Author: TechBrunch

Tiktok is partnering with National Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) to provide real-time Amber alerts directly to users for its US feed, the company announced Thursday. This new feature will activate Amber Alerts by law enforcement and alerts will appear in your feed if you are in the specified search area. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that Tiktok is identifying whether users are within a specific search through the device's IP address. The alerts include important details available in standard Amber Alerts, including children's photos, descriptions, last known locations, and other important information that will help you search. According to…

Pruna AI, a European startup working on compression algorithms for AI models, has made its optimization framework open source on Thursday. Pruna AI creates a framework that applies several efficient methods to specific AI models, such as caching, pruning, quantization, and distillation. “We standardize the storage and loading of compression models, apply a combination of these compression methods, and evaluate the compression model after compression,” Pruna AI co-fonder and CTO John Rachwan told TechCrunch. In particular, the Pruna AI framework can assess whether large quality losses occur after compressing the model and performance can be obtained. “If I use metaphors,…

The Swedish startup, which is aiming to build a hyperscale cloud company in Europe, has raised 50.6 million euros ($55 million) in Series A funding. Evroc says it lays the foundation for a “safe, sovereign and sustainable hyperscale cloud to rethink Europe's digital future,” as it is called. The announcement comes amid an increase in calls to create a European tech stack independent of the US tech companies and the changing political landscape. Just this week, a coalition from across the European tech industry sought “radical action” from lawmakers to reduce local reliance on foreign-owned digital infrastructure, pushing for homemade…

Michael Sabel announced late Wednesday at X that he was moving to the “Partner Honor” role after more than 12 years with the famous accelerator Y-combinator. Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan shared the news individually in a company blog post, highlighting Seibel's long history with his costume. Seibel first joined YC as the founder and passed the program twice. One on streaming startup Justin.TV, then on streaming app SocialCam. Seibel later served as group partner, managing director and CEO of YC Accelerator. In particular, Seibel has recently returned to the role of a group partner that is already less operational.…

Debt collection in emerging markets can often feel outdated and costly. As consumer lending surges and regulators push for more fair practices, legacy collection outfits have struggled to maintain their pace. ClearGrid aims to modernize debt collection and recovery with AI. The Dubai-based startup has emerged from stealth with $10 million in funds ($3.5 million preseeds and $6.5 million seeds), helping banks, fintechs and lenders collect more debt without resorting to customer harassment. For startups founded in May 2023, backing is important. Co-founder and CEO Mohammed Al Zaben called it an important advantage for “a very ambitious company with a…

Wiz's $32 billion all-cash acquisition by Google Parent Alphabet promises a huge payday for early-stage investors in cybersecurity startups. The deal is a big win for Sequoia, one of the most well-known VC companies, which is supposed to earn $3 billion, about 25 times the money they invested in the company. Despite the substantial returns of Sequoia's Limited Partners, their percentage benefits are far less than those of another early Wiz supporter, Israel-based VC CyberStarts. Cybersecurity-centric Cyberstotte invested $6.4 million in With's seed round from its first $54 million fund in February 2020. Today, the fund owns 4.1% of WIZ.…

There is a shady industry for those who want to monitor and spy on their families. Several app makers sell software (sometimes called stalkerware) to jealous partners who can use these apps to remotely access victims' phones. But despite how sensitive this data is, the number of these companies is on the rise in massive decline. According to TechCrunch's Tally, counting the latest data breaches for Spyx, there have been at least 25 Stalkerware companies since 2017 that have been known to have been hacked or leaked customer and victim data online. That's not a typo. At least 25 Stalkerware…

TechCrunch learned that consumer-grade spyware operations, called Spyx, were hit by a data breach last year. The violation reveals that Spyx and two other related mobile apps have records of around 2 million people at the time of the violation, including thousands of Apple users. The data breach dates back to June 2024, but has not been reported previously, and there is no indication that Spyx operators have notified customers or Spyware subjects. The SPYX family of mobile spyware is now known to have exposed or exposed victim or user data in the 25th mobile surveillance operation or other ways…

Sequoia will close some of its Washington, D.C., offices and policy teams at the end of March, TechCrunch confirmed. The news is a bit contrasting, along with other prominent Silicon Valley VC companies strengthening their ties between Capitol Hill and the new Trump administration. For example, Andreessen Horowitz is leaning towards the policy team as some of his partner roles in the White House. For example, I recently hired former Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry as my advisor. Sequoia opened the Washington Office five years ago, supporting companies with regulatory issues and deepening relationships with policymakers. In a statement to TechCrunch,…

Sequoia will not only close its DC office at the end of March, but will also close some of its policy teams there, TechCrunch confirmed. The news is a bit contrasting, along with other prominent Silicon Valley VC companies strengthening their ties between Capitol Hill and the new Trump administration. For example, Andreessen Horowitz is leaning towards the policy team as some of his partner roles in the White House. For example, I recently hired former Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry as an advisor. Sequoia opened its DC office five years ago, supporting businesses with regulatory issues and deepening relationships with…