Category : Techcrunch

Kenyan legislative committee calls for Worldcoin shutdown in the country

A Kenyan parliamentary committee formed in August to investigate operations and activities of Sam Altman’s crypto project, Worldcoin, in the East African country, has recommended for it to be shut down. The committee, in a report published today...

Fearless Fund barred from awarding grant to Black women founders

The Fearless Fund suit is heating up in Atlanta’s 11th Circuit. A panel of three appellate judges on Saturday temporarily blocked Fearless Fund from awarding its $20,000 Fearless Strivers Grant to Black women entrepreneurs as the lawsuit filed a...

IronNet, founded by former NSA director, shuts down and lays off staff

IronNet, a once-promising cybersecurity startup founded by a former NSA director and funded by cyber and defense investors, has shuttered and laid off its remaining staff following its collapse. In a regulatory filing published Friday, IronNet’s...

Queer social app Lex gets a new CEO and $5.6M to grow

Lex, the app inspired by vintage lesbian personals, just raised $5.6 million in seed funding and elevated co-founder Jennifer Lewis from COO to CEO. As a result, founding CEO Kel Rakowski steps into a new role — chief creative officer, while for...

Amid Twitter chaos, Mastodon grew donations 488% in 2022, reached 1.8M monthly active users

Consumer interest in open source, decentralized social networking isn’t something that was only reflected in news headlines over the past year, it’s also apparent in the financials behind Mastodon. The nonprofit organization powers one of the ma...

This week in AI: AI-powered personalities are all the rage

Keeping up with an industry as fast-moving as AI is a tall order. So until an AI can do it for you, here’s a handy roundup of recent stories in the world of machine learning, along with notable research and experiments we didn’t cover on their o...

How much carbon pollution is in your product? Muir AI raises $3.25M seed to answer that question

Apple made some waves when it said that the newest Apple Watch would be carbon-neutral, which is not an insignificant feat, given that the company sold over 50 million smartwatches last year. But at the same time, Apple brought in almost $400 bi...

Web3 funding is down again as the crypto winter drags on

Crypto pretty much seems to have lost its allure as far as venture capitalists are concerned. According to new data from Crunchbase, investments into web3 startups declined in the third quarter compared to the second quarter, marking the seventh...

Beams helps product teams shine a light on the work that matters most

Beams’ co-founders Jana Schellong and Mihri Minaz see a fundamental problem with how product teams work. While they have productivity tools that are supposed to help them work smarter, too often they end up distracted by a mishmash of notificati...

We need to break Big Tech’s data broker industry

Martina Larkin Contributor Democracy is under siege. Our digital fingerprints are being sold. And digital ownership is being crushed by the small group of tech giants who control the internet as we know it. Th...

TikTok might begin testing $4.99 ad-free subscription tier

Soon, you might be able to watch TikTok ad-free. Mostly. And for a price. As first reported by Android Authority, code within the TikTok app indicates that TikTok might begin to test an ad-free subscription tier for users in the U.S. For $4.99,...

TikTok confirms small test of an ad-free subscription tier outside the US

Elon Musk’s X to test livestream shopping in partnership with Paris Hilton

As Elon Musk’s X expands its efforts to become an “everything app,” the company formerly known as Twitter announced today it will run a livestream shopping event with media icon Paris Hilton. The feature will allow X users to watch a livestreame...

Eyeing vision-based autonomy for farm equipment, Bonsai Robotics raises $10.5M

One can’t accuse Bonsai Robotics of lacking focus. The Bay Area-based firm is starting with trees — specifically nut trees. Like most labor-intensive sectors these days, farms have suffered from a profound lack of available workers, so the start...

Google Pixel Event 2023: How to stream the Pixel 8 reveal

The biggest question at this point is whether Google has any more surprises up its sleeve. The company appears to have announced everything about the Pixel 8, Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel Watch 2 but the price. And even that appears to have been reveal...