TechCrunch Startup News - podcast cover

TechCrunch Startup News

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Listen to select TechCrunch articles on startups coverage—who's raising, who's exiting, who's changing the world.

Episodes

Phase raises $13M to speed up the UX design process with its no-code platform

UX and UI designers work closely with engineers throughout product development to build and implement design concepts and wireframes for functional user interfaces. Regular communication, feedback and testing are required for the collaboration to work smoothly and deliver a user experience that aligns with the intended design goals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 18, 20255 min

Apptronik, which makes humanoid robots, raises $350M as category heats up

Apptronik, a University of Texas spin-out that was quietly building humanoid robots before it became quite so fashionable, on Thursday announced a $350 million Series A round of financing. B Capital and Capital Factory co-led the round, which also featured participation from Googl Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 17, 20256 min

Avride launches sidewalk delivery bots on Uber Eats in Jersey City

Uber Eats customers in Jersey City can now have their orders delivered by one of Avride’s autonomous sidewalk delivery robots. The launch, which kicked off this week in New Jersey, is Uber’s latest foray into autonomous vehicles and represents an expanding relationship with Avride. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 17, 20254 min

No-code app builder Softr expands beyond Airtable databases

If you’re working for a small company and want to build a client portal or an internal tool, it can be difficult to find the budget and resources to allocate a developer to that small project. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 14, 20254 min

SpotDraft taps AI to help streamline contract management

More and more legal professionals are embracing AI, surveys show. Per a recent poll from legaltech company Clio, 79% of firms used some form of AI for casework last year, up from just 19% in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 14, 20254 min

Voyantis aims to help companies figure out their customers’ worth

How much is a customer worth to a company? That’s the eternal question. To arrive at an answer, customer and sales teams are often forced to use spreadsheets and other manual data analysis methods. The problem is, these methods tend to be slow and error-prone, leading to gaps in reporting processes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 13, 20254 min

Archer Aviation doubles down on defense aircraft with fresh $300M

Escalating geopolitical tensions and a new administration with a hawkish defense agenda has led many startups to embrace dual-use strategies to secure revenue through military applications. And it’s a trend that is already heating up in aerospace. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 12, 20257 min

3D mood board and marketplace Mattoboard picks up $2M to launch AI visual search

Mattoboard, the makers of web-based software designed to simplify the creative process for interior designers and architects, is getting into AI. On Tuesday, the startup announced its $2 million seed funding round, which will support the launch of a new feature called Design Stream, an AI-driven visual search and discovery tool. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 12, 20254 min

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admits that AI’s benefits may not be widely distributed

In a new essay on his personal blog, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said the company is open to a “compute budget,” among other “strange-sounding” ideas, to “enable everyone on Earth to use a lot of AI” and ensure the benefits of the technology are widely distributed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 11, 20256 min

Hiveclass, a platform for virtual PE classes for kids, raises $1.5M  

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck in 2020 and schools transitioned to online learning, both Joe Titus and Paul Suhr were concerned about how to maintain their children’s activity levels in the absence of mandatory physical education classes and sports. The two friends’ solution was Hiveclass, a New York-based edtech platform that hosts online courses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 10, 20254 min

Fizz brings on TikTok alum to help build out its marketplace and recommendation engine

Fizz, the college social app, is looking for ways to enhance and expand its platform, and a recent new hire is poised to help drive these ambitions. The company has brought on David Vasquez, who previously served as TikTok’s head of creator monetization and a product lead for TikTok Shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 10, 20255 min

Pendulum’s AI-driven platform helps enterprises better predict supply and demand

Supply chains have had a tumultuous few years, beginning in 2020, when COVID-19 upended legacy global supply chains. More recently, the “TikTok-ification” of retail has companies like Shein and Temu creating new products constantly as consumer demands change at the same rapid pace. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 07, 20254 min

European AI startups have raised $8 billion in 2024

In just a few days, France will host the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit, with heads of state flocking to Paris to meet global tech leaders. They’ll most likely announce some big investments and diplomatic agreements focused on safety or the environmental impact of artificial intelligence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 07, 20255 min

