Author: TechBrunch

Boston-based Flint Capital has closed its third fund with $160 million, four times the size of its first fund in 2013. The capital will be split evenly between early and later stage investments, and the firm will focus more on IT, cybersecurity, fintech and digital health startups. The firm's success is largely due to its unique strategy of who it attracts as limited partner investors. The firm is over 10 years old and was founded by partner Dmitry Smirnov, former CEO of Russia-based investment firm FINAM Global, who quickly made an unconventional decision: rather than pursuing traditional LPs like pension…

Elon Musk has agreed to stop using Europeans' X posts as AI training material for his Grok chatbot for now. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC), which leads X's privacy oversight under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), announced the development in a press release on Thursday, saying it welcomed the social media company's decision to “suspend the processing of personal data for the purposes of training its AI tool, Grok.” It was revealed earlier this week that the DPC had filed suit seeking an injunction against Company X for processing data without consent, and Irish national broadcaster…

Days after Elon Musk's X announced it would sue an advertising industry group over an alleged boycott of its service, the company is removing ads entirely from its top subscription tier. On Wednesday evening, X-account announced that its Premium+ subscription would be “completely” ad-free, raising questions about how the change will affect creators' earnings as part of X's ad revenue-sharing program. Last year, the company, formerly known as Twitter, opened up its advertising revenue-sharing program to creators around the world, allowing them to monetize their accounts through ads that appear in replies to their posts. This has encouraged creators to…

Apple has further revised its compliance plans for the European Union's Digital Markets Act (DMA) rulebook, which since March has required it to give iOS developers more freedom over how they distribute and promote content on the mobile platform. The iPhone maker is already under investigation by the European Commission for allegedly violating the DMA, a market competition regulation that can impose fines of up to 10% of annual worldwide turnover in case of non-compliance (20% in case of repeat violations). In June, the EU confirmed it would be directly investigating Apple's new DMA Business Terms fee structure following complaints…

The rise of neobanks has been fascinating to watch in recent years, with many of them having grown from simply challenging traditional banks to becoming huge players in their own right. Chime and Dave are just a few of these neobanks. At TechCrunch Disrupt 2024, Chime Product Officer Madhu Muthukumar and Dave CEO Jason Wilk talk about how their companies overcame challenging macroeconomic conditions to achieve impressive growth in both customers and revenue. Chime has grown to 7 million active users and is preparing for an IPO, while Dave has 10 million members and is profitable, reporting record revenue of…

Five years ago, numerous apps began implementing dark mode, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Hulu, and WhatsApp. Apple and Google began offering system-wide dark themes for their mobile operating systems in 2018. Wikipedia finally caught up and began implementing dark mode on its website in 2024. If you visited the Wikipedia website on mobile in July, you might have seen a pop-up informing you that dark mode was primetime. Here's how to enable dark mode on mobile: Visit the Wikipedia site. Tap on the hamburger menu at the top. Tap on Settings. In the Color section, select “Dark” as an option.…

ADT acknowledged this week that it was recently hacked, resulting in the exposure of some customer data. The home security company did not say when the cyberattack and data breach occurred, but said attackers accessed its database, which includes customers' home addresses, email addresses and phone numbers. In a brief regulatory document released late Wednesday, ADT said it had “no reason to believe” that customers' home security systems were compromised during the incident, but did not say how it reached that conclusion. The statement said a “small percentage” of customers were affected, without providing more specific numbers. ADT announced that…

TikTok's latest service takes advantage of the app's ability to act as a discovery engine for other media, a feature that users already leverage by sharing short clips of movies and TV shows. The company today partnered with studios like Warner Bros. to launch a feature that lets users discover movies and TV shows through the short-form video app. Called “Spotlight,” the new feature will appear on videos related to a movie or series and direct users to a dedicated landing page where they can find additional information about the title, such as plot summary and cast, as well as…

Slag is the molten effluent produced when producing steel in traditional blast furnaces. The material has been touted as a greener alternative to cement for making concrete, the most abundant man-made material on Earth. But as the steel industry turns to greener production methods, the effluent is facing supply chain problems. As steelmakers in the U.S. and Europe turn increasingly to electric arc furnaces (EAFs) that are smaller, more energy-efficient and run on electricity rather than coal, Cocoon is a new startup founded on the belief that producing greener steel or generating concrete slag doesn't have to be an either/or…

SoundHound, an AI company that develops voice interface technology used by automakers, restaurants, tech companies and others, is focusing on enterprise services by acting as an integrator in a crowded market. The company said Thursday it is acquiring Amelia AI, which develops AI agents that companies can customize for their own companies or customers. SoundHound will pay Amelia $80 million in cash and stock. It's unclear what Amelia's valuation was before the acquisition, but according to PitchBook, Amelia has raised at least $189 million in funding, including a $175 million investment from Build Group in March 2023. (PitchBook cites multiple…