Humans have cast metal parts in basically the same way for thousands of years: by pouring molten metal into a mold, often made of compacted sand and clay. There’s a reason this ancient method is used today: sand casting is inexpensive and works well with both ferrous, or iron-based, and nonferrous metals. But there is … Read more
Nothing today announced a pair of refreshes to its earbud line. The naming conventions are a touch convoluted here, but the Nothing Ear is an update to the Nothing Ear (2), while the Nothing Ear (a) is more of a spiritual successor to the Nothing Ear Stick. The most notable bit of today’s news, however, … Read more
Spend management startup Ramp has raised another $150 million at a valuation of $7.65 billion, the company confirmed to TechCrunch today. Khosla Ventures and Founders Fund co-led the raise, which also included participation from new backers Sequoia Capital, Greylock and 8VC. Existing investors Thrive Capital, General Catalyst, Sands Capital, D1 Capital, Lux Capital, Iconiq Capital, … Read more
Paris-based Dark Space is taking on the dual problems of debris and conflict in orbit with their mobile platform designed to launch, attach to, and ultimately deorbit uncooperative objects in space. Dark CEO Clyde Laheyne said the company is aiming to become the “S.W.A.T. team of space.” The three-year-old startup is developing Interceptor, a spacecraft … Read more
Jaclyn Johnson and Angeline Vuong were on a hike deliberating how hard it can be for people to get started in angel investing when they realized they had stumbled upon a startup idea. Today they are the co-founders of Cherub, a marketplace that pairs angel investors with entrepreneurs. Vuong spent nearly five years working in … Read more
This week Boston Dynamics retired its well-known Atlas robot that was powered by hydraulics. Then today it unveiled its new Atlas robot, which is powered by electricity. The change might not seem like much, but TechCrunch’s Brian Heater told the TechCrunch Minute that the now-deprecated hydraulics system was out of date. It’s not hard to … Read more
CommentSold, the e-commerce tech startup that provides web and video tools to online retailers, launched a new generative AI-powered tool on Wednesday that can sift through livestreamed footage and generate short product explainer videos for sellers to post to their website, app and social media platforms. The “AI ClipHero” feature creates short clips from livestreamed … Read more
In 2022, Rewind had just raised $10 million from a16z and was building a personal data recording service that promised to privately record your activity and let you search through your own history. But that was before OpenAI launched ChatGPT. Today, generative AI can make what Rewind had built previously — a searchable record of … Read more
Late last summer, TechCrunch joined forces with StrictlyVC to create smaller, more intimate evenings for our readers. Already this year, we’ve hosted these nights in San Francisco and Los Angeles, featuring the co-CEO of Waymo, the cofounders of Anduril and WorldCoin, and the founder of the AI hardware device Rabbit, along with top investors like … Read more
Business banking startup Mercury, founded in 2020, is now launching a consumer banking product. Mercury today serves more than 100,000 businesses, many of which are startups, via its B2B practice. The expansion is a natural move for the company and one that has been in the works for a couple of years, according to Immad … Read more