Author: TechBrunch
Dating app maker Bumble is rethinking its vision for the future after disappointing results and announcing major layoffs that will cut about 350 people, or a third of its workforce. In addition to plans to revamp the app for Gen Z, the company's new CEO, former Slack CEO Lydiaan Jones, will focus on building a social network for the Bumble BFF friend-finding business. Currently, Bumble's BFF side of the app uses the same swipe-to-like mechanism used on the dating side, giving users a profile that they can choose to match or pass. will be displayed. Jones doesn't think the format…
When Coverdash, which provides commercial insurance products to startups, tripled the number of embedded distribution partners to more than 100 in the past year, CEO Ralph Betesh made a decision. He could either continue on his way to profitability or raise a venture capital round that the private insurance company didn't really need so he could bring in bigger partners faster. “We encouraged more large partners to continue partnering with us and getting on board with our roadmap,” Betes told TechCrunch. “We talked about adding these partners over time, but we thought we might lose a partner. On the other…
Back in the day, Mobile World Congress, which we've been covering all week, hosted a side event for startups with the quirky name “Four Years From Now.” The event is now housed within his very own MWC, Borg Starship, which holds an annual startup competition aimed at finding the “best startups” around the world. Therefore, from among the hundreds of startups that applied and proposed, five finalists were selected by a panel of industry experts and investors after pitching their projects on stage. Here is a brief introduction to the five finalists from the competition. (Some of them are newer…
Developers are adopting AI-powered code generators (services like GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer, and open access models like Meta's CodeLlama) at an astonishing rate. However, the tool is far from ideal. Many are not free. Others are available, but only under licenses that prohibit their use in general commercial contexts. Recognizing the demand for alternatives, several years ago AI startup Hugging Face partnered with workflow automation platform ServiceNow to create StarCoder, an open source code generator with a less restrictive license than others. Did. The original was released online early last year, and a sequel, StarCoder 2, has been in…
SambaNova, an AI chip startup that has raised more than $1.1 billion in VC funding to date, is aiming to rival OpenAI with new generative AI products for enterprise customers. SambaNova today announced Samba-1, an AI-powered system designed for tasks such as text rewriting, coding, and language translation. The company calls this architecture “expert configuration.” This is the technical term for a bundle of 56 generative open source AI models in total. Samba-1 allows enterprises to fine-tune and address multiple AI use cases while avoiding the challenges of implementing AI systems ad hoc, said Rodrigo Liang, co-founder and CEO of…
With so much fresh competition in social apps right now — plus the usual set of social media platforms and messaging giants sucking up attention — it might feel like there’s precious little room to innovate in this slice of the consumer market. But the creators of a new iOS app called Yolk are joining the fray, spying an opportunity to hook into recent developments in on-device AI and attract a younger demographic. In this playful arena, no text can be typed. Users have to message each other visually, sending custom live stickers the AI tools enable them to make. The…
OpenAI's Sora, which can generate videos and interactive 3D environments on the fly, is a remarkable demonstration of the cutting edge of GenAI and a true milestone. But curiously, one of the innovations that led to this, an AI model architecture colloquially known as a diffusion transformer, arrived on the AI research scene several years ago. This diffusion transformer is also the driving force behind Stable Diffusion 3.0, AI startup Stability AI's latest image generator, which is expanding the GenAI field by allowing GenAI models to scale beyond what was previously possible. Looks like it's ready to transform. Sainin Shi,…
The tech-wide reckoning that began in 2022 and ran throughout into 2023 has continued into this year. And while 2024’s losses are not at that scale, they’re still significant, driven by big names like Pixar, Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and TikTok. It remains to be seen if this year’s layoff trends follow last year’s, in which layoffs slowed down in the summer, before cuts began ramping up yet again toward the winter. Momentum for a tech sector rebound remains slow to build, outside of bright spots within artificial intelligence and adjacent companies, resulting in tech companies continuing to cut back on…
Black Tech Nation Ventures was founded in 2021 to address the lack of funding for Black founders amid a wave of venture diversity efforts following the 2020 killing of George Floyd. Three years later, the company's mission may be lost amid a growing backlash against DEI and diversity-focused investing. It's more important now than when I started. The Pittsburgh-based venture firm has raised an initial $50 million in debut funding to back pre-seed and seed-stage software startups led by founders from underrepresented groups, including Black people, women, and members of the LGBTQ+ community. completed the procurement of The company is…
Pitching is critical to getting funding and getting your first customers.However, innovators rarely get it Really Candid insights into their pitches in front Stand in front of the VC. It's a chance to do something different. We're excited to bring back “So You Think You Can Pitch” at TechCrunch Early Stage 2024, our annual founders summit in Boston on April 25th. TC Early Stage gives three founders four minutes to present their pitch decks in front of a panel of expert judges, gaining key insights before they step to bat. Investors will provide live feedback on the structure, content, solution,…