Author: TechBrunch

Reddit today announced that it is releasing a suite of tools called Reddit Pro to help businesses grow their organic presence on the platform. The announcement comes as Reddit prepares for an initial public offering (IPO). With this new suite of free tools, Reddit is likely looking to add more brands to the platform and possibly turn them into paid advertisers. The launch marks the first time Reddit has offered free tools to help businesses with their social strategies. Reddit Pro is currently in beta testing and will give businesses access to an interface with several different tools. The suite…

Turo, the venture-backed peer-to-peer car rental service, reported fourth-quarter and full-year financial results in its latest IPO filing this week. The company initially filed an S-1 to go public in early 2022 and has since updated the document quarterly in preparation for an eventual public offering. TechCrunch covers regular financial disclosures and when a well-funded startup with a historic $1 billion valuation finally decides to pull the trigger and go public. provides insight into. According to Pitchbook, Turo raised $250 million in Series E led by IAC in 2019, giving it a post-money valuation of $1.25 billion. Crunchbase counts Turo's…

Throne, which allows fans to gift items to creators from their wishlist, is launching a new gifting portal for family and friends called Happy Wishlist. But what's more interesting about this story is that the company returned the money it raised from investors last year, choosing to go the in-house route. starting throne The startup was founded in 2021 by Patrice Becker and Leonhard Soenke. The duo previously launched calendar management app Meeter, which was acquired by workflow automation startup Bardeen. In February, the company raised $830,000 in SAFE notes with a valuation cap of $30 million from investors including…

Earlier this week, the US government announced sanctions against Tal Dillian, the founder of a controversial government spyware maker, and his business associate Sara Alexandra Faisal Hamou. U.S. Treasury officials said in announcing the sanctions that Mr. Dillian and Mr. Hamou developed and sold spyware that was later used to target Americans, including government officials, policy experts, and journalists. It criticized the act as enabling human rights violations. This move was a first. Until now, the U.S. government has targeted spyware companies, rather than the individuals who run them, by placing them on blocklists and imposing sanctions that prohibit U.S.…

Yet another AI-powered fraud detection software provider is laying off staff. Inscribe, which provides a platform that detects fraud in areas such as business underwriting, tenant screening and onboarding, has cut just under 40% of its workforce, which equates to dozens of employees. The news followed another small round of layoffs at Turnitin, an AI-based plagiarism detection company. Last year, the company's CEO touted how AI could help reduce headcount. Sources said Inscribe's board of directors recommended the layoffs because the current market has prevented the company from meeting its revenue goals for more than a year. San Francisco-based Inscribe.ai…

Microsoft announced Friday that Russian government hackers continue to infiltrate its systems using information obtained in last year's hack. This time, Russian hackers known as “Midnight Blizzard” targeted Microsoft's source code and other internal systems, the company announced. “In recent weeks, we have seen evidence that Midnight Blizzard is gaining or attempting to gain unauthorized access using information originally leaked from our corporate email systems. This includes access to source code repositories and some internal systems,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post. Microsoft also disclosed these new findings in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.…

Artemis Fund, which invests in undervalued founders, has closed its second fund with $36 million in capital commitments. Stephanie Campbell, Diana Murakhovskaya, and Leslie Goldman Tepper founded Artemis in 2019, naming the company after the Greek goddess of the hunt, the wild, and the defender of women. With offices in Houston and New York, Artemis leads seed rounds for diverse founders in fintech, commerce, and care, with a portfolio of over 20 companies led by female founders. More than 60% of them are black or Latino. Or immigrant leadership. The second fund will be created by a group that includes…

A German subsidiary involved in Sam Altman's controversial crypto blockchain digital identity business WorldCoin has filed a legal challenge to a cease and desist order from Spain's data protection authority, it was reported on Friday. Earlier this week, it was revealed that Spanish regulator AEPD had instructed WorldCoin to temporarily stop scanning people's eyeballs and further processing data already collected from people in the market. As reported on Wednesday, AEPD announced an Article 66 “emergency procedure” against WorldCoin under the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), saying it was acting after receiving a large number of complaints. Concerns raised…

Baron Capital, an investor in Indian food delivery startup Swiggy, has upped the value of its stake in the Indian company, suggesting a valuation of $12.16 billion, with Swiggy expected to sell in early 2022. That's above the post-money valuation of $10.7 billion for which it secured funding. New York-based Baron Capital has increased the value of its stake in Bangalore-based Swiggy to $87.2 million, it revealed in new content (PDF), increasing its initial investment in the food delivery platform to $76.7 million. The amount was increased from $. The increase in valuation at the end of December is a…

X today announced a new long-form post format called Articles. This feature, available only to Premium+ subscribers and verified organizations, allows users to publish text-based posts, other herx posts, and embedded videos and images. This is similar to a post in a content management system like WordPress or an article on Medium. Last year, the Elon Musk-owned social network raised the long-form post limit to 25,000 characters for paid users. As Engadget pointed out, the article limit appears to be even higher at his 100,000 characters. this mailbox Chris Bakke shows that users can add bulleted lists and hyperlinked text…