Author: TechBrunch
Odyssey, a mushroom-based functional energy drink maker, has raised an additional $6 million in equity investment, bringing its total funding since launching its first drink two years ago to $14 million. Odyssey's products harness the health benefits of Lion's Mane and Cordyceps mushrooms to create a drink that combines energy boosting with 2,750 milligrams of mushrooms to provide cognitive clarity and focus. A 2023 National Institutes of Health preliminary study shows that lion's mane, in particular, has a positive impact on cognitive function and mood in young people. Scott Frohman, founder and CEO of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Odyssey, first learned…
In the midst of a funding downtime last year, and with conditions getting tougher for fund managers raising capital as backers (limited partners) enhanced their focus on strategy and track record, some new African and Africa-focused funds still emerged, with several of the existing ones receiving fresh backing. Among the notable VC funds that came up last year include the $300 million Partech Africa II, the largest Africa-focused fund to date, and Africa People + Planet fund by Novastar Ventures, an over $200 million pool that will invest in agriculture and climate sectors. Meanwhile, Norrsken22, one of the biggest VCs…
Pinterest has announced a new advertising deal with Google, aiming to increase advertising revenue. Google is the social platform's second third-party advertising partner, following Amazon's multi-year deal with Pinterest last year. The company talked about its partnership with Google during its fourth-quarter 2023 earnings call, announcing results that were lower than analysts expected. His Pinterest revenue for the same period was $981 million, an increase of 12% year over year. Meanwhile, monthly active users jumped to his 498 million, an 11% year-over-year increase. Pinterest's stock price fell nearly 28% after lower-than-expected revenue, but rebounded after CEO Bill Ready announced a…
Software asset management, an area of enterprise IT designed to reduce costs for businesses, continues to attract significant funding in its own right. In the latest development, Xensam, a Stockholm startup that offers AI-based tools that help companies understand and track how and where their software is used, has raised $40 million, marking an eight-year It raised its first external funding since its previous founding. The funding will come from a single investor: London-based Expedition Growth Capital. Oskar Fösker, CEO of Xensam, who co-founded the company with his brother Gustav (CTO), continues to develop the AI technology stack, hire more…
Will 2024 be the year of fintech IPOs? According to F-Prime Capital's State of Fintech 2024 report, that possibility is quite high. F prime — VC firm with over $4.5 billion in assets under management Track the performance of emerging public and private financial technology companies. Unsurprisingly, he remains bullish on the fintech space, saying:Although fintech companies collectively capture less than 10% of financial services revenue, many large private fintech companies have revenues of more than $1 billion, are still growing rapidly, and are It is expected to be listed on the market. ” “Many major companies are currently applying…
CodeSignal, a technology assessment firm that counts Index Ventures and Menlo Ventures among its backers; code signal learning. The new platform is aimed at audiences who want to learn technical content and also features an AI-powered bot called Cosmo to help users learn. The company says it will have hundreds of courses at launch, ranging from introductory to programming, language-specific tutorials, data analysis, and machine learning. CodeSignal eventually hopes to expand into non-technical areas, such as management skills, to further your career path. How does the platform work? CodeSignal Learn is currently accepting users through a waiting list. When you…
Since Apple was released When I purchased Vision Pro last Friday, I realized the importance of immersive content. This is by no means a radical proposal. At this point, we're all acutely aware that hardware platforms live and die by serving content. Let's go back a little bit to the end of 2014. When Tim Cook first announced his Apple Watch alongside his iPhone 6, the product was met with some blank stares. Many wondered what is the point of such a device. It wasn't the Dick Tracy watch we'd been promised since the mid-1940s, but rather an extension of…
Welcome to TechCrunch Crypto, formerly known as Chain Reaction. Get a roundup of TechCrunch's biggest and most important crypto articles delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12pm PT. Subscribe here. Hello. Welcome to the fourth edition of the new and improved TechCrunch Crypto newsletter. You probably already know about this deal, but we've added some regular segments and features alongside some of our regularly scheduled news. If you like what you see (or don't), let us know at jacquelyn@techcrunch.com. Anyway, let's get into the big headings below. this week's web3 Decentralized social network Farcaster aims for mass adoption through…
New public data reveals that hackers have begun mass-exploiting a third vulnerability affecting Ivanti's widely used enterprise VPN appliances. Ivanti last week announced two new security flaws (CVE-2024-21888 and CVE- (tracked as 2024-21893). Ivanti has more than 40,000 of his customers, including universities, medical institutions and banks, and its technology allows employees to log in from outside the office, according to the company's website. This disclosure comes shortly after Ivanti identified two previous bugs in Connect Secure, tracked as CVE-2023-46805 and CVE-2024-21887. Security researchers say the bug has been exploited by Chinese-backed hackers since December to infiltrate customer networks and…
The FCC's fight against robocalls has gained a new weapon by declaring AI-generated voices to be “artificial” and therefore clearly against the law when used for automated call fraud. It might not stop the flood of fake Joe Bidens that will almost certainly cause problems on our phones this election season, but it won't hurt either. This new rule, which has been under consideration for several months and was announced in the Telegram last week, actually new Rules — The FCC cannot invent them without due process. Robocall is just a new term for something that is already largely prohibited…