Today on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Devin Coldeway kicks off his roundup of the week's best buys with a look at Piramidal, a startup that offers a basic model for analyzing brain scan data and just raised $6 million. The idea behind the company is an interesting one: their technology aims to augment the work of nurses and doctors in neuro-intensive care units by identifying signs of things like epileptic seizures and strokes.
Mary Ann Azevedo led the discussion on Comun, a neobank that provides financial services and banking products to immigrants in the U.S., primarily Latinos. The fintech company just closed its seed round and raised $21.5 million in funding led by Redpoint Ventures. The company has been growing rapidly and its valuation has risen.
Rebecca Beran dug up the scoop on Fluid Trucks and the recent turmoil there: The startup founded to disrupt the commercial vehicle rental industry appears to have ousted its sibling co-founders, CEO James Eberhardt and chief legal counsel Jennifer Snyder, in what sources say is a hostile takeover bid.
We then covered the arrest of Telegram founder Pavel Durov and whether tech executives can and should be held accountable for what happens on their platforms. Finally, we dug into the situation at Inflection after Microsoft poached its co-founder, a move that has attracted the attention of antitrust regulators in the US and UK, who are currently investigating whether Microsoft was anti-competitive. Equity's reporting team discussed the practice of large tech companies using talent acquisitions to circumvent antitrust regulations.
Honestly, we had so much to talk about that we could fit it all into one more episode, so we hope you enjoy listening.
Equity is TechCrunch's flagship podcast produced by Theresa Loconsolo and posts every Wednesday and Friday.
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