Author: TechBrunch
In 2020, while working as a product engineer at Pinterest, Katherine Wu started a side hustle. Wu started a milk tea company, Ohtea, hoping to partner with local grocery stores and gift shops to carry her tea. She quickly realized how difficult it was to not only find all the potential retailers, but also to find contacts for each location. The fragmented market was extremely difficult to navigate, which contributed to the company's demise. “I couldn't achieve product-market fit,” Wu told TechCrunch. “It's very hard to find retail information. I had to pull information from several tools, open big spreadsheets,…
Both Apple and Google will be able to breathe easier after the UK competition watchdog announced on Wednesday that it was closing two investigations into their respective mobile app ecosystems, citing administrative priorities. The UK regulator has been investigating Apple's conduct regarding app distribution on iOS and iPadOS mobile devices since March 2021, focusing in particular on the terms of use governing developer access to the App Store. Since June 2022, a similar investigation has also been looking into Google's conduct regarding app distribution on Android devices, as well as the Play Store's rules regarding its own billing system for…
AI giants like Anthropic, OpenAI, and Stability AI have faced plenty of criticism for scraping data and ignoring others' intellectual property when training and running their underlying models. Now, a startup called Story, which announced $83 million in funding, is looking to redress the balance with a blockchain-based platform that allows IP owners to more effectively track usage. According to CEO and co-founder SY Lee, the aim is to create a more “sustainable” IP ecosystem for the next generation of digital consumers and builders. The startup's approach is to think of IP like Lego and use blockchain to make that…
There's a lot of hype around the promise of AI agents right now, but payment is a major limiting factor. Currently, an AI agent may be able to independently plan a vacation for you, but human intervention is required when entering credit card information. Skyfire Systems wants to change this. Skyfire has created a payment network for AI agents to transact autonomously. Of course, AI agents are currently difficult to control, so the idea of them being tied to a bank account is scary. However, Skyfire has put in a number of safeguards to prevent AI agents from overspending, so…
WeTransfer expiration dates have been a big problem for users, especially creative people. The problem is that if you don't download the file the moment you receive the link or email, you'll forget to download it before the link expires. At that point, you'll have to ask for the link to be resent, which can be quite a hassle for both parties. The company is aware of the issue and is now apparently trying to mitigate it by allowing recipients to change the file expiration date in the mobile app through a new “Save Now” option, but this isn't a…
SleekFlow, a social commerce platform headquartered in Singapore and Hong Kong that has built a conversational AI suite for customer engagement targeting Asian markets, announced on Wednesday that it has secured an additional $7 million in funding, which will be used to continue the company's AI development, expand further into Southeast Asia and the Middle East, and expand into Europe. The startup's funding and growth plans underscore the rapid rise of social commerce, in which merchants use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, TikTok and YouTube to promote their products and find new customers, and consumers use the same social media…
Parker Conrad, founder of Rippling, an HR startup valued at $13.5 billion, recently appeared on our Found podcast and shared some interesting thoughts on AI. “Nobody really wants to chat with HR software outside of the novelty of, 'Oh my gosh, it responds to me,'” he said. He also believes that too many software companies are adding novelty AI features to their products that don't provide much use. “There's a lot of stuff in the AI world that's really intangible,” Conrad said. “I'm not saying AI isn't transformative. There are a lot of really important capabilities. I'm just not impressed…
People in the European Union now have access to alternative app stores thanks to the Digital Markets Act (DMA), a new regulation designed to promote competition in the app ecosystem. Like Apple's App Store, alternative app marketplaces offer easy access to the broader world of apps, but instead of apps going through Apple's App Review process, apps on these third-party marketplaces must go through a notarization process to ensure they meet some “fundamental platform integrity criteria,” such as being malware-free. However, each store can review and approve apps according to its own policies. Matters regarding support and refunds are also…
After tech giant Cisco announced plans for its second round of job cuts this year, employees told TechCrunch they won't know if they'll be affected for nearly a month. Reuters reported earlier this month that Cisco was planning its second round of job cuts this year after laying off about 4,000 employees in February. Cisco acknowledged in an SEC filing last week that it was cutting 7% of its workforce. According to multiple Cisco employees, employees have already been notified that the new job cuts are coming, but the company is refusing to notify affected employees until September 16th. Have…
OpenAI has inked a deal with Condé Nast, publisher of well-known magazines such as The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Bon Appétit, and Wired, to surface articles owned by Condé Nast in OpenAI's AI-powered chatbot platform ChatGPT and its search prototype SearchGPT. Specific terms of the partnership were not disclosed, but Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch suggested in a memo to staff that the “multi-year” deal would include some form of payment from OpenAI, and a Condé Nast spokesperson told TechCrunch that OpenAI would have permission to train on Condé Nast content. OpenAI declined to comment. Condé Nast is the…