Author: TechBrunch
Instagram is introducing a feature that will allow users to go live only with their close friends list, the company announced on Thursday. The new “Live with Close Friends” feature will allow users to go live with up to three users. According to Instagram, the new feature can be used to share thoughts, spontaneously catch up with friends, share memes, plan trips, do homework together, and just hang out in real time. Instagram launched Live streaming in 2016, and from the beginning, live streams were meant to be public and visible to all followers. The feature has been widely used…
Gynger, a platform that lends companies money to buy technology, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by PayPal Ventures, it told TechCrunch exclusively. The funding brings the total venture capital raised by the New York-based startup to $31.7 million, with participation from Gradient Ventures (Google's AI-focused venture fund), Velvet Sea Ventures, BAG Ventures, and Deciens Capital. In addition to the equity offering, Ginger has secured debt facilities under an agreement to receive up to $100 million in funding from Community Investment Management (CIM). Gynger was born out of m]x[vCapitalaNewYork-basedearly-stageventurefundfoundedbyMarkGhermezianinJune2021GhermezianalsopreviouslyfoundedBrazeacloud-basedcustomerengagementplatformformultichannelmarketingTherehetoldTechCrunchduringthecompany'slastfundraisehewitnessedfirsthandhowdifficultitwastosellsoftwareandontheflipsidehowdifficultitwasforbuyerstobuythesoftware[vCapitalaNewYork-city-basedearly-stageventurefundfoundedbyMarkGhermezianGhermezianalsopreviouslyfoundedBrazeacloud-basedcustomerengagementplatformformultichannelmarketingTherehetoldTechCrunchthetimeofthecompany'slastraisehesawhowdifficultitwastosellsoftwareand—ontheflipside—howdifficultitwasforbuyerstobuythesoftware[vCapitalから生まれた。ガーメジアン氏は以前、マルチチャネルマーケティングのためのクラウドベースの顧客エンゲージメントプラットフォームであるBrazeも設立している。そこで同氏は、同社の最後の資金調達の際にTechCrunchに、ソフトウェアを販売することがいかに難しいか、そしてその反対に、購入者がソフトウェアを購入することがいかに難しいかを目の当たりにしたと語った。[vCapitalaNewYork-citybasedearly-stageventurefundfoundedbyMarkGhermezianGhermezianalsopreviouslyfoundedBrazeacloud-basedcustomerengagementplatformformultichannelmarketingTherehetoldTechCrunchatthetimeofthecompany’slastraisehesawhowdifficultitwastosellsoftwareand—ontheflipside—howdifficultitwasforbuyerstopurchasethesoftware Gynger works with both buyers and sellers…
Lightspeed Ventures-backed audio platform Pocket FM announced it has partnered with audio duplication company ElevenLabs to use AI to quickly convert scripts and other text content into audio series. Pocket FM, which raised $103 million in Series D funding in March, told TechCrunch at the time that it was already experimenting with a feature to convert text content into speech using ElevenLabs' technology. Now, the India-based company is expanding its partnership and plans to make the conversion tool available to all creators in the coming weeks. In its testing phase, Pocket FM has already used Eleven Labs' AI technology to…
OpenAI rival Anthropic is releasing a powerful new generative AI model called Claude 3.5 Sonnet, but it's more of an incremental step than a breakthrough. Claude 3.5 Sonnet can not only analyze both text and images, but also generate text. At least in theory, it is Anthropic's best model to date. Across several AI benchmarks for reading, coding, math and vision, Claude 3.5 Sonnet outperforms its successor, Claude 3 Sonnet, and outperforms Anthropic's previous flagship model, Claude 3 Opus. Benchmarks aren't necessarily the most useful measure of AI progress, in part because many of them test esoteric edge cases that…
As the U.S. Surgeon General calls for social media sites to display warning labels similar to those found on tobacco products, a startup is unveiling a set of new tools that give users the power to fight app addiction. Designed for iOS, Roots improves on traditional screen time apps by measuring not only the time you use your device, but also the quality of time you spend in different apps with a “digital dopamine” tracker. Other features let users lock themselves out of their most addictive apps and add reminders to stop the algorithmic scrolling of their social feeds. Co-founded…
The United States is facing a shortage of accountants. According to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, fewer candidates will take the CPA exam for the first time in 2022 than in 2006. One possible reason people are less interested in the field is that it involves a lot of tedious work: accountants must comb through large amounts of unstructured data to conduct audits or simply find answers to questions. Kevin Merlini, co-founder and CEO of Materia, left the industry for that very reason and is now working to ease the burden for other accountants. Materia integrates with accounting…
Christopher O'Donnell has a hobby. He loves music and playing guitar, but more than anything, he loves building software. That's why, three years after leaving HubSpot, he built Day.ai, a CRM for the AI era. Unlike modern CRMs, which are essentially giant spreadsheets that someone needs to enter and keep up to date, Day pulls all the information about an individual from public records like conversations with the company, emails, and LinkedIn. O'Donnell knows CRMs well: He helped develop HubSpot, one of the most popular CRMs today. O'Donnell spent over a decade at HubSpot, first helping to power the company's…
Active Directory is the Microsoft directory service that connects users and network resources and is used by over 90% of the Fortune 1000. So it's no surprise that Active Directory is a huge target for malicious hackers. This also means a lot of attention for security companies building tools to protect and restore AD services. Today, Semperis, a Hoboken, NJ startup focused on AD protection, announced that it has raised $125 million in funding from JP Morgan and Hercules Capital. The funding will be used for research and development and business development. In addition to Active Directory, Semperis recently also…
Spotify is now allowing unhosted podcasters to upload videos to the platform, a new feature that the company quietly introduced last week, a Spotify spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch. Previously, creators who wanted to upload video podcasts to Spotify had to sign up to host them with Spotify for Podcasters, a free platform for podcast creators, or a partner hosting company. Creators could also separate the video feed from the audio, but this wasn't ideal as it would be uploaded as two episodes. Now, any creator can upload directly to Spotify using their podcast hosting service of choice. To use the…
Online shopping trends are expected to remain strong this year, but e-commerce is more fragmented than ever. With brands selling on numerous platforms, from TikTok shops to established marketplaces, live shopping, and even their own channels, you might think it would be easier for shoppers to find what they're looking for. But that's not quite the case, and shoppers often have to spend a lot of time searching. To make matters worse, SEO algorithms and an influx of content have made it difficult to sift through useful information, making current search less effective for shopping. But it's 2024, and if…