Hydrogen startups are widely seen as a promising way to eliminate fossil fuels from heavy industry and long-haul transportation. But they have been stuck in limbo for the last couple years, waiting for official guidance from the U.S. Treasury on lucrative tax credits. That was until last Friday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Electra has raised $76.3 million to clean up the dirty ironmaking industry, TechCrunch has learned. The startup has developed a novel method of using electricity to coax pure iron out of low-grade ores, opening the door to cleaner steel. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As 2025 dawns, it’s a good time to look at the trends that are likely to define the coming 12 months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
French food delivery startup Epicery will cease operations Tuesday, after one last holiday season hurrah for its clients and the local food businesses that were using the platform during its nine years in business in exchange for a 25% commission. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A business built around increasingly customized ready-to-eat meals has netted Middle Eastern startup Calo a sizeable funding injection as it looks to expand both what it can offer its time-strapped customers and where it delivers its growing range of just-heat-to-eat dishes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI holds huge promise for healthcare, but not just on the medical side; many startups are convinced machine learning-based systems can do a lot of good on adjacent tasks such as appointment scheduling and confirmations. Brazilian startup Carecode is among these AI believers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
If there was one phrase that captured the vibe and theme of 2024 — at least in the transportation sector — it was business whiplash. Legacy automakers changed direction on their all-EVs-or-bust strategy, startups pivoted, and some Silicon Valley VCs and executives adjusted their views to a changing political landscape Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
When you really probe venture capitalists about investing in AI startups, they’ll tell you that businesses are experimenting wildly but are very slow to add AI solutions into their ongoing business processes. But there are some exceptions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
On the first day of Y Combinator the founders of PearAI got “cancelled." They used the hate to launch a new product, raise $1 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI creates a dilemma for companies: Don’t implement it yet, and you might miss out on productivity gains and other potential benefits; but do it wrong, and you might expose your business and clients to unmitigated risks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Once, not long ago, booking a table at a hot new restaurant didn’t entail a midnight dash to Resy. Truly, we didn’t know how good we had it then. Hours-long lines out the door are now the norm, not the exception, in major cities from New York to Los Angeles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
After nearly four years of working in sales at tradesperson software company ServiceTitan, Mark Hoadley (pictured above) was looking for a change and to potentially start something of his own in a similar industry. Hoadley’s brother-in-law, and now co-founder, Ben Sikma, was working on M&A in the waste management space at the time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Over the last decade, the Sustainable Ocean Alliance has graduated from dorm room activism to a thousands-strong global network of experts, investors, and “ecopreneurs” — all of whom believe the best way to save the ailing oceans is to embrace innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Drop by any given loading dock and a buzz of forklifts — loaded up with goods — can be spotted maneuvering in and out of truck trailers. This logistical dance can take up to an hour to fill a trailer, leaving truck drivers in idle limbo. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Grammarly is acquiring productivity startup Coda, the company announced on Tuesday. As part of the deal, Coda’s CEO and co-founder Shishir Mehrotra will become the new CEO of Grammarly. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The massive lasers will be installed in the startup’s future facility, which it is building in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Cybersecurity practitioners take a community-driven approach to solving problems. Security researchers share the vulnerabilities they find with the broader cybersecurity community, which allows companies to patch up their security holes before something catastrophic happens. Prequel is looking to bring that same approach to software. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
While I have fond memories of past efforts to combine VR content with real-world locations, I’d assumed the pandemic had put those ambitions to an end. If I wanted VR in 2024, I thought I’d have to buy a headset, and it would be a largely solitary experience at home or in the office Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Threat exposure management startup Flare thinks it has an answer to info-stealers with a service that watches the dark web, resets passwords. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
With disinformation on the rise, especially given the explosion of AI, companies are just as vulnerable to its effects as individuals. Refute is a London-based startup that detects and responds to disinformation on behalf of these commercial entities. It’s now raised a £2.3 million ($2.9 million) pre-seed round led by UK investors Playfair and Episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Two prominent programs, Activate and The Engine Accelerator, have decided they can give founders an advantage if they team up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI models that understand videos as well as text can unlock powerful new applications. At least, that’s what Jae Lee, the co-founder of Twelve Labs, believes. Granted, Lee’s a little biased. Twelve Labs trains video-analyzing models for a range of use cases. But there may just be something to his assertion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Upvest might not be a familiar name if you don’t pay close attention to the fintech industry, but chances are you’ve already interacted with the company’s products. Founded by Martin Kassing (pictured above), the Berlin-based startup builds a white-label investment platform that is used by some of the biggest fintech companies in Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
If startup funding rounds are any metric, generative AI is seeing ample adoption in the sciences. It makes sense: there’s a lot of trial and error involved in research and development, and any tool that can speed up the process for researchers is bound to be useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Small and medium businesses are getting more love in the world of fintech these days, and one example of that is the growth of a startup out of Sweden. Mynt, which has built an AI-based platform for corporate cards and spend management catering to SMEs, has closed a round of €22 million ($23 million). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
LambdaTest, a cloud-based software testing platform, has raised $38 million in a funding round as it looks to expand its presence in existing markets and advance its AI capabilities. The San Francisco and Noida-headquartered startup’s Series D round has been led by Avataar Ventures with participation from Qualcomm Ventures, bringing its total funding to $108 million. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The startup argues that its hot-water approach is not only more efficient, but also more useful. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Podcast recording platform Riverside said Monday that it has raised $30 million in Series C funding led by Zeev Ventures, with participation from Seven Seven Six, and angel investor Sam Lessin. The company wants to use this funding to grow its team and build out solutions for the podcast and content creation space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Do we really need another social media app for college students? With the looming TikTok ban in the U.S., a new app called Connyct seems to think so. Connyct closely resembles the popular short-form video app, providing all the features you would expect, such as a personalized content feed, private chatting, as well as video . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Ladder, an Austin, Texas-based fitness startup that makes a popular strength-training app, is accusing Peloton of ripping off its work with the launch of Peloton’s new Stength+ app, which exited beta on Wednesday. After receiving feedback from Peloton’s beta testers that the app looked, felt, and functioned much like Ladder’s own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
