Author: TechBrunch
June 5th, TechCrunch Sessions: AI kicks off. And you can be part of the industry-changing conversations that take place. Members of the AI community have open invitations to lead breakout sessions and discussions with more than 1,200 startup founders, VC leaders, and AI enthusiasts taking part in the latest event at Zellabach Hall in Berkeley, California. There's only one catch. By Friday, March 7, 2025, you will need to apply to be considered a speaker before midnight, so head here. You only have 4 days left to get your application before our team before we choose! As the AI field…
On Tuesday, Google announced a new software update for the Pixel Phone as part of its March “Pixel Drop” program. Pixel Watches and all Android devices also receive some new features in this release. The most notable parts of the update include using AI to detect message and call fraud, better categorization in the screenshot app, menstrual tracking on the Pixel Watch 3, and the ability to find the My Devices app and share live locations with friends. Pixel phone feature Google is launching call fraud detection using the company Gemini Nano model for all English-speaking Pixel 9 series users…
Venture investments in women-run startups are constantly slowing down the entire market, and with companies in the sector reducing their diversity, equity and inclusive efforts, things seem tougher than ever for female founders. However, this data tells another story from 2024. At least this one report by the Women Foundry of European venture platforms shows venture investments in startups founded by European women fell 12% from the previous year in 2024, but roughly along the line with an 11% decline in overall venture investments. In particular, women who have founded deep tech startups raise more men than they do in…
Polish Space Agency (POLSA) says it is working to restore services following a cybersecurity incident. Porsa, the Polish government agency responsible for the country's space activities, said in a post by X that it “quickly disconnected” the network from the internet after detecting a cyberattack on Sunday. Porsa's website remains offline at the time of writing. Polish digital minister Krzysztof Gawkowski confirmed in another post that the cybersecurity services were working to detect “unauthorized access to the Polish Space Agency's IT infrastructure” and identify the person behind the cyberattack. The nature of the incident is yet to be known, and…
Agents are the next big thing after AI. While some people define these “agents” differently than others, the general idea is AI-driven tools that allow tasks to be autonomously executed. Agent hype reached fever pitch, but one startup was relatively early in the game: Llamaindex. Founded in 2023 by former Uber research scientists Jerry Liu and Simon Suo, LlamainDex allows developers to build custom agents with unstructured data. “Llamaindex began in November 2022 as an open source toy project,” Liu told TechCrunch. “I was deeply interested in understanding how large language models (LLM) can be used on top of their…
The Mach Industry, backed by Sequoia, a defense technology founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, has signed a contract with the US Army and plans for its first factory, Thornton told TechCrunch. The factory will be 115,000 square feet in Huntington Beach, California, where Mach's headquarters are located, CEO Thorton said. It sounds like the expensive zip code of a Southern California arms factory in the shadow of SpaceX, but it has become a hot spot for America's burgeoning defense technology industry. Mach has also announced that it has been selected by the Army Application Institute to develop a vertical takeoff…
Venmo or Splitise is effectively a “debt collector” tool, requiring one person to pay the full invoice and ask for funds from another, but they are not cracking the invoice split at the moment of payment. The European startup CINO, which came up with exactly that product, has raised 3.5 million euros in a seed funding round led by London's Balderton capital. The real-time shared payment app allows groups to split their invoices and pay stocks directly from their selected bank account or wallet. After leaving Tallinn, Estonia and operating in continental Europe since 2023, CINO will use this fund…
Large tech companies don't sleep with Quantum Chips: Amazon Web Services introduced Ocelot. Microsoft, Majorana; and Google, Willow. But while all of these are considered breakthroughs, quantum startups often focus on more practical advances and are making progress. Founded in 2020, Dutch startup Quantware is one of these, claiming that the hardware it manufactures already powers quantum computers for customers in 20 countries. Its core product, Vio, focuses on scaling the bottlenecks of quantum processing units (QPUs). Everyone in the quantum computing field is striving for more Qubits equivalent to the bits, but integrating more qubits on a single chip…
As storage plays a key role in enabling green transitions, the push to decarbonize the economy through electrification and clean energy continues to generate momentum around battery technology. Renewables are cleaner energy sources compared to fossil fuel burning, but their output is not always consistent. In the case of the sun – its development has been rising significantly in recent years – when the sun stops shining with solar cells, power generation will stop. One solution to regulating solar plant variability is to store energy when there is an excess (time during the day). In this way, stored power can…
Three major investors have left the general catalyst amid the company's recent series of changes. This now describes itself as an “investment and transformation company.” The late managing directors include Kaildherty, who co-led the Late Stage Strategy for General Catalysts, known as Endurance, and Adam Balkin, one of the three leads of the company's early stage fund, according to several people close to General Catalyst. Nishal, Doherty, and Valkin did not respond to requests for comment. General Catalyst declined to comment. The reason for the departure remains unknown, but the general Catalyst Limited partners have explained many other changes in…