Author: TechBrunch
Welcome to Startups Weekly, Haje's weekly roundup of must-reads from the startup world. This week, Anna is in charge. Sign up here to receive it by email every Friday. This week's most interesting startup stories As the fallout from the end of 0% interest rates continues, SoftBank-backed Norwegian online supermarket delivery startup Oda has announced it will cut 150 jobs and refocus on Norway and Sweden, aiming to turn a profit next year. While it's never good news when employees are laid off, Oda co-founder Jon Kåre Stene, now a partner at venture capital firm Skyfall Ventures, hopes that this…
Byju's investor BlackRock now estimates that its stake in the Indian edtech giant, once valued at $22 billion, is worth zero.The write-down in the company's estimates, revealed in an SEC filing, gave Byju's one of the most spectacular share price declines of any startup in recent history. BlackRock's disclosure, for the period through March, comes after a tough year for the Bengaluru-based startup, which was until recently India's most valuable startup. Last year, Bejooes struggled to meet financial reporting deadlines and faced a range of governance issues that ultimately led it to miss revenue forecasts by more than 50%. These…
Apple is set to get into the runaway locomotive of generative AI at its Worldwide Developers Conference next week, with previous reports pointing to a partnership with OpenAI that could help power Siri, among other things. A new set of rumors reported by Bloomberg sheds more light on the news expected to be announced during the keynote address at 10 a.m. PST on Monday. First, there's the name: Apple Intelligence. The company was apparently intent on keeping the AI acronym in order to take on the Large Language Model (LLM) piñata for itself. The name appears to apply to Apple's…
Founders, need something to do this weekend? There's no better way to spend your time than applying to this year's Startup Battlefield 200 at TechCrunch Disrupt. Monday's deadline is fast approaching, so be sure to add it to your weekend to-do list. We accept both applications and referrals Startup Battlefield 200 accepts both high-quality applications and referrals. If you're an innovative early-stage startup, we want you to apply. If you know of one (or more) such a startup, please refer them. Submit your application by Monday, June 10 at 11:59 PM PDT. Applying is completely free and only takes 30…
EnerVenue, a startup developing an alternative to lithium-ion batteries for long-term storage of renewable energy, has raised $515 million in new capital, according to an SEC filing reviewed by TechCrunch. The company is building a gigawatt-scale factory in Kentucky to produce nickel-metal hydride batteries, estimated to cost $264 million. The company recently raised $125 million in a Series A round that closed in late 2021. Given the scale of the investment in the factory, the new funding will likely be dedicated to this project. EnerVenue has raised $308 million to date of a $515 million target, according to filings. A…
Meta is quietly rolling out a new “Communities” feature to Messenger, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The feature is designed to help organizations, schools, and other private groups communicate in a more organized and structured way. The rollout comes on the heels of Meta introducing Communities to WhatsApp in 2022. The feature lets users connect with other users even if they're not associated with a Facebook group. Meta introduced Messenger Community Chat in 2022 as a way for Facebook group members to connect in real time, but with this new feature, the company is letting users create a space on…
A lot is riding on next week's WWDC 2024 keynote. The importance of this presentation is much higher than the standard post-event market trends. The pressure on Tim Cook and his team to deliver is actually even higher than it was before the Vision Pro launch last year. On Monday, Apple will unveil its AI plans, a topic that has had a huge question mark hanging over Cupertino for the past few years as rivals like Google and Microsoft have embraced generative AI. There is a broad industry consensus that systems powered by large-scale language models like ChatGPT and Gemini…
Shopify has acquired Threads.com, a Slack alternative service backed by Seqiuoa, Threads announced on its website. The companies did not disclose terms of the deal but said the Threads.com team will join Shopify. Threads added that the startup had an “opportunity to sell the domain” after Meta launched its eponymous social network last year. It's not clear whether the startup sold the domain name to Meta, Shopify or anyone else, but the memo suggests that it would have had to rebrand from Threads if it had remained independent. We've reached out to all of these companies and will update the…
According to information obtained by TechCrunch, two senior officers working in Bangladesh's counter-terrorism police are accused of collecting sensitive and personal information of citizens on Telegram and selling it to criminals. According to the letter, signed by a senior Bangladeshi intelligence official and seen by TechCrunch, the data allegedly sold included identities of citizens, mobile phone call records and other “sensitive information.” The letter, dated April 28, was written by Brigadier General Mohammed Baker, director of Bangladesh's electronic eavesdropping agency, the National Telecommunications Monitoring Centre (NTMC), who confirmed the legitimacy of the letter and its contents in an interview with…
Carta, the Silicon Valley startup that loudly exited one of its businesses earlier this year, is pursuing a secondary sale that could value the company at $2 billion, TechCrunch has learned. Carta is working with investment bank Jefferies to advance the sale and had initially expected demand at a valuation of $4 billion, but sources said even $2 billion may be too ambitious. This is a significant, if not entirely unexpected, drop in valuation for Carta. The company originally focused on cap table management software, but over time began to evolve into the “private equity marketplace for corporations.” The company's…