Author: TechBrunch
Givebutter started in a dorm at George Washington University in 2016 as a software solution to make nonprofit fundraising more transparent and fun. Eight years later, the company is profitable and he just raised $50 million to scale as the nonprofit-focused startup appears to be gaining momentum. Max Friedman, the company's co-founder and CEO, supports a variety of organizations on campus, from fundraising for GW's Greek Life to raising money for national nonprofits like TAMID. We collected donations for. Friedman told TechCrunch that no matter the size or scope of the organization they were funding, they all had the same…
Jonathan Strimling faced a dilemma. His company has been working for nine years on a chemical process that turns old cardboard boxes into high-quality building insulation. The good news is that the team finally cracked it. CleanFiber technology delivered the insulation. It was a really good insulator. It contained fewer pollutants and produced less dust than other cellulose insulation materials made from old newspapers. Insulation contractors loved it too. CleanFiber needed to do more with it. A lot more. Many founders and CEOs may be envious of this problem. However, the transition from a scientific project to a commercial project…
OpenAI's video generation tool Sora wowed the AI community in February with smooth, realistic videos that appeared far ahead of its competitors. But the carefully stage-managed debut left out many details. The details were filled in by a filmmaker who was given early access to create a short using Sora. Shy Kids is a Toronto-based digital production team that was selected by OpenAI to be one of the few teams to create a short film essentially for promotional purposes for OpenAI, but they had quite a bit of work to do when it came to making “Air Head.” Creative freedom…
When Aseem Chandna drove into Rubrik's offices in Palo Alto on a Friday night in early 2015, he was excited to see what the young company, which had yet to develop a product, would have in store. Greylock's partners did not disappoint. The company's CEO, Vipul Sinha, whiteboarded Rubrik's plans to revolutionize the data management and recovery market. “The old and new architecture he presented was very convincing,” Chandna said. “Based on my knowledge of the field, I knew it had the potential to be built into a large business.” It was a visionary call. On Thursday, nine years after…
EyeEm, a Berlin-based photo-sharing community sold to Spanish company Freepik after bankruptcy last year, now licenses users' photos to train AI models. The company notified users via email earlier this month that it was adding a new clause to its terms of service that “gives you the right to upload your content to train, develop, and improve our software, algorithms, and machine learning models.” ” The user was given his 30 days to opt out by removing all content from EyeEm's platform. Otherwise they were agreeing to this use case for their work. At the time of acquisition in 2023,…
Meta's new large language model, Llama 3, powers the imaginatively named “Meta AI.” This is the new chatbot that social media and advertising companies are installing into as many apps and interfaces as possible. How does this model compare to other general purpose conversational AIs? It tends to regurgitate a lot of web search results and isn't great at anything, but it's reasonably priced. Currently, Meta AI can be accessed for free on the web at Meta.ai, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and perhaps a few other places if those aren't enough. While it's always been available, with the release of Llama…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — a weekly roundup of must-sees from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox every Friday. Ticktock, TikTok: It's been a wild week for TikTok. Even as the company begins testing Twitter competitors in certain markets and launches a high-end second-hand store in the UK, it's finding there's plenty of friction in the land of the free and home of the brave. In an episode of “As the TikTok Turns,” the U.S.'s esteemed House of Representatives, in a rare show of bipartisanship, passed a bill giving TikTok's parent company…
AI may be trickling into newsrooms, as Newsweek, Sports Illustrated, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, CNET, and more are experimenting with articles written by AI. But while most respectable journalists would condemn this use case, there are also a number of startups that believe AI can improve the news experience, at least on the consumer side. The latest to join the fray is Rio, an “AI news anchor” designed to give readers access to the stories and topics that interest them most from trusted sources. The new app, created by the same team behind AI-powered audio journalism startup Curio, was first unveiled at…
After a successful launch at CES, Rabbit is letting journalists try out R1. R1 is a small orange gadget with an AI-powered voice interface. This comes just weeks after the launch of the Humane Ai Pin, which is also being touted as a new kind of mobile device centered around AI. I'm still waiting for a detailed review (rather than my first hands-on) of the R1, but there are some pretty clear differences between the two devices. Most notably, the Ai Pin doesn't have a screen, relying instead on an audio interface and a projector, while the R1 has a…
Please act quickly! Applications for the content call close today, April 26th at 11:59pm PT. If you're an experienced startup professional ready to lead a session at TechCrunch Disrupt, October 28-30, now's your chance to apply. Submit your proposal to speak at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 before the deadline. Your topic should empower startup founders, builders, and entrepreneurs to move their businesses forward. Choose the format that best suits your content (or try both!): Breakout Session: A 30-minute presentation followed by 20 minutes of Q&A for up to 100 participants.Roundtable Discussion: Guide a 30-minute interactive conversation with up to 25 participants…