Tuesday, June 18, 2024

After 20 months of trying to raise funds, insurance startup Loop cuts staff

Loop, the car insurance company co-founded by Harlem Capital co-founder John Henry, has laid off staff as the company struggles with fundraising. Henry took to Instagram to post the email his co-founder Carey Nadeau sent to impacted staff on June 16th. Nadeu also posted the letter to LinkedIn. It stated that this was the “absolute […]

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Apple kills Pay Later feature ahead of Affirm integration

on 12:12 AM with No comments

Apple announced at last week's WWDC 2024 that users would be able to access loans through third-party app Affirm through Apple Pay.

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Astroscale’s space junk inspection satellite snaps a close-up photo of a discarded rocket stage

on 12:09 AM with No comments

Astroscale’s space junk observation satellite has moved within striking distance to a discarded rocket upper stage that’s been floating around Earth for nearly 20 years, taking close-up pictures — preliminary to actually deorbiting the object in a future mission. The company released an image captured by its satellite from a distance of just 50 meters […]

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DeepMind’s new AI generates soundtracks and dialogue for videos

on 12:06 AM with No comments

DeepMind says that it sees the tech, V2A (short for "video-to-audio"), as an essential piece of the AI-generated media puzzle.

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Google brings Gemini mobile app to India with nine Indian language support

on 10:17 PM in features, Tech News with No comments

Google has released its dedicated AI mobile app Gemini in India — over four months after its debut in the U.S. — with support for nine Indian languages, including Hindi. The Gemini mobile app in India is based on Google’s AI Gemini 1.5 Pro and supports nine Indian languages alongside English: Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, […]

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Finbourne taps $70M for tech that turns financial data dust into AI gold

on 5:17 PM in features, Tech News with No comments

Finbourne, founded out of London’s financial center, has built a platform to help financial companies organize and use more of their data in AI and other models.

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TechCrunch Space: A new era for human spaceflight research

on 3:17 PM in features, Tech News with No comments

Hello and welcome back to TechCrunch Space. We’ll have to wait a little longer for the return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule from the International Space Station — the capsule and its two astronauts will stay at the station for twice as much time as originally planned, to give mission operators additional time to conduct tests […]

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Can quick commerce leapfrog e-commerce in India?

on 3:17 PM in features, Tech News with No comments

Even as quick commerce startups are retreating, consolidating or shutting down in many parts of the world, the model is showing encouraging signs in India. Consumers in urban cities are embracing the convenience of having groceries delivered to their doorstep in just 10 minutes. The companies making those deliveries — Blinkit, Zepto and Swiggy’s Instamart […]

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Tinybird raises another $30 million to transform data into real-time APIs

on 6:00 AM with No comments

Tinybird is not so tiny anymore. The enterprise data startup TechCrunch first covered three years ago has been growing at a rapid pace and recently raised a $30 million Series B funding round. According to a source, the company is now valued at $240 million. Originally from Madrid and now also based in New York, […]

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Perplexity AI searches for users in Japan, via SoftBank deal

on 5:46 AM in features, Tech News with No comments

After announcing a strategic partnership with SoftBank in April, Perplexity — the AI search engine that has ambitions to take on Google — is now using the deal to expand its user base, and data touchpoints, in SoftBank’s home market of Japan. SoftBank and two of its mobile operations, Y!mobile (SoftBank’s mobile phone operator) and […]

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YC-backed Hona looks to reduce the communication friction between law firms and their consumer clients

on 5:16 AM in features, Tech News with No comments

When Manny Griffiths worked with a personal injury lawyer after his wife’s car accident, he was surprised by the lack of information and communication from their lawyer regarding their claim. The couple sometimes wouldn’t hear from their lawyer for months and found the entire process to be really opaque. Griffiths dug deeper and learned that […]

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Privacy app maker Proton transitions to non-profit foundation structure

on 4:46 AM in features, Tech News with No comments

Proton, the Swiss company behind a suite of privacy-focused apps such as ProtonMail, is following in the footsteps of Signal and Mozilla by transitioning to a new non-profit foundation model. The newly setup Proton Foundation will serve as the main shareholder to the existing corporate entity that is Proton AG, which will continue as a […]

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Tinybird raises another $30 million to transform data into real-time APIs

on 4:16 AM in features, Tech News with No comments

Posted from: this blog via Microsoft Power Automate.

India’s Oyo, once valued at $10B, finalizes new funding at $2.5B valuation

on 12:06 AM with No comments

Oyo, the Indian budget-hotel chain startup, is finalizing a fresh fundraise of about $100 million to $125 million that slashes its valuation to $2.5 billion, two people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. That’s a steep decline in the Gurgaon-headquartered startup’s value, which was worth $10 billion in 2019. The startup, struggling to raise from […]

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