Neuralk-AI is developing AI models specifically designed for structured data

Tabular data is a broad term that encompasses structured data that generally fits into a specific row and column. It can be a SQL database, a spreadsheet, a .CSV file, etc. While there has been tremendous progress on artificial intelligence applied to unstructured and sequential data, these large language models are fuzzy by design. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 06, 20254 min

Archive raises $30M to solve fashion’s pollution problem and Sotira landed $2M to help brands offload and monetize their surplus inventory

The fashion industry has concerned Emily Gittins since adolescence. The sector is, after all, one of the most polluting in the world. According to some sources, it is responsible for nearly 10% of the earth’s CO2 emissions and more than 20% of all water waste. Yet people still want more, fast.; Also, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 06, 20257 min

Waabi and Volvo team up to build self-driving trucks at scale

Self-driving truck startup Waabi is partnering with Volvo Autonomous Solutions to jointly develop and deploy autonomous trucks, an important milestone as it gets closer to a commercial launch. The tie up also marks Volvo’s second partnership to co-develop self-driving big rigs with a startup partner. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 05, 20255 min

AI agents could birth the first one-person unicorn — but at what societal cost?

Thanks to the advent of cloud computing and distributed digital infrastructure, the one-person micro-enterprise is far from a novel concept. Cheap on-demand compute, remote collaboration, payment processing APIs, social media, and e-commerce marketplaces have all made it easier to “go it alone” as an entrepreneur. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 05, 202510 min

Riot raises $30 million for its cybersecurity product suite focused on employees

French startup Riot has raised a $30 million Series B round after reaching $10 million in annual revenue in 2024. Originally focused on educating employees about cybersecurity risks, the company now wants to go one step further and nudge employees so that they minimize their attack surface. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 04, 20254 min

Custom feed builder Graze is building a business on Bluesky, and investors are paying attention

A startup called Graze, which lets you build your own feeds for the Bluesky social network, has caught investors’ attention. In addition to offering tools to easily build, customize, publish, and manage Bluesky feeds, Graze will soon allow feed creators to monetize their efforts with advertising, sponsored posts, and subscriptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 04, 20256 min

Backed by Mayo Clinic, Nutrix’s hardware monitors worker stress

Stress isn’t just bad for you — it’s also bad for your employer. Factoring in absenteeism, diminished productivity, turnover, medical costs, and accidents, the non-profit American Institute of Stress estimates that workplace stress costs U.S. businesses over $300 billion annually. One way to measure stress is by monitoring cortisol levels. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 03, 20254 min

European embedded banking startup Swan adds another $44 million to its Series B

French startup Swan has raised another €42 million (around $44 million at current exchange rates). The company considers this round as the second part of the Series B round that was originally announced in September 2024. Swan helps other companies offer financial products at scale. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Feb 03, 20253 min

Naboo secures $21M for its concierge-style corporate event booking platform

If you’ve ever tried to book a venue for a company event, you’ll know how onerous a task it can be. You have to contact multiple vendors, wait for quotes, evaluate them, see if you can get a good deal, and then get all that approved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jan 31, 20253 min

TravelPerk raises $200M as valuation nearly doubles to $2.7B

Barcelona-based business travel management platform TravelPerk has raised $200 million at a hefty $2.7 billion valuation — almost double the $1.4 billion valuation at its previous fundraise last year. Alongside the raise, TravelPerk also announced it has acquired Swiss startup Yokoy to bring native expenses management into the fray. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jan 30, 20256 min

Kodiak has made its first driverless truck deliveries to customer Atlas Energy

Kodiak Robotics has officially handed off two autonomous trucks to customer Atlas Energy Solutions, marking the startup’s first commercial launch. Atlas, a provider of proppant (i.e., sand) and oilfield logistics, received its first Kodiak-equipped trucks in December and began driverless operations in an off-road environment in West Texas’s remote Permian Basin shortly after. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jan 29, 20254 min

Mistral’s origin story has an insuretech founder at its heart

If you’ve been following the AI industry, Mistral should be a familiar name by now. The French AI startup with a $6 billion valuation is arguably the biggest AI company working on foundation models in Europe. Alan, on the other hand, isn’t as well known. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Jan 28, 20254 min