People are generally skeptical of customer service chatbots, and many outright despise them. In a recent Gartner survey, 64% of consumers said that they’d prefer companies didn’t use AI of any kind — including chatbots — in their customer service. Fifty-three percent went so far as to say they’d weigh switching to a rival if […]
Regal claims its customer service chatbots are better than most Read More »
Actor and director Olivia Wilde, famous for in “Tron: Legacy” and “Don’t Worry Darling,” quietly launched venture firm Proximity Ventures late last year, according to Bloomberg. She launched the early- and growth-stage investment fund with Neil Sirni, formerly of Roc Nation’s venture division Arrive; Jason Mack, formerly of Mack Ventures; and Santi White, the musician
Actor and director Olivia Wilde launches a VC firm Read More »
Eight years ago, Brian Garrett and his partners sensed the ground shifting. At the time, Crosscut Ventures, where Garrett is co-founder and managing partner, had been investing in early stage startups in Los Angeles and Southern California for nearly a decade. It focused mostly on software companies, but it started shifting its attention to hardware,
Why Crosscut Ventures is ‘following the founders’ into climate, space, and beyond Read More »
Now that we have so many startups offering AI bots that can do everything from listening to your meetings and transcribe them, to taking notes and surfacing insights, companies in the space are being forced to differentiate themselves by offering additional feature sets and integrations. One such company, Read AI is trying to do just
Read AI raises $50M to integrate its bot with Slack, email and more Read More »
Solar panels are just about everywhere. There’s a good chance one of your neighbors has them on their roof, as does the big box store down the street. As you drive there, you might see a field of them posted up alongside the road. With that kind of ubiquity, you’d be forgiven if you thought
Merlin Solar bets twisty panels will help it land on rooftops everywhere Read More »
While many venture investors, and likely their LPs, were hoping IPOs were going to come back in 2024, that hasn’t happened and isn’t likely to in the next two months. NASDAQ CEO Adena Friedman isn’t surprised. Friedman said at Axios’s BFD event on Tuesday that while on paper the public markets have been experiencing a spectacular year
The NAACP announced today NAACP Capital, a $200 million fund of funds to back fund managers focused on issues that impact people of color. The fund was conceived in partnership with Kapor Capital and Kapor Center, along with nine other venture fund managers. Last year, Crunchbase found that Black founders raised less than 1% of
NAACP launches $200 million fund of funds Read More »
It’s no secret that Stripe has doubled down on its crypto offerings, enabling crypto purchases in the EU back in July and announcing a Pay with Crypto feature earlier this month. This week, the fintech giant made its dedication even clearer with its largest deal to date: its acquisition of stablecoin platform Bridge for an
Stripe’s biggest acquisition yet, and what’s a16z doing with all of those Nvidia GPUs? Read More »
The war in Ukraine has shown that warfare changes by the day. It’s also clear that the tech used to make war today is costly: While larger countries can afford legions of tanks, helicopters, and precision-strike systems, smaller nations find themselves scrambling for cheaper ways to defend themselves. Origin, a new defense tech startup out of
Airdog’s founders are back with a precision-strike drone meant for modern warfare Read More »
Despite the tight venture capital market, unicorns are still being created every month. Using data from Crunchbase, CB Insights, and PitchBook, TechCrunch tracked down the newly minted unicorns so far this year. The list includes Elon Musk’s xAI, which is already valued at a staggering $24 billion, as well as a good number of other
49 US startups have become unicorns so far in 2024: Here’s the full list Read More »
