fund has provided funding to the group's startups. Converge 2 is a strange exception to the tech industry's usual PR practices: Accelerator programs typically announce the startups that have been accepted into their programs, as well as those that have graduated. After all, once you invest in them, you have every reason to get public recognition and increase those startups' chances of success. But for months, a tech forum…

Bluesky, a social networking startup and competitor to decentralized X, is introducing new features aimed at reducing toxicity on its platform and making conversations less aggressive than previous versions. The company on Wednesday introduced several anti-abuse features, including the ability to hide replies that X currently offers, and the ability to separate your original posts from other users' quoted posts, the latter of which limits people's ability to attack others or send hate. Dank Tweets began as a form of abuse on Twitter, where people would use the Quote Tweet feature to add their own comment mocking, denigrating, or refuting…

Fluid Trucks, a startup founded to revolutionize the commercial vehicle rental industry, has fired CEO James Eberhardt and chief legal counsel Jennifer Snyder, both co-founders and siblings, according to people familiar with the matter. The changes, which employees described as a hostile takeover, were led by two minority shareholders on the company's board of directors. Both Eberhardt and Snyder retained their positions on the board. The previously unreported management restructuring comes after venture-capital-backed Fluid Truck lost tens of millions of dollars as of June 31 and failed to make payments to vendors and vehicle owners, according to documents viewed by…

Threads is deepening its ties to the Fediverse, also known as the open social web, which powers services like X alternative Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube and Flipboard, as well as other apps. On Wednesday, Meta announced that Threads users will be able to see Fediverse replies to other posts, in addition to their own. Additionally, posts made via the Threads API, including those made via third-party apps and scheduling services, will be syndicated to the Fediverse. The latter was previously announced via an in-app message informing users that their API posts would be shared to the Fediverse starting August 28th. Since…

Just a few weeks ago, in an interview with TechCrunch, Thomas Ingenlath revealed plans to turn Polestar into a self-sustaining company. But now, he's stepped down. Polestar announced on Tuesday that Ingenlath had stepped down as CEO, a role he had held since the electric-vehicle startup spun out of Volvo in 2017. He will be replaced by Michael Roescherer, who previously served as CEO of Stellantis-branded Opel as well as VinFast and Nikola. The leadership changes come at a turbulent time for Polestar, which has implemented job cuts and other cost-cutting measures over the past year. The publicly traded company…