Author: TechBrunch
Wind and solar power has become so cheap to install, and sometimes so abundant, that utilities don't know what to do with it. Sometimes they pay other power plant owners not to produce electricity. In response, scientists and engineers are racing to find ways to cheaply store that electricity for later use, ultimately aiming to store renewable energy and make it available 24/7 at a price that would put coal and natural gas out of business. Cache Energy is the latest startup to attempt this feat, and it's taking a slightly different approach than the others. Rather than using sand…
When an ad agency creates ads for a client, they don’t just create one ad, they might create hundreds of iterations for numerous platforms, which can be quite a manual effort. Creatopy, which uses AI to automate ad creation, has raised $10 million in Series A funding co-led by European venture capital firms 3VC (based in Austria) and Point Nine (based in Germany). The startup was developed in Romania, but has a US presence with TopCo, which currently serves over 5,000 brands and agencies who use it to create, customize and automate advertising and visual content production. Amid a proliferation…
There are 2 days left to purchase tickets to TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 with up to $600 off, with prices increasing after 11:59pm PST on August 23. Don't miss your chance to get big discounts at one of the most epic tech events of the year, taking place October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco. Why attend Disrupt 2024? Engage with 10,000+ attendees, founders, and investors in 300+ roundtable and breakout sessions, participate in one-on-one and small group braindates, and extend your network at company-hosted receptions and post-Disrupt side events. Watch as top VCs evaluate startups and reveal what it…
Small businesses and startups often don't have a dedicated travel desk, forcing owners and founders to rely on human assistants or cumbersome, time-consuming travel apps. Michael Gurman, a former senior vice president of consumer products at Expedia, is betting on AI to fill that gap. His company, Otto, came out of stealth on Thursday and plans to release an alpha version of its platform to select participants in the U.S. in September. The service is designed to speed up flight and hotel bookings through natural-language queries. Otto raised $6 million in a seed round led by Madrona Ventures with participation…
Last month, a faulty CrowdStrike update took down airports, 911 call centers, and hospitals, highlighting how a faulty update can affect critical infrastructure. If the update was for something like a self-driving car or warehouse robot, the impact of a faulty update could be even more severe. Early-stage startup Trace Machina is trying to avoid such scenarios with advanced simulation software that lets developers test updates in a more realistic simulated environment. The company emerged from stealth on Thursday to announce a $4.7 million seed round investment and an open-source tool called NativeLink. CEO and co-founder Marcus Egan says the…
For several months now, Meta has been experimenting with letting users cross-post from Instagram and Facebook to Threads, a social networking platform that competes with X (formerly known as Twitter), and Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that the feature has officially rolled out globally to all countries where Threads is available. The new crossposting feature is part of the company's larger goal to make the most of the content users share across its family of apps. Meta has offered the feature on Instagram and Facebook for years, allowing users active on both platforms to share Facebook posts to Instagram and vice…
For some businesses, there's a clear path to growth without acquiring other companies or expanding organically: franchising. According to Statista, there are more than 800,000 franchised businesses in the United States, and that number is expected to continue growing every year. But franchising a business — licensing your business model and brand to an outside operator — requires a lot of contracts, compliance, and documentation, all of which can further complicate an already complex business model. Brooklyn-based Harmonyze wants to help franchisors make sense of all this using AI, and it just raised $2 million in a pre-seed round led…
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…