Author: TechBrunch
Canadian private equity firm PartnerOne has acquired HeadSpin in a bargain sale, TechCrunch has learned exclusively, and sources say most of the company's former employees received nothing in return for their options. HeadSpin is a mobile app testing company whose founder was sentenced to prison for fraud earlier this year. Since its founding in 2015, HeadSpin has raised a total of $117 million from investors including Google Ventures, Iconiq, Dell Technologies Ventures, Battery Ventures, Felicis, and Tiger Global. The company was last valued at $1.1 billion in 2020. One former employee, who asked not to be named, told TechCrunch that…
A bipartisan group of senators has introduced a new bill aimed at protecting artists, songwriters, and journalists from having their content used to train AI models or generate AI content without their consent. Called the Content Provenance and Integrity from Editorial and Deepfake Media Act (COPIED Act), the bill also aims to make it easier to identify AI-generated content and combat the rise of harmful deepfakes. The bill was authored by Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), Senate Artificial Intelligence Working Group Member Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico), and Commerce Committee Member Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.). The bill would require companies…
When Keith Rabois announced in January that he was leaving Founders Fund to return to Khosla Ventures, it came as a shock to many in the venture capital world, and not just because Rabois is a big name in the industry. This was surprising because, unlike many other fields, venture capitalists, especially those who reach partner or general partner level like Lavoie, traditionally don't move around much. VC funds have a 10-year life cycle, and partners have good reasons to stay the course. In some cases, a partner may become the “key man” of the firm's fund, in which case,…
Archer Aviation and Southwest Airlines are teaming up to figure out what it would take to build a network of electric air taxis at California airports, with Southwest's customer data at the center of it all. The two companies signed a memorandum of understanding on Friday, laying the groundwork for Archer to tap into Southwest's customer base and gain access to data about its customers to help inform decisions like where to build vertical takeoff and landing sites and local eVTOL stations. This marks the second U.S. airline Archer has partnered with, after United Airlines, suggesting the eVTOL company is…
Five years ago, numerous apps began implementing dark mode, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Hulu, and WhatsApp. Apple and Google began offering system-wide dark themes for their mobile operating systems in 2018. Wikipedia has finally caught up and will begin implementing dark mode on its mobile website in 2024. If you visited the Wikipedia website on mobile this week, you may have seen a pop-up informing you that dark mode is primetime. Here's how to turn on dark mode: Visit the Wikipedia site. Tap on the hamburger menu at the top. Tap on Settings. In the Color section, select “Dark” as…
AT&T said Friday that cybercriminals had stolen call records from “almost all” of its customers, a data breach that will force the company to notify about 110 million people. AT&T said the stolen data included records of which phone numbers certain customers called and texted, as well as the total number of calls and text messages and the duration of calls, for a six-month period between May 1, 2022 and Oct. 31, 2022. AT&T said the stolen data did not include the content, times or dates of calls or text messages. AT&T said that for some affected customers, cybercriminals were…
A new Federal Trade Commission investigation is looking into the “dark patterns” that subscription apps and websites use to extract more money and data from users. “Dark patterns” is actually a term used in the FTC report to refer to manipulative design techniques that trick users into doing things they wouldn't normally do or paying for things they wouldn't normally pay for. They're not necessarily illegal, but they're ethically questionable, so it's good to be aware of them. So the FTC said it looked at 642 websites and apps offering subscriptions earlier this year and found that about 76% of…
Welcome to a recap of Equity, TechCrunch's flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust insights, AI, and more. First, Kirsten explained the recent court decision that brought some relief to Elon Musk. Earlier this week, one of the many lawsuits Musk is facing over his firing of 6,000 Twitter employees following the company's acquisition in 2022 was dismissed. The lawsuit, filed by Twitter's former head of human resources and another former manager, alleges that Company X paid fired Twitter employees less severance pay than was promised in their contracts. While this outcome may…
Amazon announced Friday that its AI-powered shopping assistant, Rufus, is now available on the Amazon mobile app to all customers in the U.S. The assistant, which appears in the bottom right corner of the app's main navigation bar, is designed to help customers discover products, compare products and get advice on what to buy. Rufus was initially available as a beta within the Amazon mobile app to select customers in the U.S. ahead of its launch on Friday. Amazon said the chatbot is now being tested with “tens of millions of questions” and is available for all U.S. shoppers to…
The founders of HERO Software didn't set out to help small craftsmen in the construction industry. They started to fight the climate crisis. But in doing so, they stumbled upon a way to help the industry as a whole. Now the company has closed a €40 million Series B funding round and has plans to expand across Europe. “I'm a member of the Green Party and did my PhD in solar power,” co-founder Dr. Michael Kessler told TechCrunch over the phone, “looking at the best ways to reduce carbon emissions through things like solar power.” “The German building industry produces…