Author: TechBrunch

UK-based space technology investment group Seraphim Space is officially launching its second VC fund following an initial close with a limited number of partners including Airbus, TechCrunch exclusively reports Ta. This early-stage fund will build a global portfolio of 30 startups backed at seed and Series A stages. CEO and manager Mark Boggett did not disclose the success rate or target size of the fund, but it is larger than Seraphim Space's 2017 £70m VC fund (approximately $90m at the time). He said it should happen. Like its predecessor, Seraphim's second VC fund, SSV II, is backed by leading companies…

The two are parting ways on amicable terms, two sources exclusively tell TechCrunch. Piyush Gupta, one of Peak Mr. Gupta joined Peak XV, formerly known as Sequoia Capital India & SEA, in 2017 to lead the strategy development team for impact ventures. Prior to joining Peak XV, he worked at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank for more than a decade, where he focused on similar things such as mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs. Although Mr. Gupta did not serve as an investment partner at Peak I accomplished it. News of Mr. Gupta's departure was communicated to limited partners from Peak XV…

TikTok's social commerce marketplace, TikTok Shop, is launching a second-hand luxury goods category in the UK, with strong competition from the likes of The RealReal, Vestiere Collective, Depop, Poshmark and Mercari. This service has already been present on TikTok Shop US for more than 6 months. The new category will allow customers in the UK to buy second-hand luxury clothing, designer handbags and other accessories without leaving the TikTok app. At launch, only five of his British brands are available: Sellier, Luxe Collective, Sign of the Times, HardlyEverWornIt and Break Archive. Since launching TikTok Shop in 2022, the platform has…

To give female academics and others focused on AI their well-deserved and overdue spotlight time, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews highlighting notable women who have contributed to the AI ​​revolution. Start. As the AI ​​boom continues, we'll be publishing several articles throughout the year highlighting key research that may go unrecognized. Click here for a detailed profile. Anna Korhonen is Professor of Natural Language Processing (NLP) at the University of Cambridge. She is also a Senior Research Fellow at Churchill University, a Research Fellow at the Association for Computational Linguistics, and a Research Fellow at the European Institute…

When you board a United Airlines flight, the gate agents, flight attendants, and others are coordinating in chat rooms to ensure the plane departs on time, coordinating many tasks that you, as a passenger, may never notice. Is there still space for my carry-on baggage? Did the caterer bring the missing orange juice? Is there a way for the family to sit together? If your flight is delayed, you'll receive an explanatory message via text and in the United Airlines app. In most cases, that message is generated by AI. Meanwhile, in offices around the world, dispatchers examine this real-time…

Welcome to TechCrunch FinTech! This week, we cover Ramp's big raise and soaring valuation, Mercury's expansion into personal banking, Klarna's new credit card, a global funding round, and more. Get TechCrunch's roundup of the biggest and most important fintech stories delivered to your inbox every Sunday at 7:00 a.m. PT. Subscribe here. big story Ramp, a spend management startup that rivals the likes of Brex, Navan, and Airbase, told TechCrunch exclusively last week that it had raised $150 million at a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion. Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund co-led the round, which represents a 31.9% valuation increase…

To give AI-focused women academics and others their well-deserved — and overdue — time in the spotlight, TechCrunch is launching a series of interviews focusing on remarkable women who’ve contributed to the AI revolution. We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized. Read more profiles here. Ewa Luger is co-director at the Institute of Design Informatics, and co-director of the Bridging Responsible AI Divides (BRAID) program, backed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). She works closely with policymakers and industry, and is a member of the U.K. Department…

The U.S. House of Representatives this afternoon passed a bill that would require TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the popular social media app or be banned in the United States. Efforts to ban TikTok date back to the Trump administration, but the issue has flared up again in recent months. The House already passed a similar bill in March, but the Senate has shown little interest in taking it up. The new version expands the period in which ByteDance can sell TikTok to nine months (versus six months under the previous bill) and allows the president to grant one additional…

Vector databases are all the rage, judging by the number of startups entering the space and investors vying for a piece of the pie. The proliferation of large-scale language models (LLMs) and the generative AI (GenAI) movement have created fertile ground for vector database technologies to flourish. Traditional relational databases like Postgres and MySQL are great for structured data (predefined data types that can be neatly filed into rows and columns), but they're great for unstructured data like images, video, email, social media, etc. Not very good for data. posts, and data that does not conform to a predefined data…

“Down round” is a dirty word for some investors, but not for Notable Capital's Hans Tung. Hans is his partner in managing Notable Capital (formerly GGV Capital), a venture firm focused on investments in the United States, Latin America, Israel and Europe. Hans, whose portfolio includes Airbnb, StockX, and Slack, appeared on TechCrunch's Equity podcast to talk about the overall state of venture and why he still believes down rounds make so much sense. According to Hans, “IPOs are really just a milestone, not the end goal. An IPO is the beginning of retail investors getting on board with this.…