TechCrunch Startups – Spoken Edition

Zevo is a new peer-to-peer car-sharing startup, which is broadly similar to Turo, but focused exclusively on electric vehicles. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

WordPress.com owner Automattic has added another communication-focused startup to its lineup: relationship-management app Clay. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The company, based in the U.K., offers a productivity suite to streamline the legal drafting and review process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Standard Nuclear was the winning bidder for Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation's fuel-related assets at a bankruptcy auction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Commercial nuclear fusion power isn't a reality yet. But venture capital is flowing into startups that promise that clean, safe, and virtually limitless energy is no longer just a distant dream Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Co-founded by Adyen's former CTO, Tebi helps restaurants, bars and other hospitality businesses manage their operations with an all-in-one subscription-based platform that can handle payments, reservations, inventory, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mitra Chem is developing materials to make lithium-iron-phosphate (LFP) batteries store more energy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

XRobotics recently raised a $2.5 million seed round to help it produce more of its countertop pizza robots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Impact investor and advisor Christian Tooley posed a simple question to the audience at SXSW London last week: What if investors put aside societal prudence for profit?  Tooley was mainly referring to vice clauses, the restrictions that limited partners place on venture firms to guardrail their investments.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

American streets are incredibly dangerous for pedestrians. A San Carlos, California-based startup called Obvio thinks it can change that by installing cameras at stop signs -- a solution the founders also say won't create a panopticon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The fight between HR tech startups has heated up again after Rippling filed an amended complaint accuses Deel of targeting, infiltrating, and compromising of four other competitors, in addition to Rippling. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite what some experts have characterized as an environment increasingly hostile to AI R&D, North America continues to receive the bulk of AI venture dollars, according to data from investment tracker PitchBook. Between February and May of this year, VCs poured $69.7 billion into North America-based AI and machine learning startups across 1,528 deals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Monik Pamecha co-founded AI voice startup Toma in early 2024, he hadn't anticipated spending the summer months sweating in Bible Belt car dealerships. He and co-founder Anthony Krivonos were still focused on banking and healthcare customers when the dealers came knocking.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Windsurf, the popular vibe coding startup that's reportedly being acquired by OpenAI, said Anthropic significantly reduced its first-party access to the highly popular AI models Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude 3.5 Sonnet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The company is working on a bio-acoustic project, which will map out the different types of dire wolf howls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you've ever been locked out of your work computer, you know the urgent need to reach IT support. Unfortunately, helpdesk staff are often busy assisting others, which can mean a significant delay before you regain access. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speedata, a Tel Aviv-based startup developing an analytics processing unit (APU) designed to accelerate big data analytic and AI workloads, has raised a $44M Series B funding round, bringing its total capital raised to $114M. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The NAACP is calling on local officials to halt operations at Colossus, the “supercomputer” facility operated by Elon Musk's xAI in South Memphis. As reported in NBC News, leaders from the civil rights group sent a letter Thursday to the Shelby County Health Department and Memphis Light Gas and Water criticizing the organizations' “lackadaisical approach." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's no surprise that many big, left-leaning social media accounts have recently joined Bluesky — but a new analysis from the Pew Research Center attempts to quantify that shift. This comes as an update to Pew's news influencer report released in November 2024, which did not include Bluesky in its numbers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Misfits Market, the online platform that delivers imperfect groceries to help minimize waste, announced the acquisition of household restocking service The Rounds on Friday. As a result of the deal, Misfits Market plans to take on over 250 items from The Rounds' inventory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Just ahead of its Worldwide Developers Conference next month, Apple on Thursday announced new figures related to the U.S. App Store's financial success. The company says its U.S. App Store ecosystem has generated $406 billion in developer billings and sales Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI-powered office suite Context raises $11 million in seed funding from Lux Capital, Qualcomm Ventures and General Catalyst Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rillet directly pulls data from their customers' banks and platforms to generate financial statements, including the balance sheet and income statement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Reflecting on 10 years since its launch, the honeypot maker explains why the company did not take on any VC funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All Thibault Launay and his wife Simi wanted nearly five years ago was to build a dream home in Portugal, where they both now live.  But what they encountered instead was a broken system. “Fourteen months of delays, 20% budget overruns, and endless stress managing over 10 subcontractors,” Thibault recalled. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Salesforce has acquired cloud data management firm Informatica in an $8 billion equity deal, marking a major move in its push to strengthen its AI and data infrastructure capabilities. The announcement, made Tuesday, comes about a year after early rumors of the acquisition sent both companies' stock prices sliding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Outset Ventures, the Auckland-based venture firm and incubator that spun out deep tech unicorns like Rocket Lab and LanzaTech, has closed its second fund at an oversubscribed $41.5 million NZD. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Key to the company's growth are the next products RevenueCat has on its roadmap, the company's founder says. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The tale of how smart toilet startup Throne landed its seed round is so full of serendipities, one could almost believe it was orchestrated by the hand of Fortuna, Roman god of providence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A third-party research institute that Anthropic partnered with to test one of its new flagship AI models, Claude Opus 4, recommended against deploying an early version of the model due to its tendency to “scheme” and deceive. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hinge Health, a digital physical therapist company, closed its first day of trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday at $37.56, up about 17% over the $32 IPO price it set the previous day. That's a good first-day result. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From a struggling family tea estate to an innovative climate venture, Alt Carbon has raised $12 million in a seed round as it plans to scale its carbon dioxide removal work in the South Asian nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There is a new accounting software in town, coming in with a fresh $17.2 million raise and a desire to shake things up. The company, Field, hopes to automate the grunt work. “The tax industry is facing a genuine crisis,” Leroy Kerry, Field's co-founder CEO, told TechCrunch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brex has once again made the surprising, but perhaps realistic, decision to partner with another one-time competitor. This time Zip, the CEOs of both companies told TechCrunch exclusively.  In April 2022, fintech Brex announced it was making “a big push” into both the enterprise and software. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cairo-based Sylndr has raised $15.7 million as it expands beyond online used car sales into auto financing, servicing, and tools for dealers. The round was led by Development Partners International's Nclude Fund and included follow-on investments from Algebra Ventures and Nclude. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Gravitee, a platform designed to help companies manage their APIs and other digital traffic pipelines, has raised $60 million in a Series C funding round led by Sixth Street Growth with participation from Riverside Acceleration Capital and Albion VC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The global assistive technology market was valued at more than $22 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow substantially by 2030. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Roughly a month after Moonvalley, a Los Angeles-based startup developing AI tools for video creation, said it secured $43 million in new funding, the company has raised more, according to a filing with the SEC. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Y Combinator startup Firecrawl is back on the hunt for AI agent employees, after a previous attempt to hire one didn't go as planned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Savings and investing startup Acorns has acquired EarlyBird, an investment gifting platform for families, the company told TechCrunch exclusively. The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. As part of the acquisition, EarlyBird will shut down, and all customer accounts will officially close on June 23. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pronto, which provides cleaning, laundry and home services within 10 minutes, has raised $2M at a $12.5M valuation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

AI-powered notetaking app Granola is raising $43 million in funding at a $250 million valuation. It is also launching a team sharing feature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices