Author: TechBrunch

Iconiq Capital raised $5.15 billion across two funds related to its seventh growth fund family, according to SEC filings. The New Mexico Investment Council, the private firm that manages the funds of some of the most prominent and wealthy people in tech, including Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey, has been in business since 2011, according to meeting information from The Wall. The company was founded in 2007, and its original goal was $5.75 billion. The Street Journal reported in March 2022. It's unclear whether the company is currently raising funds toward its goal. Iconiq did not immediately respond to a…

X, formerly Twitter, is now using Elon Musk's AI chatbot Grok to power its ability to summarize personalized trending stories in the app's Explore section.according to announcement Screenshots posted by the X engineering team on Friday, and X premium subscribers can view the[For You]You can read a summary of posts about X related to each trending story featured in the tab. 👀 Now Available: Story of X Powered by Grok AI 👀 See what's being talked about around the world with Stories on X, curated by. @grok. Now available to Premium subscribers in the Explore tab. Web and iOS only…

It's been almost a year since Match Group announced the release of Archer, the online dating giant's first app for gay, bi and queer men. Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates Archer has been downloaded more than 685,000 times since it was rolled out in New York last June. Archer completed its U.S. rollout in October of this year. Archer's growth is certainly noteworthy as Match and other online dating companies face a downturn. Match's last financial results revealed a decline in paid users of Tinder, the company's flagship app and one of the top dating platforms on the market.…

Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje's weekly roundup of must-sees from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every Friday. Musk's 10-month-old baby xAI is closing in on a whopping $6 billion funding round. Social Network X (formerly known as Twitter, also part of Elon's technology family) is already a shareholder. The deal was originally scheduled to raise just $3 billion, but then everyone wanted in and the price soared. Investors include Musk's close friends Sequoia Capital, Future Ventures, and other friends who may join the AI ​​party. But what's really frustrating to…

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized startups have also seen a fair amount of cuts, and in some cases, have shut down operations altogether. By tracking these layoffs, we’re able to understand the impact on innovation across companies large and small. We’re also able to see the potential impact of businesses…

Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't reveal much about the company's AI plans during a second-quarter earnings call with investors on Thursday, but he did say a few things about how the tech giant plans to move forward with artificial intelligence. confirmed the information. Notably, his comments suggest that Apple is building too many new data centers to run or train AI models, despite spending more than $100 billion on research and development over the past five years. This suggests that there are no plans to increase it. Instead, the company told investors it will continue to pursue a “hybrid” approach…

Instagram announced Friday that it is adding several new features to Stories to give users more creative ways to share content and interact with each other. Most notably, the social network is introducing a new “Publish” feature. This allows you to post hidden stories for your followers to reveal by sending a DM. Instagram is also launching other features that let you share your favorite songs and highlight memories through Stories. To access the new publishing feature, you must tap the sticker icon when creating a story and select the “Publish” option. From there, you'll be asked to enter hints…

This year has already proven that startups are willing to go public in less-than-ideal markets and can reap the rewards of doing so. But bankers, lawyers and investors said recent IPO successes alone won't be enough to foster more than a dozen tech IPOs this year. “I don’t think the floodgates will open as much as I think they will,” Greg Martin, co-founder and managing director of Rainmaker Securities, told TechCrunch. “The trickle has been delayed. We thought it would happen sooner in the first quarter. So I don't think the floodgates will open until 2025, but we're getting a…

WSO2, which provides API management and identity and access management (IAM) services for enterprises, has been acquired by Swedish investment giant EQT. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but TechCrunch has learned through sources that the deal values ​​WSO2 at “more than $600 million” and that EQT will acquire a “substantial majority” stake at that price. I learned. WSO2's products include an open source API manager, comparable to Google's Apigee, that enterprises use to build and integrate all their digital services in the cloud or on-premises. The company offers tangential services such as Kubernetes-specific API management, as well as…

Climate change technology startups raised $8.1 billion in the first quarter, a near-record amount and the fact that 2023 is so close suggests it may just be a sign of a prolonged recession. Suggests. The numbers, included in a new PitchBook report, show that climate technology is not succumbing to the same slowdown that is dragging other venture communities. According to the report, the number of transactions decreased slightly from the previous quarter, but the value increased by nearly 400%. A closer look at the $8.1 billion raised in the first quarter shows that investors are focused on materials such…