Author: TechBrunch

Bluesky, a social networking startup and X competitor, is officially launching direct messaging (DM), the company announced Wednesday. Bluesky then went on to say that it plans to “fully support end-to-end encrypted messaging in the future.” The announcement comes two weeks after the social network teased that it would soon introduce direct messaging features. Until now, all conversations on the platform were public, but with the launch of DM, users will be able to chat privately while remaining on their social networks. To access this new feature, users can start a private conversation with someone within Bluesky's “Chat” tab. DM…

There's a perception in Silicon Valley that every investor wants to do business with Peter Thiel. But the venture capital funding environment has become so difficult that even one of the VC firms he helped found, Valar Ventures, raised far less money this year than in previous years. Mr Thiel founded Valar in 2010 and appointed Andrew McCormack and James Fitzgerald as managers. The two previously worked at his family office, Thiel Capital, and Clarium Capital Management, a now-defunct hedge fund founded by Thiel. It's unclear how involved Tyr is with the Valar these days. His name was not listed…

At least three Wyndham hotels in the United States have been found to have consumer spyware apps running in their check-in systems, TechCrunch has learned. The app, called pcTattletale, secretly and continuously captured screenshots of hotel reservation systems containing guest details and customer information. Thanks to the spyware's security flaws, these screenshots become available to anyone on the Internet, not just the spyware's target users. This is the latest example of consumer-grade spyware leaking sensitive information due to security flaws in the spyware itself. This is also the second time, as far as he is aware, that pcTattletale has published…

Techstars の CEO、Malle Gavet 氏は LinkedIn で、健康上の理由から今月末に退社すると発表しました。 本日より、Techstarsの共同創設者兼取締役会長のDavid CohenがCEOに就任します。 ガヴェ氏は2021年にCEOに就任し、「世界のために過去3年半の努力を代償にするつもりはない」とLinkedInに書いた。 その後、彼女は自分のチーム、取締役会、従業員、投資家、そして当時一緒に働いていた創設者たちにエールを送りました。 「私は皆さんを側面から応援し、テックスターズのサポーターであり続けます。」 テックスターズはガベット氏の退任についてこれ以上のコメントを控えたが、同社のウェブサイトに掲載した声明文を指摘した。 ガベット氏はテックスターズで波乱に満ちた在職期間を過ごしてきた。 CEO在任中、ガヴェ氏のリーダーシップスタイルは物議を醸しており、従業員やマネージングディレクターらは、大規模な人員流出につながる緊張した職場環境を助長したとしてガヴェ氏を非難した。 関係者によると、テックスターズは規模拡大の野心と利益の必要性のバランスを取るのにも苦労しており、JPモルガン・チェースのような企業パートナーとの緊張関係が原因で顧客離れが高かったという。 ガベット氏の指揮下で、テックスターズのアクセラレータープログラムはオースティン、トロント、シアトル、スウェーデン、ボルダー、ノルウェーで廃止された。テックスターズとJPモルガンの関係が悪化したため、マイアミ、アトランタ、オークランドを含む、8000万ドルのパートナーシップによって資金提供された約8つのプログラムは、今後継続される可能性は低い。 ウェブサイトに掲載された別の声明の中で、コーエン氏はマレ氏の会社での滞在に感謝の意を表した。 「彼女は素晴らしいチームを築き、多くの難しい決断を下し、切実に必要とされていた複雑な変化を勇敢に実行した」とリリースには記されている。 「今、マエルは自分の健康に集中しなければなりません。 彼女がこれから起こることに取り組む彼女の強さと勇気を祈っていると言うとき、私はテックスターズ全員を代弁しているとわかっています。」 コーエン氏は、13年間にわたって断続的に務めてきたTechstarsのCEOに戻ることに「興奮している」と述べた。 「私はTechstarsを創業者にとってさらに良いものにすることに引き続き注力していきます」と彼は書いている。 Source link

Over the past four years, the connected fitness space has experienced some of the highest highs and lowest lows in the venture industry. Funding peaked in 2021, as expected, according to Crunchbase numbers. Overall, the fitness category has raised $6.4 billion in 376 rounds. In May 2021, Peloton announced $400 million in funding for an Ohio-based production facility. This is no big deal. The company's annual revenue was $4.13 billion, an increase of more than 40% compared to 2020. On Monday, the fitness company said it was looking to refinance its debt. It also closed a five-year, $1 billion loan…

The tech layoff wave is still going strong in 2024. Following significant workforce reductions in 2022 and 2023, this year has already seen 60,000 job cuts across 254 companies, according to independent layoffs tracker Layoffs.fyi. Companies like Tesla, Amazon, Google, TikTok, Snap and Microsoft have conducted sizable layoffs in the first months of 2024. Smaller-sized startups have also seen a fair amount of cuts, and in some cases, have shut down operations altogether. By tracking these layoffs, we’re able to understand the impact on innovation across companies large and small. We’re also able to see the potential impact of businesses…

TLDR: BNED is up ~75% today and shows strong potential to continue rising, driven by retail investor momentum similar to GME and AMC. With high short interest and a reduced free float, the stock is primed for a short squeeze. Recent strategic initiatives and potential transactions add to the bullish outlook, and we estimate BNED could reach a share price between $8 – $12 if the current momentum continues into the coming weeks – similar to how we’ve seen historic meme plays play out. And with BNED having striking similarities to GME and AMC being a household name, we believe a…

HoundDog.ai, a startup that helps developers keep their code from leaking personally identifiable information (PII), came out of stealth on Wednesday with a $3.1 million seed round led by E14, Mozilla Ventures, and XAnti. announced the round. Number of angel investors. Unlike other scanning tools, HoundDog actually looks at the code that developers are writing and uses both traditional pattern matching and large-scale language models (LLM) to find potential problems. . HoundDog was founded by Amjad Afanah. He was previously a co-founder of DCHQ, which in 2016 was acquired by Gridstore (which, confusingly, has since been renamed HyperGrid). Afanah is…

Few people in the technology industry have achieved the same stature as Vinod Khosla, founder and partner at Khosla Ventures. For more than 40 years, he has been at the heart of Silicon Valley, founding or backing some of the largest and most influential technology companies. His career dates back to his time as a founder of Sun Microsystems and spans decades of venture investing. Today, Khosla's firm is known for investing in companies such as Affirm, Block, DoorDash, GitLab, Okta and Opendoor, to name a few among hundreds of successful portfolio companies. Today, he's at the heart of OpenAI…

AI has already started replacing the jobs of voice agents. Now, companies are exploring ways to replace their existing computer-generated voice models with synthetic versions of human voices. Truecaller, a widely known caller ID service, is the latest to adopt this approach, announcing that its customers will be able to use an AI-powered assistant to answer calls with their own voice. The new experience comes through a partnership with Microsoft, which gives the Swedish company access to the Redmond giant's Personal Voice technology, which was introduced in November as part of Azure AI Speech. Microsoft's Personal Voice allows Truecaller's assistant,…