Author: TechBrunch
Pok Pok, a kids app maker focused on building play-based learning experiences for preschoolers, has made a name for itself in the iOS developer community, winning both the App Store Cultural Impact Award and an Apple Design Award, but with its latest funding, the company is ready to expand its reach by offering its apps and new STEM-based activities to families with both iOS and Android devices. The app, Pok Pok Playroom, currently offers 17 different play experiences for kids to explore creative play that are more like “digital toys” than games, including touch-sensitive “toys,” drawing tools, shape manipulation toys,…
Zal Bilimoria has served as sole general partner since 2018 and will no longer remain in that role, a decision he attributes in large part to his former colleague, David Lee, who co-founded Refactor Capital in 2016. He said the Burlingame-based company wouldn't have been able to launch without Lee, a former Google executive who ran Ron Conway's seed-stage venture fund SV Angel for several years. The two worked together to raise an initial $50 million in funding. When Lee decided to retire in 2018, he wanted Bilimoria to stay on at Refactor as the sole GP. Zal Bilimoria, sole…
Brothers Toby and Jamie Morgan Hitchcock have spent years working together to build cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) systems, from tools that allow golf courses to measure “golfer engagement” to an online platform for rating job applicants. The systems they built vary widely in functionality, but one thing they all had in common was a reliance on a database that would allow them to scale while maintaining performance. Managing databases isn't as hard as it used to be, but it's a different story when you scale them, and Hitchcock says he and Morgan experienced many common pain points firsthand…
Golf has exploded in popularity in recent years due to the pandemic and the popularity of the Netflix documentary series “Full Swing.” According to the National Golf Foundation, more than 531 million rounds of golf will be played in the United States in 2023 alone. With this increased interest, golfers are finding it increasingly difficult to secure tee times at public golf courses. Loop Golf is trying to make this process easier by acting as a digital matchmaker: The company finds and books tee times for golfers whenever they become available, even if they become available in the middle of…
Self-driving cars rely on many sensors to detect objects and the world around them. The traditional approach is to use cameras and lidar. However, some technology companies and startups have developed advanced high-resolution radar technology for self-driving cars, also known as 4D imaging radar. Among them is Bitsensing, a South Korea-based startup that closed a $25 million Series B round of funding for its high-resolution radar technology, which it says its 4D imaging radar can be applied not only to autonomous driving but also to smart cities and digital healthcare. Bitsensing was founded in 2018 by Jae-Eun Lee, CEO of…
As the founder and operator of Climate Tech for nearly two decades, James Quasi has seen a lot. From solar to geothermal, energy audits to energy storage, he's had a front-row seat to help homeowners tackle reducing their energy usage. He was also able to observe what makes a startup successful: “You have to be able to model the energy system with a high degree of accuracy, and you have to be able to raise money,” Quasi told TechCrunch. “That question always comes up.” He took these observations to heart and founded a company that aims to accelerate residential electrification…
Climate change is increasing the risk, frequency and cost of sewer failures. Flooding is becoming more frequent, causing backflows that frequently shut down wastewater treatment systems. Compounding this problem is that America's infrastructure is severely outdated. The EPA estimates that nearly $700 billion in investments will be needed over the next 20 years just to maintain existing sewer, storm water and other clean water pipelines. Matthew Rosenthal and Billy Gilmartin, both from the wastewater treatment industry, saw an opportunity to use technology to help alleviate some of this problem, and five years ago they co-founded SewerAI, a company that uses…
Raquel Urtasun, founder and CEO of self-driving truck startup Waabi, has been working for the past 20 years to develop AI systems that can reason like humans. The AI pioneer was the chief scientist at Uber ATG before launching Waabi in 2021. Waabi was launched with an “AI-first approach” to accelerate the commercial deployment of autonomous vehicles, starting with long-haul trucks. “If we could actually build a system that could do that, it would require a lot less data,” Urtasun told TechCrunch. “It would also require a lot less computation. If we could do the inference efficiently, we wouldn't need…
Fisker Group, the electric vehicle startup founded by famed designer Henrik Fisker, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, the culmination of months of problems with its Ocean SUV, including recalls and dozens of lemon law lawsuits. The California-based company, which filed for bankruptcy in Delaware District Court, had been exploring a deal with another automaker as a last resort to save its business. It estimated its assets at between $500 million and $1 billion and its liabilities at between $100 million and $500 million, according to the filing. Fisker reported between 200 and 999 creditors, including SAP, Adobe, Salesforce…
Meta today announced that it has finally released the long-awaited Threads API, enabling developers to build experiences for Threads, enabling third-party developers to create new Threads experiences. “The Threads API is now broadly available and will be available to more users soon,” Mark Zuckerberg posted about the API release. Threads engineer Jesse Chen wrote in a blog post that the new API will allow developers to publish posts, pull their own content, and deploy reply management tools, meaning they'll be able to let users hide/show specific replies and even respond to replies. The company added that in addition to these…