Author: TechBrunch
There are now many carbon accounting and emissions management platforms. But startups tracking the emissions problem tend to tackle the easiest problem to solve first: direct greenhouse gas emissions from a company's owned sources. In climate industry jargon, these are called “scope 1.” “Scope 2” emissions relate to greenhouse gas emissions from the energy a company uses. Scope 1 and 2 together only account for about 25% of global emissions. The rest fall into scope 3 emissions, which are hidden in the supply chain and therefore very difficult to track. Startups are beginning to address these supply chain emissions: Clearly,…
The Financial Times reports that some parents are skeptical of the South Korean government's plans to introduce tablets with AI-enabled textbooks into classrooms. The tablets are due to be introduced next year, and teachers will be using the AI textbooks for all subjects except music, art, physical education and ethics by 2028. The government hasn't revealed many details about how it will work, other than to say the materials will be customised for different learning speeds and teachers will be able to use a dashboard to monitor how students are doing. In response, more than 50,000 parents signed a petition…
The best startups thrive in a tough venture capital market, while others struggle to raise new capital. If you can't raise money and aren't a self-sustaining company, your best bet is to get acquired, even if for a fraction of your previous valuation, or you'll run out of money and go out of business. These acquisitions can be a huge disappointment for founders and senior employees, who dreamed of building a huge, valuable company that would make them wealthy, but in reality, their shares are worth little or nothing and they may have to take on a role in the…
The fintech sector, which saw significant growth during and immediately after the pandemic, found itself in a rather tough spot in 2024. But while the rapid pace of fundraising has slowed, many fintech companies continue to grow and expand their teams. To get a better understanding of how many fintech companies fit this category, I put out a call asking which fintech companies were hiring. In just over an hour, I received over a dozen responses. Just a few days later, I had heard from dozens more. Even as someone who writes regularly about this space, I was surprised by…
HR startup Rippling has grown to over 3,200 employees and a $13.5 billion valuation. Despite its size, the company's founder and CEO, Parker Conrad, still approves every expense report over $10 and handles routine HR tasks like payroll — because he needs to use his company's product on a daily basis to do so. “One of the things I love about this company is that I'm the main user of Rippling,” he said on a recent episode of TechCrunch's Found podcast. In addition to payroll and expense approvals, he uses the product to manage benefits and set HR policies, all…
Late yesterday, Representative Nancy Pelosi released a statement in opposition to SB 1047, a California bill that seeks to regulate AI. “The view of many members of Congress is that SB 1047 is well-intentioned but poorly informed,” Pelosi said. Other Bay Area lawmakers, Zoe Lofgren, Anna Eshoo and Ro Khanna, have also raised concerns about the bill, which she described as “doing more harm than good.” The bill was recently amended to address concerns from critics such as AI company Anthropic and is now up for a vote in the California Assembly. Because it is a state bill, Pelosi and…
I've been playing around with OpenAI's advanced voice modes over the last week, and it's the most immersive experience I've had yet of an AI-powered future. This week, my phone laughed at a joke, handed it back to me, asked how my day was, and told me I was “having a good time” – all while I was talking through my iPhone, not using it in my hands. OpenAI's latest feature, currently in limited alpha testing, doesn't make ChatGPT any smarter than it was before. Instead, Advanced Voice Mode (AVM) makes ChatGPT more approachable and conversational. It creates a new…
Keychain CEO Oisin Hanrahan said most consumer brands are “totally disconnected” from the manufacturers who actually make their products. “They don't own anything except the brand and the marketing suite,” Hanrahan said. That's exactly what Hanrahan is hoping to change with the keychains: brands can use the website to search different products, see who actually makes them, and reach out to those manufacturers to potentially partner on future products. To demonstrate the platform, Hanrahan looked at the granola and yogurt I have for breakfast every morning. By knowing the source, he said, major retailers could work with them to create…
Copilot, Microsoft's initiative in generative AI to enhance productivity, continues to grow and expand alongside Microsoft's AI ambitions. There are now about a dozen Copilot-branded products that power various features in Microsoft software and services, including summarization in Microsoft Outlook and transcription in Microsoft Teams. This is in addition to the Microsoft-owned GitHub Copilot tool for code generation, and Copilot, which runs on Windows and the web, and acts as a general-purpose assistant like OpenAI's ChatGPT rather than a point solution. This article describes the different Microsoft Copilot offerings available and their features, highlighting the key differences between them. What…
A ransomware attack on UnitedHealth-owned medical technology company Change Healthcare earlier this year is likely one of the largest data breaches of U.S. health and medical data in history. Months after the February data breach, a “significant percentage of people living in the United States” have received notifications in the mail that their personal and health information was stolen by cybercriminals during a cyberattack on Change Healthcare. Change Healthcare processes billing and insurance for hundreds of thousands of hospitals, pharmacies, and clinics across the U.S. healthcare sector. As such, the company collects and stores large amounts of sensitive healthcare data…