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Sprinklr cuts 500 employees, citing underwhelming business performance

Enterprise /

Sprinklr, a U.S. firm providing a customer experience management platform to global brands, has laid off about 15% of its workforce — around 500 employees — due to business performance not meeting expectations, the company confirmed to TechCrunch. The new layoffs come less than a year after the company cut about 3% of its workforce in […]

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Early Meta employee sues for sexual harassment, gender discrimination  

Social /

One of Meta’s earliest employees is suing the company for sexual harassment, sex discrimination, and retaliation, according to a lawsuit filed this week in the state of Washington. Kelly Stonelake, who spent 15 years at the company and rose to the rank of director, alleges in the lawsuit she faced a cycle of gender-based discrimination

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Intel Capital fuels TrueFoundry’s $19M funding to help boost AI deployments at scale

Enterprise /

TrueFoundry, a startup run by a group of former Meta engineers to help enterprises deploy AI systems at scale, has raised $19 million in fresh investment led by Intel Capital. With GenAI’s emergence following the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, enterprises of all sizes have looked at ways they could embrace AI. But GenAI

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European VC firm Emblem raises $85 million for its initial fund

Venture /

Emblem, a relatively new European VC firm based in Paris, is announcing the final closing of its first fund. Eighteen months after the first closing, the Emblem team managed to secure €80 million in total (around $85 million at current exchange rates). This is no small feat in the current funding environment. According to Atomico’s

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Bench burned through $135 million before shutting down

Startups /

A clearer picture of Bench’s downfall is emerging thanks to newly-released bankruptcy filings. The records show that the Canada-based startup, which ironically enough offered cloud accounting software for small businesses, consistently struggled to reach profitability. It burned through $135 million from its founding in 2012 to September 2024. By the time of its collapse, Bench

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Modern Synthesis is making compostable materials that last a lifetime

Fundraising /

Jen Keane’s claim to fame is that she grew a shoe using bacteria, coaxing the microbes to deposit their nanocellulosic materials in the shape of a sneaker. But she’s kind of over that. “I feel like that sort of misses the point,” she told TechCrunch. “The fiber produced by bacteria — like, that’s not a

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Hitachi Ventures raises $400M fund to invest in everything from fusion to AI

Venture /

Hitachi Ventures secured $400 million for a fourth fund, the firm exclusively told TechCrunch. The size of the new fund is a vote of confidence in a range of deep tech verticals. The corporate VC’s sprawling portfolio mimics that of its limited partner’s, including energy, manufacturing, biotech, and AI. “We are open to other breakthrough

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Spyware maker Paragon confirms U.S. government is a customer

Security /

Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions confirmed to TechCrunch that it sells its products to the U.S. government and other unspecified allied countries. Paragon’s executive chairman John Fleming said in a statement to TechCrunch on Tuesday that, “Paragon licenses its technology to a select group of global democracies — principally, the United States and its allies.”

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