Back in 2011, the world held its breath after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in Japan suffered a failure of its cooling systems, in the wake of the country getting hit by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami. The worry was not unfounded: the resulting meltdown — which spread highly radioactive material in multiple directions […]
CapWay, a Y Combinator-backed fintech that sought to bring financial services to those in so-called “banking deserts,” has been shut down, according to its founder Sheena Allen. Allen wrote about it on LinkedIn and confirmed to TechCrunch. “I am proud of the work we were able to accomplish, but honestly disappointed that we couldn’t complete
Y Combinator-backed fintech CapWay has shut down Read More »
Do you want a side of socials with your fast food? Spain’s Glovo, a food delivery and quick commerce service where the bulk of orders are for ready-to-eat food, is experimenting with adding a bundle of social features to drive more in-app activity. It’s also letting restaurant partners upload food preparation videos to spice up
Glovo adds a side of social stickiness to its food delivery app Read More »
Pear VC, a prominent pre-seed and seed-focused venture firm, has been running an accelerator for about a decade with about 10 startups in each batch. Over those years, the small but mighty program has helped launch numerous companies like Viz.ai, whose FDA-approved AI can diagnose strokes (and was valued at $1.2 billion in 2022), relationship
Our favorite startups from Pear VC’s invitational demo day Read More »
In just over two weeks, TechCrunch will gather some of the startup world’s leading companies at Disrupt in San Francisco. But our partners provide more than just financial support. Their presence at Disrupt gives startups at any stage the tools, knowledge, and community they need to be a success. We thank Meta for their support
Two more weeks to go: Connect with Meta, Dropbox, J.P. Morgan, and HP at Disrupt Read More »
Getting payroll right is hard — especially for small businesses with limited resources. The three founders of payroll and benefits startup Gusto all found that out separately, running small businesses of their own, before linking up to try to fix the broken SMB payroll system in 2013. Josh Reeves, a co-founder and current CEO of
Why Gusto has stayed focused on serving small businesses Read More »
Ruben Harris and Timur Meyster, the founders of the upskilling platform Career Karma, announced today the launch of the company OutRival, which offers a service that hosts and lets businesses build their own customer service agents to take on customer interactions. AI agent companies are hot right now, and AI is one of the only
Career Karma founders launch OutRival to help companies build AI agents Read More »
This story has been updated throughout with more details as the story has developed. We will continue to do so as the case and dispute are ongoing. The world of WordPress, one of the most popular technologies for creating and hosting websites, is going through a very heated controversy. The core issue is the fight
The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained Read More »
Five-year-old AI customer service startup Neuron7 just closed an oversubscribed $44 million series B round led by Keith Block and his year-and-half-old venture firm, Smith Point Capital. Neuron7 sits in one of the most promising areas for AI technology: customer service. But unlike the hoards of ChatGPT customer chatbot startups, or those doing natural language
How customer service AI startup Neuron7 convinced Keith Block to invest Read More »
Inversion Space has become the third company to receive a spacecraft reentry license from the Federal Aviation Administration, paving the way for the startup to launch and return its tech pathfinder mission for orbital delivery later this year. The three-year-old startup has ambitions of transforming space into a new “transportation layer for Earth” using ultra-fast,
Inversion Space gets reentry license for orbital cargo delivery capsule demo Read More »
