Category: Apps

The time has finally come to announce the five finalists of the Startup Battlefield. It all started earlier this year when the TechCrunch editorial team selected 200 companies from thousands that applied. From there, the team then chose the 20 finalists who pitched this week onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 to investor judges and packed…

African venture capital firm Janngo Capital has closed its second fund at €73 million (about $78 million), 20% more than its initial target of €60 million (about $63 million). The firm marked the first close of the fund at €26 million in 2022, roping in limited partners such as the African Development Bank Group (AfDB)…

Meesho has become India’s first horizontal e-commerce firm to generate positive cash flow, marking a significant shift in a market where profitability has long remained elusive even as new competitive threats emerge. The SoftBank and Prosus-backed startup, which serves customers in smaller Indian cities and towns, reported positive operating cash flow of ₹232 crores ($27.6…

Elon Musk-owned social network X made changes to its API pricing and limits today and also announced annual plans with a discounted rate. The company raised the prices of the basic API tier from $100 to $200 and said it would introduce higher limits and new endpoints for this subscription plan. In a post on…

Swiggy, one of India’s largest food delivery and quick commerce startups, is seeking a valuation of up to $11.3 billion in its initial public offering, marking a 57% discount to rival Zomato’s market cap. The lossmaking Bengaluru-based company has set an IPO price band of ₹371 to ₹390 ($4.41-$4.64) per share for next month’s IPO.…

Archon Biosciences, a biotech startup putting AI to work designing novel biomolecules, has just emerged from stealth with an impressive $20 million in seed funding. The company aims to supercharge antibody treatments using specially designed protein “cages” that multiply their effects, opening up new opportunities in drug development. This is the first company to be…

Google won’t ship tech from Project Astra, its wide-ranging effort to build AI apps and “agents” for real-time, multimodal understanding, until next year at the earliest. Google CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the timeline in remarks during Google’s Q3 earnings call Tuesday. “[Google is] building out experiences where AI can see and reason about the world…

Tire health has a huge impact on a truck’s fuel efficiency and safety on the road.  And yet, with all of the arguably sexier solutions out there offering driver assist features and self-driving software, tires don’t get the attention they deserve. At least, so says Ron Lee, the head of business development at BANF, a…

Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor, who recently co-founded Sierra, a new startup building a customer experience AI agent, joined us to talk about why he thinks AI agents are going to transform enterprise software. Taylor also chatted about what it’s like going from a big company like Salesforce to a brand new startup – and…

While a lot of celebrities invest in startups, the Chainsmokers are different. Instead of angel investing, Drew Taggart and Alex Pall launched a formal fund, Mantis Venture Capital, invest out of a formal closed-end fund, and back companies in industries their celebrity prowess can’t always help in, like security startups and analytics platforms. Watch as…