Author: TechBrunch
Aliisa Rosenthal, OpenAI's first sales leader, has found a new career in venture capital. She joins Acrew Capital as a general partner, working alongside founding partner Lauren Kolodny and the firm's other partners, Rosenthal and Kolodny told TechCrunch. Rosenthal left OpenAI about eight months ago after a three-year sprint at the AI Lab where he launched products such as DALL·E, ChatGPT, ChatGPT Enterprise, and Sora. “I had no intention of joining a VC fund initially,” she told TechCrunch. “I was meeting with a lot of AI startups.” But after growing OpenAI's enterprise sales team from two people to several hundred…
This year we are starting earlier than usual! TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 tickets are officially on sale. Secure the lowest price of the year with super early bird pricing (available until February 27th) and be among the first 500 subscribers to get a Plus 1 Pass for 50% off. Once either limit is reached, these transactions will disappear. Register now to save up to $680 on passes and get 50% off +1 passes. Don't miss out on this one-time limited time sale. Immerse yourself in the epicenter of technology innovation at Disrupt 2026. From October 13th to 15th, San Francisco's Moscone…
It all started with sales. Cam Badger started his career in a pharmaceutical company. He expected structure and guidance on the job, but instead found “piecemeal training, inconsistent coaching, and no real way to scale learning in a meaningful way,” he told TechCrunch. He worked as a sales representative for four years, then as a sales trainer, and then at a medical start-up, where he met Bhrugu Giri. The two lamented how abysmal the number of sales representatives at life sciences companies, including pharmaceutical companies and medical device startups. The two decided to solve this problem and launched PraxisPro, a…
Ethos Technologies has priced its initial public offering, which is expected to go public on Thursday, making it one of the first technology IPOs of the year. If it lands at its current price range of $18 to $20 per share, it would be worth the day's all-time high of $1.26 billion, raising $102.6 million for itself and about $108 million for selling shareholders. If there is a lot of investor interest, the price could end up being higher. That means greater valuation and more funding. The company, which provides software to sell life insurance, is backed by Sequoia, Accel,…
Two members of Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency may have accessed and shared Social Security numbers last year to help an advocacy group “overturn election results in certain states,” according to court documents. The revelations, first reported by Politico, come as part of a series of corrections to previous testimony by Social Security Administration officials related to DOGE's legal battle over access to Social Security data. Court documents do not name the two DOGE members or the advocacy group. In March 2025, a political advocacy group contacted two members of the Social Security Administration's (SSA) DOGE team “requested to…
Online mentoring site UStrive has resolved a security flaw that exposed the personal information of users, including children. The leaked data included UStrive users' names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other private and user-provided information, and was accessible to other logged-in users. The nonprofit, formerly known as Strive for College, provides online instruction to high school and college students through its platform. The organization did not say whether it plans to notify users about the security incident. Last week, someone who requested anonymity alerted TechCrunch to a security flaw in UStrive's mentoring platform. Anyone can see the stream of your…
In this episode of StrictlyVC Download, Connie Loizos speaks with Mary Jane Rubenstein, professor of religion and science and technology studies at Wesleyan University and author of the book “Endless Worlds: The Many Lives of the Multiverse,” which was the research material for the Oscar-winning film “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” As the space economy heats up and venture capital flows into startups promising everything from asteroid mining to lunar gas stations, Dr. Rubenstein offers a critical perspective on the ethics and values shaping humanity's expansion beyond Earth. Dr. Rubenstein will discuss how religious narratives have shaped space exploration, from…
Corinna Marshall worked in retail digital marketing for 11 years and realized the industry was outdated. Specifically, the technology that helps retail brands sell unsold and excess merchandise (off-channel inventory) wasn't as sophisticated as they thought. Brands sell their excess inventory at discount retailers like Nordstrom Rack, but they often lose money because unsold inventory is difficult to manage. Products are scattered across multiple warehouses, and teams must estimate the value of an item and the best time to sell it. “There is too much time between each step of the off-channel inventory funnel, making it difficult for brands and…
What happens if an AI agent decides the best way to complete a task is to blackmail you? That's not a hypothesis. Barmak Meftah, a partner at cybersecurity VC firm Ballistic Ventures, said something like this recently happened to an employee at a company working with an AI agent. The employee tried to suppress what the agent wanted to do and what he was trained to do, but the agent scanned the user's inbox for inappropriate emails and threatened to forward the email to the board of directors to blackmail the user. “In the agent's mind, it's doing the right…
TechCrunch Startup Battlefield 200 is the leading early-stage startup competition held at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco, highlighting the world's most promising young companies. Each year, thousands of applicants from around the world compete for one of the 200 spots in this cohort. This gives you unparalleled visibility, access to top investors, and growth opportunities. Early-stage startups from around the world can join the Startup Battlefield email list and be the first to know when applications launch in mid-February. If you're ready to get in on the action, don't miss out. What is Startup Battlefield? Image credit: Kimberly White/Getty Images…