Author: TechBrunch
AT&T began notifying U.S. state authorities and regulators of the security incident after confirming that millions of customer records posted online last month were authentic. In a legally required filing with the Maine Attorney General's Office, the U.S. telecommunications giant said that more than 51 million people, including about 90,000 people in Maine, had their personal information compromised in the data breach. He said he had sent a letter informing them. AT&T, the largest U.S. telecommunications company, said the compromised data included customers' names, email addresses, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers and Social Security numbers. AT&T said the leaked…
Meta is desperate to catch up with rivals in the generative AI space, spending billions of dollars on its own AI efforts. Some of these billions of dollars will go toward hiring AI researchers. But an even bigger chunk is going into developing the hardware, specifically the chips to run and train Meta's AI models. A day after Intel announced its latest AI accelerator hardware, Meta today announced the latest in its chip development efforts. Dubbed the “next generation” Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA), the successor to last year's MTIA v1, the chip runs models such as ranking and…
Ah, spring has arrived here in the northeastern United States. It's not just the flowers that are blooming. No, this season is all about deals between startups! Today on Equity's startup-focused Wednesday show, we dug into the Multiverse and Searchlight deal, which reminded me of the Wonderschool and Early Day deal we covered on the show a few weeks ago . We also talked about the latest round of Guesty. This was large and interesting. The Monad Labs transaction that inspired us to explain the difference between L1 and L2 blockchains. And Cyera's recent quick mega round. Startup Land is…
It's easy to think that the e-commerce ship has sailed, given that giant platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Wix dominate the space. However, the field of e-commerce remains vast and fertile, as so many small and medium-sized businesses continue to go online in the wake of the pandemic. Further evidence of this has surfaced in the form of one of the largest financings by a Turkish startup, given that the average Series A is typically less than $15 million. E-commerce platform ikas has raised $20 million in a Series A funding round as it looks to expand into new markets…
The humanoid sucked a large amount of air out of the room. After all, it's much easier to generate press with a robot that looks like a human and moves like a human. Ultimately, however, both the effectiveness and scalability of such a design remain to be proven. Brad Porter, founder of Collaborative Robotics, has been avoiding robots that look like humans for some time. But machines that can potentially reason in the same way as humans are a completely different story. As the two-year-old startup's name suggests, Collaborative Robotics (cobots for short) is interested in how humans and robots…
If you've been feeling lonely for the past few years, you're not alone. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, about half of U.S. adults reported feeling lonely, according to a 2023 report from the U.S. Surgeon General. The report warns that loneliness and isolation can lead to physical effects, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke. A new app called Buffet aims to address the loneliness epidemic by helping users meet new people by quickly matching people and places to meet (Think Tinder + OpenTable). This app is designed to remove the barriers…
Anticipation is high for TechCrunch Early Stage 2024, with industry leaders and budding entrepreneurs alike looking forward to a series of startup-focused sessions. We're excited to feature HomeHQ.ai's partner session “From Inception to Cash: How I Wandered into an Idea and Jumpstarted a Company.” This session promises to provide valuable insight into HomeHQ.ai's entrepreneurial journey led by Co-Founder and CEO Oliver Parnau and Co-Founder and COO Vinny Romano. Attendees can expect to be inspired by Oliver Parnau's entrepreneurial journey, which began with his entry into the real estate market at the age of 23. From flipping houses to exploring robotics,…
Travel and tourism is once again in the spotlight for consumers and the business community. And now, underscoring that surge, one of the startups building software in this space has closed a major funding round. Guesty, a platform that allows lodging managers to manage their businesses online, including platforms like Airbnb and his Vrbo, has raised $130 million. Sources confirmed to TechCrunch that the Series F values Guesty at about $900 million post-money. The New York-based company, which has Israeli roots, said its revenue has increased fivefold over the past three years and it expects to be profitable this year.…
Almost 10 years ago, Brian Frist, Nick Alexander, and Daniel Hunter came up with the idea of bringing technology to the automotive industry. They launched the Yoshi Mobility app, which delivers gas on the day of your choice for $20 a month to consumers in the San Francisco area using the first gas entry point. “The auto industry has never been an industry that has anything to do with innovation,” Frist told TechCrunch. “In the days of Amazon, when everything was delivered, we had this idea of never going to a gas station again.” The trio brought Yoshi to Y…
Proton, the Swiss-based privacy-focused company behind end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) webmail ProtonMail and other apps, has acquired Standard Notes, a note-taking app founded in 2017. . The company offers a similarly robust privacy promise. By also applying E2EE, it will reach more than 300,000 users. In a press release announcing the move, Proton highlighted the companies' “shared values” including the use of E2EE. Commitment to open source technology. And how neither relies on venture capital to fuel growth. E2EE is considered the gold standard in security technology because the service provider does not hold the encryption keys. This means that they…