Author: TechBrunch

Cost remains one of the biggest obstacles to electric vehicle adoption. Most current EVs sell for higher prices than fossil fuel-powered cars, which prevents many people from purchasing them. That may change soon. Battery materials startup Coreshell this week unveiled a breakthrough technology that could lower the cost of lithium-ion batteries. It's probably not the kind of advancement that would make an EV with 500 miles of range possible, but not many people need that kind of capability. If the core-shell approach proves its worth, it could pave the way for cheaper batteries that don't rely on China. Forecasts for…

Google today announced significant changes to Chrome's Safe Browsing feature. This allows the service to work in real-time by checking your browsing habits against server-side lists without sharing them with Google. Previously, Chrome downloaded a list of sites known to harbor malware, unwanted software, and phishing scams once or twice an hour. Going forward, Chrome will move to a system that sends the URL you're visiting to its servers, where it matches it against a rapidly updated list. The advantage of this is that it takes up to an hour to get an updated list. As Google points out, the…

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Reddit is introducing a new ad format that resembles posts made by users on the platform, the company announced Thursday. The announcement comes as Reddit prepares for an initial public offering (IPO). A new ad format called freeform ads is designed to make users feel like the content they share with each other, helping advertisers maximize engagement. While the new format may be attractive to advertisers, ads that look like regular posts may be an unwelcome addition to users. Advertisers can use this format to combine multiple media types such as images, video, and text using ready-made templates. Reddit says…

ShopMy, the marketing platform for content creators to connect with brands and monetize their content, today announced that it has raised $18.5 million. The company plans to use the funding to expand its network of 40,000 creators, including Alix Earle, the internet's newest “It Girl” with more than 10 million followers on TikTok and Instagram. . ShopMy's marketing platform allows you to build a digital storefront, access a catalog of millions of products, create commissionable links, chat directly with businesses through our mobile app, and earn money from product recommendations. We provide creators with the tools they need. The company…

After his venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins fell into disarray a few years ago, one of B2B's star investors, Ted Schlein, kind of quit to start his own company. Two years ago, he first launched his $300 million fund, Ballistic Ventures, focused on cybersecurity, his interesting business model, and a roster of investment partners. Now, Ballistic has already closed its second fund, which is even bigger than the first. “We started raising a second round of $300 million, but we stopped at $360 million,” Schlein told TechCrunch. Over the past few months, I've made numerous calls with potential limited partners…

When open source streaming service Apache Kafka was created at LinkedIn in 2011, it was a different world. Most companies were still on-premises. The concept of cloud computing was just beginning to emerge. WarpStream, an early-stage startup, recognized the value of streaming in a cloud-native context and built a new solution from the ground up based on the Apache Kafka protocol and designed for the cloud era. Today, the company announced a $20 million investment. WarpStream CEO Richard Artoul and co-founder CTO Ryan Worl said they realized in their previous jobs that moving data to Kafka was complex and expensive,…

Instagram is working on a “spin” feature for Reels, its short video TikTok clone, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. This feature was first discovered by Reverse Engineer Alessandro Paluzzi, allowing other users to exchange text or audio within the reels. Instagram says Spins is an internal prototype and has not been tested externally. This feature allows users to create templates to start trends that others can use to put their own creative spin on them. If you have a trending template created by someone, you can swap out the text or audio to change the meaning to suit different scenarios.…

The European Commission has sent a series of formal requests for information (RFIs) to Google, Meta, Microsoft, Snap, TikTok and X on how they are addressing risks associated with the use of generative AI. . The requests, which relate to Bing, Facebook, Google Search, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, and X, are being made under the block's relaunched e-commerce and online governance rules, the Digital Services Act (DSA) . Eight platforms are designated as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) under the regulations. This means that in addition to complying with the rest of the rulebook, systemic risk must be assessed and…

Satellite sensors collect an incredible amount of raw data, but due to on-orbit computational limitations, operators have little way to process this data in space. Aethero, a startup founded 13 months ago, wants to change that. The startup is developing radiation-hardened edge computers that enable data processing and even autonomous decision-making in orbit. “Right now, space data preprocessing is the bigger market, but as the year goes on and we have more assets in orbit, we expect enabling spacecraft autonomy to become a large-scale thing.” ,” said co-founder and CEO Edward Gee. In a recent interview. Ge co-founded Aethero with…