Author: TechBrunch

Felicis founder Aydin Senkut is celebrating his 20th year as an early stage investor in the scheme by unveiling the company's largest fund. This follows the $825 million fund raised in 2023 and the $600 million fund XIII, raised in 2021. Felicis, a Seed and Series A company, is known for supporting long-term successes such as Aiden, Bonobos, Ring, Shop and Twitch, among others. Since its founding in 2006, Felicis has supported over 50 unicorns and has over 125 exits. Recently, Felicis, like most VCs, is across AI. Its portfolio includes, for example, browser usage, poolside, runways, Supabase and more.…

Bluesky misses the opportunity to explain to people that its network is more than just a Bluesky social app. Many headlines and posts have questioned whether Bluesky's growth has been declining, whether the network is in a left-leaning echo chamber, or even among other fees if users don't have a sense of humor. Investor Mark Cuban, who financially backed Skylight, a video app built on Bluesky's underlying protocol, complained this week that the reply on Bluesky was too hated. “Engagement is from a great combo on many topics to agree with me, or you're a Nazi fascist,” he wrote in…

The Internet's massive swath went down on Thursday, impacting a range of services, from global cloud platform CloudFlare to popular apps such as Spotify. The Google Cloud outage appears to be at the root of the confusion in these other services. Google Cloud said it began investigating a service issue affecting customers at 11:46am. The company does not yet have an ETA if its services return online. “We are currently investigating the disruptions to Google Cloud services,” Google Cloud spokesman Devon Smimey said in an email to TechCrunch. At 11:19am, CloudFlare said it was investigating the disruptions in the service…

The Internet's massive swath went down on Thursday, impacting a range of services, from global cloud platform CloudFlare to popular apps such as Spotify. The Google Cloud outage appears to be at the root of the confusion in these other services. Google Cloud said it began investigating a service issue affecting customers at 11:46am. At 2:23 P..M PT, the company said it had implemented mitigation and hopes to regain and execute the service within an hour. “We are currently investigating the disruptions to Google Cloud services,” Google Cloud spokesman Devon Smimey said in an email to TechCrunch. At 11:19am, CloudFlare…

Canary, the hotel's guest management platform, announced Thursday a $80 million Series D salary increase in the round led by Brighton Park Capital. Harman Singh Narula and childhood friend SJ Sawhney set up the company in 2018 to help digitalize and automate hotels. The company has raised nearly $180 million so far. “Running through the hotel becomes more and more complicated,” Singh Narra told TechCrunch. “The expectations of guests are constantly evolving, and the staffing shortage continues to be tense. The hotel market feels unserved by technology and it will help hoteliers improve the guest experience, improve profitability and operate…

Last year, Apple's WWDC keynote highlighted the company's ambitious advances in AI. This year, the company focused on Apple Intelligence, focusing on updating to operating systems, services and software, introducing a new aesthetic called “Liquid Glass” along with a new naming treaty. Despite this, Apple has tried to soothe the crowd with several AI-related announcements, including image analysis tools, workout coaches and live translation features. Visual Intelligence Visual Intelligence is Apple's AI-powered image analysis technology that allows you to collect information about your surroundings. For example, you can identify plants in your garden, teach them about restaurants, or recognize the…

As Snapchat takes over Instagram and Tiktok, the company announced Thursday it will introduce new tools and features to make it easier for creators to create and share content on the platform. Social Networks has launched the “Timeline Editor” feature. This includes new ways to create videos from saved memory, the ability to auto-save stories to profiles, and more. Snapchat says the new Timeline Editor will provide creators with a more intuitive way to directly edit videos on the platform. The Timeline Editor lets you view videos in a time series layout, making it easy to crop, move, or rearrange…

On Thursday, when Neobank Chime raised $864 million in IPOs, one of the most anticipated IPOs took place, priced stocks above the $27-$24-$26 range. This gave us a market capitalization of around $9.8 billion. According to Yahoo Finance, some point out that this is far below the last private valuation of $25 billion, according to Pitchbook estimates, but the stock opened at $42, bringing it to $14.5 in a massive deal. The hunger response from retail investors is largely due to some impressive financials. Chime reported revenue of $1.3 billion in 2023 and $1.7 billion in 2024. The losses shrunk…

Researchers revealed on Thursday that two European journalists were hacking their iPhones with Paragon spyware. Apple says it fixed a bug that was used to hack the phone. Citizen Lab wrote in a report that Apple had told researchers that it had been “mitigated with iOS 18.3.1,” an iPhone software update released on February 10th, in a report it shared with TechCrunch before its publication. Until this week, the advisory for that security update only mentioned one unrelated flaw, allowing attackers to disable the iPhone security mechanism that makes it difficult for attackers to unlock their phones. However, on Thursday,…

Instagram announced Thursday that it is testing how users can finally relocate the grid and quietly post to their profiles without showing content in their users' feeds. The social network is also launching a new initiative to support new creators, as well as the ability to stream songs directly from Spotify to Instagram notes. According to Instagram, the ability to rearrange the grid is one of the most frequently requested features. This update allows users to reposition profile posts to customize the appearance of the grid. Until now, posts to your profile have appeared in chronological order, and pinning your…