Author: TechBrunch

Evolve Bank & Trust, a leading US-based bank-as-a-service, has announced that cybercriminals have accessed the personal data of millions of its customers in a recent cyber attack. In a filing with the Maine Attorney General on Monday, Evolve confirmed that the personal data of at least 7.6 million people, including more than 20,000 Maine-based customers, was accessed in the incident, but the impact continues to grow. TechCrunch asked Evolve if that number is likely to increase, but has not yet received a response. Evolve did not disclose in its filing what type of data was compromised, but previously said in…

Etsy has struggled with the influx of generic “junk” and AI-generated products on its platform. The service updated its seller policies on Tuesday, introducing new labels that clarify whether sellers made, designed, sourced or hand-picked their products. This marks the first time that the seller policies have directly addressed AI, adding clearer guidelines about what the site will and won't accept. Etsy explained that its new “creativity standards” require sellers to categorize the more than 100 million items on the platform with clear labels indicating how much “human interaction” went into the item. The new labels will appear in the…

Seae Ventures will acquire Unseen Capital following the death of founder Kayode Owens in 2021. The combined company will continue to invest in healthcare for minority and underserved populations. Owens, an investor and entrepreneur, founded Unseen Capital in 2020, focusing on early-stage healthcare companies launched by underrepresented founders. He raised $30 million but sadly passed away from cancer in August 2021. Over time, Unseen's lead limited partner, Eli Lilly, realized the company could not survive without Owens' leadership. While it's unusual for a venture firm to acquire another company, Eli Lilly began looking for a new buyer for Unseen. The…

Apple released the third developer beta of iOS 18 on Monday, and while the update doesn't bring any big new features like Apple Intelligence, it does have some design changes, most notably the new UI for the flashlight. The company has already introduced a new way to control the True Tone flashlight on the iPhone 14 Pro and 15 models. Unlike the previous on/off and four-level brightness controls, the new controls included variable brightness and a way to adjust the width of the beam. The first beta controls were just vertical and horizontal lines, which took some time for users…

A startup called DreamFlare AI emerged from stealth on Tuesday with the goal of helping content creators create and monetize short-form, AI-generated content. The company, co-founded by ex-Googler Josh Liss and documentary filmmaker Rob Bralbar, doesn't manufacture or sell its own AI technology for video production. Rather, it envisions it as a kind of studio where creators work with professional storytellers to make videos using third-party AI tools such as Runway, Midjourney and ElevenLabs. The videos are then distributed through a subscription-based online service. Creators will earn revenue through subscriptions, advertising revenue shares and several other options. DreamFlare will offer…

Nala, a remittance startup that is expanding its portfolio through a new B2B payments platform, has raised $40 million in capital in an unusual deal that marks one of Africa's largest Series A deals. The oversubscribed round was led by San Francisco-based venture capital firm Acrew Capital, with participation from existing investors including DST Global, Norrsken22, HOF Capital, Amplo and NYCA Partners. A number of angel investors also contributed, including fintech founders Chime's Ryan King and Robinhood's Vlad Tenev. Nala founder and CEO Benjamin Fernandez told TechCrunch that the new capital infusion, which follows a $10 million seed round in…

Solo founder Cat Jones decided to launch a travel business around the time the pandemic hit Europe in March 2020. Fast forward to the summer of 2024, and her curated package tour business, Byway, is announcing the closing of an oversubscribed Series A round of funding of £5.04 million (about $6.4 million at current exchange rates). Jones is a firm believer that slower, more sustainable travel — skipping planes and travelling by land (and sea) by train, bus and ferry, with the selling point being that vacationers can avoid crowds and enjoy the scenery in secluded places — is thriving.…

Poe, Quora's subscription-based cross-platform aggregator that aggregates AI-powered chatbots such as Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT-4o, has launched a feature called Previews that allows users to create interactive apps directly by chatting with the chatbot. Preview allows Poe users to build data visualizations, games, and even drum machines by typing things like, “Analyze the information in this report and turn it into an easy-to-understand, interactive presentation that's easy to understand.” The app can be built with multiple chatbots (such as Meta's Llama 3 and GPT-4o), and can pull information from uploaded files, including videos, and share them with anyone via…

Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman are hard at work on a new venture, Thrive AI Health, which aims to build AI-powered assistant technology that promotes healthier lifestyles. Thrive AI Health, which is backed by Huffington's mental wellness company Thrive Global and OpenAI Startup Fund, an early-stage venture fund with close ties to OpenAI, aims to build an “AI health coach” that can offer personalized advice on sleep, nutrition, fitness, stress management and connection, according to a press release issued on Monday. DeCarlos Love, who previously led fitness and health experiences at Google subsidiary Fitbit, primarily…

“The labor essential to data work, such as moderation and annotation, is systematically hidden from those who profit from the fruits of that labor. A new project shines a spotlight on the lived experiences of data workers around the world, showing firsthand the costs and opportunities of doing tech work overseas.” Much of the boring, thankless, and psychologically damaging work is outsourced to poor countries, where workers are happy to take on jobs for a fraction of the wages in the U.S. or Europe. This labor market puts it in the ranks of “boring, dirty, and dangerous” jobs, such as…