Author: TechBrunch
Startups are raising big amounts of funding to provide a fun, non-alcoholic drink option for bars and other social settings. Earlier this year, canned water maker Liquid Death said it had raised $67 million in new funding at a valuation of $1.4 billion, and Athletic Brewing Company, which calls itself the largest non-alcoholic beer brewery in the U.S., said it had raised $50 million. While technology isn't necessarily a differentiator for either company, they could be considered disruptive startups as they are trying to create a new beverage category beyond just cola or craft beer. There's also a sparkling water…
Match Group announced on Tuesday that it will discontinue its dating app live-streaming service and cut 6% of its workforce. The news was announced during the dating app giant's second-quarter earnings report. The move will see Match shift its focus to other services, including generative AI. The decision to end live streaming directly affects dating apps Plenty of Fish (POF) and BLK, which launched free live streaming features “Live!” in 2020. These features were an attempt to encourage users to go on virtual dates during COVID-19 lockdowns. Users could also purchase “live credits” to send streamers on virtual dates, similar…
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…