Author: TechBrunch
Apple CEO Tim Cook didn't reveal much about the company's AI plans during a second-quarter earnings call with investors on Thursday, but he did say a few things about how the tech giant plans to move forward with artificial intelligence. confirmed the information. Notably, his comments suggest that Apple is building too many new data centers to run or train AI models, despite spending more than $100 billion on research and development over the past five years. This suggests that there are no plans to increase it. Instead, the company told investors it will continue to pursue a “hybrid” approach…
Instagram announced Friday that it is adding several new features to Stories to give users more creative ways to share content and interact with each other. Most notably, the social network is introducing a new “Publish” feature. This allows you to post hidden stories for your followers to reveal by sending a DM. Instagram is also launching other features that let you share your favorite songs and highlight memories through Stories. To access the new publishing feature, you must tap the sticker icon when creating a story and select the “Publish” option. From there, you'll be asked to enter hints…
This year has already proven that startups are willing to go public in less-than-ideal markets and can reap the rewards of doing so. But bankers, lawyers and investors said recent IPO successes alone won't be enough to foster more than a dozen tech IPOs this year. “I don’t think the floodgates will open as much as I think they will,” Greg Martin, co-founder and managing director of Rainmaker Securities, told TechCrunch. “The trickle has been delayed. We thought it would happen sooner in the first quarter. So I don't think the floodgates will open until 2025, but we're getting a…
WSO2, which provides API management and identity and access management (IAM) services for enterprises, has been acquired by Swedish investment giant EQT. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but TechCrunch has learned through sources that the deal values WSO2 at “more than $600 million” and that EQT will acquire a “substantial majority” stake at that price. I learned. WSO2's products include an open source API manager, comparable to Google's Apigee, that enterprises use to build and integrate all their digital services in the cloud or on-premises. The company offers tangential services such as Kubernetes-specific API management, as well as…
Climate change technology startups raised $8.1 billion in the first quarter, a near-record amount and the fact that 2023 is so close suggests it may just be a sign of a prolonged recession. Suggests. The numbers, included in a new PitchBook report, show that climate technology is not succumbing to the same slowdown that is dragging other venture communities. According to the report, the number of transactions decreased slightly from the previous quarter, but the value increased by nearly 400%. A closer look at the $8.1 billion raised in the first quarter shows that investors are focused on materials such…
Allozyme's ingenious method of rapidly testing millions of bio-based chemical reactions has proven not only to be a useful service, but also the basis of a unique and valuable data set. Where there are datasets, there is AI, and where there is AI, there are investors. The company just raised $15 million in Series A to grow the business from a helpful service to a world-class resource. We first covered this biotech startup in 2021, when the company was taking its first steps. “At the time, we were less than five people and our first lab was 1,000 square feet,”…
Thanks to AI, last year's downturn is forgotten. Those who were worried about a temporary slowdown in cloud infrastructure growth in 2023 can finally rest easy. Cloud came back with a bang this quarter. According to Synergy Research, the overall market increased by $13.5 billion to $76 billion, an increase of 21% from the first quarter of 2024. That's healthy growth no matter how you look at it. If you're wondering what's driving growth, you'd probably guess it has something to do with generative AI and the large amounts of data needed to build the underlying models. Whether it's Microsoft's…
The ransomware attack that hit US health insurance giant UnitedHealth Group and its tech subsidiary Change Healthcare is a data privacy nightmare for millions of US patients and CEO Andrew Mr Whitty admitted this week that up to a third of the country could be affected. But it also comes as a wake-up call to countries around the world, including the UK, where UnitedHealth is doing business with its recent acquisition of a company that manages data belonging to millions of NHS patients. should also work. UnitedHealth is nationally known as one of the largest health care companies in the…
When you're an early-stage startup, you're looking for customers. The metric that investors look at is how fast revenue is growing between the seed and A rounds, so it's essential to start generating revenue as soon as possible. If you're not making a lot of money, you'll probably have a hard time raising your next round of funding. Alex Kayyal, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, speaking at his TechCrunch Early Stage in Boston last week, said finding the right early partners is key. One problem that sometimes comes up for early-stage companies is a single large customer. Although this company…
Y Combinator is famous in Silicon Valley for many reasons, but there's one service that's secretly one of its most powerful. It's an online founder matching tool. “I think this is the most valuable digital product YC has built (i.e. more valuable than Bookface, etc.). It’s amazing how many founders I’ve met on the YC co-founder matching platform That’s all.” Tweeted Seed Investor Nikhil Basu Trivedi. (Bookface refers to YC's famous online collection of his how-to advice on startups for program participants.) Recent Y Combinator graduate Hona is one example, but its founder's “meet-cute” story is a little more exciting…