Author: TechBrunch

Jaclyn Johnson and Angeline Vuong found themselves stumbling upon a startup idea while hiking to discuss how difficult it is for people to start angel investing. Currently, they are co-founders of Cherub, a marketplace that connects angel investors and entrepreneurs. Vuong spent nearly five years working on product and growth at Opendoor. Johnson founded Create & Cultivate, a self-described “media company for ambitious women,” where she has experienced both sides of the investment world as a founder and investor. Before starting her Create & Cultivate, Johnson sold her own startup (No Subject) in 2016 and invested in numerous companies, including…

In 2022, Rewind had just raised $10 million from a16z to build a personal data recording service that promised to privately record your activities and make your own history searchable. . But that was before OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Now, generative AI makes what Rewind built earlier — a searchable record of activity — even more useful. So it's not too surprising that the startup would pivot to integrating AI more deeply into its products. The company has rebranded itself as Limitless and offers an AI-powered meeting suite and a hardware pendant that can record conversations. Dan Siroker, the company's co-founder,…

TikTok owner ByteDance is facing new questions about its compliance with the European Union's Digital Services Act (DSA). The DSA is an online governance and content moderation framework that imposes legal obligations on large platforms to reduce systemic risks in areas such as youth mental health. The EU's latest concerns regarding TikTok's DSA compliance center on the launch of TikTok Lite. It's a version of the video-sharing app that recently launched in France and Spain (a “test launch,” according to TikTok) that allows users over 18 to enjoy certain apps, such as liking content or following new creators. Allow you…

NeuBird founders Goutham Rao and Vinod Jayaraman came from PortWorx, a cloud-native storage solution that they eventually sold to PureStorage in 2019 for $370 million. This was their third successful sending off. Last year, when I was looking for my next startup challenge, I saw an opportunity to combine my cloud-native knowledge, especially in IT operations, with the fast-growing field of generative AI. Today, Neubird announced a $22 million investment from Mayfield to take the idea to market. That's a lot of money for an early-stage startup, but the company is likely banking on the founders' previous experience to build…

What's worth $11 billion and wants to go to Mars to collect rocks? NASA's rock collection mission to Mars was expected to cost $11 billion and take a long time. That means the U.S. space agency is opening its doors to more input, and that means startups are looking at opportunities that are truly out of this world. But that's not all that's happening. Today's stocks episode focuses on startups in general. That meant we also got to talk about Two Chairs' recent big Series C, Quilt's heat pump business and financing, and some IPO updates. We expect more of…

Inversion Space is aptly named. The three-year-old startup's main focus is not on transporting things into space, but on bringing them back, turning the ultimate highlands into “Earth's transport layer.” The company's plans for ultra-fast, on-demand delivery to any corner of the planet may sound like a cakewalk, but it's the kind of moonshot goal that could transform ground freight transportation. The goal is to send a fleet of Earth-orbiting vehicles capable of returning to Earth at Mach speeds and delivering cargo in minutes at lower speeds with specially designed parachutes. Inversion has developed a Pathfinder vehicle called Ray, a…

Atlas lies motionless in a prone position on an interlocking gym mat. The only soundtrack is the hum of electric motors. It's not exactly quiet, but it's nothing compared to the hydraulic jerk of its ancestors. As the camera pans around the robot's back, the robot's legs bend at the knees. It's a natural move at first, before going into creepy territory like a Sam Raimi movie. The robot, which appeared to be lying on its back, effectively switched positions with this clever rotation of its legs. Atlas turns his back to the camera when fully standing. His head rotates…

Mercury, a business banking startup founded in 2020, is currently launching consumer banking products. Through his B2B practice, Mercury currently serves over 100,000 businesses, many of which are start-ups. Immad Akhund, co-founder and CEO of Mercury, said the expansion is a natural move for the company and has been in the works for several years. “We already have hundreds of thousands of users of our business banking products, and many have expressed a desire for our personal banking products,” he told TechCrunch in an interview. There are a lot of neobanks, but many of them are “focused on the underbank,”…

Found Energy doesn't have a typical startup origin story. It started with a space robot that was supposed to eat itself. The company is currently developing the same technology to power aluminum smelters and long-distance transportation. Almost a decade ago, Found Energy co-founder and CEO Peter Godart was a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He and several colleagues were brainstorming ways to power a probe that might visit Jupiter's moon Europa. As the team was debating the energy density of a suitable battery, an idea occurred to Godard. The aluminum used in the construction of the spacecraft held more…

Late last summer, TechCrunch teamed up with StrictlyVC to curate a smaller, more intimate evening for our readers. The evening has already been held in San Francisco and Los Angeles this year, featuring co-CEOs of Waymo, co-founders of Anduril and World Coin, founder of AI hardware device Rabbit, as well as top investors like Elad Gil To do. Now, we're heading to Washington, DC, for an evening of top-notch interviews and unparalleled networking at the cozy Woolley's Mammoth Theater on Tuesday, June 11th. What to expect: StrictlyVC events foster meaningful connections between leading investors, entrepreneurs, and executives while delivering exclusive…