Startups

Should you trust Tools for Humanity’s iris-scanning orb?

Ever wonder if you’re talking to a real person online or just another bot? As bots increasingly outnumber humans online, leading to an explosion of deepfakes and AI-driven fraud, one company has a solution straight out of sci-fi: scanning your iris to verify your identity.  Today on TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, Rebecca Bellan spoke with Adrian […]

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David Sacks’ Craft leads $42 million Series A in govtech startup Starbridge

Justin Wenig remembers his days at Y Combinator in 2019. Back then, he was working with his first startup, Coursedog, which looked to provide more modern tools to higher educational facilities, including those that work with state departments. He learned quickly that his peers didn’t like working with the public sector — too much bureaucracy.

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A16z-backed Codi launches AI agent office manager

Codi, an Andreessen Horowitz-backed startup founded by Christelle Rohaut and Dave Schuman, is launching what it hails as the first AI-powered platform to fully automate office management.   Codi was founded in 2018, in a pre-pandemic world, with a mission to help companies find flexible office spaces. It was more of a marketplace, as TechCrunch previously reported, that matched companies

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Aura introduces a $499 e-ink digital photo frame that lets you go cordless

Aura is introducing its newest model, the $499 Ink frame, which brings a 13-inch color e-paper display to the company’s otherwise LCD-based lineup. The technology, similar to that found in the Kindle Colorsoft e-reader, uses a six-color ink system to create the illusion of millions of tones. More importantly, using e-ink technology allows the frame

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Shin Starr’s robotic food truck kitchen will serve up Korean BBQ at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

When Shin Starr set out to build an autonomous kitchen, the company knew that the gimmick of robotic cooking wouldn’t carry the business. What would make Shin Starr’s OLHSO Korean BBQ food truck successful is if it could cook and deliver a hot, fresh, tasty meal at a reasonable price. “At the end of the

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24 hours to spotlight your startup at Disrupt 2025 | TechCrunch

You’re looking for big ways to grow your startup, whether that means securing investors, landing enterprise deals, or generating a nonstop pipeline of leads. This is your final moment.  You have less than 24 hours — and only a couple of tables left — to lock in the most valuable growth opportunity of the year at TechCrunch

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Rent a Cyber Friend will pay you to talk to strangers online and will show off its platform at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Francesco Vitali will be the first to admit that when his co-founder Chris Siametis first pitched him on Rent a Cyber Friend, he didn’t quite get the idea. “Who’s going to pay somebody to speak with somebody?” Vitali told TechCrunch. “But Chris was insistent. Chris is a millennial, and I’m Gen X, so it wasn’t

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A new wave of social media apps provide hope in a doomscrolling world 

Zehra Naqvi recalls the magical days of the early social internet.   She grew up in the One  Direction and Marvel fandoms in the early 2010s. This was back when people posted photos of lattes using the Valencia filter on Instagram, and Twitter was still Twitter, a place where people came together to exchange jokes and cultural analysis.   But now Instagram is full

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Deel hits $17.3B valuation after raising $300M from big-name VCs

As entertaining as it’s been for the tech industry to watch rival payroll decacorns Deel and Rippling sue each other over a corporate spying scandal, top-tier VCs are apparently not terribly scared off. Deel on Thursday announced that it has raised a $300 million Series E round co-led by A-list fintech VC firm Ribbit Capital

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