Author: TechBrunch
As someone who often speaks to many people outside my time zone, I often spend at least a few minutes on a video call explaining my location, the time, and the weather. Communicating that information has just become easier thanks to a Mac app called Boom, now available as a freemium product. Boom is a bootstrap company founded by ex-Shopify employees Robleh Jama and Krishna Satya. The app works with all major video conferencing apps, including Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc. Once installed, you can add customized themes to your video call display, including your name, title, location, time,…
If you spend any time on sarcastic meme-heavy platforms like X or Threads, you've probably seen the following posts in the past few days referencing “founder mode”: https://www.threads.net/@carnage4life/post/C_eaQAxyIcV Or it might look like this: You may have seen this parody on “Goblin Mode.” The chat ties in with a recent blog post by Y Combinator founder and startup wisdom imparter Paul Graham, who writes that founders like Airbnb's Brian Chesky often ignore the conventional wisdom about running a large company — that is, hire smart people and let them do their thing — which, Graham says, often translates into “hire…
Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is closing its Miami Beach satellite office just two years after signing a five-year lease for the 8,300-square-foot space due to lack of use, Bloomberg reports. Once a crypto hotspot and area of interest for a16z, Miami has struggled to retain venture capital and entrepreneurial talent in recent years, Bloomberg noted, with venture investment falling to $400 million in the second quarter of 2024 from $5.5 billion for all of 2022, according to Pitchbook. For a16z, the closures deal a blow to its plans to set up “global hubs” in cities like New York and Santa Monica…
Cowboy, a Brussels-based company that designs and sells electric bikes found in major European cities, has closed a small strategic funding round of €5 million (about $5.5 million at current exchange rates), which includes a €1 million debt facility. While the amount is not as impressive as Cowboy's previous funding, the company was looking for investors outside of the traditional European venture capital firms already invested in the startup, investors that could open new doors. As a result, the round was led by Cypress Capital. The Hong Kong-based investment firm has strong ties to Taiwan, a key hub for the…
HR and payroll software company Paylocity has agreed to acquire corporate spending startup Airbase for $325 million, the companies announced Wednesday. The transaction is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in the first or second fiscal quarter of Paylocity's fiscal year, which would be within the next 30 to 60 days. The transaction will be funded with borrowings under Paylocity's revolving credit facility. It's a reasonable exit for Airbase, which was founded seven years ago by Tejo Koté in 2017 to provide software to mid-sized businesses looking to better manage their expenses. Its platform included bill payments,…
Ryan Breslow's return as CEO of fintech company Bolt and plans to close a $450 million funding deal valuing the company at a staggering $14 billion appear to have stalled. According to Forbes, Breslow sent an email to shareholders thanking them for approving the deal. The problem is, many investors, including Montauk Ventures and Ash Pornoli, claim they didn't approve anything. Montauk founder Philip Krim told Forbes he didn't support the fundraise, and Breslow didn't have permission to be on the list of investors who approved the deal. Meanwhile, BlackRock, along with Hedosophia and Untitled Ventures, have reportedly filed for…
Quibi may have failed because it didn't have enough AI characters. At least, that's what one startup thinks. My Drama is a new short-series app with over 30 shows, most of which follow a soap opera format to draw viewers in. The app is now introducing AI-powered chatbots that give viewers a deeper insight into the characters, increasing competition from companies like Character.AI, an a16z-backed chatbot startup. The short story app was developed by Holywater, a Ukraine-based media technology startup founded by Bogdan Nesvit (CEO) and Anatoly Kasyanov (CTO), whose parent company also operates a reading app called My Passion,…
Nearly two years after laying off X's entire trust, safety, and security team, Elon Musk's social media company is now looking to hire new employees to help moderate content and ensure the security of the platform, according to an official X job listing. Last month, Company X posted 24 jobs, evenly distributed between its safety and cybersecurity teams. Job roles within the safety team at X range from Director of Strategic Response to Government Relations Manager for the safety team at X. In its cybersecurity team, X employs several security engineers and threat intelligence experts. These are small numbers compared…
Hello everyone and welcome to TechCrunch's regular AI newsletter. If you'd like to receive this newsletter in your inbox every Wednesday, sign up here. This week in AI, two startups building code-generating and suggesting tools, Magic and Codeium, raised a combined total of nearly $500 million. The round is big even by AI sector standards, considering Magic has yet to release a product or generate revenue. So why are investors excited? Because coding is not an easy business, nor is it a cheap business, and there is demand from both enterprises and individual developers for ways to streamline some of…
The Cosmos Institute is a nonprofit organization whose founding members include Antropic co-founder Jack Clark and former Department of Defense engineer Brendan McCord, and has announced venture programs and research initiatives that it describes as “nurturing a new generation of philosophical thinkers and entrepreneurs to pioneer uncharted territory in the age of AI.” Cosmos chairman McCord said in a blog post that the institute will establish an AI lab at Oxford called the “Human-Centred AI Lab,” or “HAI Lab.” The lab will be led by Oxford philosopher Philip Collaras, another of the institute's founding fellows, and will aim to “translate…