Author: TechBrunch
Fresh off a $102 million funding round earlier this year, Bugcrowd is making good on its promise to use some of that funding for security acquisitions. The company, which crowdsources the skills of more than 500,000 hackers to find and fix security vulnerabilities and other operational loopholes in enterprise networks and apps, has acquired Informer, which specializes in assessing and maintaining attack surface management (ASM). ASM is an important aspect of how security technology works today and involves the use of various techniques to continuously monitor potential attack vectors in an organization's IT environment. Terms of the transaction were not…
Bing, Microsoft's search engine, is currently not working properly. At first, I found that I couldn't perform any web searches. The search results appear to be loading correctly now. However, the outage appears to still be impacting Bing's application programming interface (API), meaning other services that rely on Bing are not working properly. For example, DuckDuckGo and Ecosia, two alternative search engines that rely on Bing search results, are currently not returning search results. Microsoft Copilot is also not loaded. ChatGPT Plus subscribers who can perform web searches will also receive an error when trying to search for something. Screenshot:…
If you thought self-driving was just for cars, think again: The so-called “autonomous navigation” market, in which ships steer themselves according to AI instructions, saving fuel and time, is predicted to grow from $4.46 billion in 2023 to $5.33 billion in 2024 alone. Orca AI is a London-based startup that claims to have achieved the world's first autonomous commercial ship navigation in crowded waters. He was added $23 million in new funding led by OCV Partners and MizMaa Ventures. The funding is said to be between Series A and B, bringing the total raised to nearly $40 million. The startup…
The best-known mycoprotein is probably Quorn, the meat substitute approaching its 40th anniversary, but Finnish biotech start-up Enifer is developing something even older: its own single-cell fungus-based protein, branded Pekilo, which was originally developed in the 1960s and '70s by the local paper industry. The focus at the time was not on producing alternative proteins for human consumption, as the startup intended. However, his original Pekilo product was sold as animal feed. Simo Elira, CEO and co-founder of Enifer, said paper industry engineers are instead trying to solve the pollution caused by mills dumping production waste (“sidestreams”) into local waterways.…
Bay Area food supply chain startup Silo is in trouble. TechCrunch has learned that the company laid off about 30% of its workforce, or more than 24 people, on Tuesday. Silo confirmed the layoffs and clarified that the cuts were across the board and not focused on individual departments. Silo issued the following statement to TechCrunch regarding the layoffs: We recently made the difficult decision to reduce our workforce by approximately 30%. We are committed to supporting affected team members and are offering severance packages and recruitment support. At the same time, Silo remains dedicated to serving our customers and…
Meta announced the creation of an AI advisory board made up entirely of white men on Wednesday. What else could we expect? For decades, women and people of color have spoken out about being ignored and excluded from the world of artificial intelligence, despite their qualifications and the critical role they play in evolving the field. Meta did not immediately respond to our request for comment on the diversity of its advisory board. The new advisory board is different from Meta's actual board and oversight committee, which has more diverse gender and racial representation. The AI board is not shareholder-elected…
If you've ever wanted to apply to Y Combinator, here's the inside scoop on how the iconic accelerator selects companies from the person who knows it best: Y Combinator President and CEO Garry Tan. The Washington DC Economic Club hosted Tang Wednesday for a one-on-one interview with Theresa Carlson, Managing Director at General Catalyst. It's widely known that Y Combinator accepts less than 1% of applications—Tang says the last one was whittled down from 27,000—and recent cohorts tend to be around 250 companies. So, among other topics, Carlson wanted to know what the “secret sauce” was for getting accepted into…
Indian ride-hailing startup BluSmart has started operations in Dubai, TechCrunch has exclusively learned, with confirmation from a company executive. A move to Dubai, which has been rumored for months, could help him take on companies like Careem, Uber and Hala in the United Arab Emirates' most populous city. The Gurugram-based startup quietly launched a new service for Dubai through its app earlier this week, creating a dedicated Dubai subdomain on its website. Anmol Jaggi, co-founder of BluSmart, confirmed to TechCrunch that the trial began on Tuesday with 100 Audi E-Tron SUVs and 130 drivers in the city. The official launch…
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has put forward requirements for publishing AI-generated content in political ads, but has not banned it. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel on Wednesday publicly proposed that the FCC study and seek comment on such a rule. (The FCC has already made robocalls made by AI illegal, but the problem was not so much the AI part but the fact that they violated automated call rules.) “Consumers have a right to know when AI tools are being used in the political ads they see, and we want them to.” [the commissioners] We will act swiftly on this issue,”…
Want to make a founder's day, week, month, and maybe even career? Nominate them for Disrupt 2024's Startup Battlefield 200! Entries close on June 10th at 11:59pm PT. TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield 200 is the world's leading competition for early-stage startups, and it's also the absolute best way for entrepreneurs to get the most out of Disrupt 2024. When I say “early stage” I mean several things. Companies need an MVP, but it can be fully bootstrapped, pre-seed, seeded, or even Series A. The ideal candidate is an entrepreneur who brings something truly disruptive on stage. Do you know someone good?…