CollX, a company offering an online trading card marketplace, has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Austin-based Brand Foundry Ventures and Philadelphia-based 114 Ventures, both of which were previous investors in the company. Other investors such as Next Coast Ventures, FJ Labs, and Ben Franklin Technology Partners also participated . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The war in Ukraine has brought drones to the forefront of modern warfare, creating a surge in demand for counter-drone systems. However, legacy solutions to counter drones, such as ground-based defense systems and cyber warfare, often come with a hefty price tag. For German startup Alpine Eagle, these solutions fall short: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As AI companies race to improve the accuracy of large language models (LLMs) and apps built on top of them, a startup that has emerged as a key partner in that effort is announcing a significant round of funding. Turing, which works with armies of engineers to contribute code to AI projects Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
CoreWeave’s initial S-1 document for its upcoming IPO is full of surprises. Backed by Nvidia, CoreWeave runs an AI-specific cloud service from its network of 32 data centers that together have more than 250,000 Nvidia GPUs as of the end of 2024, according to the company. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
A U.K. startup, originating from founder Jacob Nathan’s high school science project on using enzymes to break down plastic waste, has secured an oversubscribed $18.3 million in Series A funding. Founded in 2019 in London, Epoch Biodesign now a 30+ strong multidisciplinary team of chemists, biologists and software engineers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The drive to decarbonize our economies through electrification and clean energy continues to generate momentum around battery technologies, as storage has a key role to play in enabling the green transition. While renewables are clean sources of energy compared to burning fossil fuels, their power output isn’t always consistent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Sequoia-backed Mach Industries, the defense tech founded by 21-year-old Ethan Thornton, landed a contract with the U.S. Army and has plans for its first factory, Thornton told TechCrunch. The factory will be 115,000 square feet in Huntington Beach, California, where Mach’s headquarters is located, CEO Thorton said. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
With just a few words, AI models can be prompted to create a story, an image, or even a short film. But according to Weber Wong, these models are all “made by non-creatives for other non-creatives to feel creative.” In other words, they’re not built for actual creative professionals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The software supply chain is notoriously porous: a reported 81% of codebases contain high- or critical-risk open source vulnerabilities. A single vulnerability can have a far-reaching impact on the wider software supply chain, as evidenced by the likes of the Log4Shell exploit that saw millions of applications exposed to potential remote code execution hacks Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Fintech has fragmented into increasingly specialized, cucumber-sliced micro-services, ranging from embedded buy-now-pay-later loans to specialized neo banks to yet more payment processing systems. What opportunities remain for innovators in such a fragmented landscape? One U.K. startup, Just Move In, zoomed out and realised that the home had been overlooked by everyone in the industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
AI has the power to transform how people work, but getting tangible value out of AI isn’t as easy as throwing any AI application at any workflow. It can be hard for enterprises to figure out which AI applications help their business and which are just hype. Workhelix wants to solve that problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Inception, a new Palo Alto-based company started by Stanford computer science professor Stefano Ermon, claims to have developed a novel AI model based on “diffusion” technology. Inception calls it a diffusion-based large language model, or a “DLM” for short. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Being somewhat later than Europe in adopting the idea of parcel delivery, much of Asia built its delivery infrastructure around e-commerce, effectively ‘Uberising’ how deliveries worked down to the last mile. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Birdgetown Research has raised $19 million in a round co-led by Accel and Lightspeed to deploy AI agents for business decisions and M&A deals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Despite employers requiring their employees to complete yearly cybersecurity training courses, human-driven cybersecurity breaches still happen. The problem could even get substantially worse as generative AI increases the scale and personalization of social engineering campaigns. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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“Agentic AI” is the concept of the moment. Developers big and small are rushing to build apps to leapfrog the heavy lifting needed to employ generative AI in specific contexts… and investors are rushing to fund the most interesting of these. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
For decades, patents have been a bone of contention in the technology world, seen by some as a way to protect intellectual property, but by critics as a blunt weapon against innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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The AI observability platform has raised $70 million in Series C funding. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Solar and wind together now represent nearly a quarter of electricity demand and nearly 10% of all energy consumption in the U.S. © 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Recalls in the food and beverage industry due to contamination incidents can have catastrophic effects. Not only do companies have to pay fines and damages, but the impacts on the brand’s reputation can be long-lasting. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
For decades, couples going through in vitro fertilization have had to spend tens of thousands of dollars on the procedures with no guarantee of success. It’s not only an emotionally draining process, but a financially exhausting one as well. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Data centers consumed 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023 and are estimated to use up to 12% by 2028. The majority of the energy data centers suck up is used to help transfer data from chip to chip. A company called Hyperlume is looking to make that process more energy-efficient while also speeding it up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
As companies like Nvidia and SoftBank make industrial robotics into a key focus for future R&D, a startup has raised funding today for another facet of how AI is being used on the factory room floor. Augury, which develops AI-based hardware that measures vibrations, sound, temperature and other factors to understand how machines are working Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Level Zero Health, a female-founded medical device startup that’s aiming to break new ground by developing a device for continuous hormone monitoring, has closed an oversubscribed $6.9 million pre-seed funding round despite being only a little over a year old. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Generative AI is getting better at interpreting dense texts, and this progress has proven to be a boon for startups attacking one of the most complex sets of texts there is: the law. It makes sense then that we’ve been seeing a new burst of activity in the legal tech space Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Helsing, the German defense tech startup backed by Spotify’s Daniel Ek and others, is producing 6,000 HX-2 strike drones in addition to the 4,000 HF-1 strike drones financed by Germany that are currently being delivered to Ukraine. “We are scaling up production of HX-2 in response to additional orders from Ukraine.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
The next frontier for large language models (LLMs), one of the key technologies underpinning the boom in generative AI tools, might be geographical. On Monday, Paris-based AI startup Mistral — which is vying to rival the likes of U.S.-based Anthropic and OpenAI — is releasing a model that’s a bit different from its usual LLM. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
When EJ Cho started his first company in 2018, he was exposed to what it takes to market a product. He was surprised to find a market filled with different single-use tools. “It was a very frustrating experience,” Cho told TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
