At 11 a.m. in California last Thursday, the day after President Donald Trump declared sweeping new tariffs under what he dubbed “Liberation Day,” Ryan Petersen was live on camera, fielding questions from a virtual room packed with more than 2,300 anxious customers. The founder and CEO of Flexport, a now 12-year-old global logistics and customs […]
Elisabeth Diana, head of communications at human resources Deel, is no longer with the company, according to her LinkedIn profile. Bloomberg first reported the news that Diana had resigned from Deel, which was recently accused of planting a spy at rival company Rippling. TechCrunch reached out to Diana but had not heard back at the
Deel’s comms chief departs amidst spying lawsuit from Rippling Read More »
Mach CEO Ethan Thornton has been building weapons systems of varying shapes and sizes since high school, but his ambitions have turned into a company that recently landed a contract with the U.S. military and a plan to develop cross-functional factories. TechCrunch’s Charles Rollet interviewed Thornton during the StrictlyVC 2025 event in San Francisco, exploring
Mach CEO on building defense tech company in your 20s Read More »
Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Want it in your inbox every Friday? Sign up here. This week reminded us that different startups share a different approach to news: Some choose to remain quiet for a very long time, even about their acquisition
Startups Weekly: Stay tuned for the Rippling espionage movie Read More »
Rippling’s latest lawsuit reads less like a legal filing and more like the plot of a corporate espionage thriller, complete with secret crypto payments, an alleged mole, and a fake Slack channel trap. This week, the HR tech startup publicly named the employee at the center of its case against its rival Deel, claiming the
Spy games in HR tech: Inside Rippling’s wild lawsuit against Deel Read More »
Generative AI has vastly expanded the toolkit available to hackers and other bad actors. It’s now possible to do everything from deepfaking a CEO to creating fake receipts. OpenAI, the biggest generative AI startup of them all, knows this better than anyone. And it’s just invested in another AI startup that helps companies defend against
OpenAI just made its first cybersecurity investment Read More »
Thatch, a startup that aims to transform the health insurance experience for employers and employees alike, has raised $40 million in a Series B round of funding, it tells TechCrunch exclusively. Index Ventures led the financing, which included participation from existing backers Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), General Catalyst, SemperVirens, PeopleTech Partners, The General Partnership, and new
Thatch raises $40M to give employees more control of their health care choices Read More »
On Wednesday, Rippling publicly released the affidavit of the Rippling employee who testified that he was working as a spy for the HR tech company’s arch rival Deel. And the account, coupled with Rippling’s lawsuit filed against Deel last week, reads like a corporate espionage movie script, complete with a sting operation and a smashed
The affidavit of a Rippling employee caught spying for Deel reads like a movie Read More »
During the COVID-19 pandemic, mortgage interest rates dropped to historic lows — as low as 2.5%. Fast-forward a few years and rates soared — to highs nearing 8% in 2023, with the national average 30-year fixed mortgage APR as of April 1 still at 6.84%. The whiplash has left many people seeking to buy homes
AI sales rep startups are a very crowded market these days. If you’re driving into San Francisco from the airport, you’ll probably spot billboards promising that you can “Stop Hiring Humans” (Artisan) or urging you to “Hire Piper, the AI SDR” (Qualified). While some of these startups are certainly growing fast, the field has its
Actively AI raises $22.5M to offer sales ‘superintelligence,’ says AI SDRs failed Read More »
