TechCrunch Startups – Spoken Edition

Lava is a digital wallet that lets merchants use credits to facilitate transactions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Celebrity Lockets is a new feature where celebrities can engage with their most loyal followers on their home screens. Also, Tavity, the one-year-old startup raised a Series A led by Insight Partners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is a juicy competitive move for both companies after AWS faced an onslaught of criticism over its progress with AI. In other news, the AI audio-generation unicorn ElevenLabs announced the launch of a new model that allows users to generate music that's cleared for commercial use. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

-The AI sales automation startup raised fresh funds, led by CapitalG, just months after its last round. -While the ActivityPub integration is a main selling point for Ghost 6, this major release includes a number of other changes and new additions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

OpenMind is building humanoid robot operating software designed for robots that interact with people and other robots. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Germ's new app lets users send end-to-end encrypted messages on Bluesky. TechCrunch speaks with the Germ founders to hear why they came up with the idea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Indian startup Jeh Aerospace has secured $11 million in a new funding round to help ease global supply chain bottlenecks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Anthropic has revoked OpenAI's access to its Claude family of AI models, according to a report in Wired. Sources told Wired that OpenAI was connecting Claude to internal tools that allowed the company to compare Claude's performance to its own models in categories like coding, writing, and safety. Also, as Silicon Valley races toward a future where AI agents do most of the software programming, a new problem is created: finding the AI-generated bugs before they are put into production. Even OpenAI is dealing with such issues, a former employee has described;  Figma began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday after a long delay. It soared so quickly that trading was halted for a short time due to market volatility. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Latvian startup Handwave aims to compete with Amazon palm payments by offering an independent alternative. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

SixSense offers an AI-powered platform that helps chip makers prevent defects. It landed backing led by Peak XV's Surge (formerly Sequoia India & SEA). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Israel-based eVTOL startup AIR has raised $23 million to scale production of both its piloted and uncrewed cargo aircraft, and enter the U.S. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A marketing automation startup called Conversation has a founding story that sounds like it could have been an episode of the HBO show “Silicon Valley.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Nara Organics is a new organic, whole milk baby formula brand that's free from palm oil, soy, corn syrup, maltodextrin, and GMOs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Delian Alliance Industries recently raised $14 million in funding to continue building its defense products, which include surveillance towers, and concealed sea drones. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Index Ventures partner Jahanvi Sardana has a reminder for all those founders worried about finding TAM for their product or service: many startups have emerged from markets that, at the time, were essentially nonexistent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In red-hot acquisition market, this CVector founders answer this key question in its first conversation with prospective customers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The internet trend is simple: A friend or family member looks into the camera and tells viewers, in a slightly aggressive tone, that they are about to witness a presentation and that they had better be nice.  Also, Acrew Capital's Lauren Kolodny led a $20 million Series A in Alix, a startup that uses AI to automate estate processing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A senior software engineer for Turso, Thorpe is part of an experimental program in the Maine state prison system that allows incarcerated people to work remote jobs from custody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's the first such product to reach the market, and it could unlock a host of fattened-up meat alternatives. Also, iRocket is aiming to hit the public markets but the SPAC vehicle has hardly any cash left. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

LegalOn Technologies, a Tokyo- and San Francisco-headquartered legal tech startup that has built an AI contract review software for legal teams, has raised $50 million in Series E funding led by Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, along with existing investor World Innovation Lab (WiL), and new investors Mori Hamada & Matsumoto Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All-electric truck fleet startup Nevoya has landed a fresh round of capital and plans to expand. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

DroneDogs can be sent to places unsafe for humans or real dogs and can do tasks like dangerous chemical detection. In other news, less than a week after becoming Europe's latest unicorn, Swedish vibe coding startup Lovable has now crossed the $100 million annual recurring revenue mark. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

RA Capital Planetary Health closed a $120 million fund. Here's the rubric two investors use to determine where to place their fund's money. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Startup Mixus has built an AI agent platform that not only keeps humans in the workflow, but also allows those humans to interact with agents directly from their email or Slack. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Cursor-maker Anysphere is snapping up top talent from AI enterprise startups in an effort to compete with Microsoft's GitHub Copilot. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Tiffany Luck, a partner at NEA, outlined what she looks for in a pitch, during a presentation at TechCrunch's All Stage event in Boston. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Diarrha N'Diaye-Mbaye, one of the first among the small number of Black women to raise more than $1 million in venture capital, announced on Thursday the closure of her award-winning beauty startup Ami Colé. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

San Francisco-based startup Confident Security wants to be “the Signal for AI." The company just came out of stealth with $4.2 million and a tool that wraps around AI models to guarantee data stays private. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spurred by the performance of its first fund, Cambrian Ventures' $20 million second fund will continue the firm's thesis of focusing on fintech startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Only eight months after its launch, Sweden's Lovable has raised a $200 million Series A round led by Accel at a $1.8 billion valuation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Auriga Space wants to reimagine launch by using electromagnetic forces. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Pronto.ai CEO Anthony Levandowski said the move is meant to help bolster his company's ranks with like-minded talent and complimentary technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Atmo will use its deep learning models to help Rainmaker identify clouds that have potential for seeding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rwazi has raised a $12 million Series A led by Bonfire Ventures to help companies with market intelligence and consumer insights Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Firefly Space has filed for a initial public offering. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Despite conspiracy theories, there's no way that cloud seeding operations days before the storm could have influenced the floods, scientists say. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

RealSense is building vision tech that helps machines like robots and drones navigate and respond to a 3D world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Helios, a startup aiming to build an AI-powered operating system for policy professionals, has raised $4 million in seed funding. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Devin won't replace humans developers at the bank. It will be supervised by them. Also, Sarah Smith launches $16M fund, says AI can ‘unlock' so much for solo GPs like herself. Smith launched her eponymous fund in 2022 and is a solo GP. She said she's “stunned” by what AI can unlock for firms like hers, solo and next-generation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While highly sought after, federal software contracts frequently come with a hidden cost: Achieving government SaaS security compliance, known as FedRAMP, can take years and require substantial resources. Achieving this certification typically takes up to three years and costs more than $3 million, covering everything from security operations engineer salaries to security audits Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The micromobility startup that spun out of Rivian this year, was raised $200 million from Greenoaks Capital. Also, French AI startup Mistral is in talks to raise up to $1 billion in equity from investors including Abu Dhabi's MGX fund, reports Bloomberg Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

With a fundraising target of €25 million, Darkstar's goal is to help startups bring battle-tested products to military customers both in Ukraine and throughout Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices