Author: TechBrunch
German robotics maker Neura released a video this week of its humanoid robot, 4NE-1, performing a variety of tasks, including ironing and moving boxes. The promotional video comes as Nvidia unveils a slew of new tools for humanoids at the SIGGRAPH conference in Colorado. Neura is one of 13 companies given early access to Nvidia's humanoid development and deployment tools. The list also includes 1X, Boston Dynamics, ByteDance Research, Field AI, Figure, Fourier, Galbot, LimX Dynamics, Mentee, RobotEra and Skild AI. Some of the biggest names in the emerging form factor space include 1X, Figure, and Boston Dynamics. Neura has…
Bending Spoons, the Italian company that owns apps such as Evernote and Meetup, announced on Wednesday that it has acquired file-transfer service WeTransfer. The companies did not disclose terms of the acquisition or the valuation. WeTransfer CEO Alexander Vasilev said the platform's development over the past decade has resulted in 600,000 subscribers and 80 million monthly active users. “Nurturing the creative community and amplifying their voices has been key to our success, and some of Bending Spoons' most successful products are tools that power creativity, so we are confident this milestone will help us accelerate our growth and create even…
The collapse of banking-as-a-service (BaaS) fintech company Synapse will have serious, long-term negative effects “on fintech in general, and consumer-facing services in particular,” one observer said. In its wake, other startups in the space are working hard to prove that not all BaaS is created equal. As fintech partners, Itai Damti, CEO and co-founder at Unit, Mitchell Lee, chief risk and compliance officer at Synctera, and Sheetal Parikh, general counsel and chief compliance officer at Treasury Prime, are working overtime to ensure their companies are operating in a compliant manner. The three will take to the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt…
According to data from Crunchbase, global startup funding increased 16% in Q2 due to an increase in mega-rounds, and the increase was unsurprisingly driven by the AI sector: funding into AI companies accounted for 30% of total investments, doubling quarter-over-quarter to $24 billion. On today's TechCrunch Equity podcast, Mary Ann talks numbers with Gené Teare, Senior Data Editor for Crunchbase and Crunchbase News. Teare is a leading analyst of the global venture capital market and played a key role at Crunchbase since its inception and remains one of the company's longest-tenured staffers. “I was really surprised that AI revenue doubled…
AI agents are all the rage right now, and early-stage startup Tezi is working on developing an AI agent to help HR teams find the best candidates for job openings. According to the startup, the bot will comb through resumes to find people who fit the hiring criteria, find interview times on recruiters' calendars, and email candidates. Today, the company announced it has raised $9 million in seed funding to support its path to mass commercialization. For now, the company is rolling out an alpha product to a small number of design clients this week, but that's the company's vision,…
Civil, a startup that's building an AI assistant for salespeople, announced Wednesday that it has raised $11 million in a Series A round led by Greycroft. The market for sales AI assistants is getting crowded as companies leverage generative AI and large-scale language models to help salespeople automate tedious tasks like filling out requests for proposals and updating internal databases. But what sets the company's assistant apart, Civil says, is its ability to track and analyze numerous call logs and emails, providing contextual insights and summaries rather than just meeting notes and transcripts for one or two calls.The startup also…
Online dating can be challenging in itself, but it's especially difficult for gamers, many of whom describe themselves as neurodiverse and introverted. Date Like Goblins is an online dating platform that takes its name from “Goblin Mode,” which means being unashamedly true to yourself, and aims to make dating a more casual and fun way. Set to launch this fall, Date Like Goblins is built for the gaming community, allowing users to connect over voice chat while playing video games. The platform announced a Kickstarter campaign on Wednesday, offering backers the chance to secure early access to the platform and…
Farms generate a lot of data. From machinery to irrigation systems, farms generate a ton of information that's useful to both the farms themselves and the companies that service them. Traditionally, this data has been siloed in different formats, making it difficult to read and organize. Leaf is looking to change that. New York-based Leaf is looking to build a Plaid for farm data, co-founder and CEO Bailey Stockdale told TechCrunch. The company will take unstructured farm data, standardize it and load it into application programming interfaces (APIs). That will allow Leaf's clients, which range from crop insurers to ag…
AI travel agency startup Mindtrip on Tuesday released a feature that lets users save locations and create itineraries from multiple locations across the web. Mindtrip lets you insert links, such as Reddit posts or blogs, and ask your AI assistant to create an itinerary based on the places mentioned. You can also see these places on a map and easily save them to your favorites or travel list. You can also use YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram links to create a list of places mentioned in the video. Currently, the tool only works with TikTok videos with text overlay. For YouTube…
It's not uncommon for developers working at any size company to struggle to keep track of all the software development-related tasks and bugs they need to address. According to a 2024 survey by Dynatrace, 88% of technology leaders say that the complexity of their tech stack has increased in the past year, and that this increased complexity has made it harder to deliver satisfying customer experiences. There are plenty of surveillance vendors offering their own products as a solution, but Hannes Lenke, CEO and co-founder of surveillance and monitoring company Checkly, argues that many are too expensive to use at…