Author: TechBrunch

Ola has fired Chief Executive Officer Hemant Bakshi just four months after he was appointed to the post and will further cut about 180 jobs, people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. The Indian ride-hailing startup's move is aimed at “improving profitability,” company founder and chairman Bhavish Agarwal told employees in a Monday email seen by TechCrunch. The company is undergoing a “restructuring exercise” to prepare for its “next phase of growth,” Agarwal, pictured above, wrote in an email. The move comes after Ola suspended operations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand earlier this month. Bakshi, a former executive…

The European Union will apply key market fairness and competition rules to Apple's iPadOS, the European Commission announced today. This expands the number of Apple-owned platforms regulated under the Digital Markets Act (DMA) to four, increasing regulatory risks for the tech giant. Take a look at the tablet ecosystem. Apple has six months to ensure iPadOS is DMA compliant. This development marks a significant change to how its tablet platform operates in the EU, as Apple must ensure compliance with a series of DMA obligations, including a ban on so-called “gatekeepers” who can choose their own favorites. may be forced…

OpenAI, the maker of the viral AI chatbot ChatGPT, has signed a new news licensing deal in Europe, adding London's Financial Times to a growing list of publishers paying content access fees. As with previous OpenAI publisher license agreements, the financial terms of the deal were not made public. The latest deal looks a bit more cosy than other recent OpenAI publisher partnerships, including those with German giant Axel Springer and France and Spain's Associated Press, Le Monde Press, and Prissamedia. The two companies called this arrangement a “strategic partnership and license agreement.” (However, Le Monde's CEO also referred to…

Plastics upcycling startup Kubik has raised a $1.9 million seed extension, months after announcing its first equity investment. The latest investment in the startup comes from African Renaissance Partners, an East African venture capital firm. Endgame Capital is an investor biased towards climate-related technologies. and King Philanthropies, a climate change and extreme poverty investor. The new capital comes as the startup expands in Ethiopia after launching a factory in Addis Ababa, where it is turning plastic waste into interlocking building materials such as bricks, columns, beams and frames. . Kubik co-founder and CEO Kidus Asfaw told TechCrunch that the company…

OpenAI is facing another privacy violation complaint in the European Union. The lawsuit, filed by the privacy rights nonprofit NOYB on behalf of individual complainants, targets the company's inability to correct false information it generates about individuals by its AI chatbot ChatGPT. The propensity of GenAI tools to generate patently incorrect information is well documented. However, this technology also conflicts with the regional General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which governs how local users' personal data is processed. Fines for non-compliance with GDPR can reach up to 4% of global annual revenue. That's even more important for a resource-rich giant like…

The savvy marketers at Boston Dynamics created two major robot-related news cycles last week. The bigger of the two was, unsurprisingly, the announcement of the electric Atlas. As of this writing, the less than 40 second video is steadily approaching his 5 million views. The previous day, the company struck a chord with the local community when it announced that the first-generation hydraulic Atlas would be put out to pasture 10 years after its introduction. The accompanying video celebrated the old Atlas' journey from DARPA research project to impressively agile bipedal “bot.” But after a minute, the tone changes. In…

A lot has happened since Dev Ittycheria took the helm of MongoDB, the $26 billion database company he led as president and CEO since September 2014. Ittycheria is where he moved MongoDB to the cloud, ran it through its IPO, oversaw its transition from open source, and launched it. He became a venture capital arm and grew his client base from a few hundred to nearly 50,000. “When I joined, it wasn't clear that people would trust us to be a truly mission-critical technology,” Itticheria told TechCrunch. “When I joined, we had about $30 million in revenue. Now we're close…

What's the next big thing in enterprise automation? According to the tech giants, it's agents, powered by generative AI. Although there is no universally accepted definition of an agent, the term has recently been used to describe AI-powered generative tools that can perform complex tasks through human-like interaction between software and web platforms. I am. For example, an agent can create an itinerary by entering customer information on an airline or hotel chain's website. Alternatively, agents can automatically compare prices between apps and order the cheapest ride to your location. Vendors sense an opportunity. ChatGPT maker OpenAI is reportedly deep…

“When investors abandon you, they won't tell you the real reason,” says Tom Bromfield, group partner at Y Combinator. “At the seed stage, frankly, no one knows what’s going to happen. The future is so uncertain. All they’re judging is the perceived qualities of the founders. The thoughts in my head are: This person isn't impressive enough. They're not smart enough. They're not hardworking enough. I don’t think people are the winners.” And they'll never tell you anything like that because you'll get upset. That way you'll never want to throw them again. ” Bromfield should know – he was…

Givebutter started in a dorm at George Washington University in 2016 as a software solution to make nonprofit fundraising more transparent and fun. Eight years later, the company is profitable and he just raised $50 million to scale as the nonprofit-focused startup appears to be gaining momentum. Max Friedman, the company's co-founder and CEO, supports a variety of organizations on campus, from fundraising for GW's Greek Life to raising money for national nonprofits like TAMID. We collected donations for. Friedman told TechCrunch that no matter the size or scope of the organization they were funding, they all had the same…