Author: TechBrunch
Humans have been casting metal parts in essentially the same way for thousands of years. This means pouring molten metal into molds, often made of compacted sand and clay. There's a reason this ancient method is used today. Sand casting is inexpensive and suitable for both ferrous, ferrous-based metals, and non-ferrous metals. However, there are also some unnecessary disadvantages. This technique requires more metal than is needed for the finished part, and although the scrap is usually recycled, energy is wasted by melting the excess metal over and over again. 3D printing has emerged as an expensive alternative generally reserved…
Last month, hackers wreaked havoc during an esports tournament for the popular shooter Apex Legends, hacking two well-known streamers during the game to make it appear they were using cheats. A month later, the hacking saga appears to have come to an end, as game developers patched the bugs exploited by the hackers. Due to the hack, organizers had to cancel the tournament on March 17th. Two days later, Apex Legends developer Respawn announced that This was stated on X's official account. “We are introducing the first in a series of layered updates to protect the Apex Legends player community.”…
If you want to get items from a grocery store in Mexico City, Dataplor has global location intelligence to help you do that. Founder and CEO Jeffrey Michener founded the company in 2016 to create an index of small businesses in emerging markets. The company raised $2 million in 2019 to bring Latin America's food delivery business online. Dataplor uses artificial intelligence, machine learning, large-scale language models, and a purpose-built technology platform to ingest public domain data. This isn't completely unique, but companies like ThoughtSpot, Esri, and Near are doing similar things when it comes to business and location intelligence.…
While in high school, Clay Canning came up with the idea for a smartphone screen protector that featured a logo on the screen. I then connected with Rashaun Brown, who was working in the sports and licensing field at the time, and the idea for Screen Skinz was born. “We both understood the opportunity and complemented each other's weaknesses,” CEO Brown told TechCrunch. “In December 2022, I quit my job to pursue building Screen Skinz full-time with Clay.” Screen Skinz can now officially announce the closing of a $1.5 million seed round led by South Loop Ventures and Abo Ventures.…
Let's say you're the founder of a company based on a breakthrough technology that allows you to create hydrogen cheaper and faster than anyone else. Let's say you were able to make hydrogen much faster and cheaper, so you made it through your first few funding rounds and raised tens of millions of dollars. You have to pay dollars to prove it works. And it was even better than I expected. All that remains is to build a commercial-scale plant, the so-called first facility. Some call this the “valley of commercial death,” and it's where many climate tech startups struggle.…
The company didn't announce any updates to its earphone line today. The naming convention here is a bit complicated, but Nothing Ear is an update to Nothing Ear (2), and Nothing Ear (a) is more of a spiritual successor to Nothing Ear Stick. But perhaps the most notable news of the day is Nothing's adoption of ChatGPT. As “AI smartphones” around the world compete for mindshare with devices like Humane's Ai Pin and Rabbit R1, the London-based mobile company is integrating its technology into its new earbuds. Looks like you skipped a step. Specifically, if you have the ChatGPT app…
The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) said in an order Tuesday that Bloomtech, a for-profit coding bootcamp formerly known as Lambda School, deceived students about loan costs and made false claims about its graduates' employment rates. , stated that he was involved in the following acts: Illegal loans disguised as “income sharing” agreements with high fees. The order ends the CFPB's investigation into Bloomtech's practices and marks the beginning of the agency's penalties against the organization. The CFPB permanently banned Bloomtech's consumer lending activities and its CEO Austin Allred's student loans for 10 years. The agency also ordered Bloomtech…
Spend management startup Ramp has raised an additional $150 million, giving it a post-money valuation of $7.65 billion, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. New investor Khosla Ventures and existing backer Founders Fund jointly led the funding, with participation from new backers Sequoia Capital, Greylock, and 8VC. Other existing investors Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Sands Capital, D1 Capital, Lux Capital, Iconiq Capital, Definition Capital, and Contrast Capital also contributed capital to the latest round. The raise is being characterized as an extension of Lamp's Series D, in which the fintech company raised $300 million at a 28% lower valuation of…
The world is on fire. Literally, most of the time. Predicting such disasters before they get out of hand, or even before they occur, is the key to maintaining a reasonable quality of life into the next century. It's a big global problem. This is also one of the challenges Alphabet believes can help solve the problem. Google parent company Moonshot Factory X this week officially announced Project Bellweather, its latest effort to apply technology to some of our biggest problems. This means using AI tools to identify natural disasters like wildfires and floods as quickly as possible. If implemented…
Humane AI raised over $230 million before shipping any product. And when the company finally released Ai Pin (priced at $699 plus a $24 monthly subscription), nearly every tech critic came to the same disappointing realization. The much-hyped product that promised to break the dominance of smartphones isn't very good. However, some onlookers are adamant that Marques Brownlee, the wildly popular YouTuber known as MKBHD, is solely responsible if the company ultimately fails. Shortly after Humane AI released its long-awaited product, the conversation turned away from the product itself and instead shifted to what Brownlee had to say about the…