TechCrunch Startup News
TechCrunch
Listen to select TechCrunch articles on startups coverage—who's raising, who's exiting, who's changing the world.
Episodes
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Jun 28, 2024 • 7min
Rainforest lands $20M to challenge Stripe with embedded payments for SaaS providers
Rainforest, a startup that embeds payment processing into other software platforms, has raised $20 million in Series A funding — less than a year after announcing the close of its seed financing. Raising back-to-back rounds was more common in 2021 but we don’t see it happening as often in this new environment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 28, 2024 • 7min
Etched is building an AI chip that only runs one type of model
As generative AI touches a growing number of industries, the companies producing chips to run the models are benefitting enormously. Nvidia in particular, which commands an estimated 70% to 95% of the market for AI chips, wields massive influence. Cloud providers from Meta to Microsoft are spending billions of dollars on Nvidia GPUs Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 27, 2024 • 4min
Boeing’s Wisk Aero buys Verocel to boost software safety for self-flying eVTOL
Wisk Aero, a subsidiary of Boeing, has acquired Verocel, a software verification and validation company with 25 years of experience in the aerospace industry. Wisk has an autonomous-first approach to eVTOL. The company’s Generation 6 aircraft, which is slated to begin airborne tests this year, is designed to be supervised by humans, but not physically Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 27, 2024 • 4min
Rocketlane snags $24M to bring AI-led experiences for professional services teams
Rocketlane initially aimed to support customer onboarding. However, it has broadened its scope and doubled down on addressing the needs of professional services teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 26, 2024 • 8min
Emergence thinks it can crack the AI agent code
Yet another generative AI venture has raised a bundle of money. And, like the others before it, it’s promising the moon. Emergence, whose co-founders include Satya Nitta, the former head of global AI solutions at IBM’s research division, today emerged from stealth with $97.2 million in funding from Learn Capital plus credit lines totaling more Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 26, 2024 • 9min
Silicon Valley leaders are once again declaring ‘DEI’ bad and ‘meritocracy’ good — but they’re wrong
Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang set off another debate with an anti-DEI post. It revealed a lot about the current state of DEI in tech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 25, 2024 • 8min
How 2 high school teens raised a $500K seed round for their API startup (yes, it’s AI)
18-year-olds Christopher Fitzgerald and Nicholas Van Landschoot have founded APIGen, a platform to build custom APIs from natural language prompts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 25, 2024 • 8min
‘Lawyer-in-the-loop’ startup Wordsmith wants to bring AI paralegals to all employees
Wordsmith, a fledgling Scottish legal tech startup, has somehow managed to attract the backing of two well-known venture capital firms. The startup targets in-house legal teams and law firms with an AI platform that they can configure to help other workers in the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 24, 2024 • 4min
Ex-HubSpot exec builds an AI-powered CRM that learns for you, with $4M seed led by Sequoia
Christopher O’Donnell has hobbies. He likes music and playing guitar, but above all, he loves building software. Which is why three years after leaving HubSpot, he built Day.ai, a CRM for the age AI. Unlike modern CRMs, which are essentially giant spreadsheets that somebody needs to populate and keep updated, Day learns everything Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Jun 24, 2024 • 3min
Language learning app Speak nets $20M, doubles valuation
Speak, the AI-powered language learning app, has raised new money from investors at double its previous valuation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
