Author: TechBrunch

European regulations are transforming ESG reporting from a “nice to have” to a “must have,” creating new momentum for start-ups such as Paris-based Apiday, which offers a platform to target private equity funds and blue-chip companies that need to track and pilot sustainability efforts. Asset managers, particularly in Europe, are a prime target for Apiday. With the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR), it's not just impact funds that are closely monitoring sustainability metrics: all kinds of companies are now paying attention to ESG reporting. This has created a different environment than when Apiday was founded in 2021, and a backlash…

Google has published its 2024 Environmental Report, an 80+ page document that explains all the efforts the giant is making to apply technology to environmental issues and reduce its own environmental footprint. But it doesn't address the question of how much energy AI uses at all, probably because the answer is “a lot more than we'd like to say.” You can read the full report here (PDF) and, frankly, it's full of interesting takeaways. It's easy to forget that a company as big as Google has multiple tasks on its hands, but there's some really noteworthy stuff here. For example,…

The situation surrounding the data breach that is affecting a growing number of fintech companies is getting even stranger. Evolve Bank & Trust announced last week that it had been hacked and confirmed that the stolen data had been posted to the dark web. Now, Evolve has sent a cease and desist letter to the newsletter writers who have been reporting on the ongoing situation. Jason Mikula, author of industry publication Fintech Business Weekly, told TechCrunch that he received cease and desist letters from banks ordering them to stop sharing dark web files with fintech companies that were allegedly affected.…

Mastodon, an open-source, decentralized alternative to X (formerly Twitter), is rolling out new features to make the app more appealing to users who use it to get news and information from writers and journalists. Starting Tuesday, the company will add clickable author signatures to link posts, directing Mastodon users to the author's account on the Fediverse (if active), helping journalists get more exposure and grow their following. The new signature goes beyond the typical @username reference that often accompanies link posts from news publications or links to other written content on WordPress blogs, Substack, etc. Instead, the change displays the…

Formerly Twitter X may bring back the ability to downvote posts, a feature it tested in 2021 before Elon Musk's acquisition of the social network. At the time of the initial experiment, Twitter was testing both upvote and downvote buttons, similar to how users can vote on social forum site Reddit. But now, code references found in X's iOS app indicate that the company may be considering adding downvoting just to improve the ranking of replies. The code was first spotted by reverse engineer Aaron Peris (@aaronp613 of X), who regularly finds new features for apps before they're released. The…

Alternative investment platform Yieldstreet is the latest company to disclose that its clients were affected by the recent data breach at Evolve Bank and Trust, TechCrunch has learned exclusively. On Tuesday, Yieldstreet spokesperson Claire Burrows confirmed to TechCrunch that “some Yieldstreet customer information may have been affected” as a result of the Evolve breach. “We have communicated this to all potentially impacted customers and continue to follow best practices regarding third-party cybersecurity incidents,” Burrows said in an email. Burrows declined to say what type of customer information was stolen or how many customers were affected. Last week, Evolve, a financial…

Raising a Series A round of funding in today's competitive market is a daunting task. To provide seed-stage founders with the insights and strategies they need to succeed, TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 will host a key session on the Builders Stage titled “What It Takes to Raise a Series A Today,” in which some of the industry's most experienced investors will come together to share what they and their companies are looking for in their next Series A deal. Attendees in this session will gain unparalleled insight from industry veterans to learn what investors are looking for today and how they…

Snapchat is introducing new ways for users to personalize their accounts, the company announced on Tuesday. The new update, available primarily to Snapchat+ subscribers, lets users design their own homes on the Snap Map, share super-quick snaps, edit their Bitmoji, and more. As social media companies continue to rip off each other's features, Snapchat is introducing new ways for users to personalize their experience on the app in a bid to differentiate itself from other platforms and entice more people to sign up for its subscription service, which currently has 9 million users. Image credit: Snap Snapchat+ subscribers can design…

Meta plans to bring more generative AI technology to games, particularly VR, AR and mixed reality games, in a bid to reinvigorate its flagging metaverse strategy. According to the job posting, Meta aims to research and prototype “new consumer experiences” with new types of gameplay that leverage generative AI, such as games that “change every time you play” or follow “non-deterministic” paths. At the same time, the company aims to build generative AI-powered tools or partner with third-party creators and vendors that could “improve workflow and time to market” for games. The focus will be on Horizon, the Meta family…

In the age of generative AI, where chatbots can provide detailed answers to questions based on content retrieved from the internet, the lines between fair use and plagiarism, between routine web scraping and unethical summarization, are very blurred. Perplexity AI is a startup that combines a search engine with a large-scale language model to generate answers that include detailed responses rather than just links. Unlike OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude, Perplexity does not train its own underlying AI model, but rather uses open or commercially available models to take information it collects from the internet and turn it into answers.…