Who had the better performance at Thursday night’s presidential debate, X or Threads? Though not the top concern among social media users, it’s one of the questions people are asking themselves after watching the disastrous debate play out across the two platforms. Meta, which nearly a year ago launched Threads as a rival to the … Read more
Will robots ever have living, human skin? Researchers have been exploring the question and they’ve come up with some pretty unsettling results. I think it’s fair to say that no one would confuse any of today’s robots, no matter how advanced, with another human being. Even when a company like Tesla or Figure creates a … Read more
Get ready to unlock the secrets of successful fundraising in the upcoming year at Disrupt 2024. Our featured session, “How to Raise in 2025 if You’ve Taken a Flat, Down, or Extension Round,” is designed to equip startups with the knowledge and strategies needed to navigate the evolving investment landscape. This session will challenge outdated … Read more
If you love gadgets and gizmos, this year’s product conferences are having them aplenty. We’ve poked through the many product announcements made by the biggest tech companies and product trade shows of the year, so far, and compiled them into this list. It features the items we think are the most important, or the most … Read more
As a foreigner, navigating health insurance systems can often be difficult. German startup Feather thinks it has a solution and raised €6 million to help some of the 40-plus million expats working and living in Europe. It is not that there are no options for foreign nationals to get insurance; there are plenty. But it … Read more
The salad days of fresh grocery delivery startups are over, but those that have stayed the course, and have built businesses that are seeing gains, are still here and are hungry for more growth. On Friday, one of those survivors, the Czech grocery delivery company Rohlik, announced $170 million in new funding. Rohlik – which … Read more
New numbers out of Crunchbase this week see robotics investments once again trending in a positive direction. The previous two years presented a steady drop in overall numbers, following a record 2021 driven by pandemic-fueled job loss. As we head into the second half of the year, 2024 is on-track to beat last year’s numbers. … Read more
Hebbia, a startup using generative AI to search large documents and return answers, has raised a nearly $100 million series B led by Andreessen Horowitz, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. The round valued the company between $700 – $800 million although TechCrunch couldn’t verify whether that valuation is pre- or post-money. … Read more
Reddit is taking a stand against AI companies — or at least asking them to pay up. Earlier this week, Reddit announced that it’s changing its Robots Exclusion Protocol, also known as its robots.txt file. This dry-sounding edit is part of a larger negotiation/battle between the AI companies that are hungry for content they can … Read more
These days, when you hear about students and generative AI, chances are that you’re getting a taste of the debate over the adoption of tools like ChatGPT. Are they a help? (Yay! Great for research! Fast!) Or are they a harm? (Boo! Misinfo! Cheating!). But some startups are taking the arrival of generative AI in … Read more