European regulation is turning ESG reporting from a nice-to-have to a must. This creates new tailwinds for startups such as Paris-based Apiday, whose platform targets private equity funds and blue-chip companies needing to track and pilot sustainability practices. Asset management firms have been a key target for Apiday, especially European ones. Because of the Sustainable … Read more
Google has issued its 2024 Environmental Report, a more than 80-page document describing all of the massive company’s efforts to apply tech to environmental issues and to mitigate its own contributions. But it totally dodges the question of how much energy is AI using — perhaps because the answer is “way more than we’d care … Read more
SpaceX’s ambitious plans to launch its Starship mega-rocket up to 44 times per year from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center are causing a stir among some of its competitors. Late last month, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance submitted comments calling on regulators to ensure minimal disruptions to other launch providers in the area, with Blue … Read more
The situation around a data breach that’s affected an ever-growing number of fintech companies has gotten even weirder. Evolve Bank & Trust announced last week that it was hacked and confirmed the stolen data has been posted to the dark web. Now Evolve has sent a cease and desist letter to the writer of a … Read more
Mastodon, the open-source, decentralized alternative to X (formerly Twitter), is rolling out a new feature that’s meant to make the app more appealing for those who use it to keep up with news and information from writers and journalists. Starting Tuesday, the company is adding clickable author bylines on link posts that can direct Mastodon … Read more
The alternative investment platform Yieldstreet is the latest company to reveal that its customers were affected by the recent data breach at Evolve Bank and Trust, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. On Tuesday, Yieldstreet spokesperson Clare Burrows confirmed to TechCrunch that “some Yieldstreet customer information may have been impacted” as a consequence of the Evolve breach. … Read more
Raising a Series A round in today’s competitive market can be a daunting task. To equip seed-stage founders with the insights and strategies needed for success, TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 will host a crucial session on the Builders Stage titled “What You Need to Raise a Series A Today.” This session will bring together some of … Read more
In the age of generative AI, when chatbots can provide detailed answers to questions based on content pulled from the internet, the line between fair use and plagiarism, and between routine web scraping and unethical summarization, is a thin one. Perplexity AI is a startup that combines a search engine with a large language model … Read more
Sophisticated spacecraft often run on shockingly outdated computing systems: consider that the Perseverance rover runs on a PowerPC 750, the processor famous for running on iMacs in the late 1990s. San Francisco-based Aethero is aiming to bring more powerful computing systems to orbit, and their first payload launches this month on SpaceX’s Transporter-11 rideshare mission. … Read more
The venture fundraising trend in 2024 is fairly clear by now: Large, established VC firms are continuing to attract capital from limited partners, while smaller, newer funds are finding it more difficult to raise. But Industry Ventures’ latest fundraise should offer a dash of good news for emerging managers. On Tuesday, the 24-year-old firm announced … Read more