Author: TechBrunch
Brazilian fintech company Maggi has raised $4 million in a seed round led by Lux Capital, marking the company's first investment in Brazil. The company has raised $5.1 million in total to develop an AI-powered financial assistant. Its current product allows users to send and receive money via WhatsApp. For co-founder Luis Ramalho and Lux partner Brandon Reeves, Magie is a broader bet on Brazil's burgeoning fintech industry, buoyed by the huge success of Nubank, the Brazilian neobank that had a blockbuster IPO in 2021. Reeves, who has spearheaded many of Lux's international investments, notably Sakanai, the firm's first investment…
Dropbox has acquired Reclaim.ai, an AI-powered scheduling tool whose investors also include Calendly and Index Ventures, in a blog post on Reclaim.ai's website on Tuesday. Dropbox did not disclose terms of the deal. Founded in 2019 by Henry Shapiro and Patrick Lightbody, Reclaim.ai said it plans to continue developing its product under the new ownership. It also said it is committed to ongoing support for all its users. More than 43,000 companies and more than 320,000 people around the world use the tool, according to a blog post. The startup has raised over $9.5 million to date from investors including…
While companies are experimenting with services like ChatGPT, which helps employees write notes and answer questions, one of the clearest signs of just how pervasive AI really is in the world of enterprise IT is how frequently it's being used for the more mundane applications that organizations use. Today, a startup that embodies this principle is announcing funding, highlighting the pace of enterprise AI adoption. Opkey built an AI platform that helps organizations continuously test their finance, HR, and other enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and has now raised $47 million in Series B on the back of a strong…
Ashesh Shah, founder and CEO of London Fund, is, as you'd expect, bullish on Bolt. The London Fund is a British venture firm with “over $1 billion in cash and assets” under management that led a $450 million fundraise for Bolt, the one-click checkout startup that has been embroiled in a number of controversies over the years. But Shah isn't letting all this deter him, describing the terms offered to Bolt as “a great deal for a company that we believe still has a lot of room to grow.” I spoke with Shah on Wednesday afternoon about the deal and…
Earlier this year, an AI-powered fake voice recording of President Biden reached New Hampshire voters. The FCC swiftly fought back, identifying the culprit as Texas-based Life Corporation, which had been running similar scams for years, and fined the company and its associates $6 million. But the scammers also had the help of a gamey, shape-shifting telecommunications company that has engaged in shady activity before. Now known as Lingo Telecom (aka Ameritel, Excel, Impact, Startec, Trinsic, and others), the company agreed to pay a $1 million civil penalty and make sure it followed the rules this time. Telecommunications companies like Apple…
OpenAI broke its silence on California's most controversial AI bill on Tuesday, publicly stating its opposition in a letter to California Sen. Scott Wiener and Governor Gavin Newsom. The AI giant argued that SB 1047 would stifle innovation and drive talent out of California, but Sen. Wiener quickly fired back, calling it “nonsensical.” “The AI revolution is just beginning, and California's unique position as a global leader in AI powers our state's economic vitality,” OpenAI chief strategy officer Jason Kwon said in the letter obtained by TechCrunch. “SB 1047 would threaten that growth, slow the pace of innovation, and lead…
ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm since its launch in November 2022. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies. That growth has propelled OpenAI itself into becoming one of the most-hyped companies in recent memory. And its latest partnership with Apple for its upcoming generative AI offering, Apple Intelligence, has given the company another significant bump in the AI race. 2024 also saw the release of GPT-4o, OpenAI’s new flagship omni…
Flo Crivello was monitoring the output of the AI assistant his company Lindy makes when he noticed something odd: a new customer was asking the Lindy AI assistant for a video tutorial to better understand how to use the platform, and Lindy responded. That's when Crivello realized something was wrong: there was no video tutorial. “We saw this and we were like, 'Okay, what kind of video did they send us?' And we were like, 'Oh no, this is a problem,'” Crivello told TechCrunch. The video the AI sent to the client was the music video for Rick Astley's 1987…
The Startup Battlefield is the centerpiece of Disrupt, and we can't wait to see who will be selected from the thousands of applicants to pitch to a panel of top VCs at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, taking place in San Francisco from October 28-30. The event is always epic, with all applicants hoping to make a major impact on the world. We're excited to announce our first group of investors who will be evaluating startups and holding engaging, revealing Q&As after each presentation. Stay tuned for more names to be announced soon. Judges' feedback provides insight into the criteria they use…
AI video creation platform D-ID is the latest company to release a tool that uses AI technology to translate videos into other languages, except in this case, D-ID replicates the speaker's voice and changes their lip movements to match the translated words as part of the AI editing process. The technology grew out of D-ID's previous efforts. You may remember the viral trend a few years ago where users animated old family photos that later started talking. Following this success, the startup is looking to raise $25 million in Series B funding in 2022 to cater to the growing number…