Author: TechBrunch

Let's say you're the founder of a company based on a breakthrough technology that allows you to create hydrogen cheaper and faster than anyone else. Let's say you were able to make hydrogen much faster and cheaper, so you made it through your first few funding rounds and raised tens of millions of dollars. You have to pay dollars to prove it works. And it was even better than I expected. All that remains is to build a commercial-scale plant, the so-called first facility. Some call this the “valley of commercial death,” and it's where many climate tech startups struggle.…

The company didn't announce any updates to its earphone line today. The naming convention here is a bit complicated, but Nothing Ear is an update to Nothing Ear (2), and Nothing Ear (a) is more of a spiritual successor to Nothing Ear Stick. But perhaps the most notable news of the day is Nothing's adoption of ChatGPT. As “AI smartphones” around the world compete for mindshare with devices like Humane's Ai Pin and Rabbit R1, the London-based mobile company is integrating its technology into its new earbuds. Looks like you skipped a step. Specifically, if you have the ChatGPT app…

The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in an order Tuesday that Bloomtech, a for-profit coding bootcamp formerly known as Lambda School, deceived students about loan costs and made false claims about its graduates' employment rates. , stated that he was involved in the following acts: Illegal loans disguised as “income sharing” agreements with high fees. The order ends the CFPB's investigation into Bloomtech's practices and marks the beginning of the agency's penalties against the organization. The CFPB permanently banned Bloomtech's consumer lending activities and its CEO Austin Allred's student loans for 10 years. The agency also ordered Bloomtech…

Spend management startup Ramp has raised an additional $150 million, giving it a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. New investor Khosla Ventures and existing backer Founders Fund jointly led the funding, with participation from new backers Sequoia Capital, Greylock, and 8VC. Other existing investors Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Sands Capital, D1 Capital, Lux Capital, Iconiq Capital, Definition Capital, and Contrast Capital also contributed capital to the latest round. The raise is being characterized as an extension of Lamp's Series D, in which the fintech company raised $300 million at a 28% lower valuation of…

The world is on fire. Literally, most of the time. Predicting such disasters before they get out of hand, or even before they occur, is the key to maintaining a reasonable quality of life into the next century. It's a big global problem. This is also one of the challenges Alphabet believes can help solve the problem. Google parent company Moonshot Factory X this week officially announced Project Bellweather, its latest effort to apply technology to some of our biggest problems. This means using AI tools to identify natural disasters like wildfires and floods as quickly as possible. If implemented…

Humane AI raised over $230 million before shipping any product. And when the company finally released Ai Pin (priced at $699 plus a $24 monthly subscription), nearly every tech critic came to the same disappointing realization. The much-hyped product that promised to break the dominance of smartphones isn't very good. However, some onlookers are adamant that Marques Brownlee, the wildly popular YouTuber known as MKBHD, is solely responsible if the company ultimately fails. Shortly after Humane AI released its long-awaited product, the conversation turned away from the product itself and instead shifted to what Brownlee had to say about the…

Paris-based Dark Space uses a mobile platform designed to launch, attach, and ultimately deorbit uncooperative objects in space, resulting in a collision with orbital debris. We are tackling serious issues. Dark CEO Clyde Lahane said the company aims to become “the SWAT team of space.” Interceptor, a three-year-old startup, is essentially a rocket-powered boxing glove-like spacecraft that can be launched quickly and gently knock wayward objects out of orbit. The interceptor itself is launched from a specially equipped aircraft. Similar to Virgin Galactic's launch, the plane will carry the rocket high into the noisy lower atmosphere, where it will be…

Over the weekend, another social media platform, AirChat, exploded into the fray. This app is like a combination of Twitter and Clubhouse. Instead of typing your posts, post them with your voice. The app instantly transcribes what you say, and as your followers scroll through their feed, they can hear you along with the transcription. Built by AngelList founder Naval Ravikant and former Tinder executive Brian Norgard, Airchat takes a refreshingly intimate approach to social media. There are people I've known online for years, but it wasn't until we started following each other on AirChat that I realized I'd never…

TechCrunch Early Stage is gearing up for another insightful event on April 25th, with one roundtable session promising to be especially enlightening for early-stage founders . This roundtable, titled “Initial Finance Pre-Hire Finance Fundamentals: A Founder's Guide to Navigating Early Financial Decisions,” explores the financial complexities that often accompany the early stages of a startup venture. provides valuable insight for navigating. This roundtable, led by Dan Kang, vice president of finance at Mercury, aims to shed light on core aspects of early-stage financial management. With years of experience building and scaling fintech companies, Kang brings a wealth of knowledge. From…

LinkedIn, the worker-focused social platform, has quietly begun testing another way to increase revenue. This is a new service for small and medium-sized businesses. TechCrunch has learned and confirmed that it is working on a new LinkedIn premium company page subscription. This includes things like AI to create content and new tools to increase your follower count, all for a hefty $99 per month. To use them to increase the company's profile. The move is significant because it highlights how Microsoft-owned LinkedIn is continuing to diversify its business model while becoming more useful overall. LinkedIn has been the subject of…