Author: TechBrunch

A relatively new startup called EvolutionaryScale has secured a large amount of funding to build an AI model that can generate new proteins for scientific research. Evolutionscale announced Tuesday that it had raised $142 million in a seed round led by former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, Daniel Gross, and Lux ​​Capital, with participation from Amazon and Nvidia's corporate venture arm NVentures. The startup also released ESM3, an AI model that it describes as a “state-of-the-art model” of biology that can create proteins for use in drug discovery and materials science. “ESM3 marks a step towards a future of biology where…

As companies shut down cloud and ghost kitchens, Local Kitchens is proving that its tech-enabled, multi-brand restaurant concept is a business model that works — and it's raising $40 million in new Series B funding for its efforts. Former DoorDash employees John Goldsmith and Andrew Munday teamed up with Jordan Bramble to found the San Francisco-based company in 2020. Their goal was to bring food from local restaurants and nationally-renowned chefs to consumers in Northern California. Local kitchens operate in a similar way to cloud kitchens or ghost kitchens, which are shared workspaces for restaurants to prepare food, often for…

Ashley Beckwith has spent years of her academic and professional career focused on the intersection of biology, materials, and manufacturing to more efficiently build medical solutions. When she realized this technology could be applied to plants and plant-derived materials, which were in desperate need, she decided to change direction. “Life on Earth is only as secure as the plant populations on Earth, and today plant populations are in danger,” Beckwith told TechCrunch. “Around 40 percent of plant species are at risk of extinction. Forest areas untouched by humans have shrunk by 12 percent. [in 2022]These plant resources are under pressure…

As generative AI permeates more and more industries, companies that make the chips that run the models are reaping huge profits. Nvidia, which is estimated to control 70% to 95% of the AI ​​chip market, has particularly strong influence. Cloud providers from Meta to Microsoft, wary of falling behind in generative AI, are spending billions of dollars on Nvidia GPUs. Generative AI vendors have understandable reasons to be unsatisfied with the status quo: Their success depends in large part on the whims of the major chipmakers, so they, along with opportunistic venture capitalists, are on the hunt for promising startups…

Swipewipe, a US photo management app that has gone viral among Gen Z thanks in part to TikTok, is being acquired. French mobile app publisher and developer MWM is developing the app in-house after working with Swipewipe's indie developer Adam O'Kane to expand the app's usage. The acquisition allows Swipewipe's founders to part with some funds while still financially benefiting from their work through an ongoing revenue-sharing agreement with MWM. The sale price was not disclosed, but O'Kane praised MWM for selling the app for a life-changing amount without giving up on his hopes of future success. “If I were…

TestParty, an AI-powered software compliance company, today announced a $4 million seed round co-led by Harlem Capital and Urban Innovation Fund. The company's CEO and CTO, Michael Babel and Jason Tan, co-founded TestParty in March 2023 with the goal of automatically rewriting source code to help companies avoid violating global digital accessibility regulations such as the European Accessibility Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Currently, nearly all of the home pages of the world's most popular websites do not comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. This means that most of the world's websites are completely inaccessible to people who…

The European Union on Tuesday accused Microsoft of violating competition law. In a formal statement of objection, the bloc said it suspects the software giant of abusing antitrust laws by bundling its real-time communications and collaboration tool, Teams, with popular productivity apps such as Office 365 and Microsoft 365, the cloud-based suites for businesses. The EU launched an antitrust investigation into Microsoft's bundling of Teams in July 2023, two years after a complaint from Teams rival Slack. Following this scrutiny, Microsoft announced a partial separation of Teams in late August last year, which ultimately took effect in April 2024. But…

Rocketlane, a SaaS startup that provides an automation platform to professional services teams in the US, India, Europe, and other countries, has raised $24 million in new funding as it plans to employ AI to help businesses better understand customer feedback. Enterprise professional services teams are tasked with delivering projects to customers on time and on budget. However, for such a critical task, these teams lack an integrated solution and often juggle multiple tools to get the job done. This leads to delayed project delivery and customer anxiety. Recently, a category of professional services automation (PSA) for service teams has…

Yelp is rolling out updates to its app, including adding an accessibility identifier for businesses, improving the screen reader experience, and adding AI-powered alt text for images. The company says searches for “wheelchair accessible” locations are growing by an average of 40% between 2020 and 2023. In a new update, the company is adding eight additional attributes across mobility, hearing and vision to show how accessible a business is. Yelp partnered with Disability:IN, the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD), Open to All and The Arc to define these attributes. Mobility The company defines handicapped parking near entrances according…

Snapchat on Tuesday announced a series of new safety features, including an updated account blocking feature and enhanced friend-add protections, that will make it harder for strangers to contact users on the platform. The new moves come amid concerns about predators exploiting teens on the social media app, which often leads to more serious cases such as sextortion. One of the latest updates to address these issues is an improvement to Snapchat's existing user blocking tool, which blocks new friend requests from bad actors who have already been blocked by a user, sent using other accounts created on the same…