AI is riding high on a curve of hype, which means some of the practical questions that might grow louder over time — the many costs (financial and social), the business models — may not be the most front of mind right now. Today a startup called Fetch.ai is announcing $40 million in funding in [...]
Gutter Capital, a New York venture capital firm, closed on $25 million in capital commitments for its first fund to invest in pre-seed and seed stage companies focused on affordability, economic mobility and climate change. Founding partners Dan Teran and James Gettinger met while students at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to starting Gutter Capital, Teran [...]
Salt Labs, a rewards platform for hourly workers, today emerged from stealth with $10 million in pre-seed funding led by Fin Capital with participation from Anthem Venture Partners and others. Co-founder and CEO Jason Lee tells TechCrunch that the money is being used to build out Salt Labs’ initial team, product development and go-to-market strategy [...]
Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Wednesday show, where we niche down to a single person, think about their work and unpack the rest. This week, Natasha interviewed a Jack of all trades in the AI [...]
Deep Render, a startup developing AI-powered tech to compress videos on the web, today announced that it raised $9 million in a Series A funding round led by IP Group and Pentech Ventures. A source familiar with the matter tells TechCrunch that the round values the startup at $30 million, a respectable number for a [...]
When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed earlier this month, venture had already been navigating choppy waters for over a year as it confronted overinflated company valuations and a seemingly nonexistent exit market. But while SVB’s failure may have a long-lasting impact on the banking and venture debt industries, it doesn’t look likely to have any lasting [...]
The pandemic brought with it a spike in work-from-home and hybrid work, which increased peoples’ dependence on personal devices — driving businesses to try and rein in their use. It’s been a particular challenge for the financial services industry, which has comparatively strict governance and compliance requirements. In September, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission [...]
Autio, a location-based audio entertainment app co-founded by actor Kevin Costner and formerly known as HearHere, has raised a $5.9 million seed extension led by iHeartMedia. The app uses GPS to narrate stories of landmarks, cities and towns nearby with the aim of fostering deep connections and understandings of the places users are traveling through. [...]
Workers are being bombarded with data from a variety of sources. If the point is to make people more productive, as the volume increases, the more difficult it is to find the information you need to do your job. AI thrives in large data environments and can help cut through the noise, move across applications, [...]
Payments remains one of the most fragmented of online services, a situation that is only compounded when your business trades internationally. A UK startup called Paytrix says it has raised $18.3 million to build a solution to fix this: a single platform — and single contract — that lets its customers manage all of the [...]