Author: TechBrunch

Polycam, an app that uses smartphone sensors to capture 3D scans of objects, has raised funding from high-profile investors including Adobe and YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. Polycam today announced that it has closed an $18 million Series A round led by Left Lane Capital with participation from Adobe Ventures, Hurley and others. Polycam co-founder and CEO Chris Heinrich said the capital will support new 3D editing and collaboration capabilities, training AI models to render 3D objects, and new market expansion. Polycam was founded in early 2021 by Heinrich and Elliot Spellman, who met while working together at Ubiquity6, a startup…

Just two years ago, VC funding for cybersecurity startups was on the rise. In fact, $23 billion has flowed into the sector, according to Crunchbase. However, as a result of 2021's unusually strong rally, high valuations, and investor caution over market volatility, cybersecurity startups' revenue was only a third of that in 2023. But there's always Several Winners during downtime. Yesterday, NinjaOne, an IT platform for endpoint management, security, and visibility, announced that it has raised $231.5 million in a Series C funding round led by Iconiq Growth. The huge round, which included participation from Snowflake Chairman and CEO Frank…

From the passage of the Telecommunications Bill 2023 in the Indian Parliament to the global outage that affected X (formerly Twitter) and the launch of several major smartphones, a lot happened in the world of technology last week. Ta. Take a look at everything that's happened in the world of technology over the past week. 1) The Telecommunications Bill was passed by Congress:The Parliament of India has announced that it will reform the country's century-old telecommunications laws under the Indian Telegraph Act, 1885, the Radio Telegraph Act (1933) and the Telegraph Wires (Unlawful Possession) Act, 1950. Passed the Telecommunications Bill…

M&A season has arrived in the tough tech job market. This morning, Beamer, a Boulder, Colorado-based company that develops tools for businesses to reach users through their apps (like push notifications), announced that it is a user onboarding software startup. announced that it would acquire Userflow for $60 million. Satya Ganni, CEO of Beamer, said the acquisition is financially supported by Arsenal Growth Equity and Camber Partners, Beamer's lead investor, and will provide an integrated toolkit for product teams. This will expand Beamer's capabilities. “First and foremost, Beamer and Userflow's current customers should know first and foremost that this partnership…

Goodshuffle, which builds software for the event rental and production industry, has raised $5 million in a Series A funding round from FINTOP Capital. The global pandemic has “decimated much of the events industry,” CEO Andrew Garcia told TechCrunch. But Goodshuffle's user base, made up of smaller companies that rent items like tables, chairs, tents, decorations and linens, ended up being “very resilient.” I did. “Many of them have survived and been able to continue providing temporary infrastructure for COVID-19 testing facilities, for example,” Garcia said. “And if events are still going to take place, we need to be outdoors,…

Another year is almost over, and as the last days of December wind down, we’re taking a look back at what has been a monumental year for the video game, entertainment, and tech industries.Rockstar Games perhaps stole the show in 2023 with its Grand Theft Auto VI reveal, but Mario’s new voice, PlayStation boss Jim Ryan’s retirement, and Microsoft spending a cool $69 billion on Activision Blizzard fell closely behind. It wasn’t all great news, however, as the industry also suffered from devastating layoffs with thousands of developers losing their jobs.Barbenheimer kept us entertained on the film front, releasing against…

2023 was a much darker year for Southeast Asia's tech industry compared to last year. The global wave of layoffs hitting U.S. tech companies like Meta, Amazon and Twitter is also hitting Southeast Asia, amid a so-called “funding winter” for the region's tech startups. In March, it was reported that e-commerce giant Shopee had laid off about 200 employees in Indonesia, mainly from its customer service team. In the same month, Indonesia's largest technology company PT Gojek Tokopedia announced further job cuts to streamline its organization and increase the company's profitability. Singapore-based super app Grab Holdings cut 1,000 jobs in…

With a month left until the Digital Markets Act (DMA) deadline, WhatsApp is preparing to allow other messaging networks within its app. Dick Brower, director of engineering at WhatsApp, said in an interview with Wired that the company is ready to provide interoperability on a platform that has more than 2 billion users. “There's a huge tension between maintaining WhatsApp's privacy, security, and integrity standards while providing an easy way to provide this interoperability to third parties. We're pretty close to where we're at. I think I’m satisfied,” he told the publication. The EU agreed to include messaging interoperability in…

Snap stock fell 30% on Tuesday after the company announced fourth-quarter 2023 results that fell short of analysts' expectations. CEO Evan Spiegel said on the earnings call that the company is taking several steps to accelerate growth this year. This includes a unified experience across Stories and Spotlight, improved ad interactions across platforms, increased engagement and user growth in North America and Europe, and more. The social network launched TikTok rival Spotlight more than three years ago with promising results. According to the company's Q4 2023 financial results, Spotlight's total viewing time increased by 175% year-over-year, and the average number…

Due to construction supply chain issues, the first academic building at Virginia Tech Innovation Campus is scheduled to open in 2025. In fall 2024, graduate students in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area will continue to take classes at the university's Northern Virginia Center in Falls. church. The changes to the building schedule were shared during a town hall meeting for Northern Virginia faculty and staff held Thursday at the Northern Virginia Center. Virginia Tech broke ground on the Innovation Campus in September 2021 and is scheduled to open in August of this year. Although the building's opening has been postponed…