Author: TechBrunch

Bold, a financial technology company building electronic payments infrastructure in Colombia, has raised $50 million in Series C funding in a round led by existing investor General Atlantic. The International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, joined existing investors InQLab and Amador in this round. Bold co-founder and CEO Jose Velez told TechCrunch that Bold has raised a total of $130 million. Bold offers low-cost payment terminals called dataphones that allow small businesses to accept link payments and other local payment methods. “COVID-19 has accelerated the transition to electronic payments, or digital payments, in this country, and…

KTrust, a Tel Aviv-based security startup, takes a different approach to Kubernetes security than many competitors in the space. KTrust takes a more proactive approach than just scanning Kubernetes clusters and their configurations for known vulnerabilities. Deploy automated systems to attempt to hack into systems. This allows security teams to focus on the actual attack path, not just the long list of potential security vulnerabilities. So KTrust is essentially a read-in-the-box team. However, research firm Gartner prefers to call it Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM). Ktrust today came out of stealth and announced a $5.4 million seed funding round led…

Mushrooms are having a bit of a time. Whether it's in the form of functional drinks, using mushroom roots to make alternative proteins, creating materials like leather, or the mushrooms themselves, fungi are finding an audience. I am. Spacegoods is the latest startup to join the bandwagon. The London-based wellness brand utilizes functional mushrooms and nootropics to create a line of powder blends that touts boosting energy, relaxation, mood, and overall well-being. . E-commerce entrepreneur Matthew Kelly founded a company called Neon Beach, which he grew to £10m, but closed in April 2022 after failing to survive supply chain issues…

Germany-based Early Bird Health has announced the final completion of its second fund of €173 million (approximately $185 million). This is more than double the size of Early Bird's first dedicated healthcare fund, Health I, which reached €85 million at final close. While the funds are similar in investment theme and stage, this will allow Early Bird Health to write bigger checks. The company plans to invest primarily in Europe, including the UK, which could be good news for health tech startups in the region, many of which have been left cash-strapped by the collapse of telemedicine company Babylon. .…

Kenya-based EV startup ROHM raises $24 million in Series A round, including up to $10 million in debt commitment from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), to scale production of electric motorcycles and buses was procured. Equator, an Africa-focused climate technology VC fund, led the round, with participation from multiple investors including At One Ventures, TES Ventures, Renew Capital, The World We Want, and One Small Planet. This investment comes as Roam doubles its assembly. move The bus model was launched last year, a few months after the company opened a new, large-scale motorcycle assembly plant. “Our goal this…

Andrej Karpathy, a widely respected research scientist, today announced his retirement from OpenAI. This is the second time Karpathy has left a top AI company, and he said his departure was not due to any incident, issue or drama. Karpathy, a founding member of OpenAI, left in 2017 to join Tesla. He left Tesla where he led the Autopilot team in 2022, and almost he returned to OpenAI. one year ago. Karpathy also has a huge following on social media and his YouTube, where he posts thought-provoking writing about the emerging universe and videos explaining the inner workings of AI.…

foundry group, an 18-year-old venture firm with approximately $3.5 billion in assets under management, has quietly decided to shut down and not raise any more funds. The move was unexpected considering the company announced a $500 million fund last year. Boulder, Colorado-based Foundry first announced on January 19 that its current fund would be its last. The venture firm has been investing since 2007 and announced a $500 million fund, according to Crunchbase. Foundry 2022 — 8th time — May 2023. Over the years, Foundry hasCo-founder and partner Seth Levine said the firm has invested in more than 200 companies…

In November, Airbnb acquired a stealth AI company called GamePlanner.AI, started by the co-founder of Siri. The deal reportedly values ​​the secretive startup at about $200 million. Although the hosting company didn't call out its plans for GamePlanner at the time, Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky today shared an overview of Airbnb's larger AI plans, saying, “Application layer He said that he plans to accelerate this. Utilizing AI, he builds one of the “most innovative AI interfaces ever created.” Hyperbole aside, Chesky said Airbnb doesn't consider itself an AI infrastructure company, meaning it won't build its own large-scale language…

Airbnb is gradually eliminating cleaning fees in an effort to make pricing more transparent. Airbnb said in its earnings call today that cleaning fees have been eliminated or lowered for about 300,000 properties since the company began showing guests comprehensive prices when they book a property. Now, nearly 40% of his active listings no longer charge cleaning fees. For customers, these cleaning fees have been a long-standing complaint. You might find a great deal on a vacation rental on Airbnb, only to proceed to checkout only to find yourself charged a cleaning fee of hundreds of dollars at the last…

Grocery delivery giant Instacart announced today that it will lay off approximately 250 employees, or approximately 7% of its global workforce, as part of a restructuring. Instacart CEO Fiji Simo said in a letter to investors that the layoffs will allow the company to streamline the way it operates. The company announced layoffs at the same time as announcing its fourth quarter results. “Today, we made the difficult decision to part with approximately 250 talented team members,” Simo wrote. “This will allow us to restructure our company, flatten our organization, and focus on the most promising initiatives that we believe…