Author: TechBrunch
Back in the hectic days of 2021, Heartcore Capital had plans to raise $200 million and focus on consumer technology. Fast forward to 2024, and its latest fund “leaves sustenance” for the paper, with a new injection of $180 million (€170 million) to make it broader and more comprehensive than its earlier paper. You will be performing general activities. Nearly 17 years into the game, Heartcore's Fund V continues to be founded in its early stages, and its portfolio now includes companies such as Boozt, Neo4j, Peakon, Tink, GetYourGuide, TravelPerk, and Podimo. It aims to be the first institutional investor…
Ride-hailing giant Uber and Chinese self-driving technology company Willide have launched a commercial robotaxi service in Abu Dhabi. The launch marks Uber's first international self-driving car offering. Uber has partnerships with self-driving car companies across areas such as ride-hailing, delivery and trucking. Other partners include Wayve, Serve Robotics, Aurora Innovation, Waabi, and more. Still, investors are wary that incumbents like Uber won't be able to compete with companies building technology like Waymo and potentially Tesla. Uber stock fell nearly 10% on Thursday after Waymo announced plans to launch a robotaxi service in Miami. This is despite the fact that true…
Fly Ventures, a Berlin-based venture capital firm that invests in seed-stage startups in the European enterprise and deep tech space, has launched its third fund with €80 million. The company raised its last funding of 53 million euros in 2020. The company targets technology founders and claims that Fund III was oversubscribed and raised in one closing. Meanwhile, the slight increase in fund size reflects the company's desire to operate as a boutique firm. Matuschka told TechCrunch: More and more people are making this type of investment these days, but our strategy is to make this type of investment 2-3…
Indian financial services startup MobiKwik has reduced the size of its planned IPO for the third time, setting a price range of ₹265-279 ($3.1-$3.3) and a valuation of 250,000 yen. This amounted to $1,000,000, a significant drop from the previous undisclosed valuation. In 2021, it will reach $924 million. The Gurugram-based fintech company, backed by Peak The amount is less than that. The IPO will open on December 11th and shares will begin trading on December 11th. December 18th. The 15-year-old startup operates one of the most widely used mobile wallet apps in India. But UPI, a government-backed protocol, has…
GitLab, the popular developer and security platform, has named Bill Staples as its new CEO, effective immediately. Staples, who has also been appointed to the company's board of directors, will replace CEO Sid Sibrandi, who is battling a rare type of cancer. Mr. Sigibrandi will assume the position of Chairman of the Board. “I believe [Bill’s] “His passion for software, commitment to customers, and strong track record make him the right person to lead the company going forward,” Sigibrandi said in a statement. “Now is the perfect time to focus on cancer treatment and health.” Staples previously served as CEO…
OpenAI has finally released the full version of o1. It uses additional computing to “think” about the question and provide smarter answers than GPT-4o. However, AI safety testers believe that o1's reasoning ability means it has a higher probability of deceiving humans than GPT-4o, and for that matter, is the primary AI model from Meta, Anthropic, and Google. I discovered. That's according to Red Team findings published by OpenAI and Apollo Research on Wednesday, which said, “While we're excited that inference can significantly improve safety policy enforcement, these new capabilities will significantly improve the fundamentals of dangerous applications. “We are…
President-elect Donald Trump will have a new crypto and AI “emperor” in former PayPal chief operating officer David Sachs. Trump announced Sacks' appointment Thursday in a post on Trump's social networking platform, TruthSocial. “[Sacks] We will be working on the legal framework. [sic] “The industry has the transparency it has been seeking and can thrive in the United States,” he wrote. Sachs, a member of the so-called “PayPal Mafia,'' is the co-founder of Yammer, an internal communications tool that Microsoft acquired for $1.2 billion in 2012. He's also behind Craft Ventures, a venture capital fund that backs startups like SpaceX.…
By turning sunflower seeds into sustainable, cocoa-free chocolate, Munich-based B2B food technology startup Planet A Foods (formerly QOA) has raised $30 million in a Series B funding round. The Y Combinator graduate is now gearing up for industrialization, with funding to expand its production capacity by about 7.5 times. This round follows a $15.4 million Series A in February. The startup currently produces 2,000 tonnes of ChoViva, a cocoa-free, low-carbon chocolate alternative, per year. The company plans to increase this amount to more than 15,000 tonnes as it adds production capacity and begins international expansion beyond its three initial European…
Uber has 30 days to require certain drivers to be fingerprinted if it intends to continue transporting unaccompanied teens in California. The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on Thursday issued a ruling requiring taxi and ride-hailing drivers who transport unaccompanied minors in the state to pass fingerprint background checks. The ruling also requires trucking companies to pay for these background checks. Uber has a history of fighting back against mandatory fingerprint-based background checks for drivers. Seven years ago, Uber and Lyft blocked a similar effort to fingerprint drivers in California. The company argued that current name-based background checks and other…
If OpenAI works well, the next online course you take could include a chatbot component. Siya Raj Purohit, a member of OpenAI's education market development team, spoke at a fireside event hosted by Coeus Collective on Monday, discussing how OpenAI can help e-learning instructors create custom “GPTs” that tie into online curriculum. He said there is a possibility of exploring. . “What I hope will happen is that professors will be able to create custom GPTs for the public, and people will be able to engage with the content for a lifetime,” Purohit said. . “It’s not part of the…