Author: TechBrunch

Vanta , a trust management platform that automates many of an enterprise's security and compliance processes, today announced it has raised $150 million in a Series C funding round led by Sequoia Capital. The company is currently valued at $2.45 billion, up from $1.6 billion when it raised a $40 million Series B round in 2022. Earlier this year, Vanta announced that it had surpassed $100 million in ARR for the fiscal year that ended in January. Image credit: Vanta Initially, Vanta was focused on helping companies achieve certifications like ISO 27001, HIPAA and SOC 2. Now the company is…

Cybersecurity has become a hot topic in the tech world. Not only are there a never-ending stream of data breaches, but security companies themselves are also receiving a lot of attention as a result. One of the fastest growing companies, Wiz, was the subject of a $23 billion acquisition bid by Google that has now been withdrawn. Now, another cybersecurity startup that happens to have close ties to Wiz has just raised a significant amount of funding: Dazz, which focuses on fixing vulnerabilities for companies that use cloud services, has raised $50 million in equity funding. The startup hasn't disclosed…

Apple has a new antitrust headache in Europe: Spain's competition authority, the CNMC, said Wednesday it was opening an investigation into Apple's App Store, citing concerns that the iPhone maker may be imposing unfair trading terms on developers who use its store to distribute software to iOS users. Few details were released about the nature of CNMC's concerns, but the agency wrote in a press release: [in Spanish; this is a machine translation] “Apple may be engaging in anticompetitive behavior by imposing unfair trade terms on developers who use Apple's App Store to distribute applications to users of Apple products.”…

If you think about it, Proton has always been a crypto company — cryptography, not cryptocurrency — but the Swiss-based company best known for its secure email, VPN and storage services is now launching its first crypto product. It's a cryptocurrency wallet called Proton Wallet that's designed to make it easy to get started with Bitcoin. The wallet only supports Bitcoin for now, but the company says it plans to add support for more currencies in the future, depending on user feedback. Proton Wallet is a self-custodial wallet, which means that users maintain control over their private keys. When sending…

Content creators are busy people. Most spend 20+ hours a week creating new content for their corner of the web. That doesn't leave much time for audience engagement. But Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, believes AI can solve this problem. In an interview with internet personality Rowan Chan, Zuckerberg laid out his vision of a future in which creators have their own bots that capture their personality and “business goals.” He said creators could hand off some of their community outreach to these bots, freeing up their time for other, perhaps more important tasks. “I think we're going to see…

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek says the streaming service is still in the “early stages” of bringing hi-fi support to its platform. During the company's earnings call on Tuesday, Ek detailed the upcoming Deluxe tier. Spotify announced in 2021 that it would be rolling out a new high-end subscription tier called Spotify HiFi. At the time, the company said that the tier would allow users to upgrade the sound quality to a “CD-quality lossless audio format.” Fast forward to mid-2024, and the company has yet to release this tier. “The plan here is to offer a better version of Spotify,” Ek…

When Joe Wolfell heard on the news that a U.S. Navy submarine had crashed into an underwater mountain, he was astonished at how little government and private organizations knew about the ocean floor. That impression stayed with him throughout his time in the Navy, and a few years later he founded a company dedicated to seafloor restoration. Wolfel, co-founder and CEO of Terradepth, a startup working to map the ocean floor while also building a platform to make that data more accessible and usable, said on a recent episode of TechCrunch's Found podcast that it's a big problem to solve,…

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized startups have also seen a fair amount of cuts, and in some cases, have shut down operations altogether. By tracking these layoffs, we’re able to understand the impact on innovation across companies large and small. We’re also able to see the potential impact of businesses…

Ahead of the company's earnings release on Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the company will begin selling its humanoid robot, Optimus, in 2026. In fact, Optimus has already begun autonomously performing tasks such as handling batteries in one of Tesla's facilities, according to Tesla's earnings report. “Tesla will be building a small number of really useful humanoid robots for its own internal use next year, and then mass producing them for other companies, hopefully in 2026,” the executive said. Post to X. These dates are rough, but take them with a pinch of salt: A lot can happen…

Ahead of the company's earnings release on Tuesday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced that the company will begin selling its humanoid robot, Optimus, in 2026. In fact, Optimus has already begun autonomously performing tasks such as handling batteries in one of Tesla's facilities, according to Tesla's earnings report. “Tesla will be building a small number of really useful humanoid robots for its own internal use next year, and then mass producing them for other companies, hopefully in 2026,” the executive said. Post to X. These dates are rough, but take them with a pinch of salt: A lot can happen…