Automation

This $30M startup built a dog crate-sized robot factory that learns by watching humans

Startups /

While many robotics companies are building human-sized robots, or working to automate entire factories, MicroFactory is instead trying to think big by building small.   San Francisco-based MicroFactory built a general-purpose, tabletop manufacturing kit that’s about the size of my Siberian Husky’s dog crate. This compact factory includes two robotic arms and can be trained by […]

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LayerX uses AI to cut enterprise back-office workload, scores $100M in Series B

AI /

Aging demographics, labor shortages, the adoption of GenAI, and the 2023 implementation of e-invoicing are driving companies to automate finance, tax, procurement, and HR in Japan. Yet only 16% of digital transformations succeed, and that’s only 4–11% in traditional industries. The main barriers? Weak leadership commitment, a rigid culture, and a lack of digital talent.

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CrowdStrike’s former CTO on cyber rivalries and how automation can undermine security for early-stage startups

Startups /

“One of the biggest vulnerabilities in companies is actually humans,” CrowdStrike co-founder and former CTO Dmitri Alperovitch told TechCrunch in this week’s episode of Equity. “The more you automate, the more opportunities there are for people to find vulnerabilities in your system.” With the $50 billion Chinese AI market potentially slipping out of reach for

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Cast AI raises $108M to get the max out of AI, Kubernetes and other workloads

AI /

The crush of traffic going into training and running AI has quickly turned into a major cost and resource headache for organisations. Today, Cast AI — a startup building tools to ease and optimise AI and other workloads with automation — is raising a major round of funding on the back of its strong growth

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Durin digs up $3.4M to automate drills for critical minerals exploration

Climate /

Finding new sources of critical minerals is a costly business. Worldwide, companies spent $12 to $13 billion on exploration in 2023. The upshot: mining is the definition of a hit-or-miss business. Companies today use advanced models of the Earth’s crust to pinpoint the best prospects, but even then only about three out of 1,000 attempts

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UiPath is looking for a path to growth in agentic AI with its Peak.ai acquisition

AI /

A rush of agentic AI solutions is hitting the enterprise market, and now one of the bigger players in automation has scooped up a startup in the space in hopes of taking a bigger piece of that business. UiPath, as part of its quarterly earnings last night, announced that it acquired Peak.ai, a startup out

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Regie.ai injects sales enablement with AI, but keeps humans in the loop

Fundraising /

There’s no sure-fire approach to sales enablement, the process of providing a sales team with the resources it needs to close deals. Some teams are deficient on the prospecting side — that is, identifying and contacting potential customers. Others require help getting deals over the finish line. To meet these diverse wants, founders Matt Millen

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Gumloop, founded in a bedroom in Vancouver, lets users automate tasks with drag-and-drop modules

Apps /

Developers Max Brodeur-Urbas and Rahul Behal think that AI has the potential to automate lots of business-relevant tasks, but that many of the AI-powered automation tools on the market today are unreliable and costly. Part of the problem is that users expect too much of AI, Brodeur-Urbas told TechCrunch — for instance, they assume that

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