Author: TechBrunch

Good news, cryptocurrency founders! Venture capital activity is increasing in this space, recovering from a multi-year low in investment in late 2023. To put it another way, venture capitalists appear to be more bullish on Web3 than they were a while ago. But that wasn't the only news item we had to dig into on stocks this morning. Akamai is spending $450 million to acquire her API security company Noname, a deal that TechCrunch previously reported would be worth about $500 million. Still, $450 million is a lot of money, and considering No Name was worth more than $1 billion…

Google Deepmind has launched a new version of AlphaFold, an innovative machine learning model that predicts the shape and behavior of proteins. AlphaFold 3 is not only more accurate, but also predicts interactions with other biomolecules, making it a much more versatile research tool. And the company is making a limited version of this model available online for free. Since the first AlphaFold debuted in 2018, this model has remained the leading method for predicting protein structure from the sequence of the amino acids that make up the protein. This sounds like a rather narrow challenge, but understanding at the…

Good news, crypto founders! Venture capital activity is picking up in the space, recovering from multi-year lows that fell in late 2023. In other words, the VC crowd seems more bullish on Web3 than they were in the recent past. But that's not the only news we're digging into in Equity this morning: Akamai is acquiring API security company Noname for $450 million. TechCrunch previously reported that the deal would be worth around $500 million. Still, $450 million is a lot of money, and considering Noname was valued at over $1 billion in 2021, the deal is worth considering. Speaking…

Uber plans to offer more benefits to Uber One members, including member-only events, in order to earn more revenue through subscriptions. “We're going to see more members-only events where members have exclusive access to events and experiences,” Prashanth Mahendra Raja, Uber's chief financial officer, said Wednesday morning during Uber's first-quarter earnings conference. It will surprise and delight.” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said Uber One membership fees are “in excess of $1 billion” at run rate. In other words, Uber estimates its current subscription revenue at what he estimates to be $1 billion in annual revenue. This is the first time…

We've all seen them. An inspector with a clipboard walks through the building, checking to see if the fire extinguisher was last checked or if all the lights are working. They work in his TICC (Test, Inspection, Certification and Compliance) field and literally tick the boxes. And while that job may seem easy enough to do physically, it's a whole different ball game when it has to be done remotely. After moving to Portugal, founder Ben Lambert realized exactly that he needed to run his wife's property inspection business remotely. “It's no longer easy to verify tests in the field…

Nearly a decade ago, brothers Aviv and Mateo Shapira co-founded Replay, the company that created the video format for 360-degree replays, the type of replay that has become part of major sports broadcasts. Replay came to the attention of Intel, which reportedly acquired the company for $175 million in 2016, and Aviv and Matteo had a chance encounter with Rubi Riani, founder of Israel's Official Drone Racing League (FRIL). I was guided by this encounter. Riani got the brothers interested in drone racing, and planted the seed of the idea for their next startup, Extend, which he helped found. “As…

Usually when something starts to rot, it gets thrown in the trash. But João Rodríguez wants to overturn the concept of spoilage by breeding bacteria in trash to transform it into something better. “We're training mushrooms to eat trash and create renewable, bio-based raw materials,” she told TechCrunch. Rodriguez is the founder and CEO of Mycocycle. Mycocycle is one of several startups harnessing nature's recyclers, fungi, to create plastic-like polymers for a post-fossil fuel economy. Today, almost all plastics are made from oil and gas, which accounts for about 3.4% of all greenhouse gas emissions, according to the OECD. “We…

Monzo Bank has raised another £150 million ($190 million) as the challenger bank looks to expand its presence internationally, particularly in the US. The new round comes just two months after Monzo raised £340 million ($425 million). That means the London-based company will have more than $610 million in 2024 and has raised $1.5 billion since its founding nine years ago. The first tranche of the Series I round saw a rare co-investment by Alphabet's CapitalG and Google's GV, along with prominent backers such as HongShan Capital (formerly Sequoia Capital China), Passion Capital, and Tencent. The extension sees existing investors…

Reddit (now a publicly traded company and subject to greater scrutiny of its revenue growth) has placed a big emphasis on growing its audience around the world, especially in French-speaking countries. CEO Steve Huffman acknowledged during his first earnings call that the company is currently working on automatically translating site content into French in real time, thanks to advances in language models at scale. . He also mentioned expanding the ecosystem with some U-turns. The company hopes to woo developers with new tools, which is surprising given its history in this space. And the company plans to reintroduce Reddit Gold.…

Mushrooms continue to be a big field for alternative proteins. Canada-based Maia Farms recently raised $1.7 million to develop a blend of mushroom and plant-based proteins using biomass fermentation. There's also MyForest Foods and Fable Food. Then there's Meaty Foods, which claims to be different from other alternative proteins. The company makes cutlets and steaks from mycelium, or mushroom roots. “This is truly the next generation of innovative proteins,” CEO Phil Graves told TechCrunch. “It's a product that's rooted in nature. It's not genetically modified. We're just taking something from nature, guiding it, and giving it the nutrients and minerals…